Ninja Showdown at a Japanese Tea House

Here's a new MOC from brickshelf user DARKspawn [gallery here].

It shows a scene from medieval Japan, wherein two groups of ninjas face off outside a tea house.  I really love the clever curved roof design on the tea house.  Also noteworthy is the landscaping, especially the waterfall and the staircase set into the rock.

Green Dragon Inn

Check out this MOC from Matthew Hurt [gallery here]

It provides a nice home away from home for traveling Green Dragon Knights.  Since they're so new to the LEGO realm, I'm sure they're traveling a lot these days to explore things.  And what better place to relax after a hard day's slog?  It certainly looks cozy and festive inside!

I particularly like the deer (or possibly moose, elk or wapiti) head mounted over the fireplace, and of course the boys throwing rocks at the chicken (a classic!).

Resting Outlaws

Check out this MOC by ElephantKnight. [gallery here]

It shows a few outlaws enjoying their spoils.  Of particular note is the clver use of the pig piece.  Mmmm, I love BBQ!

P.S.  Sorry for the break in there with no posts, I was out of town.  Resume regular posting!

Village

Brickshelf user legoutrgnc has uploaded pictures of a great scene simply titled "Village."

The thing I love most about this MOC is its randomness.  In a medium made up mostly of square elements, it's often difficult to create landscapes that realistically mimic natural features.  Legoutrgnc has done a very good job, in my opinion, of making an organic looking landscape as a backdrop for his village scene.  The buildings, too, have a nice sense of non-uniformity, due to skilful use of mottling, and color variations from one building to the next.  On detail I particularly like is this slanted doorway and little tower/pergola thing.

Note the great use of dark bluish-gray cheese slopes on either side of the door.  I'm still trying to figure ouy how he made all of this work!  This is definitely one of those MOCs which inspires me to get better at my own building.  You can find more pictures here.

Battle of Grunwald

LEGO Conferences offer a great opportunity for AFOLs to pool their resources to create monster displays, like this one from LUGPol members in Warsaw.  LUGs often spend many hours months in advance planning large-scale displays, and many more hours setting them up once they arrive at the venue.

This is a recreation of the Battle of Grunwald, in honor of the 600th anniversary of the battle.  According to one of the participants, there are 96 baseplates and over 700 minifigs.  I love the fact that it's not just a massive array of minifigs, but there has been significant attention paid to landscaping as well.  It must have taken a lot of coordination to get the various segments of the stream lined up, for example.  There are also a ton of very detailed custom figs in both armies.  You can see some in the photos below:

This really gives the impression that various lords have been called out and brought hosts of soldiers in different liveries to the battle.  Which is, I suppose, what happened here; various AFOLs brought out their own armies and gathered them all on the same battlefield!

Here are 3 galleries of more photos from this display:
Number 1
Number 2
Number 3

Church of St. Lazarus

Brickshelf user Rhox has uploaded pictures of a MOC called Church of St. Lazarus.

There are lots of great details to enjoy here for the castle enthusiast.  Check out the nicely greebled cathedral facade, as well as the nicely shaped sacristy (the rounded area at the back) roof.  That's hard to do with LEGO!  I think Rhox has done a good job of blancing greebling against clean lines and elegance.  I also realy like the tree with roots cascading down the rock.  Also be sure to check out the Medieval Port House, by the same builder.

LEGO Kingdoms Games Part II

Now that you've retrieved the prisoners, you need to hurry back and defend your outpost in Outpost Boulder Battle.

Your archers defend the outpost by shooting down explosive barrels from the enemy's catapult.  Once you survive the onslaught, we move on to what we've all been waiting for: saving the princess!

You must navigate 3 floors of trap doors in order to reach your reward!  And now, resting from your labors, you retire with the princess to live happily ever...  Wait, there's more?  Since you've proven so capable, now you are needed to defend the castle itself, by picking up the enemies with a mysterious floating hand and shooting them back at their own comrades-in-arms. 

Hope you enjoyed that, back to our regularly scheduled programming soon!

LEGO Kingdoms Games

I went to The Lego Company's website to get some information about the latest castle line, Kingdoms, in order to post about these sets.  Instead of doing my research, however, I got sucked into playing the games on the Kingdoms home page.

 It was really a pretty entertaining way to spend some time (I decline to say how much time).

 The first challenge is Catapult Showdown.

The Lion Knight must use his catapult to destroy an enemy siege weapon that appears to launch giant axes.  Great fun!  You need to vary the angle and speed of your projectile in order to defeat the enemy.

Once you've defeated 3 enemies, you can move on to the next game, Prison Carriage Pursuit.
The enemy has taken one of your soldiers hostage, and is carrying him away on a wagon.  You need to catch up with him and rescue the prisoner.  This quest is complicated by the fact that this appears to be a very tectonically unstable region, and huge pits keep appearing right in front of you (but never in front of the cart!).  You are helped, however by a temporary suspension of the laws of physics which allows you to switch directions in mid-air.  Fast-paced and pretty enjoyable, but those pits are the pits...

If you can rescue 3 prisoners without ending up face down in the mud, wondering where you went wrong and hoping you didn't get your feather plume dirty, you advance on to game number 3. Which, I'm afraid, will have to wait until tomorrow.

Captain's Tower

I've created a new MOC to inaugurate this blog properly.

It's called the Captain's Tower.  You can see him there in the right-hand photo, talking to one of his knights.  The Captain is a very important personage in this area of Legoland.  He is retired from active military service, and now spends his time looking after the estates he earned by years of loyal service to the Crown.  His lands are rich and provide a wide variety of foodstuffs for both the Captain and the surrounding villages.  The visiting knight is working on his second glass of red wine from the captain's vineyards, and there's a load of pumpkins arriving at the tower now.
 

The captain enjoys looking out over the landscape from his perch up at the top of the tower, and keeps and eye out for bandits and Black Falcons, as well as any visitors on their way to his tower or the nearby inn.  Bu a wily Forestman has evaded his notice and made off with a leg of roast turkey, and he's enjoying it right under the nose of the guards!

You can see more pictures of the captain's tower at my Brickshelf gallery, located here.

Greatest Castle set of all time?

Recently, over at the forums on Classic-Castle there was an exhaustive poll to determine once and for all what the greatest castle set of all time is. The winner? Medieval Market Village.

Now, I understand that a lot of people liked this set, and that it was a vast improvement over the previous years' Castle offerings. However, I don't think this set has what it takes, considering the stiff competition offered by some of the other finalists. Finalists, for example, like King's Castle and Guarded Inn.

My personal pick for greatest castle set ever, however, wasn't even among the nominations (I suppose I should have nominated it myself, but I was pretty busy at the time, and couldn't give it the write-up it deserved). My pick being, of course, Forsetmen's Crossing. It may not be the biggest or most impressive set out there, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in style.



From a kid's (or big kid's) perspective, the set has lots of play value. The set includes 5 minifigs (one being, of course the coveted Forestwoman) and a horse, so there are plenty of characters to build stories around, even with just this one set. Add one more set from another faction, and that's more than enough to keep you busy. The forest fort itself is also packed with playability. Sweet features like a rope bridge (every kid's dream!) and a secret treasure hiding spot make this set even more exciting. The baseplate is one of the most unique that LEGO ever introduced, and the set includes lots of foliage pieces to emphasize the sylvan setting. And I just love how the tower is built into the tree!

Got anything to add? Prefer another set? Add your comments below!

Welcome!

Welcome to Dan's LEGO Castle Blog.

I grew up playing with LEGO, and now that I'm (technically) an adult, I haven't quite managed to kick the habit. I decided to make this blog in order to showcase some of the creations of other AFOLs (that's Adult Fans of LEGO, for the uninitiated), and maybe a few of my own as well. I'm going to focus on Castle creations, as those were my favorite as a kid (although you may see some Pirate sneak in). You may also some of my ruminations on the world of LEGO Castle and it's fans.

Anyway, thanks for checking out my blog.

Play Well!