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.

A cottage among the leaves

LEGO is an art form. It requires precision placement of elements, meticulous thought, endless creativity, and a bold sense of the possibilities. Sure, you can build like a four-year-old, placing stuff willy-nilly and using any old color you please. You can also color on walls like a four-year-old, but that doesn’t take away from the frescoes of Raphael or Michelangelo. A build like this one by Marcel V. illustrates my point. There is a balance of composition, the cohesion of form, careful use of colors, and especially crisp photography. This is no child’s toy anymore.

This is not the first time I have written about a treehouse by Marcel, but this one has glorious limbs and even more glorious little rooms. The cheese slope roof looks great, and if you look close, every potted plant is constructed and attached differently. Don’t miss the book as a little roof over the door, too. My favorite detail might be the small table at the base of the tree, built of a combination of sorcery and twigs. The little pebbles arranged so carefully, stalks of grass, and even the soldiers posed loose give the build a much larger feel while still exhibiting a mastery of brick composition. After all, LEGO is an art form.

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Two hours to get lost in the mountains [Video]

LEGO builders will sometimes look for ways to challenge themselves. Sometimes they’ll require that their creation includes a specific “seed part”, usually something that isn’t particularly easy to incorporate. Sometimes they’ll put insane time pressure on things, giving themselves a week, or even a day, to go from loose bricks to completed model. And then, sometimes, you get someone like First Order Lego who will create an entire diorama, based around a battle droid body, in just two hours.

In this scene, a murky river of transparent black elements runs between two peaks. Connecting them is a bridge, made up of those required droid bodies and robot arms. Green spikes combine with 1×1 flower plate to create a touch of vegetation. And there’s even a mountain fortress, rendered in miniature by headlight bricks and cheese slopes. Hard to believe this only took two hours.

You don’t have to take my word on the short time frame, though. Check out this awesome time-lapse of the build and see for yourself!

Successfully tilting at windmills

Lately I’m on the lookout for calming and peaceful LEGO creations; they add a nice balance to the chaos of the modern world. Happily, this windmill created by Sheo is just what the doctor ordered. There are a lot of things to love about the construction, like the curving and tapering rings of stone making up the tower. I also like how the base is incorporated into the main design. The path that leads up to the door curves down, breaking through the stone wall that rings the windmill. It creates a nice illusion that this is only a smaller bit of a larger scene, and not an isolated display piece.

There are also great details created by clever part usage. A minifigure sword serves as a weather vane, turntable bases create windows, and telescopes brace the sails. All in all, a welcome breath of fresh air.

Building ships with bricks

Ahoy there! The Peregrinus Shipyard is looking for boat builders to assemble seafaring vessels. Chief among these builders is Gabriel Thomson, the maker of this fantastic creation.

The shipyard is built on one thing: detail. From the roof design to the water depth, everything about the Peregrinus Shipyard is extremely eye-pleasing. I’m especially impressed by the brickwork in the walls of the drydocks. Click to see more of the shipyards

Goblins and dwelfs, oh my!

Most adult builders looked at the little goblin figures from LEGO’s Elves theme with some distaste. I suspect this was due to the bright colors and limited elements that make them up. I know I felt that way. They are difficult to fit into a build, even a fantasy one, because they are too cartoonish to be taken seriously. Given the right setting, though, perhaps they could be useful. Take, for instance, this build by John Snyder. Bright colors, like lime green grass and a purple wagon roof, tie the goblins and their garish hues into the overall build. The layout itself is unique, with large brick-built tomes bookending the multi-level scene. Plus, as always with a Snyder build, there are play functions. The small dwarf-elf (or dwelf, as the cover implies) is in trouble, about to fall through a trapdoor into the subterranean lair of the goblins. Could anything be worse than being captured by those almost-useless rainbow-colored creatures?

Just milling around

When I think back to the LEGO sets I loved most as a kid, two come to mind: 6075 Wolfpack Tower and 6048 Majisto’s Magical Workshop. What made them special? Well, perhaps it was the opening functions they both had, so that I could have both a fully-enclosed building and a fully-accessible interior for my characters to live in. That, and I loved both wolves and dragons, so they had cool shields. Some castle builders (myself included) generally just build an interior room or exterior tower or wall from a particular angle, with a rainbow of parts behind the scenes. It saves time and bricks to do so. But when Isaac Snyder constructs a building out of LEGO, 99 times out of 100 it includes a full interior. Every part of the build is playable, accessible, and carefully thought through. It is like the sets of my childhood, only a billion times cooler and more detailed.

I adore roofs made from cheese slopes, and surprisingly for someone as prolific in the castle genre as Isaac, this is his first use of the technique. The chairs on the waterwheel look perfect, and everything has the polished Snyderian look one expects from Isaac; nothing seems out of place. Inside the structure, several things stand out, the first being that every level is accessible via a ladder or stair, with specific holes in the floor to move minifigures around. Kid me would have had a heyday making characters go up and down the stairs, falling through the holes, and so on. Second, there are beds and other practical furniture, which castle sets seldom had. Friends sets do, but not castle. Third, and perhaps most excitingly, the mill really spins! The gears connect to the grindstone, so you can make your very own ABS flour. Play functions and aesthetics. What more could one want?

Hair today, microscale tomorrow

Is this real life? Or is this just fantasy? How about a fairy tale then? Yeah, that’s what we’ve got here. Letranger-Absurde brings Rapunzel’s Tower to tiny life in this charming microscale build. Filled with innovative part usage, this scene balances whimsy with rock-solid building techniques.
The most eye-catching feature is probably the use of the costume from the LEGO Movie 2’s Crayon girl minifigure. (Some other figure lost their purple leg to fill in the archway, too.) That tower also features the use of a banana and bar holder with clip to make Rapunzel’s tresses.

The rest of the landscape has some cool secrets as well. That’s a dragon arm providing a bit of greenery. Tree tops are from Joker hair and a skater helmet. My favorite detail, though, is the waterfall turbulence that perfectly-repurposes ghostly minifigure legs.

A medieval town to die for

When it comes to medieval buildings, builders sometimes go all out on texture. Pieces end up being used every which way, with studs facing all directions, and random parts thrown in there just to show how clever the builder is. It doesn’t always look good, though, since it can appear too busy. That’s not to say that I think every surface needs to be smooth and flat and all lines need to be clean and straight. Quite the contrary. Ralf Langer is one of the builders out there who manage to balance irregular surfaces, crooked lines, and clever parts usages with cohesive structures and a strong visual presence. The ground in his latest creation is a perfect microcosm of what I mean: he blends smooth bits, heavily studded bits, and interesting parts to create something appealing and delightful, and I haven’t even looked at the buildings yet!

If you are wondering what the part in the ground is that gives it the baked-clay or tiny cobblestone look, it is a Technic drive chain. And by a Technic drive chain, I mean about ten billion And they’re not just in the ground, but also in the walls of the buildings, forming some of the wattle in the classic wattle-and-daub medieval look. Minifig legs create some fun decaying shapes in one of the buildings, and flex tube ends make for some clever windows. But best of all is Ralf’s use of stud shooter triggers. I see at least four different uses for those in this build, showing once again that all pieces have uses in custom-built LEGO models. I’m always a sucker for immersive builds, and Ralf is one of the best at them. Look through the arches and you can see more town beyond, promising a bigger world out there. Just not for the figure on the ground, since the standing one is Death.

Set sail through the ruins of Valyria

Some really great large Game of Thrones LEGO creations have been built in the last few years (if I don’t say so myself). Ekjohnson1 has built a number of amazing smaller Game of Thrones models, including this masterful vignette of Tyrion Lannister and Jorah Mormont sailing through Valyria. The amount of detail jam-packed into this small scene is amazing.

Right off the bat, I have to recognize the parts chosen for the custom minifigs. There is no question which characters are represented. Beyond that, there is so much to be in awe of here, such as the wands and claws as reeds. Two techniques stand out as most impressive to me both being held together by gravity and balance. First, the upside-down green hats being used as a plant – amazing. Second, and fittingly described at the bottom of the paragraph, is the use of 1×1 round tiles at the bottom of the model to represent the water simply but effectively.

Not just another brick in the wall

Walls can be drab. I don’t know if you have ever had to stare at a wall, but I spent my fair share of time as a kid in time-out, sitting in a chair in the corner, examining the minutiae of the paint texture of the wall. Since then, I have stared at many walls, from cinder block to stylish shiplap, in doctors’ waiting rooms, my old calculus classroom, and many other places. They all look more or less the same. And the same thing can often be said of LEGO castle walls. Seen one castle, seen ’em all. But Marcel V. provides a break from the monotony by spicing up the grey with nice texture, but even more importantly, fun accessories. Because you know what makes a wall worth looking at? Family pictures, or a clock, or a piece of art hanging there.

The art of Marcel’s build is in the clever piece usages. There are paintbrushes and minifigure hands in the roof frame on the small tower. Unikitty tails give a delightful decorative detail on the battlements, and pistols provide support beneath. I also enjoy the wheelbarrow from a catapult and the vulture made from orc ears. All of these fun features make this wall lovely to look at, not drab. Add to that the fact that it is shown under construction, well, that just makes it better and more interesting. I’ve already stared at it for a while, and will continue doing so with pleasure.

Like the build? We covered an earlier part of Marcel’s brick adventure here.

Black Falcon flies again

Between 1984 and 1992, the Black Falcons were one of the lead LEGO Castle factions, alongside the Crusaders. The sometimes fractious relationship between these two factions defined an entire era of LEGO Castle. The Crusaders might have had more official sets released during this time, but the Falcons were “outnumbered but never outgunned” — what was never in doubt was the quality of their castles. 1986’s 6074 Black Falcon’s Fortress is widely acknowledged as one of the finest LEGO Castle sets to be released, and was honoured with a LEGO Legends release in 2002. In a nod to that fine fortress heritage, Marcus Aspacher has put together an impressive castle of his own for the Falcons to defend…

Single-colour castles can sometimes suffer from “big grey wall syndrome”, but there’s more than enough texture built into the masonry here to prevent that. The fortress is impressive in its scale, and in the level of detail around the crenellations and towers. I particularly like the brick-built banners hanging on either side of the gatehouse.

The rockwork is well done, and the path leading up to the gate is smartly put-together from a good mix of angled plates. The castle is equally impressive from the rear, with a cool little bridge leading to an outlying tower. The rear view also showcases the excellent landscaping, and the attention that’s been paid to foliage and the transition between rock and walls…

Red is the new grey

When I think of castles, I usually think of a grey structure, especially when the castle is built from LEGO bricks. There are only so many LEGO colors that look like stone, after all. Perhaps something tan would work, or black if the castle is for bad guys. And then comes Anthony Wilson, building a castle out of red and dark red. Those aren’t stone colors! What could he be thinking? It is called outside the box, I believe, and sometimes it even works. Given the Ninjago figures with multi-tailed canines and the transparent blue crystals, the red creates a beautiful fantasy atmosphere.

I’ve always admired builders who can do excellent round towers, and this is no exception. Someday I’ll have enough 1×1 round bricks to play like a big kid, too. The variation in colors is just right, and a 1×2 plate here and there creates a refreshing change in textures from the smooth 1×2 tiles. Don’t miss the stud shooters serving as broken crenelations at the top, or the wheel arch over the window. The slick round black base ties it all together and makes the presentation oh-so-sharp. Almost as sharp as those magical crystals look…Almost.