Grover

Outstanding work! The story is illustrated perfectly by the pictures, and, of course, I will never fault anyone for long stories! All of the builds are very nice, with some great ground work, particularly in the rocks, and the house scene is very well done. My favorite has to be the first build, however, with the lightning and the superb rockwork. The angle of the shot and the cliffside are incredible. Really outstanding work! Keep it up!

Yup, brown one with white muzzle too. At least they were when I ordered them before Christmas. Just got the order.

From my last order. Sorry the picture is a little crappy. As you can tell, I mostly build medieval MOCs.

Thank you! I am excited, and now must have some more ideas for bear cavalry...

Thanks to all of you, @Louis of Nutwood @kahir88 @Aurore and @Exetrius! This is quite the surprise for me! There were so many amazing entries, I am honored to be awarded in this challenge. Kudos to all! As for the minidolls, @Henjin_Quilones, I daresay I don't like them either, but as you say, at least they are now evil. They also may be extinct after the bears got done eating them.

Great work! I especially love the tree made from the new three leaf pieces. It looks parts intensive, but very good, since it mixes up the planes the leaves are on. The SNOT tree bark looks great, too. The wagon by the mill is a nice touch, and you did a good job incorporating the new technique for the walls. The stream looks good, too, and I know you did it because it's on a base, but it looks kind of funny to have a two-direction waterfall off the edge of the base! Great job, and I look forward to your next build!

Thanks! I had a lot of fun building it, even if it was all a lot of work! Thank you! I don't know that this particular storyline will go anywhere (as Challenge IV has not been decided), but I will definitely keep up with the other storylines I have going with Lady Gwenllian and others. I had some fun with the Knight's Kingdom shield, as I found one and decided I'd try to use it as a decoration. I have since bought several more on Bricklink and will try to incorporate them in the future builds.

Thank you! I am hoping to continue to reveal more of Lady Gwenllian's history through stories as the builds progress. I'm glad you liked the pig pen, too! It was kind of fun to make with the two different colored pigs. I'm hoping to acquire more dark brown, as I like the color, and after seeing your builds, think it will go well with a lot of the GOH work.

Glad you're getting some mileage out of it! The build looks spectacular so far!

Glad to see you posting again! I'm glad that you posted despite not feeling it was up to an arbitrary 'standard'. I think this forum can be intimidating to newcomers since we have a lot of really talented builders on here, but I have found that the GoH are very welcoming and supportive, so the best way to learn is to put oneself out there. As for the build itself, first, what I like and think is working well: The interior is well done. One thing that you have done that is many times ignored is the realistic spacing of the interior furniture, etc. There is actually room to walk around, and room for wares. TLG in many of their official builds leave 2 studs for walkways sometimes, which I think looks cramped. You also used a band of reddish brown around the top of the wall, visually separating the roof from the lower walls, which I think helps to break up the architecture. Although I'm not entirely sure it works, I like your use of the cheese wedges for the roof, since it's always good to experiment. One of the great questions to ask with any experimental builds is if they are functional in real life. For instance, the cheese wedges you have look interesting, but realistically, they would likely pool water on the roof in the valleys, something most people try to avoid on roofs, so there may be other ways to make this look more natural to the eye. I think I see where you were going with the colors and textures on the walls, but I will probably echo what @mrcp6d said in that those bricks can be tough to use in those varieties and colors. In particular, if you're going for a mossy wall, it's easier to blend in with plates, rather than bricks, since the look less blocky. Also, keeping such color usage to 1-2 colors, or in the same color family, can help. Right now the wall looks a little busy with color, and I think that distracts from the overall nice little shop build that you have going on. One other tip: if you use those large round top doors with the clips on the side, it makes them look cleaner to put the clips on the inside. I preferred the old style door with the small clips that allowed for easier use of the door on the interior and exterior. Overall, it's a good effort and a nice, cozy little build. I look forward to seeing the progression of your work!

Excellent build! The dark color palette (dark brown, dark bley, dark red) looks great, and is a great juxtaposition with the white snow. From a distance, the technique you have used for the snow on the roof is amazing: it looks very realistic with some snowfall/melt. The snow on the peaks of the rocks is fantastic as well, and I love how you incorporated the waterfall into the build at a steep angle. I also like how the build is multi-level and sits naturally, drawing the eye upward in a somewhat spiral fashion. Great job!

I have never seen evidence of this. If you have a study, please share it. It is like saying that Nexo Knights wasn't that popular because it's a fusion of space and castle. Or because it imitated Masters of the Universe. Or because there were too many trans-orange pieces. I have never seen data on any of these, and I think all of it is speculation. Nexo lasted longer than I wanted, which would seem to indicate that it did all right, but again, I have not seen any marketing studies of this. Anecdotally, the children I've been around love the medieval settings best, beating out even Star Wars for toys they wanted. Not market research, but at least I have seen kids want Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and yes, even generic Castle Lego themes (from a used Lego store). If I were to speculate, and in fact that is all this is, I suspect that the reason that we haven't seen a generic Lego Castle theme is due to the LotR and HP series recently. I suspect they do not want to dilute sales from these lines. I would wager that is also the reason we have not seen classic space lines (dilution of SW sales), although I have not seen any research into that. As an adult, I love the Castle line and wish it came back. I am always surprised at the number of profiles on EB here that list Castle as their favorite genre. Check it out sometime.

OK, I'll admit: I look through pictures before I read the whole story. I looked at this and thought to myself: "I see all the elves, so this is supposed to be an elven fortress, but it looks like a fusion of elven and dwarven architecture." Then I read the story and it is! Great job! Love the trees and flowers, and how they naturally integrate to the walls, particularly adding some texture to the flowering vines to keep them from being flat. The detail of the shrine looks great as well. I really like the mixture of the two architectures. I would have thought that would be difficult to blend, but it's seamless! Outstanding!

The PR was backordered, so they're all slow due to the heavy demand from it being on sale. The B&P usually take weeks since they come from overseas and customs hold them up, particularly at Christmas when there's a lot of parcels. Additionally, DHL ships from Denmark to the US, and can drop off the parcel with the USPS if they do not service the area, so there can be another delay. All that said, B&P has been moving very fast recently, so hopefully our orders will be quick!

Love all these little builds and the latest is great! Didn't know they made the bucket handle in black... is that new? And... are you implying that Mitgardian husbands are ice holes? lol

@Louis of Nutwood, I like it! I think we can make a page on the Wiki for sure. As for points, I agree that it would be a fun way for some folks with smaller collections to be able to contribute to the guild. Of course, anything that is related to actual history in the guilds would have to be approved to make sure it fits with the current history, but natural elements and info should be pretty easy to fit in. Myths, heroes, etc. would likely be fairly straightforward as well, with perhaps a few more exceptions than the plants. Maybe 5% of the build points for these writeups?

I am slightly disappointed, but not surprised. I find it somewhat hypocritical that they encourage people to decorate those expensive wooden minifigures by painting them and then disallow selling of bricks modified in anyway (such as by painting). I would be fine with it if they said that you are not allowed to resell bricks with profane pictures, pornography, racial hatred, defamation to TLG, etc., but I am disappointed that they won't allow custom prints, which includes innocuous and fun decorations like "Happy Birthday Billy" etc. as well as non-offensive and interesting pieces, such as the chromed figures. I will be curious to see how they handle reselling of old licenses that they do not hold any longer, such as the old NBA theme. While retailers are allowed to sell old licensed merchandise, they are not bound by the same contractual obligations as the original seller. It could be that the original license allowed TLG to profit from their logo, with royalties, for a limited time span. Resale of these items, if TLG makes a cut as from Bricklink, could create legal headaches.

First, let me say this is a very nice build. There's a lot of great things going on here--the horses with the bedrolls and saddlebags look great, the minis are posed perfectly, the bridge looks great, and I enjoy the tree style. I think your use of the stalk pieces is well done--they appear in places that are not well trod and are also not so abundant as to make the scene look cluttered. I do have some questions, some of which are answered in the conversation above. My first thought was that this represented early fall and you were moving the story to warmer climes, thus the trees had red leaves and were just seeing an early snow, but then I didn't see any snow on the ground, so I was confused by the trans clear bricks. I thought that they represented ice from the initial viewing. The other confusing part of the scene to me was the use of the light tan. I'm not sure what kind of earth that represents, especially with the brown pathway for the torn up dirt. Given that the trans clear represents rain, it would seem to me that a darker color soil would be in order (I am familiar with rain making soil darker to the eye). The lily pads with their bright green made me think of new growth, as I have not seen lilly pads, particularly with bright green, in the winter before. I really like the lily pads, the dark green water, the small waterfall, the use of the trans clear (as far as it represents ice anyway), but I am a little confused by the inclusion of all of these elements in the same build. Overall, another quality build. I don't mean to criticize, as I applaud your willingness to experiment, and I think we all need to try new things and take some risks to move forward with our own building and the community in general. Great job!

The Mitgardian goddess of nature (folk hero, etc.) tames the bears, paving the way for Mitgardian bear cavalry... lol

Bear cavalry in training!

From a strange perspective, maybe this series will be good. Just looking at it, it doesn't seem like a great seller for many of the reasons everyone has listed above. I'm kind of hoping that's the case because if it doesn't sell well, that will hopefully tell TLG that they are priced too high and that the DC/Batman licensed themes are getting tired. With respect to this series, there are a couple of pieces in there that I want, and the leopard woman will be great for a costume party, but that's about it, and I'm not going to buy any of those at full price. I'll either bricklink the parts I need or get the figures when they're at least 50% off. I would agree that the unlicensed themes have more broad appeal. I don't mind occasional licensed themes, but they have become the norm rather than the exception. Add to that one of the more recent unlicensed themes was actually themed as a costume party, so it was somewhat contentious among AFOLs. I'd personally like to see only one licensed theme a year.

Glad you enjoyed! I think we gotta keep it light.

The queen approves.

Awesome! I love the pastries. Some from the HPWW CMF series I see. Very nice!

Make sure you have a coalescing filter on your air compressor, or you can get oil particles on your parts, especially if you crank it up to 90psi (620kPa for you metric folk) like I do.