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 palace fit for the sun

In the realm of LEGO castle builds, most of what we see is based off the European stereotype of grey fortresses, but thankfully this year’s Summer Joust building competition has a category for Middle Eastern creations. Instead of boring old grey, we get intricate tan! Talented castle builder Classical Bricks brings us the gates to a palace called Qasr Alshams, beautifully decorated with a touch of teal to complement its earth tones.

What draws my eye in the build is the amount of depth alluded to by having the different levels climbing higher and higher; what we see is just a small segment of what is undoubtedly a sprawling palace complex, complete with baths, a harem, dining rooms, administrative offices, and everything else that I have read about in the Arabian Nights, but it seems much larger. The battle droid legs make for an excellent railing above the gates, and the heads of the same droids make a nice detail beneath the battlements on the left. My favorite piece usage, though, is the pickaxes for door pulls on the gates. After a long ride on my camel through the desert, across the hot sand—I don’t like sand, since it is coarse and rough and irritating and gets everywhere—this looks to be a welcome place to stop and rest. That’s assuming I make it past the guards, of course.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

A day of winter fishing in the solace of frozen silence

A prolific LEGO builder who’s graced our pages before, Ted Andes has presented a creation I resonate with at the moment, Winter. I’m typing this from Victoria, Australia, where the frosts and bleak days have been many. This beautiful vignette, a small capture of a snowy morning on the edge of a siheyuan. I can almost feel the stillness in the air.

Andes’ parts use is always exceptional, though not just in obscure part usage. His harness on basic parts to get the maximum effect is outstanding. The bare tree is made from roughly thirteen different pieces, twisted into some outstanding, gnarled forms. See if you can spot them all — can you see any I’ve missed? The river and its edging is also another highlight for me. The 4L trans-light blue bars surrounding some fish is a nice touch, giving the impression of icy cold, rushing water. Having the land predominantly in two colours has also worked elegantly, while the simple touches of trans-clear near the edge of the river have brought it closer to the reality of the camping trips I’ve taken in winter.

For the life of every plane, I will keep watch.

A good LEGO creation will be good despite the motive and theme it depicts. Some times though, a build comes up that is both built well and plays on your personal interests. The builder that does that to me most often is Eero Okkonen. If you have been following The Brothers Brick for a while you are probably familiar with Eero’s beautiful character builds of various themes, many of which come from the Magic the Gathering trading card game, just like this particular one.

The build represents an elf planeswalker (basically a glorified mage) important in Magic’s storyline. The character’s likeness is incredibly well captured in LEGO, especially the iconic green markings on her face. The clothing and posing is great as well, with a flowing green cape and a green flame in her hand. You can read more about the build on Eero’s blog, Cyclopic Bricks. The builder is so good at capturing iconic characters that one could call him an Iconic Master…

A village with a bit of everything

Oftentimes castle builds focus on the impenetrable keep with its solid grey walls, or else they depict a single building, like an inn or a blacksmith shop. Then there are the occasional massive dioramas that have everything, but also require five tables to display and several vans to haul. In a comfortable middle place, Peter Ilmrud brings us a charming village with enough shops to be believable and a footprint that is reasonable. There is a blacksmith, an armorer, a baker, a cheesemaker, stables, a cooper, and even a mage-astronomer’s tower. Add in some nice trees and architectural details around Wyvernstone Village, and this makes for a fine build that does not even take up all of one table.

See more of Wyvernstone Village here

A border keep to keep the border well-kept

A castle built in the north must be strong enough to survive the icy winters and keep the enemy hordes at bay. Looking at this one by Marco den Besten, we can safely say that the inhabitants will be well-protected from both. Built near the southern border of the icy guild of Mitgardia, where it borders the rival guild of Avalonia, the fortifications are thick and the walls high. Ample crenelations protect those on the walls from any enemies who might aspire to shoot arrows at them from below. Plenty of action fills the scene, with troops marching over a bridge, a farmer bringing produce to market, folks fishing, and even a ship approaching the dock. Are the intentions of the sailors friendly? I don’t know, but axes are drawn.

Marco is famous among LEGO castle builders for his large displays, and perhaps even more famous for his large evergreens made of uncountable spines/vines. The way the towers are set at angles to the walls makes for a visually striking shape, a far cry from the square castles I used to make as a kid. Like this creation? Check out more huge castle dioramas built by Marco den Besten such as a fortified city and a city in the snow.

The grass is the sun and the stone is the blue sky

Certain core LEGO themes like castle and space seem to have very specific directions of experimentation and technical progress. We generally associate castle builds with unique textures, but having a colour palette usually limited to various earth tones. Colour experimentation is not unheard of in the theme though, but remains the rare exception that reminds us of specific builders like Luke Watkins or jaapxaap, among others. This time, Anthony Wilson goes to the extreme with what almost looks like a negative image of what would otherwise be a cute but quite ordinary castle scene.

There are so many tones of blue, yellow and orange in this build that even if I try to count them all, I would probably still miss one or two. The transitions between the different colours in the grass are especially smooth and really add up to a realistic effect (as realistic as yellow grass can be). The 1×2 tile-based wall is not a new technique, but the two rows look great overgrown by all sorts of dark brown plants. The yellow ninja minifig and its animal companion add that vitally important bit of life that complete the scene.

Countryside idyll built of carrots and sticks

Do you remember that guy from your Math textbook who happened to own a dozen pineapples or 30 bananas? Well, Peter Ilmrud seems to be that guy. Keeping several hundred carrots in your house might not be a good idea unless they’re LEGO carrot pieces. It’s been 20 years since the piece first appeared in LEGO sets, but it looks like Peter is one of the first to use it as roof tiling. The result looks fantastic, and bright orange carrots go nicely with white and brown walls of the house. A simple garden fence made of sticks is another nice touch in the diorama, which I would love to try to recreate in my next medieval creation.

Revisiting Löwenstein Castle from BrickLink’s AFOL Designer Program [Review]

There are only a few days left to purchase a set from BrickLink’s AFOL Designer Program (ADP), and having just taken a second look at the Wild West Saloon a few days ago, we wanted to give the same treatment to one of the program’s most successful models, Löwenstein Castle by builder Raziel Regulus. We’ll also take look back at the overall program.

In our early review of Löwenstein Castle, the finished packaging of the set was not yet ready from BrickLink. With the final product now available, let’s revisit the set and packaging, and take a look at the expansion of the base model that has been developed by the original fan designer.

Click to continue reading about the Löwenstein Castle

This monochrome medieval city is anything but bleak

While many LEGO castle builders use at least some shade of gray somewhere in their medieval fortifications, many try to push themselves outside this monochrome palette if possible. On the other hand, sometimes using self-imposed constraints can unlock new levels of creativity. In the case of this microscale village by Aaron Newman, complete with cathedral and an impressive keep, the inspiration came from the task of building a prize for a castle building contest where the use of gray is prohibited. So, whoever wins this prize will still get the benefit of a little gray in an otherwise colorful world.

One of my favorite details about this model are the many angled walls, which reflect a great many real-life castles and ruins around the world. One more missable detail is the sideways bricks that flank the entrance to the cathedral. For the round towers, Aaron borrowed a technique from a previous microscale castle of his featured here on TBB.

Step on it! – A forest drive has LEGO bricks on the move

Have you ever been a passenger in a car when the driver is just going way too slow? Geneva Durand seems to have had that experience, and brings that frustration to life in an expressive, yet tiny, creation. In this scene, brick-built horses pull a carriage fit for microfigure nobility through a dense forest. Every feature is instantly recognizable, which is pretty astounding considering those microfigures are just under 2 centimeters tall.

It’s a twisty path, so maybe the driver is justified in a more cautious pace. Perhaps the passenger is just upset that his crown is way too tall to fit inside the carriage, requiring him to lean out the window the whole way. Geneva first designed the carriage back in 2013, and later updated it in 2017. Maybe their next iteration will include a little more headroom!

In the meantime, though, we can appreciate the skill that goes into the current build. I like the “studs down” building approach for the horses, the variety of techniques used for the tree trunks, and the subtle curves in the carriage canopy. There is also some great part usage, including minifigure hands for flags, and helmet plumes for the horsetails.

Be sure to check out Geneva’s blog post detailing the techniques that went into the forest background.

Adorable cottage has big heart in a small space

Medieval cottages are a favorite subject of LEGO fan builders around the world, and while we feature them often on TBB, once in a while a creation comes along that really makes an impression. At first glance, this compact cozy cottage by mamax711 may not seem that remarkable, but once you look a bit closer, there are some wonderful details worth noticing. For example, the walls are built using a number of parts not commonly associated with wall building, particularly, the tan 2×2 brackets used to trap the sideways facing plates on either side of the windows. And speaking of windows, the brown 1×2 tile with handle on top makes the perfect small window frame. The jumbled garden and roof details fit the building very well.

The legacy of Ninjago’s Dragon’s Forge

Everything old is new again and Robert4168 takes us on a nostalgic trip back to 2017 with this colorful and detailed homage to set 70627 Dragon’s Forge. Recently, LEGO has started giving some of their classic Ninjago sets a makeover and re-issuing them under the Legacy moniker. For fans, it’s a great opportunity to get your hands on some updated versions of older locations that you may have missed the first time around. Taking a cue from LEGO, Eurobricks launched a contest asking their members to create their own Legacy scenes based on any past Ninjago set. Clearly, Robert4168 was up to the challenge!

The color palette of the landscaping is a beautiful combination of lime green and dark green accented with translucent blue tiles and bricks for a pleasing water effect. I like the use of angled plates and some sideways building to create its organic shapes. The rickety brown wooden bridge is not only nicely constructed, but provides good color contrast.

The detailed revamping of the forge’s interior is a marked improvement on the original set with its tan and dark tan color scheme, brown window frames and tiled floor. The addition of warm lights inside the forge is a perfect finishing touch that really puts this model over the top.