Covenant Alien Instructions

There are some people out there (like me) who know every little LEGO part like a good friend, and can simply glance at the photos of my Covenant minifigs and immediately understand how they are built.

This page, however, is for the rest of you. ;-)

The key to building the Grunt is getting the right helmet: the Explorien helmet, as I like to think of it (since it was featured prominently in the Explorien line of Space sets). Here is its entry in the Peeron database: http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/x168 This helmet is perfect because it looks like a gas mask and has a stud on the back in just the right position to attach the Grunt's breathing apparatus, as seen above. Any color head can be used for my Grunt now that I have a face decal, since it will all be covered by the helmet anyway, but here's the Peeron entry for the head I used to use for my old Grunts: http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/3626bpx239

Not exactly Covenant, but... For all of my LEGO Master Chief versions, I have used the same visor: a LEGO gold chrome astronaut visor with the upper half of the visor cut off. I just cut it off with my pocket knife and shave off a little more until it's about the same size as a regular visor. If you don't like doing all that, there's an easier, but slightly less cool-looking (since it's not chrome) way: in the new LEGO "Mars Mission" sets, all of the goodguy space dudes are wearing pearl-gold visors of a regular size. These make decent Spartan visors. For my newest rendition of the Master Chief, a set of minifig plate mail is also necessary. This green breastplate can be found in the Knights Kingdom sets on the green knight (along with a nice green helmet!). I just shaved a bit off the bottom to get rid of the leg-guards. Breastplates can be found in a wide variety of colors thanks to the Knights Kingdom sets... at least the following: red, dark red, light blue, green, dark green, purple, dark grey, silver, and black. If you're using decals, a black breastplate can be used for almost any color SPARTAN. If you want to use Brian Kescenovitz (Mondaynoodle)'s method to make the Chief taller, you'll also need a green 2x1 vent. All Mondaynoodle did was cut out the middle vent piece, but I also shaved mine down a bit with the fingernail file on my pocket knife. If you don't do this, the legs of the minifig don't stay on all that well.

Now for the Covenant Elite. These little 1x1 tile slopes can be found in a ton of sets these days, but here's the Peeron entry anyway: http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/50746

These hook pieces can be found in these sets: http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/x1156

This part requires a bit of cutting. You'll need a rod to attach the Elite's legs. If you want to, you can use a regular "lightsaber blade" size rod, or a chrome harpoon or something. But if you want it to be the right size, you'll need to cut a longer rod (lightsaber blade, lance, halberd, spear, etc.) short. As you can see, I used one of the newer LEGO pikes, since I have them in abundance now.

Since I knew I was going to use decals, I used a few printed tiles and just decaled over them. As long as they were the right color...

And of course, the decals add the final touch! If you don't want to use decals, you can replace the 1x1 tile on my Elite's head with a hook piece (to represent the mouthparts, somewhat poorly) or you can rig up a head more like Elite by Danny C. (Mandalore). Still, if you ask me, it's never all that easily recognizable without the decals. They're what makes it what it is.

Now for the Brute! The feet use the same parts as the Elite's, but stuck onto 1x1 bricks with studs on the side.

The head is made much the same way as the Elite's, only it's turned studs-up, with a 2x1 tile with central stud on top.

A 1x1 plate with tooth (or "minifig shoe," as my siblings and I call them) makes up the Brute's silly hat/helmet.

The Brute's arms are made exactly the same as the Elite's. If you're interested in making arms that have rotating wrists, you might want to go to my Nova Refuge LEGO section and check out the Slashrim Horde page. There are instructions on there for my Slashrim Zrillak, my original basis for the Elite. The arms, while somewhat skinny, do have rotating wrists, which are good for posing and holding swords and the like.

And that's all there is to it! Enjoy.