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.

Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the dawn!

Once upon a time, the dark fortress of Minas Morgul belonged to the to the world of men. Back then, the city was called Minas Ithil and it protected Gondor from the evil forces of Mordor. John Snyder has built a gorgeous rendition of the city as it was before the Witch-king of Angmar took over.

At first glance, I mistook John’s castle as something out of Disney rather than the Lord of the Rings. Regardless of the source material, from the top of the tower all the way down to the bedrock, this fortress is one of the loveliest LEGO castles I’ve ever seen. According to John, his Minas Morgul weighs 31.2 pounds and is his heaviest build to date. He also says he tried to maintain the architecture (and pointy crenellations) from the original design. The bridge, in particular, reminds me of the scene in the film where the Nazgul ride out in a frenzy to find Frodo.

For more photos, including alternate angles and even an “I Spy” style scavenger hunt, check out John’s flickr.

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Fantastic fantasy inn

The inn — an essential location in any half-decent fantasy tale. Where would your adventurers be if they didn’t have a good tavern to bed down in, get drunk in, hear gossip in, and get into fights in? titus.verelst‘s Grand Griffon is an impressive creation, with nicely-built Tudor-style panelling, and landscaping which adds detail and a sense of place without distracting from the central building.

This builder is on something of a roll with the fantasy creations at the moment. I really liked this detail shot from another model, showing an armourer at work in a side-street of a bustling town. It’s great when LEGO builders get their cameras down and close, creating minifigure eye-level scenes like this…

The day elves drew elven blood

It is understandable that the Lord of the Rings trilogy inspires more LEGO creations than its expanded lore collected in the Silmarillion, since the latter reads more like a textbook than a series of stories. But it is refreshing to see creations inspired by it nevertheless, even if the hand of builders has to be forced by contests such as the Middle Earth LEGO Olympics on MOCpages. This scene of the kinslaying at Alqualondë by John Snyder is one such refreshment, and it was indeed built for the aforementioned contest.

The builder has accompanied the build with a very informative description of the event, which I encourage more curious readers to explore.
The diorama features many interesting techniques and ideas, with high quality rocks and unique overgrowth. Coupling that with elegant architecture and a gorgeous Elven ship, John has brought a slice of elven history to life.

The only brew for the brave and true comes from the Green Dragon

“You can search far and wide, you can drink the whole town dry, but you’ll never find a beer so brown as that found in the Green Dragon.” So goes the tribute as sung by Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took in Lord of the Rings about the Green Dragon Inn in the Shire, adoringly built here in LEGO by Patrick Balbo.

Based on the inn seen in Peter Jackson’s movies, the Green Dragon is a perfect example of Hobbit architecture with its rounded doors and long, low-slung design. The builder has incorporated all sorts of nice details, from the curved layout of the building to the tree made from stud shooters. The scene is lively and quite welcoming with all sorts of Shire folk mulling about outside. No doubt I would like to stop here and try this brown beer for myself!

A knight needs to drill every day to stay in top condition

There was a (perhaps deservedly?) forgotten LEGO Castle theme from the early 2000s called Knight’s Kingdom with large figures, which introduced many specialized parts that appear to be hard to use other than for their apparently intended purpouse. You would expect me to reveal a surprisingly innovative use of such elements in the newest creation by Russian LEGO builder Red, but the real surprise is how elegantly the builder used the said pieces simply for their intended purpose, which is often a risky move among highly critical LEGO builders. On the other hand, there are many imaginative techniques throughout the build, which reward a viewer inspecting it closely. The best part, however, must be the figure’s menacing general shape, which gives a strong impression of a very muscular man in impenetrable armor, and yet keeping a strange sense of elegance – a perfect combination for a knight.

Do kings have bad heir days if they’re always wearing a crown?

Castle is an evergreen theme: always there, always lovely, always relevant. This beautiful castle gate caught my eye with its bright colors and clean build. The highlight of this build from Milan Skeiz are the minifigures (including the archers), which have custom crocheted coats! He’s made quite an elegant attempt at a boat build; I would have never guessed he’d never built a LEGO boat before. His take on the sail and mast is unique; I’d love to see one in real life like that!

Continue reading →

Rural beauty in the shape of a lumber mill

Following up his creation of a decaying wall, Jonathan Svenning brings us a medieval sawmill in a beautiful natural setting. The style is quite different from the previous build, with the fewer textures and a larger piece of scenery, and there is a lot to look at throughout the build. The main building utilizes many colours to mix into a realistic weathered texture.

What sells it for me though, is the landscaping. Jonathan has used a unique technique of angled plates for meandering water, as well as some interesting solutions for trees, particularly the sand green ones in front of the buildings.

Ancient abbey rests atop a mountain of support

Usually when writing about my own creation, I would take the opportunity to share some insights into my building process and what it takes to build something as large as this mountaintop abbey. Instead, I feel this creation is an example of how color, texture and composition can be combined to maximize the aesthetics of a build, especially one of this size. Like almost all of my builds, there are no crazy new techniques, and no unusually nice parts usages (NPU) to highlight. Besides building the interior supports and the two round roofs, there was nothing exceptionally challenging about the construction of this creation. However, I think its straightforwardness enhances rather than detracts from its beauty. My inspiration came mostly from ancient Eastern European churches I visited while briefly living in Budapest.

But that’s not the main point I want to talk about here. Instead, I wish to dedicate this creation to all the non-AFOL significant others out there who support us in enjoying this crazy hobby. After what I’ve put my wife through the last month, it’s the least I can do. Continue reading →

Beauty of decay in the shape of a castle wall

Modern LEGO castle building trends call for intensely textured walls, with the texture achieved with use of many small tiles and plates. While it is quite impressive, it makes me wonder why all LEGO castles look like nobody is caring for them. This wall segment by Jonatan Svenning does not have this awkward situation, as it is meant to look decreipt and abandoned. It does the job incredibly well, with wall segments tilting and breaking apart.

While I wonder if a chain could hold a cobblestone tower, it certainly looks nice. But what sets this old wall from the rest is the overgrowth on and around the wall – from moss growing everywhere to the flowers and trees (including one utilizing large figure armor parts as a tree trunk) around the wall. The best plantal element however, has to be the tree growing straight out of the wall, crumbling it in the process.

The village and its gatehouse

Gatehouses are quite a popular theme in LEGO castle builds, but this port village gatehouse by Titus Verelst still manages to bring something new to the table, surrounding the gatehouse with a village suspended on logs. It makes a nice composition with the rooftops and curved path, adding just enough minifig action to bring the scene to life, despite the bleak colour scheme. I do wish the builder had added water around the village, or at least used some clever digital tricks or blue paper as a stand in.

The knight’s triumphant return

Summer is a wonderful time of no obligations and worries for a school-age young adult such as myself. The past two years it has also meant entering the Summer Joust contest, which has just concluded. Last year I went small and built a microscale castle being attacked by a dragon, but with the addition of the “Immersive LEGO Scene” category this year (possibly my favorite type of LEGO creation) I knew I had give it a go. My first idea was to build a knight returning from battle, like we see in so many medieval movies and books, so I went with it, and this was the result:

Click through to see a behind the scenes shot (no pun intended)

Take it to the bridge

Who’s that trip-trapping over my LEGO bridge? Well, according to Andreas Lenander, it’s the King and his Knights — one of whom has taken a tumble into the stream. The hapless swimmer injects some fun detail into the scene, but the undoubted highlight must be the arches on the bridge — fashioned from partly-connected 1×2 plates.