The_Cook Posted November 13, 2013 (edited) Created as part of my Troll Town project. What would the 6067 Guarded Inn look like in Troll form? To answer that question one obviously has to build it in Troll form but before we get that far we need to go back to the source material and look at the identifiable features of the Guarded Inn that make it obviously the Guarded Inn. For me these would be: Attached to a length of wall Red half timbering curving around the side The opening front with the door, chimney and sign Big black roof with turret ontop Arches inside supporting the roof Annoyingly Peeron is serving pages but the images aren't coming through so I can't look at the instructions. Thankfully Eurobricks LDD thread has furnished me with a version of 6067 that I can inspect (because I'm too lazy to go upstairs and pick up a real ABS copy and also to sort through my paper instructions to find them!). From this I can determine some of the practical considerations such as dimensions: Floorplate from wall to wall is 8x19, comprised of a 6x16 plate and a 2x16 plate with a 2x8 at the half timbered end and a 1x8 providing the foundation for the wall. The wall length is 20, comprised of 4x 4444 panels. The Inn attaches at studs 4 to 11 inclusivs. The interior arches and fixed on top of the 5th brick in the walls. 2 from the half timbered side, 1 from the wall side. The wall passage is 6 studs wide, a single arch attached to the top of the 2nd brick supports the rear (open) side of the inn. Total brick count 250 including 4 minifigures, a horse and their accessories. So what would a Troll Guarded Inn look like? Aim to keep the same floorplate dimensions and hinging, possibly allow the wall itself to hinge. Ideally the half timbering would be Dark Red rather than Bright Red, but Dark Red is only available in a limited number of bricks and the 3x3 facets aren't one of them unfortunately. 2x3 Wedges might be a suitable substitution, how to get some form of half timbering onto them? The black roof should follow the design pattern that I used on the Troll King's Hall, where the roof has holes in it. Enough theorising, time to break out the bricks, or in my case their digital equivalent. It starts by laying out the general areangement of the structure. A BURP forms the wall, and an 8x16 plate for the interior of the Inn. Whilst I'm building the wall I add hinges halfway and properly spaced 1x2 technic bricks ready to form the connections to the rest of Troll Town's walls. The hinge for the front wall goes in and I mark out the outline of the doorway with a couple of 1x1's and some inverted slopes for the top. The front wall contains the half timbered section. I play around with dark red pieces, starting out with a flat wall, then an arched window. The arch has to be Brick, Arch 1x4 since that's the only arch available in Dark Red which leads to placing a arched window frame and associated barred window into the space. Except that nice curved windows aren't Troll! Back to the design DNA of Troll architecture, I realise that the slope of the chimney can be the starting point for a Troll window. I add the inverted arches and the corresponding side. Using a troll window allows me to make the doorway one brick wider, which will be beneficial because I want the door to be a rickety Troll style door and that needs a certain amount of space. The disadvantage is that I've lost one of the expanses of red half timberwork which is one of the key design details in the orginal Guarded Inn. I tackle the door next, I start with the top-clip, build the door and then work out where the bottom clip should go. It's a fairly standard Troll door which keeps people out but lets the wind in. Troll hygiene probably means that they need airy spaces anyway! Moving on around I try some dark red wedges to represent the half timbered end of the building. They don't work. The wedge shape is just fundamentally the wrong shape in this context and doesn't easily marry with the bricks that for the edge of the front wall. I abandon the attempt at the end wall and instead move around to the interior wall with hope of getting the roof on. A 1x4x5 panel with window is used to form the bulk of the interior wall replacing the 4444 panel that was originally used with the modern part. The issue now is getting the structure in place to support the roof and the area over the wall passage. In Troll land this is harder because the arches are brick built from multiple inverse slopes rather than being a single mould element with inherent structural integrity. The trick I use is to place a couple of arches in Light Purple to act as markers for where my brick built arches should go. Light Purple stands out from the standard Troll colour palette and is a reminder to me that I've left scaffold or marker bricks in place. The arches are duly built from inverse bricks, I opt to let the roof support arches sit a brick lower that they should otherwise there isn't the pleasing arc from inverse 45slopes to the shallower inverse 33slopes. A line of 45 slopes on top helps lock the whole structure into place and will act as supports for the roof. The aim with the roof was to have the same style as the Troll King's Hall. This means flat plates with the use of wedge plates to form gaps in the roof which are in-turn covered with dark green foliage of some form. A plate roof means some form of hinge is required to angle the plates, therefore I start with these. Building up from there a mix of 2x8 plates, 1x8 plates and wedge pieces is used to form the plane of the roof with everything being sandwiched between some 1x6 plates and tiles running perpendicular. After attachment there's a bit of fiddling to be down with tiles and slopes until the right mix of bricks forms the correct stops to allow the two halves of the roof the come together neatly in the middle. Except there's no hole in the middle for the roof turret to come through, so a quick shuffle around and a hole is formed. This pushes the SeaGrass pieces a bit too far down the slope so I swap the tiles for plates and mount Dark Green 5x6 limb pieces across the gaps. Because of the angles the gap ísn't a precise number of studs wide so it makes sense to use tall slopes to pass through the gap then spread out again afterwards. In Troll architecture this form of construction takes it's inspiration from the Siege Engine in 7037 Tower Raid and slopes are duly added in Dark Brown. Which just leaves that end wall and it's half timbering to finish up. If wedges don't work; could I do something squarer? I lay a 3x3 facet piece down as a foundation and then start building up a line of dark red 1x1's in the middle and dark grey on the outer edges. It's certainly working better than the wedges were. There needs to be a window so a Troll window is added and the wall starts to take shape. Some more 3x3 facet pieces across the top lock everything into place and conveniently form a platform for hinge bricks for the roof. The facets by happy coincidence are light bluish grey so they form a foundation layer of light bluish grey all the way around the two built sides of the Inn at ground level which is visually quite pleasing. A bit of tidying up here and there, crenelations and an interior table and it's done. 263 bricks without Minifigs so slightly more than the source set but this was expected due the arches being brick built and the 2345 and 4444 panels being replaced by bricks as well. It'll probably top out around 290 by the time the Minifigs and utensils have been added. All-in-all a good mornings work. I think the design is instantly recognisable and contains the majority of the traits that make 6067 Guarded Inn what it is, whilst translating that to 7097 Troll style architecture. There is a brief hiatus whilst waiting for a second tranche of parts in build up the Guarded Inn, Graving Dock and Dragon Platform. It's not too much of a problem as I still have the first tranche of buildings to build up. ABS having arrived it's time to start building and one evening I pick the required parts from my stocks ready to build up the following morning. The Guarded Inn goes together quite quickly, the principal delays due to me picking parts in the wrong colour and therefore having to traipse upstairs to get the right part in the right colour. Some colour substitutions occur, namely the 1x3 inverse slopes not being available in Dark Brown so Reddish-Brown gets substituted. A couple of minor changes to the top involve some 1x4 plates to lock the top structure together. All-in-all I'm very happy with how it looks and how it's gone together. Annoyingly I'd received and seen a Lady Liberty head that I'd ordered just the other day and had put it to one side to keep it safe and now I can't find it... therefore I can't build up a Troll Lady Inn Keeper Minifigure in order to take the photo's. Which leaves me in a bit of a quandry how to progress. I can't take photos until the head is found and the Minifig can be assembled. I think for fans of a certain age it is instantly recognisable in form as the Guarded Inn yet it most definitely now part of the Troll empire. As always, LDD files can be found on my MOCPages mirror of this post. Edited July 13, 2020 by The_Cook Re-upload images Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SirBlake Posted November 14, 2013 Great work as usual! Love the classic mash up. Makes me wonder what else is a good candidate for trollicizing. Maybe Troll blacksmith or Troll Mountain Fortress Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Hinckley Posted November 14, 2013 This is really fun. Thanks for sharing. I love the trolls and I love the Guarded Inn. Are you about to start another 1592 revolution? I'll go start on a Fabuland version right away. Really nice work. Thanks for sharing your process too. It's a very in-depth way to share a creation and I appreciate that you're willing to show us the whole process and inspire other people to build cool stuff too. Nice work! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Lordofdragonss Posted November 14, 2013 Looks great, but I would focus on 2-4 colors max. I know ths race is quite messy, but looking at your MOC it was hard too se what is where :) Can't wait to see more of this project as I love Lego trolls/orc/trorcs :) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
The_Cook Posted November 14, 2013 (edited) Great work as usual! Love the classic mash up. Makes me wonder what else is a good candidate for trollicizing. Maybe Troll blacksmith or Troll Mountain Fortress I'm one step ahead, Blacksmith can be found here, the other Trollicisation that I've done would be a Troll version of 2504 Spinjitzu Dojo. Trolls' already have a Mountain Fortress but I assume you're talking about a re-imagining of 6081 King's Mountain Fortress. Thanks for sharing your process too. It's a very in-depth way to share a creation and I appreciate that you're willing to show us the whole process and inspire other people to build cool stuff too. Nice work! I suppose my motivation for sharing the process is to show that care and thought have gone into the build even though it may seem very simplistic compared to some of the extravagant creations in these forums. In Real LifeTM I train and coach people and I've always found that it's the "why" things are done that's more useful than "what" is done, in this case the "what" is the bricks you see before you'll learn more from knowing the "why". In my opinion some of the best sets in recent years are the Master Builder sets because the booklets have all those tips tell you "why" things are being done it teaches those foundational construction skills. Edited November 14, 2013 by The_Cook Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
