Tag Archives: Castle

Dragons! Knights in shining armor! Trebuchets & ballistas! From enormous LEGO castles buttoned up for battle to peaceful village market scenes, we’ve got your LEGO Castle needs covered right here.

An ambush that will bring the house down

This creation from SpaceBrick looks like it’s about to fall apart. And I mean that in the best possible sense! It’s a snapshot of a delightfully ramshackle mediaeval inn. The variation of pieces in the walls gives it a nicely weathered look, and both the roof and the bridge have some great uneven layering of tiles and plates. Note the hammers used as big stone bricks in that bridge as well! Speaking of notes – SpaceBrick says this is an “ambush in a mediaeval town”. I’m not sure if it’s the knight or the bard who is about to be ambushed. I think I know who my money’s on in a lute versus sword fight…

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Don’t fall for this hideout

Here’s a gorgeous little LEGO diorama by Simon Schweyer of a bit of mountains and a waterfall. The first thing that made me stop and look was the beautiful yellow autumn trees, which look a bit like poplars. They mesh well with the lime green grass to give a crisp, September feel to the scene. The waterfall itself is worth noting, too, as I’ve never seen that large cockpit (originally designed for Jango Fett’s ship) used as flowing water before, but I think it looks wonderfully placid here.

This waterfall hides a secret within, as there’s a cave behind the flowing river where the crew can make plans—though whether they’re brigands or heroes I’m not sure.

The Fall of Gondolin and the diving board like balcony

For their latest LEGO creation Josiah Durand drew inspiration from ‘The Fall of Gondolin’ by J.R.R.Tolkien. Since I am not familiar with the source material, there is little I can say about this creation being true to the story. I can, however, say that it definitely deserves a mention on TBB. The castle is white with some tan details, but the dark grey rock formation it’s build on gives a great contrast in colour. The top of the castle is light grey and it ends with a flat rooftop – a detail we hardly ever see when it comes to LEGO castles. This flat roof is adorned with a diving board like balcony. Which to me always predicts a stand off between two nemeses that ends in one of the two falling off the balcony towards certain death. As we see in Josiah’s creation, that might just happen.

Two friendly neighbourhood giants started a forest band

We’ve featured The Birchwood Baron by Steven Erickson before on TBB. Not long after that Steven surprised us with The Red Oak Regent. Now we finally have a LEGO creation that features both these gentle forest giants. Steven’s creation is proof that minifigures do matter. With that I am not implying that a build without minifigures is not that interesting. I am implying that it pays off to carefully put your minifigures together. It is easily noticeable when the minifigures in a creation are just an afterthought. Steven mixes minifigure parts from a broad selection of themes and they are not just castle. We can spot some Disney parts, but also pirates, Lone Ranger BAM and CMF. Speaking of CMF, have you seen our elaborate LEGO CMF series 23 review?

A motorized microscale LEGO castle fit for the gods

LEGO builder Bart De Dobbelaer has left the details of the backstory sparse for this microscale castle beyond the fact that it is a home for gods, but it certainly captures my imagination. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t remind me just a touch of Laputa: Castle in the Sky, but this massive structure has some features that not even Laputa could claim. Surrounded by a ring of guardians, there’s a huge maze weaving through the entire castle grounds.

Additionally, the turrets spin and rotate thanks to some clever gearing and motorization, surely making the maze even more challenging.

Horse saddle roof castle

LEGO has released quite some specific horse saddles. We have them for regular LEGO horses, Belville horses, Scala horses and of course Friends horses. Kit Nugent used the latter to adorn their castle with a rather creative roofing. The entire castle is to die for. I have no idea how most of the parts are attached but I don’t care, it is amazing. I don’t think I’ll look at horse saddles the same way ever again. I might even start hoarding them to create my own horse saddle roof castle.

An ogre breaks wind (mill)

LEGO builder Peter Revan tells us don’t piss of the ogre. Upon mulling that over I filed that under good sage advice. Upsetting an ogre can result in your teeth suddenly being where your feet should be and vice versa. Hopefully, this particular ogre is made sweeter and more sedated by compliments because I genuinely like his shaping and clever build techniques. I’m also rather fond of the horse, cart, windmill, and scared little minifigure occupants that help establish the scale of this massive creature. If you feel like you’ve seen the ogre, horse, and cart around the neighborhood before, that is because you have.

Why rehash a previously featured LEGO creation, you may ask? Is this the result of lazy writing? Well, perhaps. But I genuinely believe the addition of the windmill and diorama offers an excellent setting that better illustrates the world this ogre lives in. Plus once you’ve squeezed out a title that fiendishly clever, there’s really no putting a cork in it once you’ve let loose that bout of genius flatulence humor into the world. Can you find it in your hearts to forgive me?

The king’s dying to eat

Following builds one and two of this three-part trilogy in LEGO, we see the king finally meet his doom thanks to this quality construction by Micah Beideman. Though it’s not at the blade of a sword that this monarch shall perish, but with the curve of a soup spoon. The hall of his demise is beautifully crafted in light gray bricks. While working so much in a single color, Micah uses the negative space to help break up the walls and pillars, and utilizes some excellent techniques while doing so. For instance, the rows of headlight bricks with studs facing each other is sublime, and I love the deep-set cracks in the stone floor. The throne at the back of the hall fits the rest of the surroundings well, while remaining unlike any other LEGO throne I’ve seen. But, alas, our king may never sit in it again….

Giant LEGO monastery inspired by a Classic Castle faction

Debuting at Brickworld Chicago back in June, builder Casey McCoy represents LEGO’s Black Falcons well with this epic monastery. And this creation is jam-packed with awesome details! Let’s start with the exterior walls, which alternate between gentle curves and harsher slopes. All of this on top of a beautiful smattering of textured brick that draws the eye to key points: the ornate stonework around the entrance, the elegantly simple bell tower, or those stunning stained glass windows. I appreciate the common architectural themes between the upper and lower structures. However, with the addition of beveled corners and more intricate stone work on level #2, the build tells a story of the later addition of the upper section, perhaps after the monastery was established.

Explore more of the monastery below!

A massive castle and bridge just under the deadline

Some people can work magic under a tight deadline. Take this LEGO castle and bridge built by Thomas van Urk for example. He tells us it was an entry for the Summer Joust: Bridging the Gap category and was finished an hour before the deadline. In his own words; “Since there wasn’t really a category for a large castle I decided to include a bridge in front of the gatehouse. Originally I wanted to leave it at that, but because of the pressure from the arching bridge, it needed to stand on a baseplate. But then, of course, there needed to be water around the whole castle, and then of course there needed to be a landscape across the water. Maybe I went a bit overboard.” If working until the deadline and going a bit overboard yields results like this then we’re pleased as punch.

Thomas says he didn’t even have time to build his favorite part of the castle. I wonder what that could be. To see how the Summer Joust is heating up with all the other builders check out our Summer Joust category in our archives.

Who needs Romeo when your balcony looks out at an amazing propagation station

Big LEGO castles are the bomb, but small really detailed medieval scenes also tickle our fancy. This scene by Eli Willsea is a great example of a small castle setting packed with little details. We are treated to a lovely balcony scene featuring a young woman looking out over a room filled with greenery. There is a trellis for a climbing plant which happens to be two green snakes. The integration of the bar with 3 leaves into the wall to turn it into a climbing plant is lovely. The brown flex tubing intertwining between the leaves works amazingly well as a plant stem. I love how this continues over the wooden beams hanging over the balcony, giving it a patio feel.

There are a lot of trans-clear tiles used to represent a propagation station. I absolutely adore the use of the Captain Marvel mohawk used to represent a box of presumably hay. The use of the Minions hair as table legs is stunning in its simplicity. The best feature of this creation has to be the use of the minifigure action pose bar with stud to make the railing of the balcony. So clever and visually appealing!

A tale of bridging and branching

There is something about pretty sunsets that make people want to take pictures of them. Same apparently goes for LEGO sunsets. This build by gGh0st features a wooden bridge that is covered in tree branches. In my humble imagination this bridge connects the village to the castle. On it we can see a lot of villagers trading and selling their goods. We can spot a baker, a guard, a troubadour and several customers. Apparently the livestock are allowed to walk the not enclosed bridge freely, which to me sounds like asking for trouble, but apparently for these people it works.

If you look closely at the rocks forming the mountains on which both the castle and the village are built, you’ll notice that it is a mumbo jumbo of different pieces. I have no idea how they are connected but it looks amazing. There even are little vines creeping between the rocks. You’ll notice these a lot better when you take a look at the midday picture of this creation. If you take a closer look at the background of the creation you’ll notice more rocks at the bottom of the picture and these rocks are formed out of loose unconnected LEGO bricks which is an easy yet very convincing method to make a rocky background. Not everything has to be a hassle.