Here are the winners of the Medieval March contest!

April 21, 2024 | 4

After combing through hundreds of amazing entries for the Medieval March Contest, it’s finally time to unveil the winners of this Medieval-themed challenge!

Spanning two categories, the main challenge was to see what wares and townies would populate Felsa’s market in the recently launched Medieval Town Square!

The grand prize is a copy of 10332 Medieval Town Square, and the runner-up will score a copy of 21343 Viking Village courtesy of LEGO and Jay’s Brick Blog.

In the Medieval Minifigure category, we invited characters to populate the Medieval Town Square, with two copies of the Creator 3-in-1 31120 Medieval Castle sets up for grabs!

Special thanks to Four Bricks Tall for hosting this contest, and also to @bricks_fan_uy for contributing and helping with the judging process!

Without further ado, here are the winners and some short notes on the winning entries!

To see more of the finalists shortlisted, and additional commentary, be sure to check out Four Bricks Tall!

Grand prize winner: u/AthenaCaprice

Description:

Famous (CMF) Troubadour, ‘Neil Olde’, is now touring with his band, ‘The Lute Gang Clan’! Playing hits such as, ‘Bard to the Bone’, ‘Bridge over Troubadour Water’ and ‘We Didn’t Start the Lyre’. Their cart converts to a performance stage and provides cheap accommodation for the band on the road. Let’s meet the rest of the band!

On drums and backing vocals we have Crystalmina Agoldera. She left the dwarf mines, put down the pickaxe and picked up the drumsticks. She still hits just as hard! She sports an impressive bushy beard and plait.

Bringing the bass tones, the Faun with the Shawm (an ancestor of the oboe), the satyr who makes the bass phatter, the goat-man who’s an oat fan, it’s Billy Idyll. When he’s not playing music he loves eating snacks!

Finally, providing the melody on lead viol, it’s Lady Grrragarr. A troll noble educated in the new-fangled classical tradition, she was trained by famous troll virtuoso Pagangreeny. Coming from a richer family, she forked out the money for the wagon, which might be why it has a giant violin on it… Somehow the band brings in a lot more gratuities when she helps collect.

Anna’s comments:

We wanted fun ideas and interesting creations that could visit Felsa’s town square and this model submitted by u/AthenaCaprice on Reddit certainly delivered on those two criteria! The Bardmobile actually converts into a stage for the traveling band. 

I love the red that covers the caravan and doubles as theater curtains. Medieval builds tend to be drab but in historically, they had lots of color. Plus, this is LEGO so I expect pops of color and whimsy.

Speaking of, that brick-built violin on top is pretty neat.

On the third criteria about photography, the model is clear– the red makes it pop– but it would have looked a lot better against a simpler environment. It gets lost a bit among all the distracting foliage.

When shooting with a phone, everything is in focus, so separating the background from the subject physically would have made the subject stand out. Plus points for the storytelling and the multiple angles! 

Gonza’s comments:

I love this idea, it is clever and definitely fun. The use of what seems to be inverted red slopes to simulate the curtains, and of course, the mechanism by which the side turns into a stage stand out. It’s not easy to fit cool mechanisms into small builds so seamlessly. This could be the centerpiece of any medieval town square at rush-hour scene. My least favorite part is probably the big violin, not very medieval looking imo, but overall this is great!

Jay’s comments:

Bards are a staple of any Medieval setting, and this delightful and charming model captured all the fun and whimsy that you’d expect from a Bardmobile.

Fun little details like a vibrant colour scheme, and the brick-built Violin and also clever functionality of the stage folding out sealed the deal for me.

Runner-up winner: stories_in_bricks

Description:

As a master woods craftsman, Petreos has made a market stall where he makes wooden puppets and paints them – sometimes to a patron’s request. To boost sales, he added a little puppet theater next to the stall to attract and entertain children. Maybe some of them might pester their parents in buying them one of the puppets. He even got a new apprentice, but he still needs a little bit more confidence in painting and performing.

Anna’s comments:

Stories_in_bricks understood the assignment too and submitted another fun idea and interesting creation with this puppet shop and theater for Felsa’s residents to enjoy at the market.

I love all the pops of color and the details in this pair of tiny models. There’s the old man carving the wood with his pedal-powered woodturner and another artisan painting the puppets in the stall. The painter is really ahead of his time with those spaceman and policeman puppets in there!

The compact theater is adorable too! Nice job with all the shapes in this tiny model.

As for the photography, stories_in_bricks knows to keep the setting simple by choosing environments that scale well to minifigs and aren’t distracting. He used a dedicated camera to take these photos, opting for a large aperture to throw everything else out of focus and letting our eyes land on his subjects.

He also gets plus points for showing us lots of photos of his creation and telling a story!

Gonza’s comments:

Love the overall simplicity of this build mixed with several cool details that really push the whole to the next level. Really well thought.

The space left between the curtains of the theater for the puppeteer and his two puppets has just the right size, which sometimes can be tricky to achieve. The use of the book piece as well as the red curtains themselves are beautiful.

On the puppet making stall, the woodturner is excellent. I love how they’ve used the little recess on the 1×1 round brick to simulate a carved line in the piece of wood there. Top detail. The use of micro figures in different colors as well as the paintbrush is another great idea.

This really looks like something you can stumble upon while walking through a medieval town square.

Jay’s comments:

The build, photography and storytelling was a highlight for me here, with not only a Puppet Shop, but also a Puppet Theatre to delight the residents of Felsa. You get a sense of time and place, and I particularly like the tile-work on the Theatre, and storybook highlighted in the middle.

The Puppet Shop makes great use of microfigures, and I especially love the facial expression of the minifigure painting the the statuette, in extreme concentration accentuated by beads of sweat streaming down his face.

Winner: u/the_aphol

Anna’s comments:

I laughed when I saw the aptly-named Magnus Ironbrow by the_aphol on Reddit. That NPU with the moustache part made this a decisive win for me. This minifigure is fun and creative, and has a fantastic portrait taken against lovely moss. 

Perhaps he’s visiting Felsa’s market to see the barber-surgeon for a trim.

Jay’s comments:

The eyebrows are an absolute winner.

The rich use of matte-black accessories also complement each other, and contrast beautifully against the rich bed of moss!

Winner: boreal.bricks

Anna’s comments:

This forest guardian/barbarian has a lot going for it: wild hair, fur, and tattoos! It’s still pretty unusual to see people swap out arms on torsos so I was happy to see that here. 

This action pose is great! It’s achieved using a bar with angled stud part inserted into the 2×2 round brick in reddish brown.

The photo looks like it was shot with a phone, but boreal.bricks was able to isolate the subject well by coming in close with the lens and throwing the background more out of focus. We can still see that it’s a forest which is the perfect environment for this character.

Jay’s comments:

This is one of those photos that reveal so much more detail the more you look at it. From the tattoo, to the acorn belt and even the green lipstick, every element here was carefully selected to tell a rich story about this Forest Guardian and convey so much about her personality and identity.

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