The_Cook

Ooooh, yellow!

1097 pieces is a little high if you're truly trying to match the MMV style. I suggest you simplify your walls, I can't think of any TLG designed set that utilises 1x1 rounds in their wall; the 1x1's come from the Derfel Cardan and the ultra-detail school of MOC's which could never translate to a normal store set. Use a mix of brick-bricks, palisade bricks, grille bricks and 1x2's in differing shades to give your wall the texture without such a huge brick count. Check that you're not duplicating 1x1's bricks in a row when you could use a larger brick. It's very easy in LDD to just cut and paste without thinking. Could larger 1xX bricks be combined into a larger brick. Similar sort of process with the roof. Replace the lines of 1x1 cheese wedges on the top of the roof with long 1x12 plates. Yes, you'll have studs on top but it's structurally stronger and in keeping with the TLG design ethos as opposed to the ultra-detail no studs anywhere MOC ethos. For the houses structure alone (ignoring the minifigs) you need to be aiming for 650 bricks to be in line with MMV. Don't be disheartened by the above comments, I'm being overly critical. Designing sets in the TLG style is a lot harder than people think, it takes a lot of effort to get the desired effect with as few bricks as sensibly possible whilst using legitimate construction techniques. Good luck with any rework and the actual ABS build.

It's based on the premise that it's easier to place minifigs into a flat open castle from above than it is to squeeze hands through small openings in tall tower rooms. Personally I've always found it harder to place Minifigs into rooms than to place them on open battlements or into the central square of a 6080; your mileage may vary. Lego do lots of studies with kids to see how they play with potential sets, if tall castles were getting the kids excited then we'd see more.

The Night Lords castle is the closest that there is to a tall tower. You might also want to look at the Vampyre Castle from the recent Monster Fighters theme. As mentioned before by previous posters in relative terms it is a lot easier to play with a castle that opens up or has access from the top than it is to play with tiny little rooms stacked on top of each other. Ultimately the Castle line is a play theme so it needs to be playable, even the D2C castle sets (both pure castle and the LOTR) have always been playable rather than purely display items.

I would still suggest that another way would be for Marshall to resubmit the project to CuuSoo. The project would have to go back through the process from the start and gain 10,000 votes again but at that point it should be considered again based on the criteria in existence at the current point in time. The hope being that any restrictions the LR license imposed would have cleared by the time it reaches consideration again, although it may well fail for other reasons. The point is that because it's gone back through due process it would be valid to consider it on it's own merits at that point in time. It should be said that this approach would only make sense for projects that might have passed review but were not considered because of bad timing around licenses or IP; those sets that have been discontinued due to size, complexity or don't fit with Lego's brand image shouldn't resubmit because those criteria are unlikely to have changed over time.

Ardelon beat me to a response... We don't know for sure but the general assumption is that they couldn't do the Western Modular because it would have conflicted with the Lone Ranger theme. Given that Lone Ranger is a licensed theme there may well be contractual issues that stipulate TLG are not allowed to sell anything that could be considered as competing with the licensed theme. Now that the Lone Ranger theme has passed there's nothing to stop the Western Modular being re-submitted to Cuusoo and pursuing the 10,000 votes again. If it gets there TLG would be obliged to consider it again. If it's a good set idea it will get to 10,000 votes again, good ideas always will. There's still no guarantee it would pass, but the immediate obstacle, Lone Ranger, would have passed. The next issue is likely to be set size, they've been favouring smaller sets for their time-to-market and there's a broader appeal at the lower price points.

A series of additions for 7097 Trolls' Mountain Fortress Trolls' Landing Topic: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87693entry1718970 LDD file: http://www.mocpages.com/user_images/81350/1381918030m.lxf Troll King's Hall Topic: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87693entry1726197 LDD file: http://www.mocpages.com/user_images/81350/1382777808m.lxf Troll Forge Topic: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87693entry1728697 LDD file: http://www.mocpages.com/user_images/81350/1383064534m.lxf Troll Training Topic: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87693entry1730065 LDD file: http://www.mocpages.com/user_images/81350/1383300149m.lxf The Engine Docks Topic: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87693&st=25#entry1734410 LDD file: http://www.mocpages.com/user_images/81350/1383726899m.lxf Trolls' Guarded Inn Topic: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=88524entry1739580 LDD file: http://www.mocpages.com/user_images/81350/1384350596m.lxf Trolls' Market Topic: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87693&st=25#entry1757313 LDD file: http://www.mocpages.com/user_images/81350/1386328682m.lxf Dragon Platform Topic: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87693&st=25#entry1779048 LDD file: http://www.mocpages.com/user_images/81350/1391635486m.lxf The Graving Dock Topic: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=87693&st=25#entry1784641 LDD file: http://www.mocpages.com/user_images/81350/1389027700m.lxf

It's not so much that the current castle line is a "placeholder" but that it's target age range is different. It's squarely aimed at 5-7yr olds whereas LOTR is targetted at a slightly older age range. Seen from that perspective the build style and quality makes sense. Maybe. However, if the management at TLG determine that the Castle range sells mostly to 5yr olds then we'll get another set of simple builds because that's where their target market is. Being a private company we never get to see the sales figures and purchase demographics which would allow us to make some more reasoned guesses as to where they might take the line; if the civilian sets didn't sell well then it will be a long time before TLG tries that experiment again. On-topic: a return to the Falcon Heraldry would be nice, although my suspicion is that "Black Falcon's" in modern vernacular implies "the bad guy's" because they've got Black in the tile. Wheras for most of the AFOL's the factions were typecast therefore the Black Falcons could have been be either good, bad or neither. Reinvent them now as bad guys and there could be uproar from the AFOL community. Introduce them as neutral and the sets struggle to find the conflict that is needed to drive a storyline that creates play. Similar argument for neutral Forestmen; how do you generate the good/bad conflict that generates the simple storyline that starts play happening.

They may be repetitive to you but they're not repetitive to Lego's target audience. Ever year another bunch of 5 year old kids comes along for which the sets are new and exciting because they've just got into Lego. They don't care that it's almost the same design as the previous castle because for them this is their first castle ever. It's the same reason why Fire and Police is perennial in City, every year there's a new bunch of kids who would love to have a Police station and it's all new to them because they're new. There are a lot more new kids coming into Lego than there are AFOL's returning, therefore TLG chases the child audience. Sets shouldn't cannibalise the sales of other lines. At the moment if you want detailed fantasy/castle builds then the LOTR/Hobbit line is where you'll find them. The reason that the current castle line has been simplified is because Lego needs to cover the whole breadth of their market. They need a product to cover the 5-7yr old age range who weren't being catered to by the LOTR/Hobbit sets. I doubt we'll see a return to the level of detail of MMV and previous era's whilst the LOTR/Hobbit line continues.

If you were worried about interactions with the roof slopes you could always invert the window and have the SNOT facing on the bottom. The SNOT could easily be timber framing using a straight tile, some form of architectural detail if you used cheese slopes or even a window box with flowers if you decided to go for an entire brick. However in this particular instance it does indeed look like a tile wedged into the underside of the slope.

I'm slightly late to the party but the modular aspect and designing "sets" rather than "dios" happens to be my area; see my posts in the Historic forums. PM me if anyone is interested in teaming up.

I started work on designing the Troll's Graving Dock as an academic project rather than something that would be a standalone set. The issue is that for it to be a play set it would need to contain the majority of a ship and that would add half as much again to the brick cost. It is however a very tempting project and one that in then end I eventually decided that I would have to realise in ABS. What would a Troll dock or slipway look like? The idea in my mind is something like a Fjord, towering cliffs on either side hemming in a boat. Caves in the cliffs allow the Trolls access to build there ships. Great chains wound on giant drums haul the ship up the slipway and above it all towers a rickety crane to lift the masts into place. The starting point is Light Purple. Before accusations of insanity are leveled against my good self the light purple has a purpose it acts as a scaffolding to build the graving dock around whilst being blatantly obvious that it's not part of the actual structure. Since Troll architecture isn't known for it's Light Purple it's an easy task at the end to select by colour all the Light Purple bricks and then delete them en-masse leaving the actual model. Using Light Purple I mock up the outline of 7048 Troll Warship with a couple of hull pieces, the outrigger boats, the mast and the battering ram prow; this gives me the something to build the graving dock around. I know that I want the inner end of the graving dock to be curved. Pure curves are a pain to do and never line up exactly with studs therefore the curve is going to be just three segements. So that everything fits a round number of studs those curves will be 3-4-5 triangles, or a useful scaling such as 6-8-10, where 10 just happens to be the width of a BURP. Three BURPs form the length of the dock with another hinged segment at the end to bend the wall around into the main wall of my rapidly growing Troll Town. Each of the faces of the curved end gain an arched entrance, for the two angled segments this is a full height arch for access to the dock, for the very head of the dock it's a small cave big enough to pass a chain through. The dock needs more height than just a single layer of BURPs but I don't want to just double them up or stack LURPs ontop as that would be visually boring. I use LURPs as bookend but the gap in the middle is filled with other stuff. One side gains an arch and ladder to descend on the deck of the ship, the other side gains a small tower and some barred gratings. Capping all of this off is a run of 4 wide plates that the crane will traverse over. Inspiration for the crane came from the Troll siege engines. The wheels were my starting point at 3 studs wide they neatly fit onto the platforms that I'd prepared with a line of bricks down the outside to keep everything running straight. Using dark brown Slope 75 1x2x3 and plates I constructed a nice rickety truss between the wheels and started thinking about putting a crane on-top. Except that the truss will hit the mast if the crane tries to move. The aim now is to get the crane tall enough to pass cleanly over the mast. A couple of extra slopes later and the truss spans the gap at a height suitable for passing over the mast. Turning my attention to the head of the dock I try to work out how to reel in the chains. I try a couple of halfhearted experiments trying to build some form of capstan but it's too fiddly to get the workings into a small enough space. I start thinking about vertical wheels and a mix of 7041 Troll Battle Wheel and 4183 The Mill springs to mind. I can use a giant wheel to drive a small drum through some Technic gears. A framework of dark brown slopes supports the wheel and winding drum. For stability the entire lot is braced across into the wall of the dock which forms a nice platform from which the overseer can direct the work. The clearances on this are very tight, when it comes to building in ABS it might require a bit of fettling to run smoothly. Last thing is to dress the back of the dock walls. Detachable sections are designed for both sides, on side has a storage cave with more storage space ontop, the other side has a small smithy. More playability if only the crane could reach them but the original design just spanned the space between the wheels so the crane is pulled apart for the third time and rebuilt to allow a sliding winch the ability to pass from outside the dock on one side across the dock and out the other side. All with enough clearance to allow items to be hoisted up and over. At 1200 bricks including figure, but excluding a ship, it's a beast of a set and clocks in at 74studs long, 52 studs wide and 35 bricks high. Building this one in ABS is going to be as expensive the rest of the sets designed to date put together. Sourcing the BURPs will require another TLG Customer Services order and there are a fair amount of large Dark Grey plates that it might not be possible to source elsewhere. After that it's all fairly standard piece that I just need to obtain a fair stock of. The bill of materials list 143 unique elements, excluding minifigs and utensils, most of which are easily obtainable it's just that they're used in large quantities. Parting out existing sets like my copy of 4813 The Mill will go a long way to providing the parts for the wheel and topping up the stock of Dark Bluish Grey. Colour choices might be an issue a quick scan of Bricklink reveals that the inverse 1x1x3 slopes aren't available in Dark Brown and the 1x12 plates aren't available in Reddish Brown so some recolouring will be required. I've two other sets in the pipeline for Trolltown that will need parts purchasing so once the existing batch has been built I'll compile a fresh inventory of the bricks that are left and work out what I need to obtain. It's likely to be Christmas at this rate before it's all done. I bite the bullet and place about 8 BrickLink orders totaling just over 100ukp in order to build the 2nd tranche of Troll structures including the Graving Dock, Guarded Inn and Dragon Platform. A TLG CS order to get Dark Green 1x2's, Dark Bluish Grey BURPs and some other bits and bobs. Since there is a paucity of Dark Bluish Grey BURPs available on Bricklink I decied to substititue the Marbled Dark Bluish Grey/Dark Green BURPs for the plain BURPs, the marbled ones will form the interior of the Graving Dock. Another interminable wait for the TLG order to arrive. To be fair the orders always arrived within the 7-9 days that TLG say they will take and that's reasonable given that it's being despatched from Denmark; it's just that I'm impatient and want it now! The order duly arrives exactly when TLG said it would. A window of opportunity opens up one evening. 3hrs to build the Graving Dock? If all the parts are to hand it's possible and the design actually only calls for a handful of parts so they should be easy enough to find. I need to pull black 1x2x3 inverse slopes out of my stocks as well as black 1x1 headlamp bricks. The later should be fine, the former is likely to be more of an issue as I don't recall having much of a stock of these as they get used so regularly in castle builds. The Graving Dock requires 2 more than I've ordered in tranche 2 and there should be 4 spare from tranche 1 so it should work. For the headlight bricks the Guarded Inn used a couple so I'll have to see what stocks I actually have in my boxes of black bricks. Between the three boxes of sorted, unsorted and uncleaned I should be able to locate the handful that I need. The bigger question is how long it will take since I'm on such a short time window. If I can get home and get some of the picking done prior to cooking the evening meal then that means I'll be ready to start building during my 3hr window. I'm considering building this one up on a board of some form so that I can move it around easier. 70x50 studs, I'll have to work out what that is in real world units and find some form of suitable board. This does however pose an interesting question, How can this open ended - U shape be made more stable? Stable enough that it can be moved on it's own by lifting the two sides without it collapsing inwards. The key would be to either strengthen the base or provide a support across the top. The problem here being that the base needs to be thin to allow boats to be pulled up over it and the top needs to be open for masts to fit through. I wonder if there's a way that I could use Technic beams to provide structural support across the bottom and have rollers that boats travel across. It would significantly increase the brick count and add complexity to the build because the walls would need raising by a brick. Or perhaps there is a way of splitting the build so that it could be moved in separate sections? The obvious point would be somewhere towards the closing end so that it comes apart into the two sides and the end; the difficulty is that the closing end requires some for of tie across it's width to ensure that it retains it's shape. I'll go with it as designed but it's something to consider if it's too unwieldy. Started building up the Graving dock in ABS. The build was going together reasonably smoothly until I realised that I was short lots of the Black 1x2x3 inverse slopes, there were only 7 in stock as I hadn't actually placed the order for 17 with one of the Bricklink stores. I've placed orders with 3 stores for another 36 inverse slopes plus some other bits like flags this morning with the hope that some might reach me by the weekend. Substitutions to the colour scheme were replacing the standard Dark Bluish Grey BURPs for Dark Bluish Grey/Dark Green mottled BURPs in the interior of the dock to give it some colour variation; I think that this has worked out quite well and the fade from Dark Green at the bottom to Dark Bluish Grey at the top of the dock is quite pleasant and gives the impression of moss and grass growing down in the depths of the dock. The wall structures are very robust, it remains to be seen whether there is sufficient strength laterally from side to side to allow it to be picked up. One modification that I will make is to extend some of the plating at the head of the dock into the dock until it intersects with the lateral plating, thereby locking the head of the dock in place which at the moment is free to move around on it's three hinges. I didn't have time to attempt the exterior sections such as the forge and wheel-store nor time to attempt the gantry crane whose structural strength is still one of my biggest concerns. To improve the strength of the lateral plating it would be possible to extend the underwall plating into the dock and support the lateral plating using slopes. The disadvantage si that this is an extra element rather than reuse of the prevalent 4x10 plated; additionally it still doesn't solve the primary weak point which is the join in the middle and is the point where any bending forces are highest. All that can be done at the center join is to increase the amount of plating layered over the top. The head of the dock has the advantage that there is now plating coming down from the head wall that will support it but there's little that can be done for the opening of the dock that will actually provide a rigid support all the way across. For all that the wall forming the interior of the dock are a line of BURPs I'm quite pleased with how they don't appear too repetitive. The marbling, the green wedges and the fact that the upper layers aren't regular all helps to give the impression that the walls are more irregular than they really are. One other way of breaking up the wall would be to substitute some of the brown 1x1's for black 1x2 inverse slopes stick out into the dock, these won't impact on the ability to all boats in. A 2x2 corner plate, a 2x2 corner plate; my kingdom for a 2x2 corner plate. I managed to get another hour of build and having had another 12off 2x1x3 inverse slopes delivered in the morning was able to get the sides of the graving dock complete. However my progress on building the crane is stymied by the fact that I need a large number of 2x2 corner plates and a data entry error in my ordering spreadsheet caused me to only source 7 rather than the 22 that I need. I'd accidentally entered 71 instead of 7 on the column detailing how many that I'd ordered from a shop which triggered the spreadsheet to colour the piece as green and as soon as items are green I won't bother trying to order more from the next shop... Another Bricklink order was placed late last night but it will be next week before it arrives and I'm definitely out of the country next week. As a structure it's pretty solid, I'm quite able to pick it up with a hand on each side without it feeling unstable; a fact that's probably helped by the fact that the hinges providing the articulation at the head of the dock are well locked in and that there's typically three of them supporting each join. This means that the ability to twist the walls is limited and therefore the strain on the plating and the bottom joins are reduced. A little bit further and another missing element, 6x10 plates in Reddish-Brown, I need at least 1 for the platform that backs onto the forge. One more Bricklink order in the system. Another batch off 1x2x3 inverse slopes arrived and I complete the last of the plating on the hinged sections at the open end of the dock. I assemble the wheel. A couple of modifications are made. Firstly the winding-drum design allowed the chain to wedge between the drum and the wall. I'm happier with the redesign but the next issue is that the mechanism doesn't run in reverse. What I mean by this is if I pull the chain then the wheel doesn't spin; this is due to friction between the wheel and it's supports and the fact that the gearing is working against the pull of the chain. This is a potential issue because the first thing that someone is going to do after winding the chain up for the first time is to pull on it to unwind it; I know this because it's the first thing that I did! The problem is arising purely because of the friction between the wheel and the supports, by leaving clear air between the wheel and the supports I can pull the chain out easily. Although the crane isn't fully built yet I've been considering alternative builds that might provide more rigidity up the sides, primarily using Technic beams. The initial attempt was a bit clumsy but I feel there's a way to make it work. Annoyingly the beams don't come in reddish-brown or dark red so it'll have to be black or dark grey. Another option that I might explore is to use Technic, Plate 1 x 5 with Smooth Ends, 4 Studs and Center Axle Hole and plates since I'd be able to add banners or teeth to the plates and use an appropriate colour. BL prices are high and the CS site hasn't been update to show prices yet. The image below shows a test models in LDD that I used to follow the ideas through. In the end it proved impossible to get the Technic Plates to align properly and my chosen solution was the left-most one that utilises a Technic, Liftarm 1 x 15 Thick. Corner plates arrive and I am able to complete the structure of the gantry crane. To cut a long story short, it's fragile! The wheels especially are prone to falling off therefore I'm going to need to properly investigate and add some form of bracing in order to keep it strong. There are a couple of options available, I should do an architectural detail model to show them. I'll also need to check my stock of black bricks to see whether I have any spare Technic beams. The box girders are robust it's just the wheels below that aren't strongly connected. Redesigned the capstan wheel in LDD, just need to realise the changes in ABS. Primary issue is going to be whether I have 1x16 bricks in Dark Grey that the change requires. Everything else I know I have it's just a case of pulling it from stock. Real Life finally catches up with me and my build time becomes limited as I jet of to Warsaw for a couple of days work. On the flight east I spent 15 minutes building up an architectural study of the various crane engineering options before fatigue took over and I feel asleep infront of the laptop. What I realised whilst building the study was that the 15hole Technic beam will reach right to the underside of the horizontal truss. This allows the bottom plate of the horizontal truss to be locked into place and we've already established from handling the existing model that the truss itself is strong due to the number of 2x1x3 slopes forming vertical connections and the double layer of plates forming the top beam. The cross connections are also fairly strong between the two sides because on the lower sections the cross plates are locked between other bricks, connections which will be further strengthened by the Technic beam locking them into place. Annoyingly however my last BL order was for a set of 11 hole rather than 15 hole beams. Therefore it seems likely that I'll have to place yet another BL order before I finally get this part of the build under control. Colour choice? The Technic beams are available in black and dark bluish grey or old brown. Black is marginally cheaper, I'll have to see what else the store has to see whether there's enough to pull an order together. Starting to favour Dark Bluish Grey over black. I also need to rework the main Graving Dock design to reflect the changes proposed by the study. Modified the LDD design to utilise the 1x15 Technic beams and placed an order for them, dark brown 2x1x3 normal and inverse slopes, 1x1 Technic bricks in reddish brown and 1x3 inverse slopes in reddish brown as well a some 1x16 dark bluish grey beams that are needed for the rebuild of the wheel support structure. It wasn't one of the cheapest BL stores but it was one of the few that had all of the required parts. Being several hundred miles away from my bricks means that not much more that can be done at this stage. I could perhaps think about a boat to go into the graving dock but should it be part-built or have the ability to be both part built and fully built? Build as major components that the crane can lift in? Requires the crane to be wider to be able to move pieces through, could probably scale from 10 to 12 maybe even push it out to 14 but this creates issues binding the top together; would need to use layered plates. Some form of snaps or Technic connections to bind the sub-builds to a simple hull structure? Brick budget around the 100 mark. If the crane is being made bigger is there any way to increase it's range? Invert the end-stop slopes, extend the end-stops out beyond the main part of the graving dock. The tower impedes the latter from occur would need to swap the two sides around so that the tower occurs on the outer edge. Visually less pleasing but it allows an overhang to exist. How to support? How much to support? 4 studs, 6 studs? Could we support a partial platform, ie. 1x8 tiles with gaps between? What would structurally support this? Something to investigate later. A few days and I'm back home again and I have a morning free to modify the graving dock. The articulated sections at the open end are swapped around to allow the crane tracks to be extended by another 4 studs. Additionally the stop points were rotated so that the sloping side faces inwards which should mean that the crane can get one brick further out, but since the crane is now a brick wider in each direction this balances out. The extensions utilised 4x10 plates rather than a more ambitious design with holes and is probably as adventurous as we can get given the lack of support beneath. I didn't get as far as a deconstructed boat, might tackle that this evening. Brick count is currently 1200 of which 30 or so are the pink bricks of the "ghost" ship that I've been using to determine appropriate sizings with another 30 involved in large props. Therefore it should be possible to easily achieve boat, minifigs and hand-props within a 1400 brick allowance. If I'm going to build a troll boat what are the salient features Viking hull with battering ram (ideally dark brown) Troll square sails (junk rigged? check precise phrasing although I know what I mean!) Inverse arches in dark red running up to a cabin. Hanging cage Drum Outriggers Without replicating the existing warship how can sufficient "clip-on" sections be provided. What can clip-on, cages, drum, outriggers are obvious. Masts? Cabin sections? Do we even want the outriggers, how can we make the ship different to the existing ship? Deliberately shorter, single. Some form of forecastle to launch attacks from, borrow from the siege engines of 7037 Tower Raid. Rear structure. Outriggers using canoes? Are canoes available in Reddish-Brown? Grapnels? Some form of mechanic whereby ramming drops the grapnels and latches onto a ship; nice but we don't have another ship to attack. Modular rear structure, left and right halves mirrored, no more than 8 bricks wide to fit through crane. How does it clip/fit? Slot together? I note that canoes are available in Reddish-Brown, would need to source Commanche Camps from the Lone Ranger theme, or they're 1ukp each on BL from reputable stores. 1414 bricks eventually. 6 trolls, a foreman, a blacksmith, a crane driver and 3 workers. The ship is shorter than the warship but follows the hull design. The rear structure is easily demountable and should fit through the apertures in the legs of the gantry crane. Double masted in the end with assault platforms at the front. The design is such ship can be docked backwards, unlike the main warship, so that the superstructure can be rebuilt with the crane. This required removing the outriggers but that saves 12 or so bricks some of which, ie. the canoes, are quite big. I realised that the oars and some row-benches were missing which has pushed the brick total up to 1428 bricks. Which is just about where I want it to be. We've finally got the dock, a boat within it which is the reason for it's existence and a number of trolls. If anything another few bricks to take us up to the 1450 mark with two or three more minifigs would just flesh out the dock and make it look as if it's busy rather than slightly sparse. One on the wheel, another in the boat and one in the stores. Total 1441, happy now. Another round trip to Warsaw and then I'm back with an hour spare to tackle the next part of the Graving Dock build. I extended the crane tracks out over the articulated sections at the open end and built up the wheel store. Still have a couple of finishing touches to add: Wheel store ladder Macaroni bricks around the forge chimney Flames on the torches and forge 1x2 Bley slope on the articulated tower section Winch for the crane 1x4 black plate and dark red teeth for the non-tower articulated section Tiling on the crane tracks Barrel, Minifigs and other props Boat! The Graving Dock without it's boat Forge Detail Chain Wheel Detail Gantry Crane I manage to find one more Bar 7 x 3 with Double Clips (Ladder) in order to complete the wheel-store but I definitely need to order as many of these as possible in my next Bricklink orders; the Graving Dock alone (with the landing craft) requires 6 more. I also complete the winch, forge chimney, forge, non-tower articulated section and the tiling on the crane tracks. This just leaves the boat. I've got an eBay bid in on a bare hull (no-minifigs or dragon) which I'm hoping will come to fruition at a reasonable price. Additionally I'm pulling together two orders to cover the deltas between a 7048 and what I need for the landing craft. Mostly fairly minor. A reasonable chunk should come from stock. I missed out on one boat, there's another coming up on eBay tomorrow that I'll have to take a shot at. Managed to get a Tower Raid for 25, but it's no recompense when what I really need are hull sections. I could also check my box of fantasy sets to see whether there's a Hull otherwise I'll have 3 boats which is more of a navy than I was expecting to amass. On top of all that I'm still waiting for the final bits to come to finish the graving dock. The latest work sojourn take me Stateside, I pickup and build Lake-town Chase whilst I'm over there since the dollar/pound exchange rate and pricing differential is in my favour. Upon returning home I find that I did have most of a 7048 in my big box of Troll bits, therefore I can start building up the landing craft. I manage to get most of the ship built but find that I'm missing 4off 1x8 brick in Dark Brown and that these hadn't been properly ordered in the last tranche of Bricklink orders. Only one shop is selling them in the UK and they've got a high minimum order going at the moment. I have a potential substitution in mind but I'm also missing the sails. I need to check the bottom of the box of bits to ensure that it's not just a case of me putting the sails in tidily at the bottom so that they don't get damaged. First two bricklink orders have arrived with most of the bits needed to complete the dragon platform and to finish the boat in the graving dock. The crane in the Graving Dock isn't quite tall enough; I need to raise it by a brick or two in order to get it to pass over the sails of the boat. This should be possible with the existing structure with a bit of tweaking. Added an extra two bricks worth of height which will get the raw masts underneath, I don't think it will quite allow masts with crows nests but I can always try. I did consider using a second Technic beam to extend even further up in order to give a full 6 bricks clearance at the top for the hoist carriage; however I think that the aesthetic is destroyed if the upper part gets too tall with respect to the lower half. The additional bricks are all 1x1 in Reddish-Brown or 1x2 Pallisade in Dark-Brown so I should have enough spares in stock to make the alterations. Over the Christmas period the final Bricklink order arrives and I manage to complete the boat for the Graving Dock and make the changes to the Graving Dock's gantry crane to accommodate the boat. The one minor issue that I still have to resolve is that the white horns sticking out the sides of the back cabin of the boat interfere with the foliage hanging down the inside of the graving dock. The latter will have to be relocated or removed in order to allow the boat to slide in properly. Other than that it just needs props and minifigs before it's ready to go. I'll try to photograph it over the next few days. Boat Detail Trolls' Graving Dock - Complete As always, the LDD files are located over on the MOCPages mirror of this posting. It's one of those sets that you possibly need to see in real-life rather than photo's; to properly appreciate the play value of assembling the boat in the dock. The Graving Dock is also the limits of my photo stage, there are millimeters to spare between the edge of the model and the end of the white background. The next job is to clear my dining room table lay some Dark-Grey and Blue card to form a landscape and then to set up Troll Town in it's entirety. I do have 3 more small designs lurking in LDD but they can wait.

I'm glad that you're happy with the Troll Hall. I'm afraid that I have no control over LDD's generation of instructions, or at least I think I don't... something in my brain is reminding me that control over the steps might be possible through editing the LDD xml file.

What the Trolls lack is a Dragon of their own. The Skeleton Sorceror has one, the Crown King has one, the Trolls don't. Definitely not fair for the trolls. Looking at all the dragons that TLG have ever produced the one which best suits the Trolls has to be the Hungarian Horntail dragon from the Harry Potter series, which is nice but not cheap. Bricklink the Dragon alone is going to be 30ukp if I get it from Europe, 50 if I get it within the UK. eBay sales are probably few and highly contested... Still, regardless of whether I can realise this in ABS I press on regardless. My starting point is the Wall Defence model that I drew up the other day to act as a filler to close a gap in the second instance of Troll Town. I dismantled the slightly rickety wooden platform that had had a small catapult mounted on it, the idea being that this would form a bridge over to the dragon platform, similar to the design of 70403 Dragon Mountain. The initial problem is that the central pivot in the wall is only 2 studs wide and a bridge probably needs to be 4 studs. Because of the way that the rocks hinge back 2 studs isn't a problem but it limits what can be attached on the opposing side. I realise that if I increase this to 4 studs I can insert technic bricks with the right spacings to allow standard wall attachments; I decide to carry this concept on through the design so that each of the components, bridge, dragon platform, rock walls and stairs, will have connection points allowing lots of flexibility. The bridge is fairly simple, black 1x8x2 arches mounted atop troll style windows to give it a bit of character. I start by trying to squeeze the design of 70403's Dragon Platform onto an 8x8 plate, but it doesn't really fit so I opt for 10x10 octagons instead which give the structure a more rounded feel even when the support is actually square. There are various tweaks and changes, primarily the replacement of the rock walls with brick built equivalents which contain the technic bricks that form the attachment points, but essentially the structure is the same. I retain the potions lab inside but the treasure chest goes; Trolls would never leave treasure outside the walls. Two crownies to be terrorised by the dragon rider and it's all done; a short evenings work. Except it's not. Looking at it the following morning in a fresh light what it lacks is height on the wall side to visually balance the bulk of the dragon on the platform. I could rebuild on of the wall sections with a stack of French Towers but I've done that before on both the Engine Docks and the Graving Dock so I want to avoid that design choice. The thought sticking in my mind is some form of archway/tower over the end of the bridge. This is complicated however by the fact that doorway can't be attached to the central portion of the wall because those 4 studs will need to form the opening. The supports of the arch are therefore on the wall sections and some slightly tricky hinging is used at the top to support the top plate. Writing my design decision up the previous paragraph I have a few more moments of inspiration that could take the design down different paths. Firstly the blocky hinge mechanics at the top could be replaced with plate hinges rather than brick hinges. Secondly there is nothing to stop me having the hinge mechanics at the bottom of the arch to create an 8 wide platform there and then building up from that. Of the two options the latter turns out to have the most promise, it save a couple of bricks (3) and allows the arch to gain a proper inverse slope crown rather than the flat blockiness created by the hinges. The one disadvantage at the moment is that only the stairs can clip onto the back because the pivots of the hinge bricks extend into the space that makes attaching anything else impossible. One improvement might be to bulk out the width of the central section by another 2 studs to allow connection at the back. If connections at the back are allowed then why not extend the tower into something more structural rather than just an archway. After several weeks hiatus, where I've been out of the country and away from my bricks and building up the giant Graving Dock model, I started to think about the Dragon Platform again. For the design to work it needs a significant tower to balance the bulk of the dragon and the current gate just isn't bulky enough. So I pull the design apart and try to build a tower. I use the Dark Brown wood structures from 7037 Tower Raid as inspiration. Design finished I sit back and admire it; it looks awful! It's too spindly, awkward and just badly designed. Back to the drawing board; back to the source material. How does 7097 do it's tower? I start building 7097's tower section from the instructions. I start out faithful to the original but deviate a little as construction porgresses. The first floor becomes a through corridor to allow access to the bridge. The room above becomes a map-room and the tower top a signalling platform. We've gained in terms of brick count but surprisingly not that much. Finally the tower is massive enough to balance the bulk of the dragon. The Trolls gain aviator headgear for flying their dragon, it's a bit steampunk rather than medieval but I think it suits the trolls and I need to do as many things as possible to give the trolls some variation when they have such a limited torso selection. The second non-flying troll gains red and green flags to guide the dragon in, the tower acts a great place to stand. With designs finalised I start to build up the Dragon platform, primarily to determine what pieces are missing given that the design has changed quite substantially between the 3rd and 6th incarnations. The obvious parts are the various plates within the tower but also the Dark Brown roof turret top sections and a couple of basic Reddish-Brown bricks that I'm just missing. I'm also running low on basic Light-Bluish Grey parts; so various Bricklink orders are placed in order to get the relevant parts. It'll probably be the far side of Christmas before they arrive. Some of the Bricklink orders arrive before Christmas and some afterwards. It doesn't take long to finish the Dragon Platform, there are a couple of minor substitutions en-route but nothing that deviates too much from the main design. The chart room The robing hall where the helmets are stored Someone is having piggies for dinner... All in all, I'm very happy with how this has turned out. The larger tower is definitely needed to balance the bulk of the dragon. If I can source a second Dragon there is even the possibility of adding a second platform, the connection points are there for a second bridge and platform. I'll just have to keep an eye out for Hungarian Horntails... Unfortunately the LDD files are unavailable whilst I sort out an alternative hosting platform. PM me if you would like them.

The curved supports on the bridge are particularly nice. Very nice indeed.

The consistent grey is looking a lot nicer than the original multi-coloured prototype from the first post. The curve of the ambulatory is also particularly pleasing. It's going to be an immense project, you're going to be at this for some months.

How about a market place, somewhere to sell the treasure the Troll's have accumulated? I was using the 7571 Fight For The Dagger as the structural inspiration for the market. Brick built angular arches working towards a BURP lined gateway. The concept of the market is still valid but this attempt isn't working. A few weeks later I started to think about the Troll Market again. Thinking about it in terms of caves from which wares are sold, caves very similar to the Troll caves either side for the main entrance on 7097. Two of those side-by-side. Could they be modular in their own right? A stair section? A bridge section? A hinged section of exterior wall that provides the perpendicular attachment. The thing about Chase For The Dagger is that it represent a scene in a movie where there's a chase, there's an obvious storyline to it, people chasing each other to get at something. How can we replicate that in the Troll Market? One of the market caves is a Prison Cell? Some way of getting the back off to break out of the cell. Then there can be chase, up and over, the props from the market form things to knock over or utilise for hiding. Then up the steps, over the top and swing out across the wall on a chain dangling from a crane. Why not make it a maiden (or feisty peasant woman rather than the sterotypical princess) who escapes. Troll, Ogre+Cart, Feisty Peasant Woman, Knight on Horse. In terms of props for the second cave; cloaks, armour, helmets and swords are all typical Troll things and would have more interaction value than food which could go in the cart. My recollection of the Troll caves is that they utilise two Mountain top panels across the back so there should be scope for hinging or loose breakaway of a panel. The tops are provided by a 6x8 plate which provides a suitable platform for a cross top-walkway. Some from of tower on the hinged outer wall would provide enough height to mount some form of crane. Possibly utilise the architeture from the siege engines for the tower rather than further stonework. Any gateway has to be sufficiently large to accommodate the Ogre and cart. This may have impact on the playability in terms of swinging across the outer wall. If there's a crane there should be playability in it, crates or barrel halves to lift from the cart. Idealy the crane is moveable on a swivel is chain based rather than string but has some degree of lift. One of the castles had a chain driven drawbridge - 7079. Can some of that mechanism be replicated on a crane? Beginning to feel that a troll crane is a big thing in it's own right in order to wind chain and have some form of ratchet to limit the unwinding of the chain. Might be better to pull a beam upright and have a chain dangling from the end rather than continuous chain from drum to hook. From an ideas perspective I think that the market concept now has merit and perhaps most importantly some form of story thread to enhance the playability. However I won't get an opportunity to fire up LDD and tackle the design until I get to the airport this evening and have a couple of hours to waste before boarding my overnight flight home. A chance to fire up LDD. The two caves are blocked out quite quickly and the arch and stairs added. Current cost is 180 bricks which is high for the size of set this was intended to be. The brick built caves are costly in terms of bricks compared with the inspiration set where a couple of arches form the main structure. The structure feels like it's going to work but at the moment it's just too big, it needs shrinking by at least one layer of bricks and the width of the caves could probably be brought down as well. The rebuild prison cave weights in at 46 to 68 bricks, so a 22 brick saving. 52 to 35 for the rebuilt open cave, so not quite as much of a saving. 18 to 11 for the stairs. Total for the 3 segments plus the stairs is 187 to 134, so 53 bricks saving, over 30%. The scale feels more human (rather than Ogre) although I still have to work out how to get the Ogre to pull a cart. Built up the a simple cart for a Troll to pull. Nothing fancy just a couple of long poles to allow the Troll to drag it. The width is about 7 studs, therefore the gateway needs to be 8 studs wide once opened to allow access, which means a 10stud space give that the clips that make up the hinges take up a stud either side. A section of modified wall allows the gateway to be connected to the perpendicular run of caves. With a 10 wide gateway there is going to be an issue of how to plate it. Another tube journey, another slew of improvements and additions. The main focus this time being the gate the upper structure and the crane. The gate was quick and easy to finish with rocky spike being borrowed from 7097. Those rocky spikes were also transposed to the top of the two caves to provide a back to the upper walkway across the caves with spiked rails being used across the front. I'd had a couple of attempts at using the styling from the siege engine in 7037 to create the tower. For the first few attempts I'd been building it running front to back which kept blocking the walkway across the top; the eureka moment was turning that through 90 degrees to allow continuation of the walkway; It seems obvious now, I have no idea why I didn't start that way to begin with. A 1x8 black arch in the middle gives some rigidity to the structure as do the 1x6 black tie bars across the sides. At 7 bricks high it's easily high enough for little hands to gain access and get minifigs through when the chase takes them that way. The crane is the thing that I'm least happiest with. Everything else clearly has the troll design DNA running through it but the crane looks like a couple of technic bricks thrown together. Which is essentially what it is since I was trying to work out how the chain winding mechanism and retaining ratchet would work. Mechanics done it's something that I need to revisit before I can call this design done. To determine the current brick count the props and minifigs were added. The feisty maiden (or as close as I can get with LDD's limited selection of female torsos and skirts) goes into the prison cave with a large bone to allow her to lever the back wall open. There's a knight on a horse outside to rescue her and two orcs to acts as guards. The second shop cave gets an armour stand, a barrel with swords and a bench with bottles. Rebuilt the crane. Decided that the key thing to tackle was the boom and replaced the two long Technic beams with a plate structure that has more of a resemblance to the troll doors and floors that I've been creating. It has cost a few more bricks but the effect is significantly more appealing. Further improvements would be to remove or cover the Other than waiting for time and bricks to be available to build it, the build went together very easily. A couple of minor colour substitutions en-route but pretty much everything major is as-designed. The main problems are in the crane, structurally it's pretty solid but the cam lever to stop the winding chain doesn't engage particularly well and the crane itself isn't quite long enough to swing someone out around the gate. All things that can be fixed with a little time and ingenuity but not something that I can correct immediately. The modularity allows the sections to be combined in different ways. The sections could even be part of the primary wall around Troll Town. Then to the storyline; our feisty maiden trapped in the prison. With the help of an old bone she prises the rocks apart at the rear... ...and is free. Sneaking past the hag selling rotten food. Hiding from Troll guards. Climbing the stairs to freedom. Swinging out across the market on the crane Dropping to freedom and riding away on the cart. This chap has been absolutely no use what-so-ever! Unfortunately the LDD files are temporarily unavailable whilst I search for an alternative file host. PM me if you would like them.

Nicely done. If only the whip was available in more colours than Brown...

Really nice to see a town MOC that isn't completely flat! That first photo of the road climbing up between the two black rooved houses with their jetties is particularly good.

LDD itself will can produce bill of materials: File -> Export BOM . It will produce an excel spreadsheet with a list of all the parts and pictures of them. If you don't have Microsoft Office installed then OpenOffice will open the files. The only unique parts are that aren't listed at Lego Customer services are the actual Troll parts (such as banners and shields) which you'll have to pick up from Bricklink. Everything else can be obtained from either Lego Customer services or Bricklink stores. Usual caveat of "it pays to shop around" and be aware that Customer Services might actually be cheaper for simple parts in uncommon colours, eg. 1x2 plates in Dark Green were cheaper at Customer Services than my local Bricklink Stores, Happy building, if you do complete something please post photo's it's always good to know that somebody has been able to replicate a model since they are designed for building rather than display. There are a couple more models in the pipeline but work in the Real WorldTM has taken me away from my bricks for a few weeks.

The Trolls' Guarded Inn has been shown in it's own thread. Progress is being made on building up The Graving Dock, WIP photo's shown below. 7048 Troll Warship to be docked; there's a Troll warrior in the second photo for size comparison. Despite it's size (70 studs by 40studs) it's just under 1200 bricks (without minifigs). I'll post photos, full design notes and the LDD files once I return from a two week business trip to Warsaw, which will allow the last few BrickLink orders to trickle in. Bricklink orders to build up the last two models, Troll Marketplace and The Dragon Platform, have arrived and the all important Dragon has been sourced. I should be in a position to display Troll Town in it's entirety before Christmas. Initial calculations are that it will just fit onto my 1.4m x 0.9m dining room table...

I quite agree with you. The sets designed for "girls" are designed as Dolls houses which means functional interiors which is something AFOLs tend to want. I'm certainly very tempted by the Disney Princess line and may well pick some up just to see.

Black Falcons or Fantasy Era Trolls, impossible to decide between the two...

Very clever rock and a nice "under-construction" monastery. My one minor criticism is that the green grass at the bottom is flat; I'd expect a little bit of a rise towards the rocks. If you did that it would look a lot more organic rather than rocks coming out of a flat plane.

The majority of Durham is Romanesque completed towards then end of the 12th century; the eastern end was rebuilt in the Gothic style in the 13th Century.