Castle Tour

For my first post, here's a Castle MOC I made a few years ago.

Rather than build a functional castle (that's been done before, and much better, by many others) I wanted to use different shapes, colours and textures to create a "ruined" castle.

My tree trunk is made with light grey 1x1 bricks and dark grey 1x1 round plates to give an impression of the light and dark markings on a birch tree. Interlocking layers of large and small branch elements in several colours make up the leaves.

The ruined path to the castle gate looks smooth, but in between flat tiles I used 1x1 plates, as well as tiles with 1 stud, so that the minifigs stay in place.

Here's a minifig-level view of the approach to the castle.

Every time I've seen MOCs on display, it's the little details that I enjoy. Here, we've got two Rohirrim minifigs standing in as medieval reenactors employed by the Castle. Every detail of their costume is perfect, but even an archer needs his morning coffee!

For the "floors" and walkways of the second layer of the castle, I used different shapes of plates. On the left, above the gate, 4x4 and 3x3 wedges leave intentional holes in the "ruined" floor. Slopes complete the impression of eroding brickwork.

Even the well in the courtyard is built to look like it's missing stones. The first layer is 1x2 bricks, joined together with a layer of corner bricks. In real life, many historical ruins have in the past been raided for building materials by their local communities.