Craghold Castle, a lengthy MOC (>1 year off/on)

[brickzone]

Hello all,

I'm finally presenting an MoC I've been working on, stop/start, from late 2007 until this week. Craghold Castle is an a keep style creation on the 3D sea baseplate. It includes a dungeon and basic living arrangements for those taking refuge, including a main hall. I merely had the vague idea in my head as I started, and it took form fairly randomly as I went along.

First, views of all sides. There is a main keep, battlements atop the cliff-face, and a gatehouse tower.

Front:

Left side and rear:

Right side:

The entrance and gatehouse tower:

A view of the castle entrance (the idea is that the drawbridge lowers onto a rock promontary or even a bridge, as yet unbuilt by me):

There is a small sentry room beside the entrance.

The entire gatehouse tower hinges open, except for the small sentry room at the base. The gatehouse mechanisms are reached by climbing down the tower from the upper floors of the main keep. The tower itself is also used for storage. A simple technic peg, when pulled out, will drop the portcullis, and it can be winched up again too. The battlement at the front of the gatehouse is also reached only from the tower, and the battlements atop the tower and keep are also reached via the top part of the tower.

The battlement on the left of the castle hinges open:

Behind that is the dormitory, which also hinges open. Just a couple of beds, a trunk and fireplace (without a fire atm):

Moving along, the entire cliff-face on the right side of the castle hinges open, battlements atop it and all. Inside is the dungeon, used for storage - of a prisoner or two as well if necessary:

Stockpiled up at the back of the dungeon:

What's this - some loot stashed away for safekeeping too?! It's snugly kept below the stairs (there's another door at the back of the dungeon to get into it, almost visible in the previous photo):

A view down the stairs from the keep to the dungeon. Needless to say I had a hard time fitting these stairs in, but they are complete (there's a 2x2 section at the turn in the stairs that's attached to the hinging open section) The doors above are the entrance to the keep - reached from stairs outside beneath the front battlement.

Inside the keep:

The first floor has a door down to the dungeon, and stairs up to the kitchen and main hall. There's a small table and chairs for any guards (there's even a small fireplace behind that guard).

Halfway up the main staircase (not visible here except the start of it downstairs) there is a small kitchen. Here we can see the resident Orc chef getting ready to prepare a bird. There are various ingredients and tools, as well as some meat on a spit.

Here you can also see the exterior stairs up to the keep, and below the first floor, a small yard and the door to the dormitory:

The main hall is rather small, but fits a fair few people in (they can probably sleep there too if necessary).

There are four columns helping support the height of the hall and the rest of the keep. Torches attached to those light up the room. You can see the molding atop one of the pillars - this is the same for all four. Just entering the hall, having come downstairs, is the princess, and sitting down at the back, obscured by a goblet, the king. We also have a dwarf king and a maiden visiting.

A view showing the fireplace in the hall, complete with trophies.

The princess is a bit upset about the lack of food... You can also get a better look at the fireplace - that wall also folds out (i.e. two walls fold open, with a joint in between them - allowing just the one or both to open). The double doors are the entrance from the stairs up from below.

Close-up of our belligerent princess and the guests:

Why was the king on his own you ask? Just look one floor up, the queen is just taking a moment or two to herself up in the bedroom.

Just above that bedroom, is the mage's study, accessed from the battlements. He likes to be left alone:

Close-up of the mage and his study. There are scrolls up by the roof, various potions, an owl and bat (alive or dead?) and a quite full bookcase.

All comments appreciated - hope you enjoyed the tour.

[Batbrick]

That is unbelievable!

The sheer height of it is amazing, and I love all the details. The dungeon and kitchen areas look great as well, and I love all the ladders leading to the top. Magnificent work!

Good colour scheme choice as well, I especially like the black skull entrance!

Batbrick Away!

[Norro]

Brilliantly imposing (as a Castle should be). I love the storage area and semi ordered chests The various opening hinged sections are also very well done. Playable but without sacrificing the look of the MOC! The princess is a little scary... no personal experience I hope The multiple rooms and characters would really fire the imagination of a child. All round a very nice MOC!

God Bless,

Nathan

[Patriot720]

This is one great creation! Out of all the castle MOC's I've seen, this would probably rank among the top two!

The idea of adding hinges to to showcase the interior is awesome. The library with the mage/wizard is probably

my favorite room of the castle. This is by far one of the best castles ever!!

Edited February 1, 2009 by Patriot720

[Asuka]

A very impressive work and a formidable castle indeed.

The opening feature of the different sections is simply great and the interior looks fine too.

Overall I really like especially the efforts you put in the construction of this MOC to make it so very 'playable'. Well done!

[TLV]

nice castle. I especially like the entrance. its very imposing and gives a sense of fear to those who enter. The fact that many parts of the castle is accessible is really cool too!

[pellevin]

An absolutely marvelous creation, Brickzone! I'm mightily impressed by how planned-out the end result seems, what with all the opening walls and such, even though you didn't have the blueprint down whle you were building! It must have been very interesting, seeing the castle take shape as you went along..

Yup, there is a certain "it" to Craghold Castle that I haven't felt in a Moc for quite some time. Maybe it has to do with that the build seems "doable" - more often than not, when looking at the fabulous creations of the professionals with huge LEGO stockpiles, it just somehow doesn't feel like a LEGO build. They are, of course, but it's not something I could put together in this lifetime, since I only have a quarter of their skill and a hundredth of their brick stash. Thus it doesn't really seem connected at all to what I'm doing when fooling around with my meagre bricks, late at night when no one is awake to berate me for it.

Your castle, on the other hand, is - to me - not about such steamrolling overwhelmingness, but more of the hobbyish happy toil. Normal castle wall pieces, studs where they're supposed to be - Craghold seems built purely by a brilliant imagination and a deep love of the brick. I haven't felt so inspired in forever!

A totally adorable castle, Brickzone, congratulations and thanx for sharing!

[Sandy]

I agree with Pellevin, this castle has that real "LEGO" feeling to it.

At first sight I thought the castle was nothing special, but when I scrolled down and saw all these hinged walls and splendid interiors, I was awestruck! In my opinion this is an ingenious LEGO creation - to hell with tiled floors and complex building techniques!

The way everything opens up is really inspiring, and I'd love to get a chance to fiddle with this myself, peeking inside each room and opening every wall just to see what lies beyond it. Yeah, it brings out the curious child in me, I guess.

If I were to give you some creative suggestions, I'd say the interiors would benefit of a little more color, decoration and furnishing. A few flags here, some torches there, you know what I mean? And the castle could definitely house more minifigs, there's certainly room for them. You could even do some more fun scenes with the minifigs.

Great creation, in any case! Accessibility and playability are always a plus in my eyes.

[I Scream Clone]

Well done! You have undertaken a massive task in making this unique and thoroughly enjoyable Castle. The sheer playability rewards extra viewing and the height of it is astounding.

It certainly has a Lego feel to it as opposed to other large creations. Though I am not a fan of the large Burp and Wall pieces, I quickly moved past it to revel in the beauty beneath. The highlight for me is something so simple, but well done, the chicken on a spit, just brilliant

[Captain Blackmoor]

This is amazing! Never seen a castle this high.

The fact the whole castle is modular is awesome, it looks rather difficult to build something like this, avoiding less playability.

I also really like the interior details.

You've done a magnifiscient job on this!

[brickzone]

Thank you all for your comments!

Some more details - this MoC is 76 cm tall (or two and a half feet). One can open all sections at once, but I would be worried about leaving it in that situation for long. Indeed when I added the battlements, and opened the two sides at once, they fell off (but I re-enforced the middle section of cliff).

I do have a reasonably extensive Lego collection, but needless to say, this creation used up significant quantities of certain bricks. I have few old grey and black bricks remaining, indeed I ran out of black 1x2 bricks (hence the log bricks and cylinders used on the battlements). I didn't really use bley bricks - I used some of those recently for my small chapel, and hopefully I've enough left for my Agents base I'm working on. I also have no grey castle walls left, and indeed few bley ones (had to use bley panels at the end). You can see that the gatehouse tower uses the kings castle siege corners at the top, and even that islanders decorated corner at the base.

From the beginning I intended to use castle wall panels - I can understand some people being less keen on these, but it was the only way I could create such a large scale model. I also realised that it would be too monotonous if I joined them with grey, so I went for the traditional approach of using black 1x2 bricks (they are wooden floor supports or something). If I had just a bit more Lego to hand, I would probably have used headlamp bricks to create some short projections instead at some of the locations.

This was my first AFOL MoC when I started it. I've learnt more techniques as time went on, and indeed the castle varies greatly in the complexity of the build. I'm not a fan of studless surfaces used all over. If I did have more small tiles though, I would indeed use them for smooth cut-stone crenellations (here the black doubles up as very dark stone as well as serving as wood elsewhere). I would retain studs on the battlements themselves and the rock surfaces though, as I think studs provide a reasonable texture as well as their functionality. I avoided adding much colour to the exterior, as I would have had to greatly increase the amount of detail and building. With the wall panels used, I stuck mainly to black and grey for the building, and dark grey/bley to match the BURPs. The BURPs gave the support necessary as well as saving on bricks.

As for the lack of blueprints... that was the reason for occasional rebuilds of certain sections (especially the early ones) and breaks of even months as I was stymied at certain steps. Figuring out how to retain enough functional space, yet fit in a stairs, was tough. Allowing the main hall to overhang, although not too realistic, was a breakthrough, and nicely broke up the monotony of the keep as well. I enjoyed putting in those pillars and arches too - it's actually a tiny room, but I think I managed to provide a stylised look reminiscent of a larger hall.

Sandy - I can understand what you mean about the decoration - e.g. in the first floor where the guard is. It was pointed out to me that I should have put extra headlamp bricks etc. into the walls in places for such features. However, there was only so much I could easily do when I went back to do the interiors after building the structure, even with the opening walls. I didn't do each level's interiors as I went along, because I wasn't sure how permanent each level was until I'd built the next (sometimes I had to go back and rebuilt to ensure stairs worked or doors, or so on).

Norro - funny you should mention about the princess... you're kind of on the ball there :)

pellevin - thanks for the very accurate (in my opinion) summary of the build. I'm picking up more techniques (and becoming handier with my own "kludges") but I think my building style will remain kind of this way. I really like Lego's actual sets, especially recent ones (I think they are some of the most playable, as well as having so many cool bricks and even using new techniques and detail) and most of my collection is from collecting sets.

[Klaus-Dieter]

That's an absolutely amazing MOC, Brickzone!

I really it!

The architecture looks (apart from that it is perhaps a bit too tall ) great and the details and the interior are simply awesome!

The most I like the stairs, the treasure room and the magician's office - great!

Very well done!

Klaus-Dieter

[Loganwan]

Wow, just wow. This is a brilliant build. Just by looking at it, with the immense size and levels, that it would have had to go through a few revisions. Could you imagine being the opposing force and coming over the hill to stare at that monster looming on the horizon.

Thanks for the back stories too. They are always fun to read.