The_Cook

The Forestmen's Mountain Stash is the 14th in a series of MOC's intended to recreate the ambiance of the 80's. For a while now I'd been thinking about producing a set that expanded on the Forestmen's theme. Design In a dull meeting at work I started jotting down ideas, since the Forestmen already had a 6066 Camouflaged Outpost and a 6077 River Fortress those were areas to stay away from. I was drawn to the idea of a mountain fortress, perhaps utilising a raised baseplate so that the Forestmen could have a counterpart for 6081 King's Mountain Fortress. Mountains, to me that means bridges, connections from one side to the other. A bridge drops into the middle of my first sketch, so we need raised areas either side. A raised baseplate no-longer feels like it will work, so I sketch in a couple of BURPS, one side I decide should be a cave. Then it dawns on me, I've just reinvented 6417 Temple Of Mt Everest in castle guise! Obviously an oriental style temple doesn't make much sense in a Medieval European setting but the structure remains valid: play features in a mountainous setting are the obvious trap-doors, hidden caves and tilting bridges. Retaining those said play-features the Temple was replaced with a wooden shack and black tree supporting a lookout. On returning to a computer a I fire up LDD and grab the instructions from Peeron because it's easier than digging out my paper copy. With minimal colour substitutions the first dozen steps build up the mountainside and the bridge and I embark on building out the top. I hack away at it for about an hour but in then end I'm just not happy with it, nothing wants to fit right, the nice details in my paper sketches just don't come true. Eventually I put it to one side and abandon the attempt. Some weeks later I'm commuting into work on the train and have 40minutes to kill. Out comes the laptop and I decide to revist the Forestmen concept again. Starting from scratch and without the instructions I build the mountain up from memory. It's a close approximation but not exactly like Temple Of Mt Everest and that seems to have made all the difference, everything seems to fit just a little bit better. I rotate the trapdoor, utilise two pallisade walls for the shack, a turret piece to form the semblance of a balcony and a shallow slope for the roof. Much better, all the details that I'd sketch on paper are now present in the design. Compared with the inspiration set I've only used about 2/3rds of the bricks, understandable when you consider that the source also includes a bi-place. I could include a cart but I'm running out of ideas for carts having included several in previous sets. My initial design had included two 80's style trees on the baseplate to try and make it look a little less bare, I took the decision to replace one of the standard trees with a brick built "black" tree similar to the one present on the mountain itself. In turn this allowed me to "hide" a ladder up to the bridge behind the tree trunk. A quick rebuild was needed to make sure that the bridge could still spin without catching the tree or leaves and finally I had something I was happy with. One last tweak... The upper tree has a lookout, why couldn't the lower tree? I never get around to it before committing myself to ABS. Minifig choice, 3 Forestmen. There isn't really much choice with 80's Forestmen figs, maybe change the head for one with a beard or moustache, change the colours of the arms. Replace one minifig for a friendly Peasant. All of them suitably armed with bows and a couple of swords to hand just in case. In the cave itself a couple of barrels and a chest with jewels form the Mountain Stash that the Forestmen are protecting. LDD files can be found on MOCPages. Analysis I'm trying to work to a similar set design criteria to what the Lego designers would work to, a more detailed explanation can be found in my earlier posting on The Maidens Tower. Story: The forestmen are defending their stash. I suppose the question is from who? There are no "opposition" minifigs to defend from. Perhaps an oversight on my part, although I'm following the lead of Camouflaged Outpost which doesn't have any opponents, although a quick check of Brickset shows the River Fortress with one lone opponent. Maybe a fifth minifig is needed. Playability: - Lots of play features on this one. Hidden ladders, rotating bridges, trapdoors and sliding cave entrances. The more I think about it the more two opponents are required because they will be the ones running into all of the traps. Good accessibility, it's easy enough to get the men into the cave on the open two sides, the shack is similarly accessible from it's two open sides. The sliding access to the cave. The collapsing bridge. The trapdoor within the mountain-top hut. Build-ability: Nothing complex, all standard brick on brick construction. However on buidling I realised that there were some minor issues and some minor improvements could be made. The principle deviation from the LDD design was the lack of a 1x10 Technic Brick in Dark Grey so a Light Gray piece was substituted, thankfully this doesn't impact on the overall appearance because the piece is located around the back. A more prominent ommission is a trapdoor frame in light gray, although that will (would by the time you read this) be rectified through a bricklink purchase since the piece exists; I just didn't have it in stock. Some last minute substitutions and rearrangements of bricks in the main tree allow it to hold itself together better by interconnecting the 1x5x4 arches more appropriately. An additional 1x6 plate was added beneath the lookout to provide more support to that otherwise parts of it would have been balancing on just a single line of studs. I feel that there's more that I can do to support the lookout, for three more bricks I can provide some inverted slopes that support things even further. This line of logic is leading me to question whether the tree as a whole is capable of taking minifigs being played with in the treetop without coming unstuck from the plates on the mountain top. The solution is to run a black 1x10 technic brick down the back of the tree to provide additional support. It's clunky but it will hold, LDD doesn't have some of the older technic plates (the ones with the teeth at the end) which might provide a less intrusive alternative. Flat technic plates only went up to 2x8 (at least that's true in LDD) so I can't use one of them without resorting to layered plates and that becomes just as clunky as the technic brick itself. The modifications made during the build have probably cost another 10 bricks. The LDD view below illustrates the technic support. Cost: At 196 bricks it's going to be slightly less than the cost of the inspiration set Temple Of Mt Everest. Consistency: BURPs, turrent pieces and pallisades are slightly anachronistic, they are early 90's pieces rather than late 80's however I don't think that they look out of place. The black tree design is consistent with the tree's in the rest of the Forestmen's range, brown only came to prominence in the much later Dark Forest range. It's seen here pictured with 6054"]http://www.brickset....54-1">6054]6054 Forestmen's Hideout[/url] and 6020"]http://www.brickset....20-1">6020]6020 Magic Shop[/url]. Conclusion Much happier with the second attempt. The BURPs, LURPs and pallisade panels and bridge provide lots of bulk and height whilst leaving plenty of bricks spare for the trees to have an interesting design, even if said design did cause me some grief and rework during the build phase. Coupled with lots of play features I think this is one of the better sets that I've put together. It will work as a standalone set in it's own right and there's plenty of scope for play inspiration. The Series

I don't have any shots of it connected, but I do have this... Please excuse the junk in the background, my photo stage isn't large enough for the entire town to sit on.

It's the set number allocations. From that we can tell that there are 6 standard retail sets. Beyond that, not much other than the theme is a definite. 6 sets matches the series of sets produced for Prince Of Persia, so expect a set at £10, £15, £30, £40 and £60, or the $ equivalents.

The Wharf is the 12th in a series of MOC's intended to recreate the ambiance of the 80's. The coaching in was born out of the need to have another free standing building in the center of my slowly expanding 80's era medieval town. The inspiration for the coaching in is the George Inn in Southwark, London, the last of the galleried coaching Inn's in England's capital city. Design To capture the essence of a coaching inn a couple of things are needed: Large gates allowing access to a courtyard Timbered galleries overlooking the courtyard A bar-room Bedrooms Stabling Simple enough, but tricky to accomplish in a limited number of bricks and with the bricks that were available in the late 80's. I knew from the outset that this was going to be at least as large as 6074 Black Falcon's Fortress with 430 bricks and 6 minifigs. The design evolved from a number of directions at once. The first job was to capture the volume of space that I wanted in as few bricks as possible, primarly this meant working out how to do a large roof for as few bricks possible. The construction technique that I opted for is the same one as the half-timbered building in 6086 Black Knight's Castle, plate's with peg-holes are stuck onto the undersides of large plates which form the roof slope. Peg-bricks in the gable ends hold the sloped plates. It order to do support the central roof sections the pegs through the gables needed to be 3 studs long. The next design task was The Galleries. I knew I wanted the pillars here to be delicate, ie. 1x1 rather than 1x2. Initially this posed me with a problem because I wantted to spring an arch off of a 1x1 pillar in either direction. I could have used jumper plates at the bottom and connected to the mid-point of a 1x2 plates at the top but that would have led to a situation at the corners where the arches couldn't be offset properly by half a stud. The next option was to use 1x3 double inverted slopes at the mid-pillars and 1x2 inverted slopes at the edges. The advantage here is that it left space directly above the pillars for extra arches to sping back to the main wall. This orientation also helped with the roof, the gables sit directly above the pillars and the 1x6 arches on either side fit neatly with the 6x10 plates forming the slope of the roof. With the galleries and roof designed it was simply a case of adding the wall and dividing up the space into rooms. The back was kept open for play access. Stables, stairs and a bar-room form the ground floor. Two bedrooms occupy the upper floor. in Yellow form the upper floors and give a bit of much needed colour differentiation. The archway attatches to the side, the room above being intended as a hay loft. A couple of yellow 2x2 bricks become hay and start the process of interior design. With the brick budget running close to my targets simplicity in the interiors was essential. The usual barrels, chests and goblets populate the rooms. The bar-room gets a table and fireplace, the bedrooms get beds. Horses in the stables. For minifigs it's a fairly standard collection: barmaid, stable-boy/groom, merchant, a travelling knight, peasants. Yet when I line them up in LDD it feels like there's something missing. What does the Coaching Inn lack? A coach! Historically coaches didn't arrive until the late 17th century before that everyone either rode on a horse or in a cart. Therefore I need cart, but I need a cart in just a handful of bricks. I started playing with the Bar 7 x 3 with Double Clips (Ladder) as sides to a cart based around a Plate 4x8. A couple of little clip bricks to hold the bottoms of the bars was fine but how to secure the top. Whilst it's not historically accurate I felt that Arm Mechanical, Straight with Clips at 90 degrees (Vertical Grip) might prove a good solution. The twist in the arms allowed them to connect the bars but also to some vertical Antenna pieces. The disadvantage was that there's nothing to stop the sticks pulling apart, after various attempts at fashioning something from brick I settled on the use of a 1x6 hanger pushed down over the sticks. the version in LDD doesn't have the through holes but thankfully the version in my bricks box does. A fairly respectable cart in less than 20 bricks. LDD files are over on MOCpages Analysis Story: None, but I somehow feel that it could if it had the right characters... The minifigs and props means that you can enact the comings and goings of a busy coaching in, the only downside is that there's very little in the way of conflict and it's conflict that drives the drama hence the modern trend for everything being "Attack this..." or "Escape from that..." I think the cart was an important part of fleshing out the set as it provides a bit of "swooshability" (to use a phrase that the Star Wars collectors use to describe their space-ships) where you can drive it around. The two horses are also important because the cart needs one and the knight the other. Playability: As a standalone set it's not bad. Everything but the very back of the bar-room is easy to access, the open back allowing little hands to place minifigures in the various rooms. On the courtyard side the galleries are similarly accesssible. The one design decision that I'm not fully happy with is that the hay-loft and attic spaces aren't as accessible as they could be, it would have been nice to have lift-up rooves. Buildability: Once again the lack of 6x10 plates in green comes back to haunt me! A hasty reconfiguration of the baseplate layout is needed and it's not optimal. It also complicates the archway section and I need to change the design slightly to account for the fact that there's now a seam between two 4x10 plates across the width of the arch. Aside from a slight pause to allow more 4444 timber panels to arrive the build progressed quickly. The most complex portion being the attachment of the roof plates, they're just a bit fiddly to get into position, definitely a sub-assembly and guidance arrows in the instructions... As a final post design tweak I added 1x2 technic bricks so that it could be clipped into the castle wall if desired. I'm not sure I want to clip it directly into my town wall but I wouldn't want to stop others from doing so. Given that almost everything else has been clip-able it seemed wrong not to make this one clipable as well. I've retrospectively applied the changes to LDD. There are a couple of loose plate joints that I'd rather weren't there, if I had access to the moulding machines a quick run of green plates in the missing sizes would easily solve the issues. Cost:At 476 bricks it's significantly larger than 6076 Guarded Inn but that is the obvious comparisson that will innevitably be drawn because both sets draw on similar subject matter. Consistency: The robot arms used in the cart didn't arrive until the late 90's. Additionally the curves on the bed in the big bedroom are anachronistic, not arriving until the early 90's. The 3 stud long pins are similarly a 90's invention but since they're well hidden they're not as obvious. Everything else is of the era. Conclusion Another build that I'm very happy with. It's ended up with all the playability that I desired and all of the features that form the essence of a coaching inn. Would it work as a sellable set? The ultimate argument always becomes economics, would a parent pay for little Johny to have a Coaching Inn or a castle of some sort. I feel that the castle would generally win the purchase because the attack and defend storyline is the more obvious. Countering that argument is 7189 Mill Village Raid, a set which works as a stand-alone domestic medieval set and illustrates that a high-priced domestic orientated set can sell. Mill Village Raid's advantage is that there is conflict, the raid, even if does feel like that conflict has been artifically introduced. The Coaching Inn doesn't have that conflict and I don't think it would be right to artifically introduce it and therefore we complete the circle and go back to comparing it against the Guarded Inn where the conflict is implied, the Guarded, rather than explicit. Would people pay the cost of larger set against the smaller one? As a castle collector I'd have bought it, but I don't think it would have sold to the general public in enough volume to warrant production. Still I've got a nice addition to my 80's style medieval town. The Series

I was away and missed the above posting when it was first put up, but I've also been toying with the idea of trying to make an 80's castle photostage. Looking at the old photo's/box-art I did wonder whether the sun effect was done by shining a lamp through some form of material. There are definitely beige cardboard shadows but I can't work out if the hills on the back-cloth are shadows of the beige hills or airbrushed on with some form of die. For reference the frontpage of the instructions for 6074 Black Falcon's fortress can be found here.

Whilst I can't send you a lovely box of bricks and glossy instructions, the LDD files are on MOCPages, or here for the Wharf. If you've got the bricks going spare feel free to build a version and if you incorporate it into a wider setup I'd love see pictures.

You might be right on the price, it's an educated guess at best. Direct comparissons are tricky because Lego's building style has evolved continually through the castle range, there's the classic style with 4444 panels moving in to the Kingdoms era with larger panels again, then the dramatic change from Knights Kingdom II to the Fantasy Era when Lego clearly move away from large panel construction toward models built from lots of smaller pieces. The Imperial Trading Post inspiration came with 9 figs, admittedly minifigs were likely to have been cheaper in the 80's as the printing demands/expectations were significantly less, a front torso print as opposed to front,back,legs,head,etc... Thanks for all the comments, Real-WorkTM has drastically reduced my building time but I've got at least one more model in ABS to show and two or three more in LDD waiting to be built up. One day I'll also get a shot of the entire town in built up form.

Very nice, much smoother than the usual domes. Have you tried to scale the method to other diameters?

The Wharf is the 12th in a series of MOC's intended to recreate the ambiance of the 80's. Design I'd been looking around for another set to castlify after my Market By The Wall attempt and whilst hunting around on eBay for bits one set in particular caught my eye. I'd always been intending to extend my range of sets towards some form of medieval harbour and this one looked particularly ripe for adaption, therefore the inspiration for the wharf should be fairly clear. As ever there are no prizes, but feel free to post if you think you know from whence it came. Sketches were drawn up on paper based on the source set. Key point's that I wanted to include were that it would be a continuation of the wall but that it's inheritance be fairly obvious. Since it's based around the same raised baseplate as 6081 King's Mountain Fortress that set would prove handy in terms of inspiration and construction technique. The final piece that I knew I wanted to include was a drawbridge down to the jetties, with the path over the drawbridge passing through a defensive tower. Design proved fairly easy except for two little items that really took a bit of playing around with to get right; the tower at the top of the slope and the position of the building on the jetties. The tower at the top of the slope was just plain awkward, there's not a lot of space there, the stud connections are limited and it has to have an opening on two adjacent sides. I eventually ended up using a modified version o f the lower level of the tower from 6081 King's Mountain Fortress. From a design perspective it is one of the weaker parts of the structure but it serves it's purpose. A building with a small store in the roof was moved to the near side of the set to allow a tall tower to be place on the far right corner of the baseplate. This tower would be my drawbrige down to the jetties. The drawbridge was the cause of the next problem, with the drawbridge in place where to position the building on the jetties. Placed centrally it was too close to the existing tower so I moved it out to the corner of the baseboard which necessitated a rejig of the supporting arches and a widening of the jetty. The end of the jetty needed a feature. Cranes are an obvious addition to any wharf, however a medieval crane would be human powered. Trying to build a minifig sized circular structure out of period 80's pieces isn't as easy at is sounds. The key piece was a Technic, Plate Rotor 3 Blade with Toothed Ends and 3 Studs (Propeller), this was enough to support a hexagon made from plates and old style finger hinges. Ideally I would have liked to get the studs inwards so that a minifig could be clipped in but I just couldn't get the plates and dimensions to work. The boat is a modification of 6057 Sea Serpent. Extended for cargo carry and with lower fore and stern-castles. I also removed the shields from the sides in order to keep the width under 8 studs, important because the stretch of water beneath the drawbridge is only 10 studs wide. On a set this big 9 minifigs don't go far. The boat crew took 3. Guards on the towers another 3. Dockhands the final 3. Plenty of barrels and chests populate the wharf as cargo. LDD files can be found on MOCPages. Analysis I'm trying to work to a similar set design criteria to what the Lego designers would work to, a more detailed explanation can be found in my earlier posting on The Maidens Tower. Story: It's just part of the wider medieval life. Playability: Lots of things to do, loading and unloading cargo. Raising the drawbridge to let the boat pass beneath. Hiding crates in the dungeon. Maybe even a little bit of light taxation. What there isn't is any direct conflict, there's no opposing side to start a fight. Build-ability: It's an easy build. My problems stemmed from the availability of bricks in the colours I wanted. The castle colour palette of grey, black and another colour for hightlights is limiting. I'd initially designed the foundations of the tall tower in Dark Grey but the Slope, Inverted 75 2 x 1 x 3 isn't widely available in Dark Grey. Therefore I had to revert black which isn't as aesthetically pleasing. Light grey might have been more appropriate but then there's a danger of everything being light gray. I also struggled with the colour of the raised baseplate. I could use Baseplate, Raised 32 x 32 with Ramp and Pit, Water, Gray Stones Pattern or Baseplate, Raised 32 x 32 with Ramp and Pit, Rocks Black/Gray Pattern. Both are shown below My opinion was that the green works better when the wharf is connected into the castle wall, shown below. It makes the join to the water a bit messy, if this were a real lego set then I'd get a fresh screen-print with water on just one side. Cost: The brick count is on a par with the inspiration set. What that retailed for back in the 80's I don't know. At 650 bricks the nearest modern equivalent would be 7189 Mill Village Raid giving it a modern price of about £66. Consistency: It fits into the wall well. My photostage can't cope with anything more than the shots already shown. From a wider perspective the raised baseplate gives a bit of height and variantion which stops the wall becoming a line of grey. More industry outside the wall is always welcome. Conclusion I'm quite pleased with this one, particularly the boat and the crane. Whilst it might appear to be a "rebuilt in grey", there's actually a lot more thought that's gone into it and the positioning of buildings and such-like. The Series

Would that work for this set? It makes sense for Jabba's palace because the lower portion the Rancor Pit has a playable storyline in it's own right and is a self-contained room. Could you say the same for the lower half of the city? It's a good argument. I dare-say that the design team at Lego has similar arguments on a daily basis, how to bring the cost of set down whilst retaining the essence of what they're trying to develop.

A very good use of panels and rock pieces to get height into the model for a minimal brick count (and weight of ABS). It definitely looks like something that Lego could produce and sell; sufficiently detailed but still buildable. The modular aspect to the walls reminded me very much of Battle Of Alamut and the other modern castles which is a good thing. At first I thought that 12 minifigs was a little too many but actually given the size set that you're proposing and it's price point I'd probably agree that it's about right. Well done.

Is the building in the corner a reworking of the build from 7029 Skeleton Ship Attack? Not that that's a bad thing the Human side of the Fantasy line shares a lot of similarities with the Kingdoms line. It's got a nice elegant simplicity to it which put's it very definitely in the line of "something that Lego could make and sell."

The Beggars Steps is the 11th in a series of MOC's intended to recreate the ambiance of the 80's. Design I'd been rolling the idea of a tramp around my mind for quite some time. Maybe a short section of wall and some form of arch for him to hide in. Maybe some stairs? Beggars steps! Steps are right angles to the wall, some form of arch below to shelter in, an arch through the wall which is why the beggar is there because there's a guaranteed stream of passers-by. With the idea settled I fired up LDD and set about putting a little set of about 60 bricks together which I dutifully saved in a sensible location on my PC. A few weeks later with some time to spare and having sourced a Castaway from the Pirates line to use as the beggar I thought I'd have a go at building the Beggars Steps I'd designed; but could I find the LDD design on my PC? Could I hell! So I tried again, but this time I had the feeling that the design wasn't turning out quite as well. The steps were too tight around the beggars head in his little alcove, on the previous design I felt I'd managed to get some more architectural definition to the alcove rather than a set of 2x4 bricks. The hunt was on for my old design, which turned out to be hiding on a memory card in a separate PC. Upon re-appraisal there were still issues with the first design, so it was electronically pulled apart in LDD and rebuilt. The alcove became more defined with a 1x6 arch this forced the steps to be a little longer than before but that in turn meant I could replace the mix of bricks across the back of the alcove with a single 4444 panel thereby reduced the brick count significantly. It's a good little design that I'm finally happy with. LDD files can be found on MOCPages. Analysis I'm trying to work to a similar set design criteria to what the Lego designers would work to, a more detailed explanation can be found in my earlier posting on The Maidens Tower. Story: Not much. A beggar begging for alms. There's a good historical precedent but that's about it. Playability: The alcove is tight, but the beggar sits in it nicely with room to spare for little fingers to get him in and out. The beggar gets a 1x1 brick to act as a little box or packet, a bottle and mug. I added a soldier to guard the wall. Build-ability: Pretty easy. No fancy techniques, the order of assembly is important, the 4444 panels have to go in last as the tab at the top on the back sits over some other bricks. Cost: At 70 bricks it's less than a 6030 Blacksmith Shop but slightly more than a 6035 Castle Guard. It's definitely in the pocket money category rather than impulse purchase. Consistency: I think it fits in very well. Seen here between 6030 Blacksmith Shop and a 6067 Guarded Inn. Conclusion I think it's a nice little set, lack of storyline and the subject matter are the downsides. Given that the sales pitch is parents buying for kids rather than a completist castle collector the parent would probably opt for the jousting knights rather than a beggar. Unlike the pirates castaway there's no romance in begging unlike surviving on a desert island. The Series

Good luck, having visited Chenonceau myself it's an amazing castle and you've captured it's essence very well in what you've posted. It would be nice to see a photo of the keep connected to the gallery, only then will the forum members gets a real feel of just how big a project you're attempting.

If it's posted on Cuusoo then it'll be turned down as it conflicts with themes that are already in production. Nuju should just keep designing like he does and hope that someone at Lego HQ notices the thread and offers him an job in the same way that Alexandre Boudon (aka Toth) got his sketches noticed and his designs became part of the collectible minifig series.

I'm lacking the floor space to assemble everything at once... I will give it a go and try to get some photos although it could take me a week or two as I'm in the middle of building a real-life timber framed building.

I'm not done yet. I've got a couple of new models photographed that I will post up fairly soon, a couple waiting to be photographed and a couple still on paper.

I bought a 6074 Black Falcon's Fortress on eBay. Because I didn't read the small print I didn't realise that it was a glued Black Falcon's fortress... (don't snigger) It's got a broken hinge, it's badly built around the back of the roof, it's dirty but not too yellowed... (don't snigger) It looks like superglue, I can dissolve superglue with acetone and stuff the bricks through a peroxide bath to clean them up. Except acetone will also dissolves the ABS in Lego bricks... (don't snigger) Essentially it's a worthless lump of plastic... (don't snigger) Caveat Emptor. Now you can laugh.

If you want to stay entirely within the rules of only using Lego supplied parts then check out part 73090b Boat Weight 2 x 6 x 2 - bottom sealed, dimple on ends. I've used the black version as a counterweight to a (not too successful) trebuchet that I've been playing with as part of my retro-80's series. Your work and the works of the zcerberus et-al that you've referenced gives me the urge to have another go with it.

I see you tacked some of the prototype shots onto the end. All those parts we could have had but never did. The puffy sleeves, the round topped shutters, the 4444 panels with ivy print. There are some in there I spy that we did receive eventually, the Brick, Modified Facet 3 x 3 x 2 Top on the well.

That would sully the pristine nature of yellow by bringing it into contact with something that has been in contact with flesh! ;-)

Nice review, pretty thorough. To be fair, just 7 Panels in a build that size isn't bad. They give the central tower height without adding too much in terms of weight. More weight means more plastic, more plastic means more cost. Whilst we all want more for less, there's a fundamental limit in how much a gram of ABS costs. I've been pretty ambivalent to LOTR theme so far but I'm warming to the builds.

The instructions for all of my creations can be found on MOCpages, I'm quite happy for people to build copies if they've got (or can acquire) the parts. In fact I'd love to see other people building them, that's part of the point of designing them as "sets" rather than diorama's. Admittedly LDD has a tendency to build from the top down, but I can always put sensible instructions together in LeoCAD if requested.

The 9th in a series of MOC's that could have come from the late 80's castle range. They're trying to explore Medieval life in more detail than Lego's sellable range Design Everything that I've built so far, and indeed that Lego produced as part of the 80's range, create a single convex wall to a castle or town that curves around. The limitations of this are that you can only have so many corners before you've created your loop, with my Maidens Tower and Hilltop Tower I've already got half a loop and it only takes a couple of other bits of wall before the loop is complete. What I needed was a section of concave wall that would allow the creation of more complex castle enclosures. Concave wall segments are useful pieces of castle architecture, the space in the concavity is overlooked by two walls which makes it easier to defend and therefore suitable for introducing a weakpoint in the wall such as a gateway. The design started from there, a gateway flanked by a piece of wall which could be used to defend it.<p>In normal use the gateway to a town would be open during the day, soldiers controlling the passing of goods to and from town, extracting taxes and tolls from them as necessary. To facilitate this, and to break up the wall a little I decided to include a little alcove in the wall that the guarding sentry could take shelter in. A 30246 Panel 3x4x6 w/ Window forms the back of the alcove. I kitted out the walkway above the alcove with a length of wooden hoarding. Simply built from 2453 Brick 1x1x5 pillars, however my initial design utilised 3937 Hinge Brick 1x2 Base which has never been produced in brown, although a box of either prototypes or special pressings is available from a US Bricklink seller. Back to the drawing board, I deviated briefly into using headlight bricks and bars to create my own hinges but eventually settled for 2458 Brick, Modified 1x2 w/ Pin coupled with a 3700 Technic, Brick 1x2 w/ Hole which are readily available in brown. The LDD captures below show the original and revised hoarding. The gateway itself is made up of fairly simple octagonal towers with an arch between, yellow being used as the detail colour so that it matches 6074 Black Falcons Fortress. The use of 3063 Brick, Round Corner 2x2 Macaroni is a design detail borrowed from the rear towers of 6085 Black Monarch's Castle. A gateway on it's own isn't a sellable prospect, to make it sellable it needs to be playable, to make it playable something needs to interact with the gateway. I considered siege engines, but eventually settled on a simple cart with the sides built up of finger hinges. Initially I'd been thinking of some form of smuggling past the guards, but I didn't want to go as complex as 6038 Wolfpack Renegades and it's false floor. Screen captures of the final LDD design are shown below Analysis I'm trying to work to a similar set design criteria to what the Lego designers would work to, a more detailed explanation can be found in my earlier posting on The Maidens Tower. Story: Nothing is to difficult to access, the bottoms of the towers are tricky but not impossible. The issue is still that it has no real story to back it up. Playability: With the redesign the interior of the hut is accessible, the fire on the front very easily so. Not present in the design, but added for the realisation in ABS are gardening tools, a spade, a sickle a knife. Build-ability: Did you know that Lego have never produced a 6x10 plate in green? Neither did I and it threw my build somewhat. Substituting 4x10 and 2x10 plates didn't really work because the joins were unsupported. Eventually I opted for a 6x6 plate surrounded by a ring of 2x8 plates which means that everything connects properly to the bottoms of the 2345 panels. The varying designs can be seen below, the favoured baseplate design being on the right. There was one further issue with the build that wasn't evident in LDD but becomes obvious in real ABS. The side wall was only joined to the adjacent tower at the bottom. When lifting and manouvering the gatehouse it bows and a crack appears between the side wall and the tower. I ended up adjusting the design to allow an additional connection at the top of the wall which fixes this engineering issue. <p>Build photo's from all sides are shown below Then I ran into a problem with the cart, my initial design proved to be wider than 8 studs which meant that it wouldn't fit through the arch. Realising that I'd over-engineered the connections to between the finger hinges and the 1x8 plates forming the side bars I was able to remove some of the plates on the outside that had been fouling the archway. Cost: 451 pieces puts it of a par with 6074 Black Falcon's Fortress Consistency: I believe the overall design still fits with the 80's ambiance. The anachronisms are the use of a Tan plate in the gateway and the 30246 panel of the alcove, both of which didn't appear until the late 90's. As usual the proof is how it looks when clipped into existing sets, the photo's below show it between 6074 Black Falcon's Fortress and 6067 Guarded Inn . I think it fits, I was quite pleased how the hoarding fits beneath Black Falcon's Fortress's peaked roof to form a contiguous whole, although it did happen more by luck than by design. I think my only consistency issue is that positioning of wall segments when they clip into the tower feels wrong, you can't walk out of the tower and onto the battlements, but this is would be easy to rectify by moving the Technic Brick that acts as the connection point. Conclusion Not bad, again I think its story is weak which leads to weak playability if it were purchased alone rather than as an item to add to an existing collection. Further emphasis on the smuggling might improve this. I'm pleased with the hoarding, I can see it occuring on some other builds as it provides height and substance with only a handful of bricks. I'm also very pleased with the cart, again just a handful of bricks have produced something quite beautiful. The Series

Thank you. I've been a bit remiss lately and my Eurobricks postings are a little behind what's on my MOCPages feel free to head there and see the other 12 moc's that make up my 80's revival. I do have to admit to picking up quite a bit on Bricklink in order to put together these MOC's. My childhood lego collection disappeared a long time ago so I've been rebuilding my stocks since. Old grey is getting harder and harder to come by in quantity.