Rock Raiders is perhaps one of the most nostalgic LEGO themes from 1999. It has a unique and fun look with a great color pallet—and for two brothers, it created a lifetime of memories. So much so that builders Sean and Matt Kohli (also known as thebrickamigos) newest creation stems back to the days where they used to play Rock Raiders the video game on their PC.

Matt and Sean have been building (like many of us) for their entire lives, starting with Duplo then eventually taking over their dad’s collection. They would often create vast, complex worlds with their own stories embedded within them. They even made stop motion videos as they explored and built their worlds!

Sean mentions that things got serious in 2013 when they decided to take apart the majority of their collection and LEGO city and start anew from scratch, building an almost completely custom LEGO city.

Rock Raider Bros.

For Sean’s 20th birthday, Matt gifted him set 4930, the Rock Raiders crew pack. Matthew and Sean never had any Rock Raiders sets growing up but they loved every minute of the video game. This gift to Sean is what kicked this Rock Raider layout into motion as a “nostalgia-filled tribute” for the bros.

Their MOC features two Rock Raiders focal points connected by ever elusive monorail track. The classic colors of the theme accent the striations in the rockwork, making the entire build feel more cohesive.

Rock Work

Here’s what Sean and Matt said about the plan and work needed for their creation:

“Overall the layout was somewhat planned on the fly, with the exception of a few sketches I had done very early on. But the main idea of having two sections with the monorail connecting them, and including some of the buildings seen in the game with a large Rock Raiders HQ structure was always in the plan.”

I’ve made and displayed a few large MOCs myself, and I’m always curious about others’ approaches to the transportation problem of such large creations. Inherently, it seems like transportation has to be planned from the very beginning of a project or you are doomed to either risking breakage in transport or rebuilding it to fit through the doors of your car. I asked them how they planned to move it and learned they actually didn’t!

Sean: “This layout was started in May of 2020, so it was never actually planned to be taken to a show due to the pandemic. But once we heard that there was an upcoming show with our LUG (Manitoba LUG), we made the decision to bring this layout and make it possible to be transported. It breaks down into the two mountain sections and those are moved very carefully as solid pieces. Luckily both pieces and our large Imperial Star Destroyer fit in my car and survived the drive to the show location.”

Rocking the Details

Their entire layout measures 55 in wide and 35 in deep and is just under 3 ft tall. The layout also features two things that move aside from the monorail. A conveyor belt brings ore through a continuous cycle and a rock monster repeatedly peers out from a cave entrance activating a light brick.

Matthew: “Sean and I made sure to add some little details for shows for people to discover, so the little Minecraft scenes on the side are always great for kids and kinda link the two theme-wise with that mining and exploration theme!”

Fans of the Rock Raiders theme will also notice buildings that are prominently featured in the game including the support station, power station, teleport pad, and upgrade station.

Sharing is Caring

Matt and Sean also share all their LEGO if you can believe that—Matt is 25 and a junior geologist and Sean is 22 and an architecture student. Sharing is a very strange concept to me—I can barely share a set with my eldest son let alone an entire collection. I asked them how they share their collection… perhaps have turns on even and odd days or every second weekend?

Sean: “As brothers, we share our collection. We have a dedicated LEGO space in our parents’ house and it is slowly getting too small for our collection, but we use the space as best as we can. As the collection—and we—have grown, we have often been asked how we would split it up.”

Matt: “I thankfully just bought a house and have moved out. So we are in the process of moving that all over to my new place. That will then be the official home of our LEGO. Sean will be welcome anytime to come over and build, especially since my career has me traveling all over Canada for my job. I’m gone often and sadly cannot fully devote as much time to the hobby.”

Now that their rock-raiding childhood memory is forever captured in LEGO, Sean and Matt don’t plan on slowing down with their brotherly collabs. Even as Matt has to travel all over the Great White North for work, they are still planning another quite ambitious MOC together: “One thing I really want us to collaborate on is building our home city of Winnipeg. Doing it in three stages. The current version, a massive upgrade, and then an apocalypse version of each area!”

Whenever that Winnipeg project is complete, BrickNerd will definitely showcase it for everyone to see!

Thanks again to Matt and Sean for taking the time to sit down with me and the BrickNerd crew and for sharing the work and a little bit of their LEGO history.

Do you share a collection with a sibling, parent or even a friend? Let us know how the sharing goes in the comments below!

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