Just a few hours ago LEGO finally revealed the first official set based on D&D in the form of 21348: Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale. This article isn’t about that set but instead a much smaller one that takes the form of a chest Mimic.
Those who buy the D&D LEGO set between its launch on 1st April, and 7th April, are entitled to a second free set which builds a large chest mimic that also doubles as a dice box. 5008325: Dungeons & Dragons Mimic Dice Box will only be available as a Gift With Purchase (GWP) which is a bundled promotional item that will not be sold separately.
The only way to get your own Mimic is to buy the larger set between 1st and 7th April and hope that there is still stock when you do. Alternatively you can head to the secondhand markets and pay a huge premium for this “free” set.
Well you have one more option: you can use my parts list to pick up the pieces individually and my instructions to build the Mimic yourself. Scroll down to the bottom of this article for those otherwise keep reading to learn more about the process to complete this project.
At this point I have to mention that LEGO has not released the parts list or instructions for the Mimic – both of these have been created by me by meticulously reverse engineering the GWP using pictures of the Mimic that have been released so far.
This was a real challenge as the Mimic is more complicated than it may seem for what is essentially a fancy box with teeth and a tongue. That tongue, for example, required a hidden bar hinge inside one side of the chest and the face of the Mimic, especially the upper eye area which is on a hinge, was also not straightforward to recreate using just images.
Because of this my build may not be 100 percent identical to the official LEGO version, but I think it’s very close. Though this isn’t the first time I have recreated a LEGO GWP just with a few pictures, as I did the same for Star Wars back in 2022.
During the Mimic build I was also double checking that all the pieces that go into it are available already, so the pieces can be sourced. Making a parts list and instructions isn’t very helpful if the pieces can only be found in the GWP, after all.
Here we have some bad news. All of the pieces in the Mimic are available elsewhere, except for the eyes. The four eyes on the Mimic are new printed pieces which are only available in the GWP. Because of this I had to substitute them with something else.
On that note I provide you with some options on your Mimic build. I found five printed tiles which look good as Mimic eyes as well as a solid orange eye that is the closest match to the printed orange eye that the GWP uses.
Below are the codes for those pieces and links to find them:
Top row, from left to right: 98138pb056 | 98138pb366 | 98138pb017
Bottom row, from left to right: 98138pb109 | 98138pb265 | 98138 (orange)
I think that the first option in the top row is the best alternative option, especially because it is printed on a tile that is the same colour as the chest. What a coincidence, right?
