Please make gate houses on castles again

[Handar]

This thread begins with a request for castles to be built with proper gatehouses, and features a number of requests for a modular line of sets that can be snapped together to form a large castle. It seems appropriate to point to a picture posted a little while ago by Satas of a combined Drawbridge Defense, Kings Castle Siege, Tower Raid.

I think a little bit of modification was necessary to incorporate the tower from the Tower Raid. You can see his original post here.

[nanuck95]

Okay, I think I can drop to $150. Why does Star Wars get large sets all the time and Castle dosent?

Because there are plenty of die-hard Star Wars fans who will pay anything for something with the Star Wars name on it. I also get the impression there are a lot more people who will buy SW Lego sets just for the collectivity of it, but aren't necessarily interested in any other Lego products.

[timber_wolf899]

bah, kings castle, black monarch's castle, and black knight's castle had gatehouses, as did royal knight's castle. And all were cheaper and with lower part counts than current castles... So i dont want to hear any excuses.

I agree that a gatehouse would be most welcome. Always was my favorite part of the old castles.

[Nicker]

bah, kings castle, black monarch's castle, and black knight's castle had gatehouses, as did royal knight's castle. And all were cheaper and with lower part counts than current castles... So i dont want to hear any excuses.

I agree that a gatehouse would be most welcome. Always was my favorite part of the old castles.

I agree that there are no excuses for not including a gatehouse in the newer sets and any excuses can easily be countered. I always thought that the gatehouses in the older sets gave the castles most of their character.

[knight howdy]

bah, kings castle, black monarch's castle, and black knight's castle had gatehouses, as did royal knight's castle. And all were cheaper and with lower part counts than current castles... So i dont want to hear any excuses.

I agree that a gatehouse would be most welcome. Always was my favorite part of the old castles.

I agree that there are no excuses for not including a gatehouse in the newer sets and any excuses can easily be countered. I always thought that the gatehouses in the older sets gave the castles most of their character.

exectly!
but the point is that lego sets from the 80's and 90's where the best sets ever made.
lego can't do better than that.
i don't think there will be good looking gate houses anymore for castle...(sad)

[Nicker]

I think if enough of us got together and made enough noise we could influence the next major castle design Lego comes out with. I see MOCs all the time that have original designs with gate houses that are just as good if not better than what Lego came up with for some of the sets in the 80s and early 90s so there is no excuse form a design stand point that they can't out do the earlier castle designs. I realize that most MOCs have the advantage of being larger and therefore have much more detail than the average Lego set but these designs can be shrunk down to a smaller scale in order to sell them to the masses at a reasonable price. I really wonder if these new sets sell better than the old sets? If the answer is no then I don't think it would hurt to base the sets on a more historically accurate design while keeping playability in mind. I realize that Lego is taking the castle theme in more of a fantasy direction but even in fantasy things have to make practical sense otherwise it is not teaching kids anything and even makes them more uneducated about medieval times than they had been before.

I know I am beating this drum hard and might even unintentionally annoy some but I really think that Lego Castles have been without gatehouses long enough and it's time to bring them back or at the very least leave out the portcullis on sets that don't have gatehouses as part of there design. I can't wait until I get my hands on Kings Castle Siege because I want to modify it in order to show what can be done.

[DO+1]

Nicker, although I don't have a way to post the picture ,I have put a "proper" gatehouse on my KCS. I had bought 2 KCS, so, inspired by Kings Castle, I put 2 wall segments on the top of the lame excuse for a gathouse.
I also extended the drawbridge,and put string through the wall segment's windows to crank up the drawbridge and a way to also crank up the gate. To top it all off,I put hoarding on the top. It was pretty easy to make(at least for me ) and wouldn't have made the piece count THAT much higher.
I really can't believe they didn't put a proper gate house on this thing. I all I basically needed was 2 wall segments and some smaller pieces,like 1 by 2 bricks and inverted slopes .But, I am interested to see how you will make the gatehouse Nicker.
SO,yes there needs to be gatehouses on Lego castles again. They give the castle's uniqueness and a different "vibe"
to each of them.

There is no excuse(none at all!) for anymore gatehouses on Lego castles, my peasent army shall march on TLC

EDIT: I also agree with you Nicker that kids are very uninformed about the middle ages, and even more so with the
inclusion of dragons and trolls. Some of my cousins think that dragons were "real" and were commonplace in the middle ages,or to them, the "knight's time". They also always want to know who is the bad guy when I play Medieval 2 and in my Lego sets. They think there needs to be a "predefined" enemy, otherwise, they don't want to play with the Lego sets or keep asking me who is the bad guy

[DerBum]

Clearly, considering the piece count in KCS, there are enough pieces involved (at a $100 price point) to build a gate house. I would prefer to see a castle with a gate house and no keep, like the Kings Castle, than one with a an airy keep and no gate house. As a child, the gate house on my Kings Castle was a ley to its defense and I used the second floor as my king's keep/throne room. Dont get me wrong, I think the KCS is an excellent set, but there are other options for the set designers considering the number of pieces they used. I am down with the idea of double doors and a very small gate house like Kings Mountain Fortress as well.

[Nicker]

Well looks like TLG has some really good castle designs coming out this year with the Kingdoms line and they even have proper gatehouses. Thanks for listening to my rant about gatehouses. It looks like this can finally be put to bed. These new designs are a very nice change.

[veevers24]

star wars has a greater following, i assume

[JoshWedin]

star wars has a greater following, i assume

How does this comment relate to gatehouses on castles? We don't mind old threads being dug up if you have something relevent to add, but this sort of comment has no point.

Josh

[Kosh]

star wars has a greater following, i assume

How does this comment relate to gatehouses on castles? We don't mind old threads being dug up if you have something relevent to add, but this sort of comment has no point.

Josh

I suspect that veerers24 was responding to maniac29's post/comment of "Okay, I think I can drop to $150. Why does Star Wars get large sets all the time and Castle dosent? " back on the first page of posts actually.

My response in regards to maniac29's post, which has relevance to veerer24's post as well. As discussed by others some SW fans will buy just about anything that's SW, if it's for thier enjoyment or later potential profit taking. I also believe that some of the reason is that SW *IS* a licensed property and that Lucusfilm has some say in what gets produced, they can ask that LEGO make larger sets and those suggestions while not always binding, can have a later impact if ignored.

In regards to the original topic of gate houses, I prefer greater detail but understand that the designers have a lot of factors to take into consideration. Including that many of the target audience don't give great thought to 'proper' historical castle design details, they want *Something* that looks like a castle they can play with. AFOL's can be more picky about the referenced details

I do think I have to agree with the idea of Adding something relevant if a poster is ... renewing an Elder post, looking at the original post date the thread started before either veerers24 or I joined.

[JoshWedin]

I suspect that veerers24 was responding to maniac29's post/comment of "Okay, I think I can drop to $150. Why does Star Wars get large sets all the time and Castle dosent? " back on the first page of posts actually.

You could be right. In fact, I'm sure you are. I certainly culdn't tell.

Josh

[Ye Olde Republic]

Seeing as the thread was nicely finished and really didn't need anymore replies to it I'd like to add my two cents and say that veever's post could/should have read as follows:

I would assume that Star Wars gets the bigger sets because it has a larger following?

If one is not going to add a quote to their post so everyone knows what the heck they're talking about they should at least write a sentence that leads a reader not to wonder. Perhaps if veevers hadn't made somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 posts just this morning he wouldn't have used up 'good posting techniques'.