What do you do at the monthly meetings?
Here are typical items on the monthly meeting agenda.
- Display/event updates and recaps.
- Display planning.
- Club business
- Proposal of a special project.
- Time to show off a build/MOC.
- Topic of conversation for the club.
- Fun activities involving LEGO such as build competitions and set drafts.
What are Build Competitions?
Approximately four times per year, the mandatory fun coordinator will announce the parameters for a build competition. Club members then typically have one or two months to build something that meets the parameters of the challenge and bring it to a meeting. At the meeting, the club will vote on the winning build in most cases, but occasionally other criteria come into play to determine a winner.
The winning build is presented with a gift card and everyone who submits a build to a build competition is entered into a drawing for a prize at the end of the year.
What is a Set Draft?
Set drafts are a great way to get multiples of a part for building MOCs. The exact implementation of each draft can vary at the agreement of those participating, but here is the high-level procedure:
- Each participant in a set draft brings one or more sealed copies of a previously agreed upon set to a meeting or other draft location.
- All the elements from the contributed sets are sorted together based on piece and color.
- Special cases such as how to allocate minifigs and how to group related parts are agreed upon by the participants while sorting
- Participants draw lots to determine which order they will draft in.
- Element selection occurs using a snake draft format where, when you reach the end of the list, you repeat it backwards.
- Example with 4 players: 1 → 2 → 3 → 4, then 4 → 3 → 2 → 1, and repeat
- During their turn, each participant picks one lot, usually consisting of all the elements of a particular type and color from across all the contributed sets
- The draft ends when all the lots have been selected
If it’s your first time participating in a set draft, don’t hesitate to ask questions about the process. Many club members are old hands at set drafts and will be happy to give you some guidance. (Don’t believe them when they tell you to pick the brick separators early though.) The other key to a successful set draft is to pay attention during the drafting process. The two items that will cause grumbling are not knowing when it’s your turn to make a selection and taking too much time to make a pick. Give yourself adequate time to make a smart choice, but don’t agonize over every pick, especially for larger sets with many lots.