Announcing BrickFest 2004 building challenge. UPDATED RULES

Magnus · Post by **Magnus** » Mon May 31, 2004 3:21 am

My Own Castle Competition.

We are hereby happy to announce the official
castle-building competition for the Castle Room at
BrickFest 2004. The competition is pretty
straightforward, but a lot can be done with it. It is
the hope of the BrickFest 2004 Castle Room
coordinators that this will stimulate all sorts of
creative ideas, and will result in a great number and
variety of contesting MOCs.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it is very
simple:

To make the best, most impressive and overall most
kickass possible minifig-scale, wait for it...

... CASTLE!

This building challenge came about because we wanted
to stimulate people to build castles without feeling
they had to build one of the biggest MOCs in the room
in order to get noticed. When building a castle MOC,
one almost always ends up building on a scale far
smaller than what would be realistic. Inevitably, the
most impressive castle MOCs are often the largest ones
– if only for their sheer size. But the time and
brick needed to put together something really big is
beyond many Castleheads. And even if you do build a
massive castle, actually transporting it to BrickFest
might simply be prohibitive.

So the idea with this competition is to get back to
the basics, building a castle not much bigger than the
Lego sets which introduced us all to the castle theme
in the first place. While we all commiserate about the
evils and woes of juniorization, and how disappointing
some of the more recent lego castle sets seem to us,
think of this as the AFOLs' chance to show ourselves
just how much better we can do ourselves - while
working within a somewhat comparable scale. This
competition is intended to level the playing field a
little, so that those who don’t have an endless
supply of brick and time won’t automatically get
their MOCs overshadowed by the biggest castles in the
room (and it seems there will be some big ones).
We are basically interested in seeing how much detail a
good builder can cram into a relatively compact castle.

Size:

The castle itself can take up a footprint of up to
1536 pegs. If you wanted to make it as big as possible
(and don't feel that you have to), one natural
solution would thus be to build it on a 32 by 48 peg
baselate. If you want to build a castle on some raised
landscaping, that landscaping itself can take up up to
2304 pegs (a 48 by 48 peg baseplate or area of
equivalent size), just so long as the actual castle
itself is no larger than 1536 pegs at the most.

Basically we're looking for castle MOCs in a similar
size to the largest lego castles which have been
released as actual sets, such as for instance King
Leo's Castle. So no massive 5 foot tall towers on a 32
by 48 peg baseplate please. There is also a height
limit: The castle can be no taller than it is long.

Appearance:

This is a castle building competition, and we are
interested in seeing actual CASTLES. In some ways this
is kind of flexible, and in some ways it kind of
isn't.

What we are NOT looking for with this competition, is
for people to build say a keep or a gatehouse or
great hall or a siskindian style half-timber building
and enter those MOCs in the competition. Do by all
means build those sorts of MOCs, and feel free to
incorporate them into the CCC display if you like.
They may well be eligible for possible prizes within
other yet-to-be decided categories. But if you are
building a MOC to enter into the My Own Castle
Competition, it should be a free-standing and complete
castle. It's walls can open up in classic
Crusader/Black Falcon style, and if you like, it can
be compatible with say, the CCC standard. But it
should ultimately be able to stand alone as complete
castle in its own right.

Style:

Having said that, there are all kinds of castles you
could build, including certain kinds of structures
which might typically go by other names, including
walled fortifications from outside the actual medieval
period. In short, the idea is to open this up to as many builders as possible, including those who may not think of themselves first and foremost as castle builders.

For the purposes of this competition, consider
"castle" to refer to any self-enclosed walled defensive
fortification up until right before the modern age. So
no WWII era bunkers or sandbagged hilltop firebases
please - but a walled American Civil War era fort
would certainly be acceptable. If you just saw the
movie Troy and felt inspired, and want to have a go at
an ancient citadel, that’s totally cool. I know
there are some people who make beautiful Oriental
style castles, so let’s see what you guys can do if
you scale it down to 32 by 48 pegs. If someone wants
to build an early medieval motte-and bailey type
wooden castle, give it your best shot - I still
haven’t seen a really impressive one of those done
yet in lego. Maybe an ancient Roman fort, or
fast-forward over a millenium to a 17th century gun
fort? If you want to build a ruined medieval castle
being visited by 21st century tourists, see if you can
give that a try. Or perhaps go for a haunted or
fantasy or fairy tale style castle. And of course last
but most definitely not least, the ever-popular
European medieval stone castle is also warmly
encouraged.

Scale:

Again, entries for the MOCC should be in minifig
scale, not microfig scale or anything else bigger or
smaller.

Ideas/suggestions:

Aside from the above limitations, feel free to
interpret the rules as widely as you like. If you want
to see if you can add motors or even a light up a
fireplace or two, we'd love to see that. If you want
to use the pre-fabricated castle wall sections, go
straight ahead, but if you don't want to, don't. Feel
free to take your inspiration from lego sets if you
like. Did you ever wonder how much cooler the Black
Falcons’ Fortess might look if it were just that
little big bigger? Did you ever think that the
King’s Castle was a great set, but was just missing
a large keep-like tower somewhere? Did you ever wonder
what the classic Yellow Castle would have looked like
in gray? Or tan? We're not asking you to just tack on
an extra wall or tower to an existing lego set (in
fact, please do not do this), these are just ideas.

A note on prizes and categories:

If you want to build a Castle related MOC, but don't
think it will fit in the MOCC, don't worry. Any
castle-related MOC will be welcomed in the Castle Room
and appreciation will be shown for all MOCs regardless
of how big or small they are. There will be a prize
for the best MOCC castle, but it will not be the only
prize that the Castle Room awards.

It is the hope of the Castle Room co ordinators and
the BrickFest 2004 organizers that the inspiration to
build will not be primarily fueled by a desire to win
a very big lego set. The prize for best MOCC castle
has yet to be determined. It may be reasonably big, or
quite honestly it may not be. But there will be
something cool, and best of all of course, the winning
castlebuilder's name will become renown, nay legendary
across the lands as bards and poets spread his or her
name across the AFOL community. Minifigs for
generations to come will speak in hushed whispers of
awe as they recount the great MOCC challenge of 2004,
and being the winning master castle builder will in short
just be a pretty cool thing to be.

If there are any questions, please feel free to ask. Oh, and if you are coming to BrickFest 2004, you might want to keep tabs on another BrickFest 2004 thread on the Displays forum.

So castle builders, on your marks, get set go!

Good Luck

Magnus

BrickFest 2004 Castle Room co ordinator.

Lord Resta · Post by **Lord Resta** » Mon May 31, 2004 6:17 am

wow! You must have spent a long time writing that. Un fortuately, I won't be attencding, as I live in the UK!

Post by **Robin Hood** » Mon May 31, 2004 5:21 pm

Wish I could enter, but Washington is a long ways away.

Post by **Formendacil** » Mon May 31, 2004 6:01 pm

This contest looks awesome! I really wish I could make it to Brickfest. Unfortunately, Alberta is a long, long ways from Washington, and I have to save my travel money for Germany!

Magnus · Post by **Magnus** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 3:25 am

I hope some of you who will be attending BrickFest are considering taking part in this!

Just a little reminder that I forgot to mention initially - please remember when building MOCs for this, to fill out a MOC card on the Brickfest website.

http://dc.brickfest.com/

Your castle certainly won't be disqualified if you don't, but it makes it easier for the organizers to figure out table and room allotments if they know how many of what kind of MOCs there will be.

Thanks - and looking forward to meeting some other CC.commers in August!

Magnus

Magnus · Post by **Magnus** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 10:28 pm

In view of a request, the rules have changed a little, allowing for more flexibility in building castles which are very tall. They have not become more restrictive in any way, so if you've already started your castle you don't need to worry about it being disqualifiedunder new rules.

Basically if you want to build higher than the length of the castle you can do so by making the footprint smaller. The overall spacial area taken up by the castle should stay the same, but it can be vertical rather than horizontal.

Check out the Lugnet post for details:

http://news.lugnet.com/castle/?n=20023