The_Cook

If you've got the bits then the LDD files are attached to the MOCPages page, follow the link at the top of the first posting. The designs are there to be built, if anyone does and finds a home for it in their own collection then please post pictures.

The sixth set in a series of MOCs in which I'm trying to create MOC's that look as if they could have been part of the Lego castle product lineup from the late 80's. This posting can also be found here on MOCpages. The Apiary is one of my attempts to get a little industry going outside the walls of the castle. It was also an attempt to get a set in the £10 bracket which means less than 100 pieces. Design I chose The Apiary, bee keeping, because it was an important part of medieval life. Bees produce honey which was the only sweetner readily available in Medieval Europe and their wax produced the finest candles that graced castles and churches across Christendom. Additionally, perhaps most importantly, the props are fairly simple! The beehives are simplest in the extreme, the cauldron for boiling wax similarly so. The wooden canopy is mounted on hinge plates and kept up using a 6l brown bar, it's primarily there to add some variation when inserted into a long stretch of wall. The wall itself was limited to a single 4444 panel with an extra studs worth of buttress to take it to 6 studs wide. The only other detail was to use a 1x8 arch to support a section of wall running perpendicular to the main wall. This is the first time I've done a three way joint the wall and provides a starting point for a more complex wall scheme within my town that cna separate individual wards and areas. Minifig selection was easy, a peasant with paniers to tend the hives and a soldier on the wall to guard. Analysis Story: There is no story it's just an addiiton to castle life. Maybe a third minifig who could steal or attack the peasant would add story to the set but it would push it just out of it's price bracket. Playability: No tricky access, what you see is what you get. The addition of a third minifig would allow the playing out of a scene where the peasant is protected from the thief by the soldier. Buildability: Nothing problematic. 10 steps on the instructions at most. Cost: ~88 bricks. similar to 6918 Blacksmith Attack so it should hit the £10 price point. Consistency: The domes are an anarchronism, they weren't available until 1995. Initially I'd used Tan for the hives which is another anachronism as it didn't become publically available until the 90's; however, I reverted back to yellow for the actual build. My use of cheese slopes for the fire was for the purposes of expediency only, at some point I will correct this and replace them with 1x1 plates in transparent red and yellow. The above issues aside I believe that it looks like it fits, the photo's below showing it inserted between 6074 Black Falcons Fortress, 6067 Guarded Inn and 6041 Armour Shop. If anything the Apiary's small size means that it's lost amongst the larger sets. However it does serve it's alterior purpose of getting some industry outside the walls and providing a 3-way joint in the wall to help divide my medieval town into sections. Conclusion I'm torn on this one, it's a nice little set but I think it's lacking something to make it desirable. Other than the urge to collect, what is there that sells this set? For a set that's in general retail, unlike say the City Modulars or UCS Star Wars which are clearly targeted at adult fans and collectors, there needs to be an immediately act-able story to sell it. Hence the predominance at the £10 bracket of simple cars and good-vs-bad minifig sets. You don't get that instant play from boiling candles and keeping bees. I'd love to know how many little sets Lego designs and gives to the play-test group only to find that the kids would really rather play cops-and-robbers or knights jousting. This is where a third antagonist minifig would be useful, it's what makes 6918 Blacksmith Attack a sellable proposition, it's not just about bashing metal it's about defending the forge against a Dragon raider. Conflict is drama, drama sells product. The Series

It's also worth noting that Bricklink's set inventory is also a great way of working out what sets to try and source in bulk. Let's say that you're after 3832 Plate 2x10, Green: Bricklink will tell you which set's it's in and in what quantities. In this case it's 3862-1 Hogwarts game that has the most. In fact the games are quite good for getting parts in bulk without having to pay a minifig premium. I recall someone on the forums mentioning that they'd picked up 3853 Bannana Balance in bulk just to get the leaves and brown technic pieces for making trees.

Comparison between price per piece in a set and prices on Bricklink is misleading as is prices between Bricklink and Lego's own Pick-A-Brick. Bricklink prices are driven by supply and demand. For items with a low supply, eg. minifigs as there's one minifig per set, and with a high demand, eg. minifigs particularly the army building minifigs, then the prices will be high, pieces which are common or easily available from PAB walls will be relatively cheap. Since Lego manufactures the pieces it's prices are driven by the amount of ABS that goes into a part and the amount of additional print on them that they have to do. It's a different mechanic driving their pricing strategy. Plates are tricky, they don't appear in the same sort of quantities in brick boxes and they use quite a bit of ABS hence are more pricey direct from Lego. The large plates don't fit into Pick-a-brick cups which meams they're harder to get into the BrickLink supply chain. For Hungary I suggest you look at some of the German Bricklink stores, shipping isn't too pricey to other European destinations and some of them hold huge stocks. Also, isn't Hungary one of Lego's manufacturing bases? Does the factory have an outlet? Lego press release about hungarian factory

A really good attempt at updating a classic of it's era to a more recent style, although I have to agree with some of the other comments in that the red might be a bit too blatant. It's probably fine where you've replaced the dark blue but the addition cheese slopes on the crenelations around the top are just too much and a more subdued dark bley might have work. A really good idea and take it as a compliment that all the critique so far is trying to fiddle with the detail of the icing rather than complaining about the cake! Looking forward to seeing what you choose for your next update.

Why? It would be good to understand your reasoning behind switching out the dark gray.

The sixth set in a series of MOCs in which I'm trying to create MOC's that look as if they could have been part of the Lego castle product lineup from the late 80's. This posting can also be found here on MOCpages. Design The idea for this one was fairly simple, I was looking for ways to use up some of the many spare BURP's that I've got lying around and decided that I should build a little hill with a tower atop it. Simple? From an idea perspective yes, from the design and play perspectives; no! This design was one of the earliest that I embarked on but it required several months of revision before it reached the stage that I'm happy with it. Iteration 1 As this was one of the first sets that I started to design I hadn't started focusing on the criteria (listed below) that I now keep in the forefront of my mind. I blithely fired up LDD and set about building a hill out of BURPs. With this first design my idea was to create a cave where things could happen, a tacit nod to story and playability. Some things became evident fairly early on and were carried through subsequent iterations. Steps to access the various levels A corner tower that introduces a 90degree bend into the wall Unequal length wall stubs for connecting to the rest of the castle A forestmen opposing force with grappling hooks to scale the wall. The problem with this first design is that the cave isn't accessible, even little hands are going to struggle to place anything in there, therefore this design has limited play value. The idea is still valid, but the design doesn't quite hit the mark. Iteration 2 With the second iteration I opened the design up. Gone were the little arches over the cave entrace, replaced with big 10stud with openings. The tightly enclosed lower wall segment received a similar treatment whilst the overall shape remains intact, keeping the aforementioned design features such as the stairs. Better, but it's lacking something; story! For a set which is going to have about 300 pieces and retail for maybe £40 there needs to be a pretty convincing story, two forestmen storming the tower isn't that convincing. Design fails, back to the drawing board. Iteration 3 I have a love/hate relationship with "action" features in Lego sets, sometimes they're just too gimmicky for my liking and seem like they've been placed there to cater for kids that don't have any imagination. I have to put those feelings to one side and come up with some action to make the design more playable. The first idea was something to top off the tower, thankfully flick shot gimmicks don't fit the 80's ambiance so I don't have to go down that route. Instead I take a 6012 Siege Cart remove the carriage and wheels and adapt it to fit onto a turntable and pivot hinge. First playable action, the defender can shoot some big stuff back, let's hope the forest men can creep up on them. The second itea harked back to the cave of the first iteration, what about a secret passage? I wanted this to be a bit more than just a collapsing piece of wall and I'm willing to sacrifice the lower chamber of the tower to get something useful. A rockface goes in behind the arches which supports a trapdoor in the floor of the upper chamber. A couple of slopes provide a chute leading to a lifting rock on the outside. We're getting somewhere now! The shape of the structure is good, there are play elements in the siege weapon on top and the secret passage below. The passage is good because either side could use it depending on how a child want's to play, the people inside can escape out or the people outside can break in. The only problem is that we're at 380 bricks and I haven't added minifigs which will count for at least another 30 pieces. This is well above the 300 brick target that I was aiming for. The design is close but it's not there yet. I did try to tweak the design but I only saved a dozen bricks, not the hundred that I need to remove. Iteration 4 A rebuild of Iteration 3 from the ground up. From the outset I have 5 fully kitted out minifigs and the siege weapon stuffed into a corner of my LDD design space so that I can keep an eye on the brickcount from the very beginning. The shape remains but I pay carefull attention to my layers, unlike iteration 3 there's a layer of plates running all the way through the first floor which means I can use a simpler plating pattern with bigger plates rather that working around the features. This also simplifies the stairs to the upper level and their associated wall. I simplify the rockwork on the outside, limiting the amount of extras added to the BURPs. By the end of it, a piece count of 307. That's within spitting distance of the 300 target so I'm happy. The following screens capture show some of the play features in more detail. With the redesign one intention was to have a string pull up the trapdoor, the highlighted components show where the string would be threaded first through hole near the roof, then out through a technic brick on the side. The other capture shows the open secret entrance. I also considered replacing the slope by the stairs with one of the large 30249 Slope 6x1x5 pieces, but the piece savings weren't as significant as I'd hope and I lost the detailing of the arch so the modification was reverted. Physical Build Designing in LDD is one thing, seeing it in real life is something different. There was nothing particularly complex about the build, I corrected a couple of design errors that are obvious in real life but not in LDD. This added a couple of bricks but spotting a line of short plates that could be replaced by a single longer plate clawed those bricks back. LDD files are attached to the MOCPages version. It's a solid build, the base of the hilltop is probably more solid than what you'd expect from the Lego design studio. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it leaves me thinking have I used too many bricks? Could I have got away with less? Regardless, phsical photo's are below. Analysis For those that haven't seen my earlier posting on The Maidens Tower the criteria that I'm working to are similar to those that the actual Lego designers would work to. Story - Each set needs to have the ability to have it's own story constructed around it. Playability - Sets need to be playable. To a certain extent this can trump reality, rooms that hands can put minifigs in are more important than accurate scale and/or making sure that every room has a door and that therer are stairs to reach the battlements. Little minds (or big ones for that matter) quickly fill in the irrelevant blanks to get on with important tasks of rescuing maidens, slaying dragons or stealing treasure. Build-ability - Sets need to be build-able. If I can't provide sensible instructions for my creations then they can't be built. As a rule of thumb I should probably be looking at one instruction step for every 15 bricks in the creation. Therefore a 300 brick model would have at most 20 instruction steps. Cost - All Lego sets are built to a budget. My Own Creations should try to fit the price bands that TLG aims for. As a rule of thumb the total cost of parts on BrickLink based on the BrickLink average should be the same as current sets cost. It's not an accurate measure, scarcity of parts on BrickLink pushes the price up, whereas the cost to TLG to produce a brick isn't constrained by it's rarity. Consistency - The creations should be of a design that makes them consistent with sets released in the mid to late 80's, the Lion and Black Falcon era's. Story: The story is there in the form of the Forestmen trying to storm the tower, but in a large setup it could the same secret passage play-feature could be used by the defenders to escape or launch a counter-attack. It's not the strongest story that we've had, but it's not the weakest either. Playability: Getting minifigs in and out of the secret passage is a bit fiddly but the slopes within mean that anyone going down the trapdoor ends up against the moving rock ready to extract. The far side of the interior of the tower is a bit inaccessible due to it's distance from the outside. In future I probably shouldn't create anything thats deeper than it is high, everything else is accessible. I'm glad that I left the studs on the BURPs since it gives places to clip on the Forestmen when they're scaling the tower. Build-ability: A simple build, although I've not created instructions for it, I reckon 40 east steps building from the baseplates up. There are no fancy techniques utilised. Cost: At 307 pieces, including Minifigs. I was quite surprised in that there are no historic examples around the 300 piece mark, early to mid 250 yes, 400 and beyond, yes, but nothing in between until 6088 Robbers Retreat at 277 pieces in 1998's Ninja Theme. From the modern lineup 7079 Drawbridge Defense at 338 pieces is nearest, retailing at £27. Consistency: BURP's themselves are something of an anachronism, not arriving in the castle lineup until the Dragon Knights era. The trapdoor piece is also of more modern origin but I could replicate it using period parts if I really needed to. Those issues aside I think it fits, the following shot show it between 6067 Guarded Inn and 6074 Black Falcons Fortress. Conclusion I think I'm finally happy with the design on the fourth attempt. I still wish it had more story and the longer I look at I the more I think it needs some more minifig weapons and utensils in terms of spare swords, shields and spears, etc... In the wider perspective is there enough of it to stand up to the parent test, ie. would a parent buy this for little Jonny? It's expensive enough that the temptation would be to go for a fully fledged castle for just a couple more bucks, rather than an expensive extension. Whilst the expansion idea works for the smaller sets that I've produced to date, I'm not sure it translates well into the larger price-points. Unfortunately I don't get the sales opportunity or market research panels to tell me whether my gut instincts are borne true or not, although feel free to pass your own judgement. The Series

I wish they would but the days when the 4444 panel reigned supreme are long gone; the building techniques and detail that we've come to expect are a world apart from what Lego was producing in the 80's.

I think your price points are a little optimistic, but the designs do look as if they've come straight out of the Lego Design Studios. Do you know what brick-counts you have on each of the sets? If you know your Brick and Minifig count then you can compare it against other licensed themes to get a rough idea of the price point that they might have hit had they been real. Definitely some well thought out, neat and tidy, little sets that look like real shop bought product. Well done.

As far as we are aware the Castle theme for the next year or two is going to be Lord Of The Rings to coincide with the two hobbit movies. Lego have not announced any non-branded castle sets in the immediate future, although for the hardcore castle fans the Monster Fighters theme that is due to be released later this year has some appeal.

Thanks for the thanks. Sometimes it takes a while to get noticed around here. Part of my design brief was that the sets be buildable, they all come with .lxf files if you want to build them up yourselves. None of the parts are particularly hard to come by, although some of the half timbered 4444 panels are a little pricey due to scarcity. I also have LDraw derived instructions for some of them which I could probably .pdf. If you've got the bits and feel like building them up I'd love to know how they turn out and how they fit in with anyone elses landscape, whether they're fun to play with, etc... I can see your point. I was following my source material but with a horse instead of a camel and sticking to my limitation of 80's era parts. I did try using minifig paniers either side of a brick in the horses saddle slot, but the paniers are just too small to look right on a horse. I also tried bringing the red 2x2's so that they lay against the side of the horse but that again felt wrong the small gap was preferable. It's all a compromise, in the end there's only so much that can be done with 8 bricks and a horse. What I hope is that the comprise I came to is obvious enough that someone playing with it realises it's goods being carried by a horse. Indeed. However, recently I've been looking at 10188 and thinking "How could I turn that in classic castle?"

The 5th in a series of MOCs where I'm trying to create sets that could have been part of the late 80's line-up. Design The Market By The Wall idea came about when building up a modern set one morning; there are no prizes but I'll leave you to guess which set it is, post in the comments if you think you know. As I was building it up I was thinking to myself "this could work as a medieval set".Another of the hooks that drew me to the idea was that I have been playing around with ideas and mechanisms for creating sets that extend away from the castle wall rather than along it, ie. trying to get more into the middle of my castle compound rather than forever extending the wall to greater and greater lengths. I felt that this market idea had great potential for allowing this. With the memory of the build fresh in my mind I brave the chilly January weather, board a tube train heading into London town, find myself a seat and power up LDD on the laptop.I stay fairly true to my inspiration. A tower is built up from an 8x8 base which has the relevant technic bricks and pins to clip into an 80's castle wall. The external arch is "closed off" with a pair of brown round topped gates which can form another entrance into what is becoming a walled village rather than a castle. Extending away from the tower, perpendicular to the wall, are two arches on round pillars terminating in a set of stairs. Initially these were much "heavier" but a subsequent tweak turned them back into something less bulky, the intermediate point is shown below. Whilst putting this together I was also researching bricks since I would need a number of Brick, Arch 1x6x2 in dark grey, I was also looking for dark grey Brick, Round 2x2 but was quite surprised to see that these don't actually exist so whilst the design utilises dark grey columns the actual realisation has to use light grey. A second story to the the tower is built up with light grey arches and topped off with a black roof reminiscent of the Black Falcons fortress. Some torches and leaves add a bit of colour and texture to the build without adding complication. '> The interesting part of the market design is actually creating the various stalls and props that make the market. What makes this interesting is the challenge of staying true to the late 80's roots and the minimal utensils and accessories that existed at that point in time. There were no apples, bannanas or cherries back in the 80's, it all has to come from brick and plate!When designing these little props the other important question is "When to stop?" It would be very easy to go on adding props and little bits-n-bobs to the market, but all of this would add to the cost of the set. Therefore a designer has to ask himself what's the minimum I can get away with to evoke the scene that I'm trying to depict? Once that question has been answered you can ask What can I add to take me to the price point that this set is targetting? I'm aiming for the £20 price point, which gives me a budget of about 230 bricks. Personally I think that having to build from brick and plate makes this slightly easier, there's not the temptation to just throw in another cherry or banana for the sake of it.The first task was to check my references for inspiration, I trawled Brickset looking at all the sets between 1984 and 1991 hoping to find a City set that had a bit of a marketplace. Surprisingly there weren't any city food shops, lots of post-offices and garages but no food. The city sets tended to either used custom utensils like the simple 80's era spanner, spade and pickaxe or they used Tile 1x2 to represent things like letters and parcels. I did find one restaurant that used a barrel and tap on it's side and another used Tile, Round 2x2 as plates. So, I had very little historic precedent to refer back to.Next I compiled a list of potential props and market items: Upright barrels with stuff in, eg. weapons Barrel on stand with tap Paniers with 1x1 rounds in red and green to represent fruit Round 2x2 plates in yellow to represent flat-breads Bar 1x6 with open studs for spades, brooms, pick-axes, lances, axes, etc... A Simple cart Glasses, bottles, etc... The weapons got me thinking about grindstones and a couple of bricks later I'd produced a small grindstone accompanied by a weapon rack and a barrel of swords. A 2x6 table was decorated with bottles formed from cones with either 1x1 round plate tops or jewel stoppers. A couple of glasses finish it off. A hand cart was another option, simply built, green 1x1 rounds were used for it's load. A panier with red 1x1 rounds represents fruit, orginally intended to hang of the above table it ended up hanging off the back of the cart when I built the set for real. Equally it could have gone on someones back. A small stand is produced for a barrel with tap. Two mugs accompany the barrel. I was aiming for 4 minifigs. A guard overlooking the market was a fairly obvious choice, he gets a spear. The remaining figures have already been shown above with their props. One male peasant to operate the grindstone, another to sell from either the table or the cart and a female figure to sell beer from the barrel. The final addition was a horse with paniers. Final design in LDD, lxf file attached. Analysis For a more detailed explanation of what I'm looking at in the Analysis please see my Maiden's Tower MOC and it's associated description. Story: Not much really. It fits into the same category as 6067 Guarded Inn; there's no direct story it just adds to the castle. Playability: There are no difficult areas to get minifigs into, indeed on this one most of the action happens away from the building. The props all sit neatly on the floor and I think that they have large enough bases so that they won't topple over, even on carpet. Build-ability: Easy. There are no complex building techniques used, the wall itself being a standard build straight up from the baseplates. The only part of the design that might raise an eyebrow with the engineering department is that the slope 33 3x1 are held in place by friction with nothing below to lock them together. The props are no more complex than the sort that you'd find in something like 7952 Advent Calendar. The realisation of the building is shwon below, the full market scene is the headline image on this page. Cost: 239 pieces including the minfigs, weapons and props. The nearest historical matches are 6067 Guarded Inn at 248 pieces and 6062 Battering Ram at 236 pieces. The modern equivalent would be 7188 King's Carriage Escape which at 286 pieces is slight above our current brickcount. Unsurprisingly the set that was my inspiration comes in at 258 pieces and is the £30 price bracket but it's a licensed set which adds a bit of a premium. Consistency: I believe the overall design still fits with the 80's ambiance. The anachronisms are the use of modern Minifigs for the peasants, the actual props howevr stick true to the 80's aim. As usual the proof is how it looks when clipped into existing sets. The photo's below show the fairly sizeable domestic corner of my medieval world with the Market clipped in between 6067 Guarded Inn and 6040 Blacksmith Shop with my own Stables tucked in there as well. I think it all fits, but feel free to draw your own conclusion and post comment. Conclusion This set came together really quite quickly and was very enjoyable to design. Unlike some of my other designs there have been no redesigns but that could be attributed to the fact that it is a reimagining of an existing set which has already been through the development process in it's own right. The little props were a joy to put together and I'll have to try it again in future sets rather than concentrating solely on the buildings.I always have worries when a set doesn't have a story associated with it. Unlike the licensed set that was my inspiration, this doesn't recreate key scenes from a movie therefore it doesn't have that pre-existing narrative to drive it. However, one of the greatest castle sets of all time 6067 Guarded Inn doesn't have a story behind it, therefore there is scope for none story driven sets and I feel that this Market By The Wall might stand up better than most. The Series WallMarket.lxf

Harry Potter is stopping this year as there are no longer any films to generate sales on the back of. Star Wars is continuing because George Lucas keeps releasing the original films, and there's Clone Wars to get the kids interested. LoTR will most likely continue for as long as the Hobbit movies are around and in the general public's (not LoTR geeks, but your average person on the street) imagination, which is probably about a year to 18 months after the second hobbit movie comes out. The same has been true for all licensed themes Indy, PoP, PoTC, they last for about a year after the movie has stopped in cinemas (or theatres as the Americans like to call them).

Pictures from the German toyfair are cropping up, Brickset posted a link to this Slovenia site. I think the Monster Hunters theme might be of interest to us castle builders, 6th picture down. As a theme it's been a bit dismissed, everyone's concentrating on the LoTR sets, but Dracula's castle looks nice. Hopefully more pictures will surface. Whilst Monster Hunting isn't technically Historic, I don't see why my medieval villagers can't go hunting werewolves with their pitchforks and drowning old ladies that happen to have a crooked nose!

The fourth set in a series of MOCs in which I'm trying to create MOC's that look as if they could have been part of the Lego castle product lineup from the late 80's. This posting is also available on MOC Pages Idea The stables was born out of the fact that I had a 6040 Blacksmith for shoeing my horses, a 6041 Armourers Shop for arming my knights, but nowhere for the horses themselves to live. Given that a good horse was worth a small fortune in the medieval period, horses were always well looked after. Design I knew that I needed another piece of hinged wall rather than a straight section so that it would be possible to form a curtain wall of my castle / walled village. The hard part of any hinged structure is working out where to place the hinges so that the structure can be fold whilst still retaining any protrusions and surfaces that were originally envisaged. My intention with hinged section of wall was to allow it to fold to 90degrees to lie flat against the stable structure. I also wanted the standard projecting parapet on the outside which complicated the positioning of the upper hinge, eventually I opted to use a plate hinge seated in floor of the parapet rather than bringing the parapet back in to accomodate a brick hinge. When fully folded this does leave a gap in the parapet, but nothing that a competent soldier on the wall couldn't defend.The stable structure itself is fairly simple, a couple of 1x6 arches on pillars of 1x1 rounds give some texture to the building. By offsetting the central pillar by half a stud and ensuring that it's only a single brick in width I think I've kept the structure open. Whereas if I'd opted for a column 2 bricks wide in the front it would have had the opposite effect and closed off much of the interior. Upon building the model I realised that the dark-tan plate I was using for the base of the stables just wasn't long enough to adequately clip down the horses, a problem you can't see in LDD as it assumes every connection is perfect and doesn't account for gravity and leverage. The 6x12 plate that I'd originally utilised for the base was replaced with a pair of 6x8 plates in an 8x12 arrangement. This chnage also necessitated a slight remodelling of the wall structure to provide adequate support for the baseplates given that they now had a split running through the middle. Thankfully the split lines up with the central structure that divides the two stalls so there was a jumper plate at the front that can act to secure the joint.For minifigs the key items are the horses, a pair of which are supplied, but I also added a soldier on the wall and a derivative of the blacksmith to act as the stableman. For props a broom and shovel are present for mucking out, spare clips on the wall gained mini-swords. From a collection of small black pieces I put together a saddle stand and the entire lot was finished off with a couple of yellow bricks for hay. Analysis Story: Not much really. It fits into the same category as 6067 Guarded Inn; there's no direct story it just adds to the castle. Playability: No difficult areas to get minifigs into, with the baseplate redesign the horses clip in properly when they're stabled. The props all sit neatly on the floor and have large enough bases that they won't topple over, even on carpet. Build-ability: Fairly easy, nothing too complex. The transition from offset back to on-stud alignment at the top of the central column might need a two step cutout illustration, but the rest is all fairly standard. Probably about 15 minutes for the veteran builder with all the parts easily to hand. Cost: The set comes in at 191 pieces including the minifigs, weapons and props. The nearest historical matches are 6067 Guarded Inn at 248 pieces and 6062 Battering Ram at 236 pieces. The modern equivalent would be 7187 Escape from the Dragon's Prison which at 185 pieces fills the £19 price bracket. This set would therefore be targetting the £19-£20 price point. Consistency: I believe the overall design still fits with the 80's ambiance. The only anachronism is the use of Dark Tan for the base, a colour which didn't appear until after the turn of the millenium, however I believe it fits, doesn't obviously detract and provides a useful colour variantion in the set that wouldn't have happened if I'd used the standard green or grey for the baseplate. As usual the proof is how it looks when clipped into existing sets, the photo below shows the domestic corner of my castle, with the stables clipped in between 6041 Armourer Shop and 6040 Blacksmith Shop with my own Maidens Tower on one extreme and 6067 Guarded Inn at the other. I think it fits, but feel free to draw your own conclusion and post comment. Conclusions It's a nice little addition to a Castle, it fits in with the rest of the sets but I do worry that there's no immediate storyline behind it that drives it. This isn't necessarily a problem, neither 6067 Guarded Inn nor 6040 Blacksmith have an obvious storyline beyond things that Knights need in a castle. Perhaps the inclusion of a knight would add a bit more, but would push the cost up by another £1. The Series

Mostly it was the Greeks against the Mythical creatures, the Romans had foreign territories to conquer. I see nothing with giving the kids these days a bit of a classical education, the big question is would the parents buy it? At least if there is a movie like Gladiator that generates a popular interest in antiquity then Lego are now a in a position to capitalise on it reasonably quickly since they have the moulds to available to them. Designing the sets is probably the quicker part of the process, the killer is the buying cycle where toy-retailers are ordering now at the toy fairs for Christmas in 10months time, during which time popular interest in the subject might have waned. Let's just hope they do a non-licensed historic theme alongside LoTR in next years lineup.

For an Army building set, give them just that! 852922 Battle Pack is one example, although historically you've got 6103 Castle Minifigures. The question I'd be asking would should we go with single faction sets like 852922 Dragon Knights, or mixed faction sets like 6013 Castle Minifigures? I'm sure the TLG accountants and product analysts have histroic sales figures that they can use to determine whether single or mixed faction packs will sell better. Average cost of a minifig seems to be around £2, $3 or 3EUR, so 4 or 5 minifigs with weapons should retail for about £10, $15 or 15EUR. A low enough price point that they're just about in the "impulse" category. As a designer my aim with 5 figures would be to provide 5 torso variants, 5 head variants and 5 weapon/helmet variants. If you multiply those 5 options together 5 x 5 x 5 then you get 125 possible combinations before you repeat. No scenery! Army building isn't about scenery it's about massed ranks of Minifigs. That's not to say that your columns aren't nice, they're a great start for a moc but they're not the aim of Army building. I would however look to produce some other small sets in the £10 price bracket that contain some "built" props. My example of this would be 6012 Siege Cart, 2 minifigures and a simple trebuchet. Obviously the precise details would need to be tailored to the faction in question, I'm no expert on LoTR so I really don't know what to suggest. Some form of simple battering ram for the Ork faction perhaps. For the riders of Rohan two riders on horses with weaponry would hit the £10 bracket, a historic example would be 6021 Jousting Knights. Only time will tell if Lego decides to take LoTR down the Army Building route. At the moment they seem to be going down the Minifig collection route with each set having their own individual minifigs that can be collected. The fellowship plays to this marketing strategy very nicely, I'm sure that when the Hobit releases come out we'll find they've pursued the same strategy with the band of dwarves that accompany Bilbo.

As much as we'd like to see the Falcons come back, it's just not going to happen, it just doesn't make sense. Minifigs have come a long way since the always smiley 80's. People expect printing front, back and in-between, a dozen the colours with flecks of gold. Whilst new Falcons might look nice, they're never going to fit with that army that you've quietly been amassing since the 80's. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing and Lego tipped the AFOL's a nod by including a Falcon print shield in 10223 Kingdoms Joust, but it's not the presage to a new wave of Falcons. I'm a Falcon fan, the Black Falcons could wup those furry footed upstarts right the way back to their bonny little burrows; however I'm also a pragmatist and a return to the Black Falcons isn't likely, and if it did happen it wouldn't be the Falcons you wistfully remember.

I hate to say it but I think Lego will be taking a break from medieval stye castles whilst the LoTR theme is running. One would take sales from the other and it's the LoTR which will be the big seller because it will have all the ancillary marketing from the Hobbit Films helping promote it. The best we could hope for is some form of historic theme that doesn't overlap with LoTR. Similarly, no overlap with Ninjago, so no chance of a historic theme from the east in the immediate future either. A return of the Western theme could be one option. I was in a dark age at that point so I don't know how well it sold to know whether it might make a comeback. Ancient Rome/Greece might be another, but how many kids (remembering that the volume market is not AFOLs but parents buying for their kids) sit down at breakfast and say "Mummy, I'd like to recreate scenes from Homer's Odyssey today!" or "Daddy, can I have a Pegasus so that I can pretend to be Bellerophon fighting the Chimera." With PoTC on it's way out now that 4th movie has long since passed, there's an opening for something Napoleonic, although from the pester perspective of kids Pirates are way more exciting than the Grand Armée. I wouldn't expect a resurrection of the prototype Eurpoa theme just yet. If we've got to wait until after LoTR for a return to classic unlicensed castles, then I think that the Robin Hood theme is due for a comeback. There's plenty of playability in robbing from the rich and giving to the poor and plenty of opportunities for both Castles, Forest Hideouts, Domestic scenes and Carts and Carriages, ie. a full enough range to fill a theme. If Disney or Warner suddenly come up with a Western, Roman, Napoleonic or Robin Hood movie blockbuster then Lego might just license it up as a theme if they think they'll make the sales.

Thank you all for your responses, I'm glad that I'm hitting the right notes on the 80's styling. I've got a couple more of these little sets lined up to show over the next few weeks and then something slightly larger. I did think briefly about wooden props and whilst they would have been nice I think there's more playability in the cart than there is in a wooden prop. Part of my design brief is to ensure that the sets have playability rather than then being purely artistic detail.

That explains why I ended up with a whole bunch of 1x1 Pearl Grey bricks in amongst an eBay purchase of old-grey castle bricks... I've got no idea what I'll use them for, I'm sure something will come up however.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead." William Shakespeare: King Henry V Act 3, Scene 1 The third set in a series of MOCs in which I'm trying to create MOC's that look as if they could have been part of the Lego castle product lineup from the late 80's. Design The design for the model was very much story driven, it was there from the outset rather than something I was trying to retro-fit later in the development phase. The inspiration came from looking at a Panel 2x6x6 Log Wall and thinking that it would be a useful for filling the gap in a castle wall and thus 'Defending The Breach' was born. I wanted something that was deliberately simple; aiming for the 100 bricks mark and the £15 price point. My usual rules would apply, see the Rationale section in my Maidens Tower posting for a longer explanation of what I'm working towards. I started with a standard 4 panel wide stretch of wall, but removed the middle two panels to make the breach, for structural purposes a light grey 1x12 brick ties the bottom together securing the green plates that make up the base. The log panels sit immediately behind, their location pretty much dictated by the rear tabs on the 4444 panels. The next task was to fill what was currently a very square gap with some degree of ruined masonry. At this point I knew that I wanted to use two Brick,Arch 1x3s to mimic the shape of windows that should have been there in the 4444 panels. On the right hand side the arch was positioned where it should be, held in place below by a little stack of 1x1 and 1x2 bricks and locked in above by bricks up to the parapet. On the left hand side I wanted the arch as part of the rubble, I also wanted to get some non-linearity into the rubble. The arch was duly attached to a Brick, Modified 1x2 w/Pin which pushes into a Technic, Brick 1x2 w/Hole brick and swings down until the arch touches the base-plate. Addition rubble came from 1x2 bricks and slopes. The LDD screenshot below shows the underlying structure before the rubble and detailing are added. The two sections of parapet were built up with plates locking the log panels into the 4444 panels for stability. The log wall was topped with another two rows of log bricks, a small parapet and a ladder up the back. The final detail that I knew I wanted to add was a selection of 'items' from around the castle that had been propped up again breach to shore it up. As well as a couple of bits of light grey and black rubble and some barrels I elected to use a very simple cart turned on it's side. The hard part with this is how much to add, it would be very easy to just throw extra plates and bricks into this pile but this would be moving away from making it look like and actual set and into detailed vignette territory. I was happy with the cart since it has play use elsewhere, but I decided that only those things clipped to the base-plate would be part of the supporting material. Minifig selection is again fairly easy, two attackers, two defenders. I chose Black Falcons to defend and Lion Knights to attack, but it could easily be the other way around. Spears seemed to be good defending weapons, so we'll give one defender a spear and attach another the wall. Arrows and another good defence, so the second defender gets a bow and quiver. For the first attacker a standard sword and shield, for the second an axe. A spare sword fills the clip on the rear. LDD screenshot below show the final product of the design phase, .lxf file is attached to this post. Analysis Story: The story is in there from the start in a fairly blatant fashion. Two men are defending a hastily patched breach in the wall against an attack by another two men. Playability: No difficult areas to get minifigs into, they're either on the floor attacking on stuck onto the parapet defending. The cart will fall off it you move the set around too much, but this is no worse than minifigs falling off. The cart can also be used standalone. Build-ability: Fairly easy, nothing too complex. If all the parts were fresh out of a bag, a competent builder easily complete the build within about 10 minutes. Unlike previous builds I hadn't drawn up instructions for this set, but I can't imagine it being more than 15 steps for the wall and 3-4 steps for the cart sub-assembly. Images below show the built set. Cost: A very sparse 117 pieces including the minifigs and weapons. Within it's historical context it's very close to 6041 Armour Shop at 114 pieces and 6040 Blacksmith Shop at 92 pieces. Additional minifigs and a 4th panel make it slightly larger than the Blacksmith shop, so probably just a pound or two more expensive. The nearest modern set would be 7187 Escape from the Dragon's Prison which has 185 pieces and retailed for £19 ($20), by taking away the siege engine and horse for 7187 you're getting close to what I'd designed and dropping back towards the £15 price point that I was trying to hit. Consistency: Use of the 30140 Panel 2 x 6 x 6 Log Wall (Palisade) is an anachronism since the part wasn't introduced until the mid-90's, however I believe the overall design still fits with the 80's ambiance. As usual the proof is how it looks when combined with existing sets, the photo's below show it clipped between 6074 Black Falcons Fortress and 6061 Siege Tower. Conclusion I'm quite please with this little set. Simple, direct, with 4 minifigs it's appealing to the army builder and it's a storyline driven set. DefendingTheBreach.lxf

An interesting topic and a couple of very nice little builds. "What would Lego do" is a topic that I've been considering in my own 80's style MOC's The Maidens Tower and The Merchants House". If you're trying to make a set like Lego would do, then you have to start thinking and building like their design office rather than a MOC'r on the forums. For a set that is targetted at parents buying for their kids (which the LOTR sets are unlike say Modular Buildings and UCS Star Wars which is aimed at adult collectors for display) then you have to think about playability, buildability and price. Playability: In general sets need something of a storyline. In the case of licensed set this usually means an interesting or pivotal scene in the licensed film that can be acted out. Buildability: It's got to be buildable by a child of 10 years old. Lego's building style has definitely changed over the thirty years that I've been playing with it, contrast the 80's panel castles with something like the latest Kingdoms releases, but even Medieval Market Village with all it's detail isn't anywhere near as detailed as the creations of the MOCer's here on the forums. With no disrespect intended to Derfel, but Lego could never release one of his creations because the instructions for the walls of 1x1 studs would send even the most dedicated AFOL insane. Cost: Lego aim for a set of price points and that dictates how many pieces and minifigs are in a set. Use Brickset or Peeron to go over the last few waves of Castle sets and you'll be able to see piece counts and prices. Try to aim for a selection of price points and their associated piece counts, Lego never releases a theme with everything at the same price, there's "the big thing" for $70 (Mill Village Raid), a couple of mid-range items either side of $40 (Escape From Dragon's Prison), impulse sets at $15-$20 (Blacksmith Attack) and some minifig and prop sets at $5 (Jester). So if you want to be like Lego then you have to be answering: What's the playability behind each Hobbit Hole? Can it be sensibly built? How many pieces and in it and which price point are you aiming for? In my opinion (and don't let my opinion stop you from carrying on with your work on these modulars) I can't see Lego releasing much in the way of scenery for LOTR, it's very much a collectors / an army building theme hence the emphasis on minifigs. Maybe they'll do something like 10193 MMV but with Hobbit holes instead of the half timbered buildings and a set of tables and other loose props to recreate the party that they have at the of the first book/movie. Again think of it from a parents view, should I buy little Johnny some buildings or should I buy him an elf/orc army? Small boys being what they are the latter will probably win out.

6081 King's Mountain Fortress has a similar design, the wall atop the raised base-plate is only 1 brick high. From a historical standpoint this isn't entirely inaccurate, the primary obstacle that an attacker must overcome is the slope of the raised baseplate. The wall at the top is there to act as shelter for the defenders (from arrows and the like) whilst they counter-attack from the top. If you do a Google image search for York City Walls (York being a medieval town in Yorkshire, England) you'll find that their city walls aren't that tall and sit atop a much more gentle slope than the raised baseplates. If Lego wantted to be historically accurate the wall should probably be two or three bricks high with crenelations another 2 bricks, however that would have cost more and probably detracted from the playability of the set.

Once a designer declares "This is it! My masterpiece! The ultimate model!" the next thing he's likely to hear is his colleague saying, "It's the wrong colour and the thingies are waaaay too small!" and thus begins the process of peer review. Then engineering get hold of it and tell you that your construction techniques are going to break the bricks, technical design get hold of it and tell you that there's no way they can create instructions that will ever make sense and finally the play-test kids tell you it's boring and that they want more fire-engines... I'd honestly love to know how many alternative variations get developed in the design studio before the final production ready design is actually chosen. My suspicion would be many weeks of revisions. If we're being true to the rest of the design ethos that I've already outlined then peer-review and revision are just another part of that process. Yes, you're probably right. The obscured windows had been niggling at me as well, but I'd held onto the 4444 panels out of habit. At 5 studs width there's no way that the 4444 panels will center neatly within the arches, so I'll probably change them to a large 1x6x5 brick and whatever else is needed to fill the gaps. At the same time another thing that had been bugging me was the fence beneath the 'escape door' which wasn't centered either. Use of a Window 1x2x2 2/3 with Rounded Top is anachronism as they didn't appear until 1996, but at 2 studs wide it's a better fit even if the Interesting thought. My original intention had been to keep a bit of height in the system. Often the 80's castle walls feel very low, whilst the modern designs such as 8877 Vladeks Dark Fortress do a very good job of getting height into the designs for a very low brick count through inventive use of sloped panels and BURPS. A half hour of playing with the desing in LDD yielded the following. On the plus side it gives plenty of connection options allowing both straight line and right angle connections. The downside is that the brick budget has gone up to 283 bricks which would push it into the next price-point. Not a real concern, but one of my longer/larger goals is to try and have a product line-up that encompasses each of the price-points. All of the above was done on the underground whilst commuting into the office, so no access to Peeron. File for ldd attached below. With hindsight what I should probably have done, and might try this evening, is to loose the upper gallery completely and add on the 6062 tower design complete with it's articulation. I've got some more yellow half-timbered panels on order with Bricklink so perhaps next week's posting might be a side-by-side comparisson of various options and alternatives. Noted, he use of Imageshack is a hangover from my time on a different forum. I tried to use links directly to the images, is Imageshack introducing popups? I haven't had any problems with them using Firefox with Adblock and NoScript. I've got a MOCPages account awaiting approval where my creations should eventually appear. I'll have to investigate their linking policy to make sure I can crosslink from here. Thanks for all for the constructive criticism, I'll keep evolving this design for a little while longer. MerchantsHouseAlt.lxf