The_Cook

It's been a good few (say 18) months since the last posting but Troll Town moves slowly forwards... I was staring at my Troll Harbour and thinking of other options. A Mine is still a possibility as is a Prison; the latter stuck, there is potential merit turning the current 60130 Prison Island into a Troll set. To start with it's based around a rocky island which is a good candidate for conversion. Whilst the architecture is more modern the actual shape of the structures could easily become Troll-like. My initial attempts tried to insert the prison into the wall of Troll town but after downloading a pre-built Prison into LDD and starting to delete all of the boats it occured to me that actually keeping the Prison as an island is a valid concept. Replacing the helicopter pad with walkways lifted from [url="http://www.moc-pages.com/moc.php/372408">Trolls' Landing</a> allowes it to be stand-alone in the middle of the sea or part of the walkways abnd piers attached to Trolls' Landing. The frame and bar structures were reaplaced with a stack of 3 fences, door controls replaced with Troll style angular archways and floodlights with burning torches. The remaining piece of work is to rebuild the look-out tower, either as wooden structure similar to the siege towers, or as a stone structure similar to the towers in the fortress. The building of the prison in ABS was spurred on by the original set going on offer at Lego.com . That gets me most of the plates, burps and larger structural pieces but there's still a lot of "Troll" pieces needed to complete the conversion. A number of Bricklink orders were necessary to obtain enough black spindle fences and I realised that I have no 2x3 reddish-brown wedge plates as they're still fairly rare. My final burst of Bricklink activity deals with 1x1 dark bluish-grey plates. I'm always loathe to order 1x1 plates as they're often expensive in relation to the weight of ABS obtained but the upshot of this ordering policy is that I have a very limit stock of 1x1 plates in any colour. The 20 or so that I've ordered in Dark Blusih-Grey won't last long; it's something that I'll have to keep adding to orders as they get placed. The Dark Bluish Grey 1x1 plates duly arrived. Fitting the plates to the columns on the tower; just need to build the very top now. Might even get as far as photography tomorrow... Having said the above with great gusto; weeks pass, weeks become months, empires rise, empries fall... There are a few little details to fix and I need to select minifigures. The minifigure decision is harder than it looks. I even end up building most of another (non-Troll) model in the intervening period. Finally I spot a 75198 Tatooine Battle Pack in my local supermarket. Replacement legs and heads and some Pearl Dark Grey spears turn the Jawas into Guards and a new head, cape and helmet turns the Tusken Raider into an Overseer. The 4th minifig is drawn from existing stock. Need to find 4 minifigures from the human side as inmates. I grab a couple of Vikings for their rough and ready appearance and then use Crown Soldiers to man the balloon and boat. The balloon gets a makeover; Red-White fits the Crown colour scheme. The Trolls need their equivalent of a helicopter; cue a dragon! After many bitty Bricklink orders to get parts, the final result in ABS. All of the trapdoor functionality from the original Prison Island has been maintained; the rear view shows access to the cells and all of the play possibilities. A Side by side comparisson with the original Prison Island. Conclusions, it's good. The original had lots of play features which have been retained. The trap doors, sewers and breakaway bars allow lots of play opportunities; more than any other set I've seen in a long, long time. Structurally it's very robust; I've regularly picked it up from the corner opposite the landing pad and the whole thing stays together. The weakest part is probably the top of the main tower; with hindsight I'd use two black 1x4x6 door frames to support the dark brown slopes that hold the top octagon. It's not immediately obvious but there are some technic bricks to allow it to be joined into the Troll Town city wall. This post can also be found on MOCPages and the LDD files are located there.

Looking at the Brickset review for 75933 T.Rex Transport your wish has come true. Looks like just 4 in the set; a MOC castle from these might be an expensive proposition.

It's also ease of buidling. The target market for Castle has always been the younger demographic and the use of the large panels makes it easier for them. It's also creates bulk, volume, without and extraordinarily high brick-content. Castles are supposed to be impressive, big things, but Lego need to do that in as few bricks as possible to make them cost effective hence the use of panels and in the early day's raised baseplates.

The nice thing about the early castles (the true "Classic" castles in my mind) were that they could be combined. Whilst 6059, 6061 and 6062 all had playability in their own right from the seige perspective; they could also be incorporated into the big castles. This is something I've missed in the modern castles.

The parts count for a solid keep would be as much as the curtain walls themselves and push the price point beyond what most parents would be willing to pay for an 8 year old child. I could see it working as D2C, where the keep opens up Dolls-House style to reveal rooms inside (think Ghostbusters HQ) but either the cost has to be high to cover brick built or the panel count has to be high to keep the costs down (and think of the ire the panels would raise on these forums).

One of the skills of the Lego designers is delivering products as large as Castles in as few bricks as possible. Most modern castles have been in the 900-1000 piece range, the D2C's of MMV and Joust were 1600. You probably want to reserve at least 100 bricks for minifigs, animals, weaponry and items/tools. Careful and creative use of panels is a necessary evil if you're trying to create bulk whilst maintaining a piece count; and therefore a price point! There is an art to designing "buildable" sets that is often lost in these castle forums where fiddly detail is much admired.

That's the point that many here seem to always seem to miss. The tastes of children; the target audience (and core market) most Lego products (some D2C excepted, eg MF); has changed over the last few decades and will probably continue to evolve. Mark Stafford mentioned, in one of the early Nexo-Knights Q&A's that he did, that Germany was the Castle themes core market; easily outstripping even US sales; traditionally Germany focused on it's medieval roots rather than it's 20th century history. However since the millenium; children across Europe have been brought up on the same set of Japanese inspired animation which mashes up the genres; and more recently the resurgence into popular culture of the Superhero's; consequently they're spending preferences match their viewing habits. The mash-up that is Nexo-knights must have play-tested well with the children for it to make it to market; if you want someone to blame, blame the kids! Arguments can always be made that one child or another likes classic medieval style castles; but a representative sample must have responded better to the mash-ups than pure medievalism to be where we are today. To remain a going concern TLG needs to follow the wants of the market; regardless of whether that intersects with our niche interests or not. Maybe tastes will change again; but the lack of any child friendly medieval or fantasy movies; compared to the glut of Superhero movies; means that this is unlikely and that at best we could hope for Castle being a niche release like trains have become.

What @Nabii was trying to point out is that Steampunk as a concept for a theme doesn't work because young children don't have enough knowledge of history to see the humour and juxtapositions that are steampunk. Faux victoriana isn't enough to grab their imagination. Steampunk as a design aesthetic will work (although it can fall into the trap of stick some gears on it). The theme is monster hunters or sky-pirates but the characters within are using vehicles that utilise the steampunk aethetic; the play experience is still hunting monsters or chasing pirates through the sky.

Unless you place the poll on the EB frontpage and allow everyone on EB to vote you're not going to get a sensible answer; instead all that will happen is that you'll confirm the assumption that people that frequent the "Historic" forums generally don't like Nexo because it's not a Historic/Fantasy theme. I can't face trawling through the old posts but the original "rumour" went something along the lines of "It's castle, a bit like fantasy era" which got everyone in the history forums all excited; if only that person had said "it's sci-fi with medieval influences" then the world would be a very different place with significantly less shattered dreams. Expectation management is everything; TLG need to get better at phrasing the rumours that escape so that the correct expectations are set.

That's the bit of information that I was missing; I thought it might be something like that. It might be worthwhile stating that a bit more explicitly in the front-page post; "it might take up to a week to rebuild all the old posts and that they might not display correctly until they have been rebuilt."

None of the BB code seems to be rendering properly; I just dropped into both the Capitol Building review and the S16 collectable minifigs review and it was displaying all the markup code with the underlying links and image urls shown rather than acatually rendering them as links. I'm using Firefox, ABP and NoScript which might/might not be part of the issue although neither ABP nor NoScript have complained about anything. It's a thankless task running a big site like this so I'll be one of the set that does say thanks and keep up the good work!

Post 49; whilst over a year old is the best representation of Troll Town in it's entirety so far. The current problem is that Troll Town when assembled takes up more space than I have in my small house. Post 49 was easily occupying 6' x 4' (1.9m x 1.2m). Since Post 49 the above Fisherman's Landing is the only building addition to the town, the Dragon Platforms will need extending to accomodate another 4 Horntails and there's another 100 plus Trolls of varying types to populate the Town. One day I should really sign up for a show (somewhere in the United Kingdom) and display the whole lot for people to see in person.

Between the day job and a major redecorating project the progress on Troll Town has been slow and much of it is currently in storage. I have however been quietly collecting bricks, Trolls and Horntails. Some of the custom Trolls are detailed in The Three Head Problem over in the Minifigure Customisation Workshop; the ulitmate solution to the problem being the custom heads that you can see a couple of posts further up. On the drawing board are a new siege tower based on tracks from 9449 Ultra Sonic Raider but the big goal is to build a Troll structure based upon Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Tower Of Babel.

Work on Troll Town continues; albeit in fits and starts. The inspiration for the latest model was Nuju Metru's Dunrak Harbour. Some months (years?) ago I'd recreated Nuju Metru's set in LDD and over the past year I'd collected the relevant bricks to assemble Dunrak Harbour in ABS. With solid pastic sitting in my hand I relasised that this would translate very nicely into a Troll set. Following my usual modus-operandi I fire up LDD and started playing. Whilst the design itself is fairly obvious; a watergate flanked by a large tower the details proved very tricky. Getting the gateway translated into Troll architecture was not easy; the troll arches comprise of inverted slopes rather than the single 1x5x4 arch piece therefore there is less stability. Another major challenge was the lack of large wedge plates in Blue; this resulted in me reducing the depth of the model from 11 studs to 10 studs then eventually to 8 studs which resulted in a severe redesign of the reverse structures and gateway in order to get everything to fit. The gates themselves proved problematic; firstly I'd hoped to use Technic, Link Chain in Reddish-Brown to drive the gates as I felt that this would fit with the Troll aestetic a lot more. However the reduction in depth meant that it is impossible to get the chain link to fit as it requires a minimum separation between the two shafts and a minimum gear size. After several false starts and a few weeks away from the design to allow a fresh perspective I resorted to a meshed gear approach and everything started to fit. After that the gateway itself came together over the course of an evening. Next the tower. This had a few false starts. I dropped the angled link piece that Nuju Metru had used and opted to hinge the tower straight onto the gateway. After several attempts at building the base structure the eventual design settled upon was a modification of the Ogre "caves" that flank the main gate of 7097 Trolls' Mountain Fortress. This resulted in a reduced width which caused problems on the next level as there wasn't enough space to provide the mechanics necessary to connect a pre-moulded door; they're Trolls they don't care for doors. With the thinner tower I struggled with the design of the next level; there wasn't the space to build the bay windows. Then a moment of inspiration; Troll towers aren't always stone they use timber. I quickly dismantled half the floor and "ruined" the remaining part and from the ruins built a wooden tower akin to seige tower in 7037 Tower Raid. This is topped by a ramshakle platform on which the light projector is mounted. Inverted arches top of the platform in Troll Style. I come back to the door; I take the door from my Trolls' Guarded Inn and reconfigure it to fit into a 4 wide space with the hinge clips projecting into the door space. It's not ideal but it's all that can be accomplished in the available space without the door projecting significantly forwards from the tower. The ramshakle aesthetic fits with the upper portions of the tower. I also put together a small single sailed Troll boat utilising 4 of the new Dark Brown hull sections from 70732 City Of Stix. The Boat is too big to fit through the arch due to the mast and sail but it can moor at the dockside; although that would benefit from being larger. The 30516c02 Turntable 4 x 4 Locking Grooved Base with Black Top are getting pretty pricey on Bricklink so I built up a composite replacement using 2653 Brick, Modified 1 x 4 with Groove, 61485 Turntable 4 x 4 Square Base, Locking, and a pair of 60474 Plate, Round 4 x 4 with Hole; even as a composite this seems fairly stable. 60474 Plate, Round 4 x 4 with Hole; even as a composite this seems fairly stable. Currently the set as a whole is up to 609 bricks which matches the 601 of Dunrak Harbour quite nicely; especially considering that the boat is significantly more complex than the small one found in Dunrak. The entire build process takes the best part of 6months due to distractions and having to source the a couple of bricks at the last moment. I was initially worried about the stability but it's fairly sturdy evern through the big arch in the middle. Looking Down The Reverse The Boat Minifigure choice was another problem area; Nuju Metru's original had one side in the boat pitted against another side in the harbour which doesn't work here as both Harbour and Boat have been designed for Trolls. The contrite answer is to cite City themes like Harbour that are driven by recreation type play rather than conflict and therefore all the minifigurres are working together. If this were a set that were going into production this probably wouldn't sell so well and whilst the little Troll Boat is nice it would be better as a small set of it's own against some form of adversary and the Fisherman's Landing set should follow Nuju Metru's original concept and have a small boat from an opposing faction. The aim with the minifigure design was for as much differentiation as possible whilst still retaining Troll characteristics. Given that I now have access to alternate exp<b></b>ressions through some custom printed heads I decided to utilise those. The selection includes boat crew, a wizard and witch in the tower as well as two Troll guards. The following two photo's provide a comparisson with my interpretation of Nuju Metru's original Dunrak Harbour. Both are roughly the same size; although Fisherman's Landing comes in a brick or two higher due to the base design. Dunrak Harbour is a little longer by about 6 studs. As always this post is reproduced across on MocPages and the LDD instructions are attached.

As mentioned in the previous posts it was the last of the classic era castles designed to connect together with other castles to form a bigger stronghold. The singular pin on it's own isn't that useful, a second connection point is needed in order to allow a wall to loop around and create a courtyard or bailey. The modifications are fairly simple for anyone with a reasonable supply of old grey bricks. An example of the 6081 being connected into part of a larger setup can be found here.

minifigforlife.com did the printing, £1.40 per head plus postage. I provided the Sand Green heads which I'd sourced from Bricklink. Probably came in at £2.20 per head which is significantly more than Bricklinking standard Troll heads but then it has the uniqueness factor. I'll definitely run another batch at some point perhaps with some additional designs. With well over 200 Trolls in Troll Town every little thing helps to create some differentiation and uniqueness.

There is slow but ongoing progress on Troll Town. I've got at least one more "set" sized piece that is nearing completion and one major piece that's been on the drawing board for 12months and in piece acquisiton for a large part of that. Part of that acquisition phase has been to extend the array of "Civilian" trolls that I have; most of which has been documented in an alternate posting The Three Head Problem. My female trolls now look a little more feminine without being wild eyed and witchy. Piracy and age can now be represented. Alternate expressions for the common soldiery. From left to right; original, shouty, goofy, eye-patch. Very happy with the results; they're almost perfect. If I do another batch I'll just tweak the line thicknesses on the mouths up by about 20% to match the TLG originals. The new artwork for the new heads was created by me and based on the existing designs from TLG; they were professionally printed for me by MinifigForLife.com . The shot below shows my new heads on the right with the original 3 heads on the left. There are 5 alternative designs. I'm very pleased with how they turned out; if I run another batch I might just tweak the thickness of the mouth lines to increase them just a little to match the original designs.

Decided to try my hand at some custom minifigure heads so that I have 5 additional Troll variants to use when populating Troll Town The heads are based on the existing designs and were professionally printed. The shot below shows my new heads on the right with the original 3 heads on the left. There are 5 alternative designs. My female trolls now look a little more feminine without being wild eyed and witchy. Piracy and age can now be represented. Alternate expressions for the common soldiery. From left to right; original, shouty, goofy, eye-patch. Very happy with the results; they're almost perfect. If I do another batch I'll just tweak the line thicknesses on the mouths up by about 20% to match the TLG originals.

If they had picked up the license I would have expected to see merchandise on the shelves by now. You want product on shelves at the same time the movie's marketing campaign is running to maximise your own sales.

An absolute classic and for such an old set the white bricks are doing very well.

My personal opinion is that if you stray from the original 3 head variants then they stop looking like trolls; they need the red eyes and the pointy white teeth. Hmm, maybe I should investigate getting some heads custom printed by minifigs.me ...

Thanks for the tip on the staff; I think I got the "bishop" figure in a job-lot from eBay so I had no real way of attributing the part properly. I do have a medusa but I'd like to keep her whole. I might source an additional torso from BrickLink.

Apologies to the TL:DR mob who just want to look at pretty pictures this is a wordy post; go knock yourself out looking at pictures in the GOH sub-forum. Those of you that are still here; read on... I've been collecting a Fantasy Era Troll army for a few years now; it's origins can be traced in the Troll Town series of posts. Trolls however have a problem, The Three Head Problem, there are only three Sand Green Troll heads available. : King/Captain : Warrior : Queen There is an equally limited number of torsos : Reddish-Brown : Drak Bluish Grey There are three helmets, and either nothing, shoulder pads or a cape. At best this is 3 x 2 x 3 x 3 = 54 possible combinations; although availability of the King and Queen heads reduces that to nearer 36. Additionally all of the combinations are of a martial nature and I'm trying to populate a town with at least some civilians. Therefore it becomes a challenge to create a diverse population utilising existing torso prints and the available three heads. My first attempts are fairly simplistic, stick an 80's era plastic cape on backwards, add a farmers cowl and call it a blacksmith. I change the minifig hands to black to represent gloves which gives me spare sand-green hands to use elsewhere. I forsee sand green parts becoming a valuable commodity as things progress. This version can be seen in Troll Blacksmith The next simple swap is to the skirt and torso of Viking Woman from Collectible Minifigs series 7, marry that with a Sand Green Troll Queen's head and top it off with the hair from a Fortune Teller from Collectible Minifigs series 9; this becomes my Inn Keeper for the Trolls' Guarded Inn. It's not ideal, there's a small sliver of yellow at the neckline of the Torso, however it's the beginnings of a female presence in Troll Town and a start at building customised Trolls. As I work towards assembling Troll Town in it's entirety I start to craft more and more minifigures. One of the first creations is a market seller to supplement the Trolls' Market Place. The Neimoidian Viceroy torso was the starting point; a hand-swap to Sand Green and some dark tan legs complete it. Another torso that I already have in stock is the Atlantis Portal Emperor; the sand green torso is a reasonable representation of a bare chested troll. Couple that with some black legs and we have a Troll that's happy to brawl in the streets. Star Wars Torsos provide rich pickings for kit-bashed minifigs; the Dark Red Pauldrons and Capes provide additional adornment for elite troops and royal bodyguards. Everyone's favourite little green alien from Star Wars provides a tan tunic torso with sand-green skin; ideal for civilians if a little pricey due the desirability of Yoda. More recently the Embo torso provides more Sand-Green as does the Wald torso. A Wald troso married with POTC Cannibal Legs. The POTC Cannbial legs are a good find and can be used as a direct substitution for the standard Troll Warrior legs in order to give the Rank and File troops some more variation. There are also two variants of the Cannibal legs, one with skulls and one without. The "Colors" section of Brinklink also proves useful, allowing me to view all the Dark Red or Dark Orange torso's. Another trick has be to select sand-green hands and then see what minifigs they are part of; similarly for sand-green arms. Are those torso's useful at all? The latter trick lead me to the Embo torso, the legs are from Space Police 3. It's a happy coincidence that the skull belt buckle seems to line up perfectly with the dark tan armour printing on the torso. An aviator helmet turns the minifig into one of my Dragon Riders. Staying with the Embo torso I use the legs from Dragon Wizard and a black hood. I'm not sure what role this Troll plays in Troll Town but he looks suitably menacing. Yoda troso are useful because they have sand-green necklines and hands; therefore they fit nicely with Trolls. The torso is paired with Cannibal Legs and black combed back hair to create a troll merchant. I experiment with the hair and settle on swept back black. As I'm building up the minifigs I realise that there are rules. Trolls have Sand Green skin; the obvious thing would be to hunt down all the Sand Green torso's ever produced and utilise those but most of them are printed to represent clothes so they actually look wrong; a better option is to look for torso's in complementing colours and supplement them with Sand Green arms or hands to represent sand green troll skin. In terms of complementing and contrasting colours blacks and browns complement the sand green nicely, reds and oranges are the contrasting colour and also work. Olive green seems to be too close, it looks wrong, so I avoid it. Dark green has a similar problem it's just too close to Sand Green to properly work. I aim for the darker earthier colours rather than the brighter colours; as the darker earthier tone seems more Troll like. There is a similar rule around Troll hair; Reddish-brown is too similar to the colour of many of the Troll torsos and therefore they all merge into one reddish-brown lump; so I avoid it. Dark brown is better but it still looks wrong compared with black. Black hair becomes another of the rules for building up custom Troll figures. There is an interesting Spiked Helmet on one of the Space Police 3 minifigures; although the black visor looks too futuristic. Replacing that with a visor with horizontal slit gives a more appropriate headgear. The idea to use Gundabad Orc torso's with sand-green arms substituted is attributable to Nuju-Metru. The spiky armour works and sets me thinking about what other torsos have spiky details on them. Space Police 3 once again comes up trumps; one of the aliens has spiky silver armour on a reddish-brown background and sand-green arms. Win-win situation, all that needs to change is the head. My hunt for Dark Red troso's led me to the Evil Wizard. After a head and hand swap and the addition of a dark red hood and pauldrons some form of Troll priest emerges. Cleansing Monks of the Avenging Flame; Thou shall not covet another man's minifigs. I'd already been using the Dark Red Evil Wizard Troso and Slope; but the Red Torso and Slope on the righthand minifigure was new to me; off to Bricklink we go. The minifig in question is Fluminox Heavy Armour two are subsequently ordered and appropriate substitutions made. Capes and pauldrons turn out to be a useful way of creating diversity in the minifgures. An arm swap on a Dark Ninja (from TMNT) torso, paired with Dark Red hood and Cape and cannibal legs creates a Troll Nobleman. Dark Red Pauldrons turn ordinary Troll warriors into verterans or an honour guard. A Nemoidian viceroy troso paired with A black pauldron and a messenger pouch creates a courier. Another option for adding differentiation to the standard Troll Torso's is through the use of scarves and bandanas. A dark red headscarf on a troll warrior. A black bandana; the warrior could now be a farmer or a labourer. The headscarf coupled with a peg-leg; an injured veteran but still a force to be reckoned with. The headscarf works both ways around, here it's protecting the back of the neck with the knot infront. The Dastan legs from Prince Of Persia are good fit, principally due to the red belt, and have been used a number of times in the Troll Town population. Headscarf couple with a Wald torso and cannibal legs. Headscarf and bandana used together. The legs are from Prospector Legs but the original dark tan hips have been replaced with reddish brown hips. Keffiyeh are another piece of headgear that seems suited to Trolls. A standard Troll torso is matched with Wiley Fusebot legs. White keffiyeh. The Dragon motifs can dominate some of the Ninjago Torsos; this one happens to be fairly plain. The old Adventurers line has a nice Dark Orange Torso that matches some dark red hips and black legs. The Witch torso form the Series 2 Minifigures provides a starting point for what I keep thinking of as a Bishop; if such a role exists in the Troll belief system. I think the staff is a Megabloks part; I might have to revisit it and replace it with a purist staff at some point. Did you notice that there was just 3 heads? Did you notice that I only used the female variant once? If you didn't then I think that I might have solved the 3 head problem.

Is this intended to be one model that can be rebuilt in three different ways or a set contains three models? If it's the former then you might want to revisit the designs and check that they all utilise the same pieces. It looks to me like one has the ribbed round bricks; one uses smooth. Two have gears, one uses cams. A couple of bricks unused isn't a problem but you need to be looking at 98% overlap for a sensible 3-in-1 set.

I would suggest that they do have an indirect impact on Castle; principally through the fact that TLG has a limited production capacity therefore they can only produce a certain number of sets per year. The production managers and accountants at TLG will always be considering "is this range going to be more popular than that range?" and choosing what they produce accordingly.