Weird activator for that catapult

That is one awkward looking catapult, but still a decent castle wall.

also, just realized that the 'snake head' polybag name got changed to 'snake head?' hahaha!

These wall sections were unbelievably cool when you were a kid in the early '90s, but as an AFOL, there's just not a whole lot you can do with them that looks aesthetically OK. The minifigures are still great, though.

Personally I really cant see why Lego couldnt do a modern version of this with new pieces and updated prints etc.

Nice to see a proper catapult/trebuchet. Im surprised Lego rarely ever made battering rams, makes sense for a very easy play feature to break open doors yet they didnt do them very often???

That trebuchet-loading archer must be very strong but not very bright, considering where that thing is aimed.

Gotta love a good old fashioned castle

My first ever castle Theme LEGO

This seems like a good set to start a castle collection back in the day. I still do like the look of these "less flashy" castle sets.

The last "wall" section of the old Castle theme.
This was a nice set. I have two of them to expand the city wall, but now I think that I will build my own city wall.

I have this. I played so many hours with this and now it’s getting a second leash on life from my son.

When I played with it the knight in full armor was obviously the stand out. He had so many adventures.

Now the castle has been taken over by the Ninjago bad guys as they plot against the ninja’s in their monastery.

Looks like those defending knights are going to be under siege from a hail of toilet rolls!

Got this as a kid and played the hell out of it! Wonderful set :)

@Mr__Thrawn said:
"Old LEGO box art looks excellent. I’d gladly hang some of them (497, 375, 6067, 6285, 6990) on my wall."

Exactly. My dream is to get those background by themselves somehow. I wonder whether they exist somewhere.

@brickengineeringdude said:
"Sure is a friendly-looking war going on there."

Well, they are all smiling!

One of the few Castle sets I had as a kid, although sadly it has not survived amongst my collection. Amazing how many hours of fun could be had with what is, essentially, a few walls and a door.

Being 18 at the time, I had stopped playing with Lego about 6 years ago when this one was released. But seeing it on shelves was still bringing stars in my eyes, even if I hid it from my teen friends then, not wanting to let them see that Lego toys could interest me. Classic castle was The toy of the KFOL I was. So simple, basic but so effective, so much play value!

Such a good set, with the system to expand walls via technic pins (like current Harry Potter sets), the 80s and early 90s Castle line was very expandable.

However to me, Harry Potter is in no way a replacement for Castle.

@TheBrickshipyard said:
" @Yooha said:
" @Mr__Thrawn said:
"Old LEGO box art looks excellent. I’d gladly hang some of them (497, 375, 6067, 6285, 6990) on my wall."

Exactly. My dream is to get those background by themselves somehow. I wonder whether they exist somewhere."

100X times this! I've always had this thought of finding a library of these old box art images without any sets superimposed on them. However it was done by Lego back then, it was magic and holds up well today. Beautiful box art sold sets in equal measure as the sets themselves I could argue. "

You could probably get something half decent by just painting over the sets in photoshop :) What would you do with the backgrounds?

I loved this set, I would use it as the center gate for huge castles, or curtain walls around other sets, especially once I got the black knights castle/mountain fortress one.

ETA: one of the frustrating sets tho: not enough shields! especially since they had started making the big kite shields at this point. that was a problem with a lot of sets back then I think.

i'd love to see someone use all the old castle sets connected together for each faction, they all had at least one castle and one extra wall. the original kings castle had a blacksmith and the guarded in as well.

I did not realise until recently how old that armour piece on the horse-riding knight was. I first saw it in Knights' Kingdom II and Vikings, and assumed it was new at the time; it's always weird to see that, in fact, it's been around longer than I have!

Speaking of KKII, I had the set that feels like essentially a modern update on this concept: 8799 Knights' Castle Wall. It had the single large gate-tower-part (complete with flags), plus wall section, and was manned by three knights against two attackers... though in that case the attackers were a separate complementary set that it was often dual-packed with.

In any case, given how many hours of fun I had with that KKII set, I can only imagine this one would be equally enjoyable :D

At first glance this Stronghold was not very strong if the mini-figs could just walk around the wall? The primary use may have been an extension to 6085 rather than a castle on it own, but it still has a certain charm and element of fun all on its own with the catapult, while you could combine with other wall type extension sets to make a more complete structure.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Zander:
The counterweight is from a trebuchet, but the arm is pure catapult. Due to the way a real trebuchet works, a sling is required to release the projectile at a specific point in the rotation. This catapult arm needs a hard stop to release, and since there isn’t one on a trebuchet*, if you combine the two in this manner, it’s just going to bury that thing in the ground a few dozen feet in front of the base.

*there’s so much inertia involved in a trebuchet that if you did put a hard stop on it like you would with a catapult, you’d probably shatter the frame after just a few shots. Instead, the counterweight is allowed to swing freely below the arm, like a pendulum, until it slows down enough that the operators can safely halt its movement and start to prep it for the next shot. But if you impose a hard stop on the arm, you also do so on that massive counterweight."

Yes, I know how a trebuchet works. SpoonTree’s question related to the ‘activator’ which I took to mean the counter-weight given its prominence.

I don’t have this set but maybe someone who does can clarify whether the cylindrical projectiles get buried ‘in the ground... in front of the base’. If, as I suspect, they don’t, then this is a(n admittedly simplified) trebuchet by virtue of the means by which force is imparted to the projectiles (the potential energy of a weight elevated to a height) and not an onager that depends on a torsion mechanism.

now this is a classic set that is worth being picked by huwbot! wonderful!

back in those days i had the bigger Black Knights' castle.

We had this and two 6034 Black Monarch's Ghost and I was always a bit miffed that those small buildings, while possible to connect (if you modded the flag to the other side on one of them) with this set, did not look like they matched at all, I had to add a couple of pieces to make them a better fit. That, and I didn't like the fact that when you 'closed' the walls there were gaps wide enough for a minifigure to slip through (and a total lack of protection for those on the side walls). Still played a lot with this though :-)

Classic Castle. Instant like.

One of my favourites growing up, and now resurrected on my display shelf. It's currently connected to Black Monarch's Fortress (6085) which creates a (mostly) hexagonal ground plan when combined - nobody is sneaking around my walls! ;)

With the exception of Battle Dragon (6018), the Black Falcons were being phased out, so getting that knight with the updated armour was really something special. I think that the minifig crossbows were new that year, too, so this set was REALLY something special!!

Whichever way you all are classifying that siege weapon, I will say that it worked just fine - not award-winning by any means, but perfectly well for play.

@Zander:
But the counterweight is 3 studs wide, and the gap between the blue supports is not wide enough for it to fit (looks 2-wide to me). At this scale, when that arm finishes about 1/4 rotation, the counterweight will smack into the supports (a “hard stop”, like a catapult), and the projectile will be ejected from the basket because it will keep moving while the basket won’t. It works for the same reason ants can carry 100x their own body weight, which is that there’s barely any mass involved. Scaled up to a real siege engine, that counterweight will hit the supports and the entire frame will (at best) crack and be rendered unusable, or (at worse) shatter, showering any nearby troops with splinters and other deadly debris. It’s not a trebuchet because it’s not a real thing. It’s a hybrid between a trebuchet (the counterweight) and a catapult (the means by which the projectile is ejected).

However, given how complex the sling mechanism on a real trebuchet is, it’s probably impossible for them to have designed using 100% stock parts, so this is likely as close as they could get to a functional trebuchet, and someone may have decided that getting it half right was a better idea than just making a regular catapult.

A nice set to get if you (or your folks) could not afford the main castle sets. Sadly never had one as a kid, but have one now.

@unslipped said:
"One of my favourites growing up, and now resurrected on my display shelf. It's currently connected to Black Monarch's Fortress (6085) which creates a (mostly) hexagonal ground plan when combined - nobody is sneaking around my walls! ;) "

Those were/are two of my favorite sets, but it always bothered me that they didn't connect "properly" because the fortress is on a thin baseplate, while the stronghold is on a regular plate. Echoes the emerging issue of how to incorporate the new road plates with Modular Buildings. . . .

My first Castle set with walls to build a castle!! How many battles have seen those walls!! I love it!! Now, I have attached a fouth wall to finish the castle, but the essence remains!!

I really like the symmetry and the colors in this set, however simple they are. The way the all-red Black Knights figs and all-blue Black Falcons (save for their helmets) contrasted against the black wall somehow stood out to me when this was released in 1990. It is simple, but visibly appealing.

The only thing confusing about the 1990 sets containing both Black Falcons and Black Knights, as well as 1992's Battle Dragon, is that sometimes these factions were competing with each other (like here), while other times they seemed to have formed an alliance. The were like the Evil Horde, who'd sometimes fight Skeletor and other times they'd work together against He-Man.