2011 MOCathalon - Team Eurobricks' round-up

[SlyOwl]

Hey all,

You might remember that for the 2010 MOCathalon, a group of us - "Eurobricks' Finest" - decided to compete, and we came third!

We planned to do the same thing this year (apart from coming higher up the rankings!), only just myself and Matn were able to play again, as the others had more important commitments.

So, we brought together Team Eurobricks just in time for the contest to start - SlyOwl, Matn (AFOLs), Newright, Matthew Maulfair and Infomaniac (TFOLs).

For those of you unaccustomed to the MOCathalon format, here's the rules. Essentially, in teams of 5, 2 AFOls and 3 TFOLs, over the course of a month you have to build across 30 wild and wacky categories, which can then be repeated after they have all been completed - and each MOC receives a total score out of 25 from the judges.

Having started two weeks late after getting in a mix-up with the dates last year, I decided to start early, with, unsurprisingly the pirate cabin category! Having run the Captain's Cabin contest - and done the promotional image for it - it was a very quick build to do.

Matthew also struck early, with his clever entry in the "you know what they say" category - building well known expressions out of Lego!

From then on I worked in short bursts of activity - managing the fairytale category and classical literature in short succession, before stalling for a long time on Dr Seuss and Shake and Bake - making a meal with Lego.

I must confess I don't recollect as well when the other team members submitted their entries, as we were constantly discussing the WIPs, so they all blurred into one! But huge kudos to them - their building techniques and skill were outstanding, and I believe Team Eurobricks had one of the highest average scores per entry, even if we didn't manage that many!

Unlike last year, we only managed 18 entries this year - but I know there were a lot of very good WIPs that didn't make it for one reason or another - many commiserations to Infomaniac, who had a beautiful diorama experience a rather nasty dose of gravity! Hope to see it finished sometime!

You can find all our entries here

Ultimately, we came 8th, with 365 points (one for each day of the year!). The winning team scored over 1200 points - many congratulations to them! We decided towards the end that we weren't in the running for the win, so chose to aim for 300 points, which I'm pleased to say we made very comfortably.

So thanks to the judges, the competitors and my team-mates!

Special thanks must also go out to the Fellows, who gave excellent and incisive feedback on many of our WIPs, taking them to the next level.

Cheers,

Barney

[Brickdoctor]

Great job, guys. Was rooting for you the whole time.

Shame you had to come in behind teams that milked the system and built eleventy-gazillion mediocre MOCs.

Edited April 19, 2011 by Brickdoctor

[Scorpiox]

Good luck for this year!

Shame that teams (like you guys) lose with a few really good MOCs but teams who build loads of average ones win.

May I ask what other teams participate? Is it just other LUGs or random AFOLs and TFOLs who fancy a challenge?

[Brickdoctor]

May I ask what other teams participate? Is it just other LUGs or random AFOLs and TFOLs who fancy a challenge?

Sometimes groups come in ready to go, but mostly it's MOCpages members who sign up and wait for some other people to organize a team. A lot of times that's members who know each other from another MOCpages group.

[SlyOwl]

Thanks guys

Ah, I forgot - a special word for Brickdoctor, who was part of the team, but offered to step aside to let the other 5 compete - thanks mate

Shame you had to come in behind teams that milked the system and built eleventy-gazillion mediocre MOCs.

In fairness to them, many of the top teams had a very high average score, and produced some great MOCs. But that's the eternal dilemna of personal satisfaction versus competitive advantage; lots of my MOCs are for contests, so often I'm not perfectly happy with them, but have to cut my losses and go for what the judges want...

[XimenaPaulina]

Excellent job guys! My hats off to all of you (SlyOwl, Matn, Newright, Matthew Maulfair and Infomaniac) for selflessly sharing your time, effort, and resources to come up with top-notch entries for this competition. IMO, it's all about the quality of the entries, not just simply the building MOCs to reach the 'required quantity', and your entries have clearly shown the high level of MOC expertise that all of you have. You did a great job representing Eurobricks and hope this will be something we could build onto for next year's competition. Once again, a job very well done!

[Erdbeereis]

Nice work guys! Sorry I couldn't help out this year.

You can be proud, most people just don't have the time or patience to build so many entries. I know that after last year I was totally burned out for a while. While I wouldn't trade the experience for anything (well, maybe not anything. ), if I hadn't done it, I wouldn't have felt too bad.

I really liked your guys' MOCs, you represented EB well.