The LEGO Group has been spoiling Castle fans lately with some impressive sets like Lion Knights’ Castle and Viking Village, and this year we’re getting a reimagined version of the fan-favorite Medieval Market from 2009 in the Medieval Town Square.
This peaceful village has a name, Felsa, and is full of craftspeople who provide the citizens and the nearby Castle with cheese, furniture, hospitality, and other goods and services.
The instruction booklet invites us on a tour of the village and the daily lives of its inhabitants, so I’ll do just that in this overview.
Disclaimer: The LEGO Group sent this to me via BrickCentral for a photoshoot, but all opinions in this review are my own.
The buildings
The Medieval Town Square consists of two separate structures: the cheese shop, woodworking shop, and weaving workshop model on one side and the tavern, shield-painting workshop, and guard tower model on the other.
Of the two, the structure with the tavern and watchtower is the more interesting one to me because of the colors and that nod to the Guarded Inn 6067.
The watchtower in Felsa received the same treatment as the towers in the Lion Knights’ Castle and the thatched roof of the Broken Axe Inn matches the roofs in the castle as well.
On the other side of the village, the white weaving workshop is similar to the white buildings in the Lion Knights’ Castle. All of which brings the two medieval sets into the same universe.
While I like the form of the second smaller structure, it would have been nice to see the central building that houses the woodworking shop in another color apart from light bley to give it a better focal point.
Medieval villages weren’t all that drab despite the conditioning we’ve received from Hollywood. Besides, Felsa seems like a prosperous place with all the commerce going on and its proximity to the majestic Lion Knights’ Castle.
Still, the town square is quite photogenic, especially because you can swivel the buildings in both structures to create different configurations.
All the buildings are open in the back but can be closed with hinges to make for a more compact footprint. If you want a tinier village, close it up. If you want to fill a shelf as a street, you can line them up.
Toy photographers will be happy to find that there are some good interiors in this set, particularly the cheese shop and the weaving workshop. These two spaces have quite a bit of empty room.
That’s not something we see often in a LEGO model and might be a downside for a LEGO collector or builder, but a plus for us toy photographers.
Thankfully, Felsa is without a blacksmith (although there is an anvil in there); I think we’ve got enough of those in sets already. Of course, that job might belong to the blacksmith from Medieval Blacksmith 21325 whose abode is much grander than any of the village buildings. Maybe he’s set up further outside of town where the real estate is cheaper.
The big tree serves as a poster board for the community and on it are 3 announcements. All 3 are stickers so that might be a bummer for people. I read that designers have a limit on how many new prints they can request per set and I’m glad that they were spent on the minifigs.
The minifigures and animals
LEGO really delivered on the Minifigures in this set and I’m thrilled to see a bunch of new prints, mostly torsos. In total, there are 8 Minifigures: an innkeeper, a tax collector, a carpenter, a cheesemaker, a painter, a weaver, a watchtower guard, and a Wolfpack rogue.
Dressed in a dark purple, the tax collector is easily the standout minifig of the set. Both the torso and legs are brand-new prints with ornate details befitting a rich guy.
The only new minifig element is the sand green cap on the Cheesemaker. I think that same cap appears in the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs set. I require more of these caps!
The two minifigs without any new prints are the watchtower guard who has the same torso and legs as the rest of the Lion Knights and the painter who has the torso of the farmer from the castle.
Animals in this set include a dark bley goat, a white kitten, and a reddish-brown squirrel. It’s great to have another goat in the set even though LEGO already released a white goat earlier this year with CMF Series 25’s Goatherd minifigure.
Worth it?
At 229,99€/£199.99/$229.99 and the LEGO Ideas Dungeons & Dragons set somewhere on the horizon, it’s not a clear winner for LEGO. As a medieval theme fan in general, it would be hard for me to decide where to spend my money and I might wait it out until the D&D set is officially revealed.
I’m just an average builder but I wasn’t wowed with any techniques or design choices in Medieval Town Square as I was with the Lion Knights’ Castle. A lot of the wattle and daub (that half-timber look) as well as the roof design is the same as in the Castle so if you already have the bigger set, these might even feel tedious to do.
The goat might have been the big pull if we hadn’t already gotten it in a CMF. It’s special because it’s dark bley and exclusive (so far) to this set, but hey, it’s not spotted so it’s not that special.
As a toy photographer, I think this is a great set because it’s photogenic with lots of great angles and storytelling possibilities. Backgrounds and environments have always been a bit of a challenge for LEGO photographers so Medieval Town Square could solve that rather easily.
With removable roofs and buildings connected by hinges, it’s easier to get into spots and light them as well.
The minifigs are great but as we’ve seen from the Viking Village and Lion Knights’ Castle, they became readily available to buy on LEGO.com Bricks and Pieces as Bestsellers. Meaning, you could just get a bunch of these minifigs later fresh from LEGO if you wanted to just populate your medieval MOC.
So I don’t think this is a Day One buy unless you’re a hardcore Castle fan. I think a lot of casual LEGO fans will just wait and see what the D&D set from LEGO Ideas will look like.