justinbuildsbricks
Forestmen's River Fortress, Redux V1, Stag Sculpture Close-up
The Forestmen (including Forest Guardians and Dark Forest) are my favorite sub theme from LEGO Castle. Like many, I wanted to revisit the nostalgia of my childhood by building this classic Castle set. But of course, that set was made for kids in the 80s, so naturally it was very simplistic and only included 325 pieces. So I decided to re-envision it for the 2020s and in my own style. Because the Forestmen Sigil is a stag, I thought including a stone stag sculpture on the front of the tower would be a great tribute. I redesigned the trees using some newer pieces from the Creator Pirate Ship set, and made a stone bridge using some of the great Pentagonal tiles from the PAB wall at the LEGO store. Lastly as a hat tip to Majisto the wizard from classic Castle, I included a modern wizard from the LEGO store's Build A Minifigure kiosk.
This was my second MOC since returning to LEGO after a 17 year dark ages period / hiatus, so I'm still re-building my collection from scratch, after losing my original collection in a move. So there is a ton of improvisation here and I did not have many of the pieces I would have preferred to use. That said, constraint is the mother of creativity, and I think the parts shortage forced me to come up with some creative build decisions and parts usage. I'd like to redo this soon now that I've had the opportunity to gather more parts from BrickLink to fill in some of the many gaps in my collection, but wanted to document this one here for posterity and comparison.
Forestmen's River Fortress, Redux V1, Stag Sculpture Close-up
The Forestmen (including Forest Guardians and Dark Forest) are my favorite sub theme from LEGO Castle. Like many, I wanted to revisit the nostalgia of my childhood by building this classic Castle set. But of course, that set was made for kids in the 80s, so naturally it was very simplistic and only included 325 pieces. So I decided to re-envision it for the 2020s and in my own style. Because the Forestmen Sigil is a stag, I thought including a stone stag sculpture on the front of the tower would be a great tribute. I redesigned the trees using some newer pieces from the Creator Pirate Ship set, and made a stone bridge using some of the great Pentagonal tiles from the PAB wall at the LEGO store. Lastly as a hat tip to Majisto the wizard from classic Castle, I included a modern wizard from the LEGO store's Build A Minifigure kiosk.
This was my second MOC since returning to LEGO after a 17 year dark ages period / hiatus, so I'm still re-building my collection from scratch, after losing my original collection in a move. So there is a ton of improvisation here and I did not have many of the pieces I would have preferred to use. That said, constraint is the mother of creativity, and I think the parts shortage forced me to come up with some creative build decisions and parts usage. I'd like to redo this soon now that I've had the opportunity to gather more parts from BrickLink to fill in some of the many gaps in my collection, but wanted to document this one here for posterity and comparison.