With 1371 pieces, 31168 Medieval Horse Knight Castle is the flagship of the Creator 3-in-1 line this year. Packed with goodies in any configuration, let’s and build and review this LEGO castle, which will be available August 1st and will retail at LEGO.com for $129.99 US $149.99 CA, £109.99 UK.

The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

The Box

As all the other 3-in-1 sets we’ve reviewed, the front of the box handsomely illustrates the main build as well as the two alternate builds to the right with the usual 3-in-1 Creator graphics. The back features vignettes of the best angles of all three builds. So far, design-wise this is just like any other 3-in-1 set. What soon becomes apparent though is this box does not have a thumb-punch feature but rather a two part box and removable lid. Once the lid is removed, the box features a front cutout in which the three thick books and eleven numbered paper bags reside within. Unfortunately, the box was photographed only after I tore open all the bags so you’ll just have to take my word for it that they were all there.

The Main Build: Medieval Horse Knight Castle

The name; Medieval Horse Knight Castle- doesn’t quite roll off the tongue but it describes the set well. I get the hunch they were trying to make the horses the selling point. An alternate suggestion for the title can be Medieval Knights and Horses Castle but it’s certainly longer. But with an array of ramparts, spires, a working drawbridge and some tudor styling, this castle features lots of visually interesting facets. From the front, the walled gate and courtyard makes the castle seem like a truly fortified community.

The back, however, is open dollhouse style. This enables easy access to the many rooms of this castle. Pictured here, on the lower floor, is a banquet hall fit for a king.

Beside the banquet hall lies a a small blacksmith forge and stable in which a horse can be fitted for a new pair of shoes. The banquet hall and stable shares a fireplace, which adds warmth and ambience for one side and working utility for the other. It’s an efficient use of that feature. There is even the brown chocolate ice cream-looking piece used atop many brick-built pasties in other sets; but here it’s used for- exactly as you’d think it would be.

Above the banquet hall lies a cozy little bedroom, complete with its own mini fireplace.

Above the stable in a narrow tower lies a small office, complete with a quill pen presumably used to sign royal decries.

Before you piece it all together, the instructions make it clear that you can have two seperate buildings; sort of a hidden feature not shown on the box. I call them the living quarters (on the left) and tiny castle; more on that in a bit.

Here are the living quarters as is, without having the fortified walls and a courtyard in front of it.

Here are the walls and drawbridge area both front and back. There’s nothing overly amazing about it just yet other than the working drawbridge.

However, you are instructed to fold the walls in this configuration and lock them at their connection points forming a completely fortified tiny castle, complete with its own ramparts and drawbridge. We’ll learn later that this versatility will carry through to the alternate builds as well.

Minifigures

While this set boasts versatility with its structures, the six minifigures will also change roles with the other configurations. The main model encourages you to build this cast of characters: a black knight, the king, and a lady knight. (She will take on a more regal role later.)

Here are three more minifigures both front and back, these are: knight, blacksmith and hooded archer. All six minifigures have face printed only on one side.

When mounted on their brick-built steeds, the black knight and king steal the show. Both horses are posable and well dressed in bright medieval garb. We’ll get a closer look at how they work soon. Like the structures and minifigs, these horses will prove to be versatile and suit up in different outfits later.

Jousting Tournament

As it’s made clear in the awkward title that the horses will be a main selling point for this set, it only makes sense that one of the alternate configurations features the horses front and center as the star of the show. This jousting tournament features a couple of tall towers and situated between them in an enclosed balcony are primo seats for the royal family to enjoy the sport.

We’ll highlight the inner rooms of the towers soon, but outside the leftmost tower features a small eatery. I’m not sure if this food prep station is for the horses or their human riders but sort of hidden in the shadows behind the blue awning is a wooden keg presumably full of a libation of some kind; leading me to believe it just might be liquid courage for the riders.

The right tower features a weapon rack for the riders to choose from.

From the back, the leftmost tower houses a small forge in which horseshoes and custom weapons can be made. Above it resides a cozy little bedroom for maybe the jousting humans to get some shut eye. Above that is a clothing rack that currently stores an extra helmet.

At the base of the right tower houses a small holding pen for a horse to rest up and get some water and a bite to eat. Above that is a desk and chair with a quill pen presumably to record the tournament scores and declare an official winner. A treasure chest sits above that.

Between the towers sits the VIP balcony for the king and queen. The instructions cite that you should place the king in the larger, more extravagant chair closest to the banquet table but our queen had something to say about that. Clearly she won that argument.

Minifigures

For this go around, the important cast of characters are the black knight, the king, the aforementioned argument-winning queen, who in the prior build was a lady knight. She seems quite pleased with both winning arguments and her increased station in life. Lastly is the white knight. The other two minifigs can also help flesh out the population here but are sort of second tier to this group, so I didn’t photograph them again.

As I keep mentioning, the star of this show are the posable brick-built horses, so I provided a special callout here. The keen observer may note that they are dressed slightly differently from the prior build, especially the white knight’s horse who is adorned in red and blue instead of blue and white favored by the riding king in the main build. The horse’s skirting prominently features right and left justified angled tiles of alternating colors that, when arranged differently, can produce either a jagged sawtooth design or wider pointed peaks and valleys. This makes it clear that this particular piece can garner limitless geometric shapes and patterns when arranged in various configurations.

These images portray one of the horses a little more deconstructed and without their riders. This shows how the skirting goes on and how the legs are independently posable as well as their heads. Each design contains a pocket in the horse’s back that can fit the rider’s legs.

WINDMILL MARKET SQUARE

While I’ve chosen to feature the Windmill Market Square last, it was actually the first to be built. My reasoning was to have a complete main model at the end of the review that required very little cleanup. With any 3-in-1 set, the directions state to open all the bags in the box, in this case eleven of them. The box design implies you can sort of do this to house your pieces while you build and to easily stow everything away when not in use. This is what nearly 1400 pieces look like loose in its box. While it was nice to sift through the parts as we did before the bags were ever numbered, (yes, there was a time when that happened) this method slowed me down quite a bit. Incidentally, I was tasked with reviewing two 3-in-1 sets in quick succession, both with tight deadlines, so this slow process seemed detrimental to meeting those deadlines. For the other two configurations, I ended up nixing the box and sorting parts by color instead. However, I’m aware that when most children and adults build with LEGO, they are not burdened with deadlines so this may yield a more enjoyable build experience for you.

This main photo features the market square as it is shown on the box and book cover for this model; with the arch to the far left and an eatery to the right in which the king and queen are hanging out, surveying the wares. It’s a serene slice of life model that portrays a section of a medieval village within a walled city. Notably missing are the aforementioned horses, in which this set is prominently named from but there is instead a brick-built sheep so that’s neat.

A closeup detail of the gate features someone wheeling in food and some treasure on a wooden handcart. Beside him is a two-story inn.

The removable roof of the inn reveals a cozy little lodge on the second floor.

To the right of the inn, unfortunately blurred and buried in shadows in the background of this photo is a table of food under an awning along the wall. Who was previously the black knight in the prior two build configurations is now given a slick-back hairdo and has become a non-descript villager; sort of a Lord Baelish type from Game of Thrones who appears he’s about to offer the sheep an apple. Nothing unbecoming here. Probably.

The king and queen stand with the eatery behind them. The blue and yellow right and left justified tiles first seen as skirting for the horses form a colorful awning where the proprietor prepares an assortment of pasties. Just left of the queen’s head lies that aforementioned brown ice-cream looking piece that formerly acted as a horse apple is now frosting on what appears to be a tart. That gave me a chuckle.

Even this serene configuration is not void of hidden versatility. In the directions, it is made clear that you can fold the walls in and connect them to create this square fortress compound.(Or is it a compound fortress?) The establishments inside are still arranged in a cohesive manner with a narrow street between them but now they’re protected within a castle wall. Each side reveals a new and fascinating function.

When I unlatched the market square again, I had inadvertently separated the walls at the wrong location but what unfolded was an intriguing new configuration, this time with the rampart lookout tower to the far left, the inn at the far right and the windmill in the middle. Whether done by accident or on purpose, this set makes it clear that versatility abounds in any configuration thus giving it more than just the 3-in-1 notion featured on the box.

Conclusion and Recommendations

This set is fairly comparitave to the 31120 Medieval Castle 3-in-1 set back in 2021 (1500 pcs, $99.99 US), although with a higher piece count and lower price point back then, it’s hard not to feel just a little burned. But at about 9 cents per brick you’re getting a slightly better than average parts per piece count value. There’s a lot of fun play features here and each configuration had proven to be highly versatile, which is a huge draw. The posable brick-built horses are a win for me and I can foresee a variant of these being used in castle layouts and other places in which LEGO horses are a necessity. This set may not have the same wow-factor as the 10305 Lion’s Knight Castle from 2022, but at a significantly smaller price point, this set, at the very least, can become a formidable parts pack to supplement any medieval builder’s fancy.

The 31168 Medieval Horse Knight Castle will be available August 1st and will retail at LEGO.com for $129.99 US $149.99 CA, £109.99 UK.

The LEGO Group sent The Brothers Brick an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

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