The Winner of Our "piRATS & BUGaneers" Contest Is…
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Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day! We rapscallions at BrickNerd be crazy fans o’ LEGO Pirates, so earlier tis yearrr we done launched a crazy contest. So weigh anchor an’ batten down the hatches ‘cause we swashbucklers are ready to announce the winners o’ “piRATS & BUGaneers!”
To recap, we were looking for pirate-themed LEGO creations but with a twist—no humans allowed! And boy, did you deliver. We received 78 entries complete with brick-built critters, animals and fantasy crews, and so much creativity it blew us out of the water.
Judging this contest was extremely difficult! There were so many fantastic interpretations of the theme and so many praiseworthy pirate builds. Each BrickNerd contributor had an equal vote, and the results were very close.
Three key criteria were considered by the judges:
Concept: Who is the crew and how is the creation inspired by them?
Pirate-ness: Does it feel like the build could be related to pirates?
Quality & Presentation: Is the creation built well and is the scene composed and photographed thoughtfully?
Honorable Mentions
We’ll start off with our honorable mentions. These are just a few of the stand-out entries that we enjoyed. Each represented a great concept and embodied that pirate pizazz we were looking for. Each wins a pair of our contest mascot minifigs and swag from our amazing sponsors Crazy Bricks and KTown Bricks.
Congratulations to these six builders who amazed us with their creativity, building skill and artistry.
The Top Three
But at the end of the day, this is a contest and we had to choose some winners—as difficult as that was. So here are the top three (all of which were only one vote away from each other!) who will receive our coveted Golden Nerdly trophy and BrickNerd Box of swag, a LEGO shopping spree provided by LEGO, custom minifigures and a pirate torso from Crazy Bricks and KTown Bricks, and our contest mascot minifigs! Whew, that is a lot of loot!
Third Place: The Rubber Duccaneers - Random Vector
Our third-place prize goes to Random Vector for their adorable Rubber Duccaneers. The concept of this bathtime battle blew us away. The transparent bubbles containing so many details, the clever bathtub references, and the wordplay alone carried this easily into the top three! (Seriously, read the description on the Flickr photo—it is delightful!)
Second Place: A Crew of Crabby Corsairs - Thomas Jenkins
Our second-place prize goes to Thomas Jenkins for his Crew of Crabby Corsairs. We loved the concept of a giant hermit crab finding a wrecked ship for a home, and all the little crabs with guns and swords ended up holding our hearts hostage. The little atoll uses some clever elements for the seafloor, but we want to know what’s inside the treasure chest! (Thomas also submitted a second Star Wars-themed entry that merged a ton of nods to existing sets—way to go above and beyond!)
First Place: Pi-rat - jaskierthebard
Our first-place winner claiming all the pirate booty is jaskierthebard with his Pi-rat! Jaskier took the title of our contest literally and made the most adorable pirate mouse ever! We enjoyed the NPU of this build with the barrels for shorts, a life preserver for the earring, and a shiny Technic balljoint as a pearl.
We also really fell in love with the fact that the sword came out of necessity because he didn’t have enough light grey parts to build another of the mouse’s hands. Way to be scrappy and make the most of what you have on hand… or, um, don’t have on hand! This buccaneer build screamed “Pirate!” to us and stole our hearts… and all the cheese from the fridge!
Congratulations to all of the winners! We will be in contact about your prizes soon.
BrickNerd Contributor Crews
But wait, there’s more! In addition to the public contest, some of our own BrickNerd contributors wanted to join in the fun. Our amazing patrons voted from all the entries and chose Dan Ko as the first-place winner with his incredibly expressive shipwrecked crew. It makes us want to know what happened and what that cute mosquito is seeing on the horizon!
Second place in our contributor contest goes to Andreas Lenander’s Captain Niffler-beard and His Crew. We could just imagine this cute crew pillaging for gold, and the single-piece shark fin in the corner with water spilling out of the frame added the perfect amount of danger.
Check out all the other entries from our BrickNerd contributors below. From squirrels, dinosaurs, tigers and Bionicle, there are a lot of nifty treasure-seeking pi-rats and bug-aneers!
piRATS & BUGaneers Gallery
You can see all entries for our piRATS & BUGaneers contest embedded below or in the official gallery. We’ve linked to each builder’s Flickr or Instagram. There are so many amazing pirate builds, we wish we could award more treasure. Take a moment to browse through the gallery below, read the descriptions and leave a comment. We are grateful for each and every entry, and we LOVED that so many people—both kids and adults—had fun with our quirky idea. We loved your crews, your concepts, your throwbacks to the past and even some pirate crews in space!
Promotion Raffle Winner
Finally, we promised an extra pair of our mascot minifigs to a random entry that linked to our contest, so congratulations to The Pirate Sheep by ABrickDreamer. You’ll have a pi-RAT and a BUG-aneer shipped to you soon!
Again, thank you to everyone who participated—and get ready, our next Nerdvember contest is coming up soon!
Do you need even MORE pirate content to celebrate Talk Like A Pirate Day? Here’s “Everythin’ Ye Wants t’Know ‘bout LEGO Pirates,” the history o’ arr best mate, the LEGO parrot, some o’ the best Pirate ships from the BrickNerd crew.
Which crazy pirate build is your favorite? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Do ye wants t’ help BrickNerd always be publishin’ tales like this here one? Become part o’ the crew like Charlie Stephens, Marc an’ Liz Puleo, Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg o’ Brickstuff, an’ John an’ Joshua Hanlon o’ Beyond the Brick, Megan Lum, an’ Andy Price t’ show yer pirate spirit, get exclusive loot ‘n more ye scurvy lads an’ lassies!
