LEGO® Games & board games ⁽¹²⁾

LEGO® Games: build first, then play

With LEGO® Games, it wasn’t just a board, playing pieces, and a die from a box. You first built part of the game yourself with LEGO® bricks, and then you could start playing. That makes this range a fun crossover between a LEGO® set and a traditional board game.

LEGO® introduced the Games theme in 2009. An important idea behind the range was that you could build, play, and customize a game. Many LEGO® Games sets used a special buildable LEGO® Dice for this purpose, whose sides could be assembled with different tiles. In various games, you could also vary the rules and setups.

The original LEGO® Games range was released through 2013 and is no longer an active theme today. So anyone who comes across these games now is looking at a piece of LEGO® history from a period when building and board games were combined in a very distinctive way.

From LEGO® board game to microfigure

There is quite a lot of variety within LEGO® Games. Some games focus on strategy or racing, while others are about space travel, fantasy, or familiar LEGO® worlds. Examples from the range include Robo Champ, Lunar Command, NINJAGO – The Board Game, and Battle of Hoth.

The small figures also stand out immediately. Many LEGO® board games used microfigures: compact playing pieces that are much smaller than regular minifigures. You may encounter them as knights, adventurers, monsters, and other characters. The Heroica games even built an entire fantasy world around this format.

That mix is precisely what makes the collection fun to explore. Perhaps you’re looking for a complete LEGO® game to actually play, perhaps you’re still missing a microfigure from an older set, or perhaps you simply enjoy collecting the more unusual branches of LEGO® history.

Buying LEGO® Games: what should you look for?

If you want to buy older LEGO® Games sets, look beyond just the front of the box. With a board game, small parts can be especially important: playing pieces, microfigures, tiles for the LEGO® Dice, instructions, and specific board elements can all be essential to the playing experience.

That’s why you should always check the product description and the condition of the set carefully. Products at De BrickPlaats may, for example, be offered as new, used, built, or in another clearly stated condition. This gives you a better idea of what you’re getting and helps prevent that one essential playing piece from being missing.

For collectors, LEGO® Games are interesting because of their recognizable gameplay concept, special parts, and relatively short period within LEGO® history. For families and players, the appeal lies elsewhere: you don’t just build something attractive—you can immediately turn it into a game afterward.