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.

Hidden in the forest, bandits lurk

Stumbling across a bandit hideout in the forest might normally cause some alarm. But this Oriental LEGO creation by John Snyder evokes nothing but admiration. It’s a lovely scene, with great landscaping, a nicely detailed building, and some fun minifigure action around the fringes. Normally I like when the central subject of a creation is built in a colour scheme that contrasts with the backdrop, but here the building’s muted tones blend in perfectly with the browns and reds of the autumnal forest. This means you have to look harder to spot the details, but that’s perfectly appropriate for something that’s supposed to be a hideout! Also, don’t miss the use of minifigure legs as curling waves at the edge of the stream — a clever way to avoid the harsh cut-off this kind of diorama base sometimes causes.

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In the midst, there stands aloft a great hall of Men

Here’s an impressive LEGO rendition of an epic film location — Edoras, the capital city of the Riders of Rohan in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy classic The Lord of the Rings. Patrick B. has faithfully recreated the film’s vision of the town — a hill, studded with wooden buildings, surrounded by a palisade, and capped by King Théoden’s hall. The wooden fencing around the town is excellent, particularly the towers — brilliant detailing for such small-scale building. And don’t miss the dark brown robot arms clutching Harry Potter wand parts — they make for surprisingly effective windblown trees.

Here’s a more detailed look at the great hall on top of the hill — Meduseld, seat of the Kings of Rohan. The close-up view allows you to fully appreciate the rockwork and the clever choice of different textured bricks which goes into the microscale detailing of the buildings…

Fright Knights flashback

Do you remember Fright Knights? Thomas “Thomassio” van Urk does, and he’s built a flashback tribute model to the LEGO Castle subtheme from the late 1990’s.

This homage is quite a bit more complex than the forgotten theme’s biggest castle set, 6097 Night Lord’s Castle, but features many of the key details that scream “Fright Knights” including bats (using original flags, soldier helmets, and bat elements), Willa the Witch on one of the towers with a telescope, and even main antagonist Basil the Bat Lord if you peer closely. More modern flourishes include the Bat Monster from an early collectible minifigure series, seen terrifying a hapless knight on the grounds outside the castle.

It’s not just new and old minifigures being included. Fancier building techniques than the original sets are on full display here as well, with tons of Studs Not On Top tiling and detailing all over the place. My eye immediately latched onto the round tower section shown below, which features some really nice double cheese wedge action to fill the gaps of the detailing wrapped around the tower.

If you enjoyed Thomas’ work here, see some of his previous models on TBB like the Dohodno Zdanie and giant sky pirate airship the Lady McZep.

Mr. ROBIN’s NeighborHOOD

Hong Kong builder, mamax711 brings us his rendition of Robin Hood’s home. It’s an excellent fit for the medieval rogue, right down to the organic-looking shape of the building, the patchwork, and plant growth. Robin’s home would be well-hidden in a dark forest. I love the non-traditional angles of the walls and roof-lines and would love to see the interior framework holding everything together. Since this is Robin Hood’s house, I am guessing it will have to remain a secret.

Revisiting a classic castle on New Year’s Eve

Ringing in the New Year is all about reflecting on the past and looking toward the future. John Tooker has accomplished both with his modern take on the classic LEGOLAND yellow castle (set 375), originally released in 1978. John’s model is not an exact replica, as it features some different windows and does not swing open like the original set. However, it possesses the basic form and enough key features to make it immediately recognizable. The castle looks wonderful in tan, which was not officially available back in 1978. However, it’s an appropriate choice, given that the LEGO Group’s official name for the color is “brick yellow.” John also makes good use of darker colors with landscaping, including olive green vines climbing the castle wall. The period-correct castle minifigures and brick-built horse look right at home in their new abode!

A small reflection of life as it is

We often build with LEGO bricks to imitate, in other words reflect, life. While Ralf Langer‘s latest creation is a completely realistic microscale depiction of medieval life, the word reflection has more meanings to it.

First we see a micro mountain village with some cool techniques like the church roof, printed tiles as windows and modified plates as pine trees, but then something interesting in the water catches the eye. Ralf states in the picture description on Flickr that this is an experiment in water reflections, and I can see where he is going with it. A little extra bit is exposed in the description; if you go to the beginning of Ralf’s Flickr photostream, you can see that the building being reflected in the water is a microscale version of his first custom LEGO creation, earlier this year.

Real paths have curves

In a world where it seems as if a castle builder’s merit is measured in part by their best stone and timber medieval cottage, it is not hard to imagine that the motif has been perfected over the years. Though it is nearly impossible to invent anything new, builders like David Zambito still manage to bring something fresh to the table.

It is no surprise that I will point out the sloping path as ingenious and unique. It is so simple and effective that the real surprise is the fact we haven’t seen such paths everywhere! But I should not ignore the patchy snow on the frozen pond, achieved by combining clear and white slope pieces, or the stone walls on the cottage. What really brings the creation together is the smoothly flowing snow, made out of an assortment of curved slope pieces.

Itty-bitty servants of Darkness

Although JRR Tolkien primarily created his Middle-Earth fantasy world as a place for his invented languages to exist, his populating of that world with an array of fantastical creatures was a key element in the enduring appeal of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings. Aaron Newman brings us fantastic microscale LEGO models depicting the movie versions of 3 of Tolkien’s most famous “big beasts” — the Balrog, the Nazgul’s Fell Beast, and an armoured Mumakil.

The Balrog looks great, with it’s flaming whip and broad wingspan. I particularly like how Aaron has captured the creature’s distinctive face in a tight selection of pieces. The Mumakil is brilliant, poised to stomp and tusk-sweep its way through a swathe of eensy-weensy Rohirrim. But the highlight of the show has to be Nazgul on his Fell Beast. A clever parts selection has managed to produce a sinuous and reptilian effect, perfectly capturing how the movie trilogy Fell Beasts seemed to slither through the air. Now we need appropriately scaled microscale backdrops for all 3 models — come on Aaron, get to work.

The shrine of nature will make you see the light

There is something about the jungle that just fills me with all sorts of unexplainable pleasant feelings. While I understand that the humid hell filled with insects that is a real-life jungle would evoke a different kind of emotion, that does not mean we can’t enjoy an insect-free jungle shrine from our armchairs, like this one built in LEGO by Jonas Kramm. This is more than just a pretty build though, Jonas has created this “Shrine of Nature” to explore the unusual use for minecraft animal head pieces as described in his article on the New Elementary blog.

The focus of the build is the central pattern built out of multiple Minecraft wolf heads in two staggered rows, with a lit up translucent green background, giving a mysterious tone to the creation. The exotic and unique plant and animal life in the scene are great too, using all sorts of exotic pieces in unique ways.

Defend the fortress from the dragons, with full hardness

A thick stone wall is all well and good, but how does that help when what you’re up against has huge fangs, breathes fire, and can fly? Michael K. addresses this dilemma in this large-scale castle siege diorama titled expressively, “With Full Hardness”.

The scene is quite moody, using mainly dark colours, focusing on dark green. Even darker than the colour pallet is the theme, a vicious battle that the builder depicts quite explicitly, sparing no blood in the shape of translucent red parts. The best part of the build has to be the dragons, all posed and placed so they convey as much sense of motion and story as they can.

A castle amongst waterfalls

I am constantly jealous of both Jeff Friesen‘s exceptional photography and his beyond-exceptional LEGO builds. As the winner of our 2017 LEGO Builder of the Year award and the author of the book LEGO Micro Cities, Jeff is always on his A-game. This castle with lovely waterfalls made from trans-blue curved panels and Technic driving ring extensions for turrets is just awesome.

Just a few weeks ago we wrote an article on another cool LEGO castle of Jeff’s. Also, stay tuned for our review of his book!

Go get ’em Golem

Orcs menacing your castle? Run out of rocks for your trebuchet? No problem. Simply call up your friendly neighbourhood wizard and he’ll turn your castle walls into a living weapon. Chris Perron‘s LEGO “Wall Golem” is a nicely-built model of a great idea. The golem looks suitably architectural, the shoulders and crown immediately evoking a castle brought to life. But it was the torso and its rock “ribcage” which caught my eye — a nice detail that manages to feel like some sort of organic masonry, in other words, exactly how a golem ought to look.