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.

The medieval market village gets a fresh new look

If you’ve been a LEGO fan throughout childhood, this situation might be familiar to you: spending hours staring at a set you’ve always wanted in the catalog, obsessing over it until you’d memorized every detail in that set, down to every last brick. For me, that set was the 10193 Medieval Market Village, with the hinge-open village houses and waterwheel powered blacksmith hammer. It was a beauty back then and it still does in this recent Medieval Market Village redux by Robert Maier, aka hellboy.bricks. Drawing inspiration from all the original set’s essential features, this revamp uses more complex techniques yet still holds all the character and charm of the original Medieval Market. The brick-built tree branches have been substituted with Technic connectors, a pumpkin patch has been added in the back, and macaroni tiles now adorn the blacksmith shop’s archways. The classic brick slope roofing on both buildings has also been swapped out with a cheese slope roof for the blacksmith shop and a curved tile roof for the medium blue house. Also, the olive green looks gorgeous on the newly paved cobblestone, a color that you wouldn’t have found in this 2009 set.

Missing the good ol’ days of the Castle theme? Robert has made another set redux (hint: there’s goats) that you can check out here.

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In the early mourning light

LEGO builder Sheo. has one of the broadest ranging skillsets out there, having drafted masterful models of everything from futuristic motorcycles to uncannily accurate DLSR cameras. Now they’re back with a bizarre shrine called the Temple of Tears. This eery holy place is dominated by two giant weeping angles chiseled in low relief.

There are a few small vignettes to accompany the main temple, though Sheo is keeping their cards close regarding the mystic meaning behind it all. But that doesn’t stop me from appreciating the build, which is filled with intricate details, from the wavy blue leading lines on the floor (or the floor itself which is covered in a zig-zag pattern of tiles), to the teardrops falling from the giant eye, all the way to the intersecting columns supporting the arched roof. Sheo has provided a video that walks the viewer through all the various elements.

Is Unikitty a Disney Princess?

Sure, you might recognize this build by Koen Zwanenburg as a mini version of the Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland Paris. But if you imprinted on The LEGO Movie like I did, this looks like Unikitty bought and redecorated Cinderella’s castle. And that’s not a bad thing. (Well, maybe for Cinderella.) Built on a 32 x 32 baseplate, Koen has crammed an enormous amount of detail and creativity into a compact footprint. There are little rewards all over for taking a close look, like spotting a Gungan shield as decoration, or recognizing bunches of golden ski poles as turret toppers.

There are even more building Easter eggs on rear of the castle. Can you spot the hot dogs and unprinted minifigure heads?

All in all, it’s a masterful effort, and an impressive display piece. But we’ve come to expect that level of “wow” from Koen, as a trip into our archives will show.

A very stable genius

A builder who goes by the name of Ayrlego has constructed a LEGO scene depicting a peaceful stable. He tells us that Lacryma, with its rolling plains and temperate climate, has become famous for the quality of the horses bred there. In the settlement of Elizabethville, many stables such as this one were built to house both the equines and their human companions. I would love to live in this world for a little while and maybe brush the horses and banter with the townsfolk. The word for how I feel about this is anemoia, a nostalgia for a time and a place I’ve never known. Are you feeling a bit of anemoia too? It turns out this builder is quite good at evoking feelings for a time and a place we’ve never been to. I hope you can check out the archives to see what I mean.

A splash of colour to light up the dark ages

LEGO castle creations are often a brilliant display of how to build with gray bricks. And though I love big gray castles as much as the next LEGO fan (I’m even hoarding all kinds of gray bricks to build my own massive castle one day), I can also appreciate castle creations with a generous splash of colour, like Tobias Goldschalt has with his jester scene.

The trees are a brilliant adaptation of the one in front of the Bookshop modular building, and remind us in the real world that autumn I around the corner. If the bright colours aren’t enough, the jester is prancing along the road with his entourage in tow, bringing cheer to the local peasantry. Dancing to the sound of a drum and guitar, as he moves on to his next location along with his wagon full of props.

Goat raid

LEGO released the 7189 Mill Village Raid set nine years ago (yes, you heard it correctly, nine years ago!). To this day this is the only set to feature this particular LEGO goat. Buying a LEGO goat on Bricklink is like buying a kidney on the black market. Somehow adding a goat adds to your creation makes it ten times as good. Hellboy.lego made a beautiful new rendition of this set. And it doesn’t need goats to make it look good. However, he added 4 of them anyway. I am not sure what is being raided in this creation but it would be wise to snatch a goat or two while at it…

My uncle is a great fan of LEGO. He once spoke these wise words: “Making something awesome out of LEGO is not about having a lot of different bricks, it’s about having a lot of the same bricks.” And Hellboy.lego proves him right by using a ton of 1×2 tiles in this creation. Most of the walls and the roofs are composed of 1×2 tiles. Even the blades of the mill are made of them!

A nomad’s life for me

LEGO has produced a lot of castle sets, but in my honest opinion there always has been a lack of travel carts! Markus Rollbühler is here to fill that gap for us. One of the best things about this creation is that the walls of the cart are positioned at an angle. The only straight wall, where the door is located, uses 2×1 cheese slopes to fill up the gap created by the slight angle of the other walls. But that’s not the only thing. This creation is filled with original details! One of the best used pieces has to be the blaster trigger. The blaster adds great playability to the set for kids, but as an adult fan of LEGO, I do not tend to use them. Markus used the trigger piece as table and chair legs and it looks stunning. Have you noticed the candle holder using the scuba breathing regulator. And don’t even get me started on that cute brick-built snail!

With 100 magazine foil bags, the sky is the limit

Most builders love a good challenge, but everyone loves free LEGO. Such was my reaction when my LEGO user group, Brickish, selected me to represent them in a build challenge. In this friendly competition amongst UK and Ireland-based LUGs, the task was to build anything using the parts provided in 100 LEGO Star Wars magazine foil packs. These were provided by Fairy Bricks charity, and contained 10 each of 10 small sets. I (Mansur “Waffles” Soeleman) challenged myself to take these small Star Wars models and… not build anything Star Wars related. There weren’t much of the usual grey bits anyway. So I had my next favourite thing in mind: microscale architecture.

I had no plan going into this build challenge. But the parts provided were surprisingly good – lots of small bits that I use in my building style. I knew I was going to surprised myself with the finished results, and I did, for such is the nature of any challenge. It definitely produced a beautiful build I am most proud of: The Voyage to Cirrus Palace.

The house of sand and coral

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part was a fun and amusing romp that reunited us with our friends Emmet, Lucy, and LEGO Batman. More importantly, though it released a few sets that featured a new color; coral. It’s a pretty color but limited and potentially difficult in its use. But builders like Simon Hundsbichler step up to the challenge and do it with amazing results. There are only three colors in this creation: Dark Tan, Light Royal Blue, and the aforementioned Vibrant Coral. A mix of plates and tiles adds intricate texture to the ground while a variety of coral bricks makes for a vibrant splash of color. Simon has proven to be a master of the LEGO medium, even with a limited palette. We’ve been smitten with Simon’s build techniques and color choices before.

Take your permanence on the go

Castles, fortresses, and the like have a big imposing permanence to them and appear as if they have been carved out of the very landscape they inhabit and have seemingly been there forever. But this LEGO fortress by WoomyWorld can lift itself and walk away. It is a re-imagining of Alexander, the Roaming Titan that can be summoned in the Final Fantasy games. Each section looks like it would be right at home in a fantasy microscale layout. I can just imagine the earth rumbling as it moves along!

Wait a minute, Mr. Postman

What do you get when four of the most talented castle builders out there collaborate on a series of LEGO builds? It’s a bit like alchemy, because the result is solid gold. Well, Grant Davis, Simon Hundsbichler, Marcel V., and Markus Rollbühler teamed up to show the life of a postman, carrying the mail across every bridge in the realm to make sure each and every citizen receives their letters on time. Each build is different in every detail, except the postman himself, but they are all scaled and shot to mimic the others, with the result that the builds complement each other perfectly. I’d love to have these framed on my wall, side by side, because these are not just LEGO builds, but art.

Click to see each of the builds up close

Schloss Drachenburg in LEGO: Here there be dragons!

There are castles that are blocky grey fortresses, and there are castles that look like fairytales come to life. One such castle is the ornate Schloss Drachenburg, which bears resemblance to the more famous Neuschwastein. Just a few miles south of the German city of Bonn, this 19th century villa was the passion project of builder Caleb Schilling who replicated this building with an attention to accuracy. A range of earthen tones dominate most of the exterior, while the dark grey adorns the top sections. The overall appearance of this build already satisfies my hunger for beautifully built architecture, but there are plenty of details yet to savour.

Click here to take a closer look at the many architectural details!