>>10363417The Black Knights had 2 big castles
This set is the first for the Black Knights and also the 1st to feature barding, so I guess you could say that the Black Knights entered with their best foot forward. It is a brilliant set and the castle itself is quite an improvement on the earlier ones. The gate is imposing (I love the portcullis) and the design for the winch is a clear advancement in technology, the sloping columns in between the wall panels give the castle a very solid design and the black brick choice gives the set a clear individualism over what came before.
New to this set we see barding for the horses (I mentioned that above), black knight shields (10 in total), black knight flag, inversed printing on the wall and corner panels (it was grey with black printing, it became black with grey printing for this set) and the jail cell piece. At 12 figs and 4 horses this set is generous and the fact that the castle can be opened gives a lot of play value to this set, the castle does not come with any opposition however so it is following the trend of all the others, somewhat to the detriment of playability.
As this set was released in 1988 we miss out on some of the newer LEGO pieces that made Black Knights so interesting (such as printed faces, oval shields, armour plating, ghosts, visor styled helms) however I don’t think the set suffers for it, this set is a brilliant evolutionary piece from what was, to what was going to be, it has roots in the past but its intentions in the future, a modern style filled with dated figs.
It is the last of the traditional castles and possibly one of the best, after this set most castles could not longer be opened or connected, the beautiful connectivity of sets)was disappearing to be replaced with something else, raised baseplates and closed castle design. It was simply change, neither a good or bad thing, however this open design was to eventually return to castle sets we just had to wait almost 20 years.
