Retro MOC archaeology

[The_Cook]

About 10 years ago I created a set of MOCs in the classic (80's) castle style and posted them up here on Eurobricks, you can still find the orginal posts by searching for "Retro MOC" in post titles. At the time all of images were posted on MOCPages but that site has now gone and the images with it. Recently there have been a few requests for me to repost some of the MOCs. Unfortunately I can't find the original pictures any more, they're probably on an SD card somewhere, but where that SD card is I don't have a clue. Thankfully old MOCs don't die, they get boxed up, I just need to find the box...

Historic Castle, that looks hopeful!

Alas, it's Trolltown which I am still slowly (very slowly) extending. There are a couple of 6057 Sea Serpent and my Classic Castle variant  of 6277 Imperial Trading Post appears to be buried at the bottom but it's mostly Trolls.

A suspicious box lurking deep in the eaves of the roof...

That looks more hopeful, I can instantly see the Maiden's Tower and the Hilltop Tower. All I need do is extract the box from where its buried...

Success. They're out, I can re-photograph them.  Time hasn't necessarily been kind to the MOCs, the dust I can deal with but the Old Grey has browned in many instances. Still, there's enough that if I repost to this thread every few days there's a few week's worth of content some of which might not have been posted here before.

Edited January 24, 2023 by The_Cook
Grammar

[1963maniac]

Wow! Good for you, good for us.

[The_Cook]

Having returned from my Dark Ages I had a hankering to build castles, as a child I'd had 6080 amongst others so it was a theme I was familiar with. I also wantted to create MOCs that looked as if the could have come from the Lego Design Studio, they needed to follow the historic design rules and most importantly be buildable. For all of the sets I was always thinking in terms of Story, Playability, Build-ability, Cost and Consistency, think like a product designer.

It started with The Maiden's Tower, follow the link to get the backstory, I'll summarise here.

I had 6074 Black Falcons Fortress and 6067 Guarded Inn and wantted to connect them together but because Guarded Inn isn't articulate you can't. Therefore I needed a corner piece. One of the common fantasy tropes is "The maiden in the tower" so I thought that would make a good starting point for a design.

The timber panels are a nod towards 6067 Guarded Inn, the roof is inspired by the roof used in 6074 Black Falcons Fortress.

The stairs at the back given access to the parapet, a feature lacking in many of the official castle builds. The steps are an anachronism as the part wasn't created until 1996 for the Western Theme and didn't appear in old brown until 2002 with the first Star Wars and Harry Potter sets.

The torch is a small thing I always do, space-blaster with red and yellow rounds ontop. I don't remember whether I've inherited it from an official set, but they occur in most of my builds.

From memory I originally had a Maiden figure in the tower, a Black Falcon on the Parapet and a Lion Kight on Horseback. I thought that that was more than enough to be able to re-enact the knight rescuing the maiden. The minifigs have returned to the box of minifigs and I didn't have time to find them, so most of the builds will be shown without minifigs.

The tricky part is getting the Maiden into the tower, with hindsight the modern technique of easily removable roofs could have worked quite nicely here.

Personally, I think it sits quite nicely alongside the Guarded Inn. The design aesthetic matches, nothing looks out of place.

At 200 parts, including minifigs, it's 1986 equivalent would be 6061 Siege Tower from a price comparisson standpoint, which was a whole $17.50 according to Brickset.

[LegoAUT]

Nice! I am looking forward to seeing more of your retro designs! :)

[crusader9576]

Thanks for reposting these! The philosophy behind your builds really shows in the final results; I don't think I've seen anyone else make MOCs this fun and accessible while sticking so closely to the parts palette of the '80s and early '90s

[The_Cook]

Merchant's House was the second MOC, again follow the link for the full backstory to how it was designed.

 

The inspiration was the the righthand side of 6086 Black Knight's Castle, the raised baseplate being replaced with a section of classic wall.

The roof was remodelled to be two sided and there's an obvious colour change from the red of 6086 to black, the roof fit better with the black rooves of 6067 Guarded Inn, and 6074 Black Falcon's Fortress.

The wall itself incorporated a gated storage chamber, hence the name Merchant's house, to accomodate the living space above; although I'm sure it could be repurposed for a dungeon, the beauty of 80's plays was that you had to make your own stories. The living space interior was sparse, a table and goblets which matches 6086 Black Knight's Castle and is signifcantly more than 6074 Black Falcon's Castle.

The final design detail borrowed from 6086 Black Knight's Castle is the escape ramp / sally port.

Consistency with other sets is fairly good, seen here alongside 6040 Blacksmith Shop. Indeed it was the smaller sets lik 6040 Blacksmith Shop and the "life" that they embedded into the walls that was a driving force behind many of the sets.

The height is nice, from the outside a long stretch of wall can be quite boring, the height and offset break up long stretches of wall. The downside however is that it's not articulated, it needs to be combined with an articulated piece of wall to insert it into one of the existing castles, however this is a criticism that could be levelled at several of the sets, 6067 Guarded Inn and 6040 Blacksmith shop included. The doors are an anachronism, and the wrong shade of grey! The old 4611 Door 1x6x7 Barred would have been too tall, a frustration that I remember from my childhood, the piece and it's doorframe don't match the castle wall panels. The modern 60621 Door 1 x 4 x 6 Barred with Stud Handle didn't arrive until 2008 and has never been produced in old grey, the only "old" colour that it comes in is black which I didn't have in my brick collection at the point when I was putting this set together otherwise I would have substituted.

I didn't have the minifigs to hand when recapturing the photo's but there were originally two guards, a wolfpack thief and a merchant. That felt like enough to act out some interesting play.

Total parts after minifigs are added was around 240, which is similar to 6067 Guarded Inn.

[SirBlake]

Heck yes! I have loved this series since the day you first posted about it. Good thinking keeping everything together. I really appreciate that you're taking the time to re-photograph these. 

[The_Cook]

Defending The Breach wa s intended to be deliberately simple; reminiscent of 6040 Blacksmith Shop or 6041 Armor Shop, slight bigger than an impulse purchase but not a candidate for the Christmas List.


 

The idea for the storyline behind this one was that the breach in the wall needed to be defended since it forms a weak point in the wall. The design entailed the construction of a ruined piece of wall with a timber pallisade behind. The log panels are an anachronism, they didn't arrive until the Western Theme in the mid-90's, but being old-brown they don't look out of place.



Looking back at this retrospectively the pallisade was securely attached to the ruined wall, if I built it again I'd probably try to contrive the pallisade to break-away to increase the playability.

My original design has 2 defenders, 2 attackers. The defenders were still attached when I came to re-photograph it, but the attackers had been returned to the bag of Lion Knights and missed out.

At just 117 pieces it's in line with 6041, the modern equivalent (still over 10 years old!)  would be 7187 Escape from the Dragon's Prison.

[Tom_Brick]

And here I was, reading your title, thinking you created a MOC of an archaeological dig in the style of 80s Lego. 

But yeah, really nice builds. my 8 year old self is very envious. If only I had sets like these as a kid.

[A_Forest_of_Lego]

This style of builds brings back such good memories from my childhood! Keep posting them!

29 minutes ago, Tom_Brick said:

And here I was, reading your title, thinking you created a MOC of an archaeological dig in the style of 80s Lego. 

I thought the same thing! lol

[The_Cook]

The fourth set published was "The Stable", born out of the observation that I had lots of horses but nowhere for them to stay.

Design wise the starting point was a hinged wall similar to 6062 Siege Tower, but I needed a little extra width to accomodate the stalls for the horses so and extra 2 studs was inserted into the center of the wall.

There's a little bit of complexity in order to allow the parapet of the hinged section to fold against the side of the stable, but it's nothing more exciting that offseting the horse stalls by a stud.

The intended minifigs were a stable-hand, who is present in my photo's, another soldier who is not present and two horses.

It's consistent with the other sets, in the above image from left to right is 6067 Guarded Inn, The Stable, Market By The Wall (which will be the next post) and the wall from 6062 Battering Ram.

[jodawill]

This is really cool. I'm glad you kept all of your MOCs. I'd love to see the Forestmen's Clifftop Lookout in particular.

[The_Cook]

Next up is Market By The Wall.

This one is an interesting creation in that it's not entirely original; it's a Classic Castleification of 7571: The Fight for the Dagger.
The overall structure remains the same, it's converted to stone grey, the roof is standard classic castle courtesy of 6076 Black Falcons Fortress, there are attachment points to add it to the wall.

The backside isn't that exciting but you can see the double doors leading outside the wall.

I think it fits quite nicely into the wall, shown here attached to Merchants House and the Guild Hall (more on that in a future post)
The perpendicular wall and awnings creates some depth to the things attached to the wall and market stalls are another way to move stuff out from the wall into the interior space.

 

On 2/8/2023 at 9:53 PM, jodawill said:

This is really cool. I'm glad you kept all of your MOCs. I'd love to see the Forestmen's Clifftop Lookout in particular.

Hmm, I'm fairly sure that I didn't break that one up but it wasn't in the box that I photographed...

...I'll have to go diving back into the attic to try and find that one ;-)

[ptifrans]

superbe!!!