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Growing up in the 90s, the Black Knight's Castle (6086) from '92 has always been the quintessential LEGO castle to me. With its big 3D baseplate it was a really massive presence and it had everything that to this day still defines a stereotypical castle for me, a big gate with a working drawbridge and portcullis, well-defended towers and walls, a cozy house with beautiful yellow tudor framework and red roof and a neat little back entrance, together with the cool glow-in-the-dark ghost and a dungeon inside the base accessed via a trapdoor. One of my biggest and most favourite sets as a child, I built this a lot over the years. Jump forward almost 30 years and even before the huge 400€ nostalgia castle there's another cool castle within the Creator 3-in-1 series. And while that's of course only a 3-in-1 playset, it works really well as exactly that and still looks really nice for what it is. So I asked myself, what would the almost 3 decades older legend of LEGO castles look like in the style of this new 3-in-1 castle? Well, wonder no longer, because that's how it might actually look like: Now keep in mind this is a deliberate attempt at porting the style of the 3-in-1 castle over to the architecture of the old castle, so it isn't going to sport the most elaborate building techniques. However, I still took the liberties of refining the 3-in-1 style a bit more for a more rounded composition as well as nicer battlements and roofs. But while I tried to use as many parts as possible from the 3-in-1 set, I explicitly decided against a pure alternative build, as that would have limited the part selection too much and when in doubt, it was usually aesthetics over part reuse. You'll note it also uses the old 3D baseplate, which I think is an integral part of the Black Knight's Castle's design and appeal. Other than that, it wasn't too difficult porting the sets over, as both quite rigorously use a 6-high storey design. But of course I didn't want to just capture the old castle's architectural features but also its play features, and combine them with the new castle's. Most of the interior and furniture is directly taken from the 3-in-1 castle, so we have the blacksmith with his workshop, the throne and fireplace, the food stall, as well as the dungeon complete with removeable wall. Only for the watermill and its mechanism there wasn't any room anymore. From the old castle we got the floor dungeon with trapdoor as well as the back entrance to the house and of course the good old ghost is there too, together with the skeleton from the new set. The gate uses the string-based drawbdrige from the old set, but with the automatic locking mechanism from the new set. It also ports this mechanism over to the portcullis, which in the old set was manually operated (the only reason I use a newer part here is aesthetics, the old big portcullis piece would fit just as well). Using string, while maybe not as beautiful or modern, has the advantage that the unlocking and falling mechanism of the drawbridge works a lot more smoothly than in the Creator set. Of course the whole thing also comes with building instructions on Rebrickable. The Creator 3-in-1 castle is a good starting point, covering about half of the 1800 pieces. From the others only the 3D baseplate (if you don't own the original castle) and the 2x5 bricks with the portcullis rail might be a bit problematic, since they're a bit rare in dark bluish grey. The figures are of course only a "serving suggestion", but using the ones from the Creator set makes sense (and the MOC uses the same Black Falcon theming of that and other recent castle revivals).
