[MOC] Medieval River Outpost

[Lodeman]

Medieval River Outpost

Hi everyone!

I've recently tumbled into my first adulthood Lego addiction. I ended up buying several of the classic castles off of Bricklink and had a ton of fun building them...and even playing with them (in a mature grown up way, of course).
After this initial outburst of fun, I wanted to try my hand at creating my own set that could fit within the classic theme.

I downloaded LDD and stud.io, and ended up creating a vibrant classic set which features some interesting play scenarios: presenting the Medieval River Outpost:
https://ideas.lego.com/projects/b310ffb4-a50f-4ae7-b375-894bc96c815b

Inspiration:

This medieval river outpost is inspired by fond memories of the various traditional Lego castle themes.
The goal was to create a simple yet elegant structure set within an interactive colorful environment.

Description:

This small medieval outpost was built to allow its defending faction to maintain control of the river crossing.
It provides enough room to garrison a small guard detachment, along with some supplies and a small armory.

The structure was built into the cliffside to provide an excellent overview of the surrounding terrain for its defenders.

Any hostile forces wishing to easily cross the river will have to risk a dangerous passage across the bridge.
However, a clever foe may decide to take advantage of the surrounding scenery to gain an advantage by chopping down the tree next to the river.

Play features:

The set provides an interesting colorful scene that allows for various play scenarios.

Bandits may create a diversion by sending out their tamed wolf to draw away attention from the bridge. This could provide a window of opportunity for any raiding forces to swim across the river unnoticed. Once across, they can sneak around to the back of the outpost or scale the cliffs.

Alternatively they could hide near the forest until night-fall and decide to chop down the tree next to the river. The tree features a simple hinge-mechanism allowing it to be felled, thus providing an alternate way to cross the river. An acrobatic bandit could then decide to climb along the fallen tree, and jump right onto the cliff...surprising any unattentive guards.

The river outpost could also be combined with existing castle sets to provide many more scenarios. For example one can imagine a hostile faction marching towards the defender's main castle. But they would first need to find a way to get past the river outpost which guards the defending faction's border.

Notes:

• Ideally, the river in this set would be printed onto a custom baseplate. For illustration purposes it was built with blue and tan plates.
• The set is presented with the traditional Black Falcons and Wolfpack factions. This is merely to illustrate the concept and play features, factions could of course be replaced with any other existing or new factions. Having said that, the Black Falcons are still my favorite faction :-)
• Brick count is around 320. By making use of the larger cliff and castle wall molds, the idea would be to produce this set for a target budget of about 50$, making it accessible for a large audience.

 

Thank you very much for checking out my project.
Feel free to support and share this project if you like it. Any feedback and comments are of course also very welcome!

 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Lodeman

[pantelis]

thats lovely...my favorite black falcons minifigs...true torso , legs and head that you cant see in the new minifigs of lego..

[Aine]

First - criticism:
You could reconsider the defensive value of walls northeast from the bridge: the BURPS and/or LURPS form a ready made siege ramp up to the castle. You could either lower the rock structure, or, more cleverly and elegantly, you could bar it from the bridge with a small palisade, made of either antenae, round bricks, or maybe even, if you're courageous enough, and want to give the customer some extra pieces: from few spears. This way you'd bring more colours (well, more brown) into the castle, and make it's defense better. And it would also make more sense to chop the tree, as the tree would fall behind the palisade right next to the rock-ramp-stairs.

The bridge could be wider. Right now it can't be used by a wagon, and even the horse would have troubles. It may be on purpose - a small tower that's easily defendable due to difficult access -, but it would complicate supply of the tower (unless the guys carry everything in their arms), and every general/duke that would want to pay a visit to the structure, would need to approach it by foot, and that is unlikely, unless it's a mountain-top outpost. It's a pity that there's too little space on this baseplate, as the tower and bridge are bit too cramped. But I wouldn't use bigger one: budget, box size, elegance...

Second - praise:
Clean, elegant build, nice minifigures, enough useful bricks, XURPs for those who need them (and to cut the budget), clever idea with tree, buildable, fast fun. It has nice 80's (or early 90's) feeling, and there are some details and parts that would make it fun to play with and a good purchase on top of it.

I like it!

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

So sweet ...the bridge on the river looks beautiful!

Very nice scene!

[zoth33]

Nice little scene.  You should try it with real lego.  I think the tower should be taller and agree the bridge needs to be bigger.  But i love the overall idea of this piece and the tree feature is cool.  

[Lodeman]

1 hour ago, Aine said:

you could bar it from the bridge with a small palisade, made of either antenae, round bricks, or maybe even, if you're courageous enough, and want to give the customer some extra pieces: from few spears. This way you'd bring more colours (well, more brown) into the castle, and make it's defense better. And it would also make more sense to chop the tree, as the tree would fall behind the palisade right next to the rock-ramp-stairs.

The bridge could be wider. Right now it can't be used by a wagon, and even the horse would have troubles. It may be on purpose - a small tower that's easily defendable due to difficult access -, but it would complicate supply of the tower (unless the guys carry everything in their arms), and every general/duke that would want to pay a visit to the structure, would need to approach it by foot, and that is unlikely, unless it's a mountain-top outpost. It's a pity that there's too little space on this baseplate, as the tower and bridge are bit too cramped. But I wouldn't use bigger one: budget, box size, elegance...

Thank you for the excellent suggestion of the pallisade! That is something I could still easily add, and as you say it would make for a more logical scene and add some color variation.

Unfortunately I was indeed limited in space to add a larger bridge. Perhaps I could tinker with the river layout a bit more..

[LM71Blackbird]

A cool looking build in the classic castle style! I like it! 

[Aine]

On 7/24/2018 at 12:05 AM, Lodeman said:

Thank you for the excellent suggestion of the pallisade! That is something I could still easily add, and as you say it would make for a more logical scene and add some color variation.

Unfortunately I was indeed limited in space to add a larger bridge. Perhaps I could tinker with the river layout a bit more..

I'd be interested in the palisade/bar addition. Otoh I doubt that there's enough space for the river to be moved, as it may not look good if it gets too close to the plate edge.

Maybe you could move the whole thing right next to the rear edge of the plate, and make the rear side of the building and rock non-visible. This way you'd get a bit more space in front, and as long as the castle isn't folding, it doesn't hurt that much that the posterior part has limited playability.

Also, is the rock hollow? Some kind of natural dungeon? That'll be cool.

 

EDIT: Oh, now I see it, there's only one row of studs left in the rear, this won't work.
Imho this is the best you can design. You've self-imposed kinda harsh limit with the small base, and you've used the limited space the best that you've could. I guess that this is clearly the best option.

Edited July 25, 2018 by Aine