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My wife made me some little tables to display my Lego Castle collection, and even though I ended up cramming the castles closer together than they were before, I think it turned out pretty nice. The old Lego catalogs had a lot going on in their dioramas anyway.







I guess I need to make some sort of backdrop and add another table to put the boats on.

Sir Auros wrote:I guess I need to make some sort of backdrop and add another table to put the boats on.

I was just going to suggest the backdrop. Nice setup by the by.

Nice display! Is there a story behind it with different sides, or did you just organize it in whichever way looks best?

I'm jealous of you and your large open space usable for Lego. All of my castles are sitting in a plastic storage unit in a closet.

Is that the Troll's Mountain Fortress off to the right-hand side of the second pic? I don't think I've ever even seen that for sale up here. But then, it seems like the only place that stocks Castle anymore is TRU. I'm hoping that'll change with the new 'Kingdoms' line.

I've seen the Troll's castle, but I'm not about to spend $100 on Lego sets. That King's Castle Siege was a $50 sale item. There's a troll siege engine, but the only two castles over there are some Vladek fortress and Majisto's workshop. Basically, everything to the left of the wall by the siege engines are the "good guy" factions, and the Dragon Masters/Black Monarchs, Trolls, Skeletons, and Vladek factions are the bad guys.

If I can find the missing parts to my Black Monarch's Castle online later on, I'll definitely add another table for that and the boats. It's kind of nice as is, because I can access everything on the tables.

Nice collection. I wish I had space to display mine.

The Forestmen's tree fort was my favorite set as a kid. There's not much to it, but it's AWESOME!

Nice set up by you.For a minute I was lost into your set up world.It seems some story was going on.I have also done one set up but not good as your.Hope I can show you in my next post.

Instead of starting a new thread, I'll just hijack this one.

Castle stuff has been very thin on the ground around here for a long time now. Actually, I don't think I've seen a Castle set outside of Toys'R'Us since the Fright Knights were the main theme. Even TRU is cutting back pretty severely now, though -- six months ago there was a four-foot-wide section three or four shelves deep in the main Lego display devoted to Castle there, but now it's been relegated to about a quarter of that shelf space on one of the secondary shelves. I'm hoping it'll get a lot more space when the new Kingdoms sets start to show up in a few months, though.

On the bright side, the Price of Persia sets are starting to show up, and they look pretty cool. Alas, all the ones I saw looked like the "reproduce a scene from the movie exactly" type of licensed kits, and even though it'd be cool to have some Middle Eastern-themed sets (Crusades MOCs ahoy!) most of the sets in the first wave don't look like they'll be very good for that except for the big $100 fortress. Also, I'm a tad disappointed that they went to the trouble of casting a new scimitar mold, then armed so many of the minifigs with katanas.

Aaaanyway, ranting aside, in the paltry Castle section at TRU I finally managed to find a Drawbridge Defense, which I've been looking for for eight or nine months now. I've never had a castle with a working drawbridge before, so I was very impressed with how well the mechanism worked. I wasn't quite so impressed with the brick-build ballista up on the top tower, though...it's a neat little play feature but it really don't look like it belongs up there. It also came with seven minifigs -- three skeletons, a queen, a soldier, a knight and a jester (which I don't think you can get anywhere else), which is a huge amount for a set this size. The gold-plated knight kinda stands out as odd alongside the rest of my Crown army, but as a ceremonial bodyguard for the queen that makes a lot of sense.

I got a bit bored with it, though, so I ended up combining it with the small tower from the Tower Raid set. They actually fit together shockingly well -- the drawbridge is just the right height to connect with the second level of the tower, and the small ramp from the drawbridge set fits perfectly into the tower's side. I'm hoping a few of the later Kingdoms sets end up using the same colour scheme as the Crown Knights, so I can add another wing or two to the structure later.

Drawbridge Defense does have some cool minifigs, and I was able to get mine on clearance at Kmart. I haven't seen anything (even at TRU) for the past month or so. My tables are so packed, I don't know if I'll get anything from the new lines, but I'm still looking forward to them.

Oh, I just remembered, I did see the Troll Mountain Fortress or whatever, but it just looked like a mess. I liked the whole fantasy turn, because that's what I always wanted when I was a kid, but the "trolls" didn't really get many good structures.

Sir Auros wrote:Drawbridge Defense does have some cool minifigs, and I was able to get mine on clearance at Kmart. I haven't seen anything (even at TRU) for the past month or so. My tables are so packed, I don't know if I'll get anything from the new lines, but I'm still looking forward to them.

Same here. If it's like the last few years' worth of Castle, where the smaller sets are all vehicles and siege engines and you have to spend $40 or $50 to get a building I'll probably sit on the sidelines myself. A collection only needs so many catapults and chariots, after all, and it's not often I have that much money to spend on Lego. I'm hoping they decide to release a few smaller buildings (in the 150-250 piece range), though, like they used to do back in the 90s. Maybe even a few small civilian sets, although I don't think that's very likely even after how popular the Medieval Market Village turned out to be.

Sir Auros wrote:Oh, I just remembered, I did see the Troll Mountain Fortress or whatever, but it just looked like a mess. I liked the whole fantasy turn, because that's what I always wanted when I was a kid, but the "trolls" didn't really get many good structures.

Actually, do they have any buildings at all, other than this? They've got a boat and a lot of siege equipment, but I think this might be their only base.

I agree that it's not that great compared to some of the other big castles Lego has done. I like some elements of it (the back tower especially) but it's not so much a castle as it is one big wall and a tower, with nothing at all protecting the back side of the fort.

Wow. Great collection! I'll have to get some pics of my sets. I have a bunch of '80s Castle stuff, which I love (including the awesome tavern set).

I agree with your sentimenent about smaller buildings sets. Lego just don't seem to produce these anymore, and when they do, its in a large box set of other items (like last year's City Corner set from the er, City range). It seems that Lego don't think there'd be much demand for smaller building sets, which is a real shame as these were always my favourites. I just find these huge new sets are way, way out my (and no doubt a good many others) price range.

Even with the City stuff, they pack in a vehicle of some sort to 'sell' the set, which is a shame.