Grover

I'd be happy to grade builds. I never did before since I'm in Avalonia, but I'm happy to!

I wanted to do it but kind of forgot about it being so focused on the HSS. I'll write myself up something for all my builds.

Welcome back! Great build to come back on too! I like the juxtaposition between the Avalonian and Nocturian settings. It helps draw attention to the differences. The landscaping, with the twisting black tree trunks, mushrooms, and lime green swamp water is great. I like the Tudor-inspired Avalonian architecture, with stone base and overhanding plaster and timber above. The recessed plastered areas look good, and you did a nice job incorporating the window, especially with working shutters! I like the color choices and texture, too, since anything would likely not be pristine in the swamp for long. I think @The Stad has some good suggestions about moss or other vegetation on the grey rocks since swamps tend to be overgrown. I would like to see a little overhang on the eaves of the roof to keep the water off the sides of the house. You have some really nice window frames and brick built doors. I especially like how you put the SNOT cheese slopes on the supporting timbers holding up the second floor, and the one plate high tile steps into the house. At first I wondered where the chimney was, then realized it was in a swamp so there was likely no need for a large heating system and any cooking fires that were needed could probably be vented out the window or a small stove hood if necessary. Looking forward to seeing more of your builds!

Are there any still pictures that those of us not in Sweden can see? I can't log in without paying to the link you sent.

I always thought there were a couple of words for castle, including Schloß and Burg. In any case, your point is well taken, since there is some immovability implied. And you're right, once you introduce flying adversaries, castle walls are useless, mobile or not. To your point about the knight, it seems that there is some inherent part of the genre that implies a special, or specially trained individual to serve as a hero or champion. I'm disappointed the Elves theme was canceled. It had some really great ideas, including the elements you describe, and some very nice builds, especially at good price points. The only part I didn't like was the minidolls, but I personally don't like the 'gendered' Lego themes, so that's a whole different argument. It seems to be a real missed chance for us in the historic area for getting some great minifigure torsos and legs. As it is we at least got some good hairpieces, but I am disappointed at the chance for more. Animals that fit into the regular minifigure mold would be nice, too. The cutsey dragons and such are OK, but would have been awesome if they matched, for instance, the white rabbit from the CMF line. I think the Elves line did a good job meshing magic and the more primitive world that they lived in. The NK line seemed to make technology magic, which I was not a fan of. I'm sure that in their canon they needed training to reach expertise on their laser guns, but there is still a different level of learning required. For instance, it requires a lot of training to be able to fire a rifle accurately at long range, but it still only requires minimal strength and training to be able to fire the gun with lethal force. Similarly, learning to drive a car well without running into things takes skill. Turning the key and putting the car in drive is quite easy. Riding a horse seems to be subjective. Some people have an instinct for it, others have a lot of difficulty and require training, and in any case, the horse requires quite a bit of training by a skilled individual to be ridden (if you've ever tried to break a new horse, it's quite an experience!). One might be able to make the case that a manual transmission vehicle requires significant training, so there is some grey area here, and I'm sure there are examples one could come up with in the medieval period that require significantly less skill than some operations today, but on the whole, I would argue that technology is meant to provide easier ways of doing things to the masses to expand our capabilities while requiring less skill for each operation. Funny, I don't incorporate many crossbows in my build for this reason. I also would still argue that use of a crossbow requires more physical strength than a firearm, even a medieval one. I agree, they are more a part of medieval Europe than most people think, but the genre, as you say, is kind of ruined by their inclusion. I think you're right in the inclusion of the later architectures, and think that TLG can include them in a 'castle' theme without having to include more modern technologies like firearms. Also amusing, I have never been interested in Warhammer, partly because of the inclusion of firearms. For whatever reason, mixing firearms with medieval genres really turns me off. I'm completely fine with firearms in western, cyberpunk, sci-fi or modern games, so it's not an aversion to the instrument.

That is an excellent point. I had not considered that, but I would probably isolate the geography to continental Europe and the British Isles. China, Japan, the Vikings, the middle east, etc., even if contemporaneous, probably deserve their own treatment based on large cultural differences. You are correct in that the Ninja was consolidated with Castle in the late 1990s, although I never fully understood that since I thought that each theme deserved its own separate attention. Another great question, and a much harder one. I think that you are correct in asserting that at some point you have to rely on gut instinct to decide what is 'castle-y'. Some video games, such as Skyrim, certainly have these magical robots that push the boundaries in an almost steampunk way. I tend to think that gnomes and dwarves will push the limit of magical contraptions more based on the fantasy genre, but even these should not be ubiquitous, such as trapping lightning elementals in wires to make electricity and such. I'd be more in favor of small, almost humorous uses of magic, such as magical lights instead of candles and torches, perhaps turned on and off with hand claps, or magical methods of communication to further a plot. Magic does bend the rules of reality by its very definition, so it must be used carefully if not sparingly in order to maintain a suspension of disbelief through a self-consistent set of rules for the fantasy universe. How that relates to Lego is an interesting question, but I think that the level of magic that they have had in the past with wizards, orcs, dragons, etc. has been pretty good. Personally, I find that the end of the medieval is marked by weapons that do not require great skill and training to wield. Early firearms were more difficult to maintain and had lower rates of fire than longbows, but had an advantage in labor since anyone could be trained to use one in a short time, whereas the loss of an archer represented years of invested training. Even magic usually requires great study in most fiction, so I would be OK with it. Thus, things like the fully automatic crossbow used in the Van Helsing movie are simply modern adaptations of a machine gun, whereas a wizard throwing a ball of fire wiping out 20 troops is reasonable given the amount of training he/she had to go through to achieve mastery. That's all probably too detailed for the Lego universe, but I don't think it hurts to have some backstory to a theme in order to maintain consistency throughout. As an amusing aside, I will date myself, but I think of the yellow borders as City themed, since all the yellow "Legoland" city boxes were yellow with blue or white lettering!

Thanks! The stairs are all on studs, with the exception of the rail posts second from the bottom where they flair out. Those are on 1x2 jumpers. The dark red carpeting is a half plate higher than the stairs, although it may be hard to see in the picture. I set the four studs wide holding the dark red carpeting tiles onto headlight bricks attached perpendicularly to another headlight brick to get the half plate height difference. I think if you want to build something like this you can unless you want to put a lot of space under your stairs. This is blocked off in the back and looks like a normal marble staircase. The split sides that go up left and right are flying, so there's plenty of room beneath and they don't look bad. You can see them a little better in another WIP shot here. I was inspired by this staircase which uses a paper or fabric carpet. I had to play with the bricks to get the half plate offset, but it was fun. Good luck with yours! I'm interested to see what you come up with!

I had the same problem and was upset until I realized that Pick a Brick counted toward the limit for the GWP. I went over there and busted $150 with two elements I needed in bulk for my MOCs.

I would consider a real 'Castle' theme any historic or fantasy based medieval theme. That means no firearms or later technology. Magical substitutes for technology and anachronistic jokes that are not part of the main theme would be acceptable, in my opinion. In my mind, firearms are the dividing line the separates technology that is too 'futuristic' to define a Castle theme. I was happy with all of the previous Castle themes to a greater or lesser degree. Some had more gaudy colors that I was not in love with, but they did have parts that were usable. Nexo Knights was not a Castle theme to my way of thinking: it was a science fiction theme that was inspired both by classic space and some castle elements, but that made it effectively neither. It had a few parts here and there (most notably a new visor and new pentagonal tiles) that were useful, but overall, the theme was uninteresting to me and I never bought any of the sets. The castle parts were largely colors I would never use in any of my medieval builds, fantasy or not, and the futuristic technological aspects were unappealing to me. I don't know, kids may have liked it, but I had no use for the sets and refused to buy them even when I found some on 75% clearance. There were simply not enough parts that I could use in my MOCs to warrant a purchase. I think I got a free Lavaria that I used as a demon, but that's about it. As for fantasy or no fantasy elements, I am happy either way. Wizards, dragons, orcs, etc. are great, but I'm just as happy to have historic medieval sets like coopers, mills, stonemasons, blacksmiths, etc. I would be happy with the return of an unlicensed medieval theme, fantasy or not.

You can aim for a wide staircase, with or without curves or splits. Here's a picture from one of my last builds when it was a WIP with a wide central staircase. I think it's kind of nice to round out the edges with the new quarter circle tiles.

@LordDan, welcome back! Looking forward to seeing more builds!

Welcome! And, as Kai said, yes, you can have lots of side characters. My main character is Avalonian, but has an important side character from Varlyrio. I look forward to seeing your stories!

@adde51 it's great to see Mophet all together! I love seeing all the buildings crowded in one place, forming alleys, markets, etc. Very nice collab for you and @Zilmrud!

S @ H was so totally sold out of everything that I couldn't find anything that I wanted to get to the $150 to get the free winter set. Until I realized that PAB can get you to that limit. lol Maybe some day BNP will count toward this too. We can only hope! Also, anyone else looking forward to the 2021 sets? They have the decorated 1x4 fence coming out in reddish brown in 2021 (76384)!

The 2339 arch wasn't produced in brown (or later reddish brown) until around 1993, so black was a stand-in for brown at the time. Brown and green were very rare colors back then. I would love to see a lot of the old sets from the 1980s, like the Forestmen's Hideout redone in brown rather than black. That being said, @pantelis has done a great job here with a modern interpretation of the old set. I loved the old sets as a kid, but looking at them now, their color palette was limited compared to the great range of colors we have now, and you have done well bringing new life to the set.

You're welcome! I think you're right to try and keep the build the way it is. I like the look as it fits into the diorama, and think the level of detail is good. I am usually disappointed by the Ideas sets that win, since they lose a lot of good detail in my opinion, but if your main purpose is to make a successful Ideas set, it's probably the way to go. However, if you are making a diorama and throwing the build onto Ideas for exposure, then I think you've hit the mark perfectly. Thanks again for sharing, and keep up the great work!

Yeah, usually the zero dollar items get canceled. I avoid buying them if I can. I try to keep track of the parts I need and if I think I've already ordered them, I wind up not having them even though they got canceled. The good news is that $0 items usually show in inventory eventually. The ones that don't even show as $0 usually never appear.

Not sure what happened with the stock, since I ordered by phone because of my coupon. Be careful ordering items with zero price. They can get canceled, but if they don't, you're on the hook to buy them, whatever price they set. If you only order 1-2, it's OK, but if you order 20-50, you can get stuck with a big bill. The purple ice cream balls were something like $0.43 each when they first came out, so make sure to check your prices. Once they pick the parts, they're non-returnable, and they bill you when it ships, so you can't stop the order once it's in the warehouse.

You certainly earned it! I appreciate you sharing your technique, too. I also bought a bunch of those wheels off B&P, so hopefully we can make some cool roofs out of them!

I'm looking forward to the violin and new jaguar shield from CMF 21. The new Ecto-1 has an interesting steering wheel that's fully circular. Assuming it's the normal thickness, it may be a way to make new round roofs sans flex tubing. @MKJoshA did an awesome job on Farmer Gyles' Mill (the roof technique is shown in a later post in the thread), and I hope that the steering wheel can be used in place of the flex tubing as a perfectly circular clipping point. Could also be used similarly for round trees and towers.

This. I've had several sets I've wanted since August that have never come back in stock. The most annoying thing to me is to receive advertisements in my e-mail promoting one of the sets that they haven't had in stock in months. Don't advertise something you can't sell!

That was always one of my favorite train stations, and it's fantastic to see it here in tan with more detail. Great work, and thanks for sharing!

The green star means your creation is on the front page when people go directly to eurobricks! Congrats!

Very nice work! I love the size of the layout and how you put things together. You also have a nice YouTube channel with a lot of informative and straightforward videos. I like that they are concise and to the point, and you don't ramble for 30 minutes about how to build a round tower or something like a lot of people seem to do. You do a good job balancing size and detail. We'd all love to have the most detailed build possible, of course, but with a display that size, building every building with all plates or something would require an insane amount of bricks. I like how you have different levels to your landscaping as well. It helps break up the scene. Great job!

Very nice build. I like the details, especially the interior. I think it fits quite well with the build you have going on, and has a lot of detail. Based on what we're seeing get through Ideas, though, if you want this to make it to a set, I'd reduce the detail on the outside, particularly in the stone wall. Greater numbers of pieces don't seem to translate well into sets unless they have a large volume (see the treehouse). If you save some pieces there and really sell it on the minis, the interior and that first picture (that is fantastic by the way), I think you'd have a better shot. Then I'm not sure the building would fit in your display as well, though, so it may not be worth it. Thank you for sharing, and I look forward to more buildings for your display!