Today we get to dig in to a highly anticipated tribute to/reimagining of/reviving of the beloved 10193 Medieval Market Village. LEGO Icons 10332 Medieval Town Square contains 3,304 pieces and 8 minifigures and will be available from LEGO.com and LEGO retail stores for Insiders on March 1st, and to everyone March 4th, for US $229.99 | CAN $299.99 | UK £199.99. It’s over twice the price of the original Medieval Market Village, but also over twice the pieces – and inflation happens, so: how does it do? Is the sequel worthy of joining the village? Let’s get our wattle and daub and find out!
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
The box and contents
The substantial box has the adult-aimed, black background and clean presentation, with the rear sides of the buildings show on the back along with some inset scenes. The cast of characters is displayed across the box top. And every LEGO box includes a 1:1 (life size) photo of one of the included parts: LEGO sure knows what we’re all looking for in this one.
Two instruction books and a modest sticker sheet are protected in a cardboard envelope. Each book covers one of the two main buildings; the accessory builds and tree are all covered in the first book. Almost everything on the sticker sheet makes sense as a stickered, and not printed, part. It’d be great to get printed flags, but it makes perfect sense not to create dedicated one-off parts for these. The large tapestry is a lovely reference to several original classic Castle sets!
There are 25 numbered bags and one un-numbered bag of large plates included. Frustratingly, our review copy’s bags were still all plastic. Bags 1-12 go with the first instruction book, and 13-25 go with the second. I’m referring to them as “first” and “second” but you’ll note they aren’t numbered; there’s no reason you can’t build them in the other order, or share the build with a friend, each working on a different book simultaneously. Within each book and building there are some pieces that can be done in parallel, but it gets harder to split out individual bags.
The build – Book 1
Bag one builds some accessories, most substantially a stand for the cheesemonger to sell from at market, but let’s dive right into the first building. The first building has three hinged sections, and the central core is a stone tower that houses a woodworker’s shop. The interior is pretty sparse, though some of the racks and tools build in bag one can round it out. Upstairs, there is a crane, operated by a small gear on the side of the building, that can lift items; a trapdoor, also operated by a mechanism on the building side, and some storage including an extra wagon wheel and some wood.
Here’s one side of the building without the roof. The 1×2 dark green tiles for shutters work well. The lattice window insert in white is uncommon, and looks great. It’s used several other places in the set, and you get 15 of them total, plus a few extras.
The roof uses some interesting and extremely studs-not-on-top subassemblies to hold a 45 degree angle. This could be done with many fewer pieces, but the substantial supports make sure that the roof is sturdy when you lift it off the shop. The instructions have a helpful top-down view to make sure each support is placed correctly. The reddish brown plates are in fact arranged so that you can’t place the supports incorrectly. There’s no need for the plates on the ends to be 2×3 instead of 1×3, but doing that gives an exact corner that the tiles on the roof support fit around. It’s a subtle way that LEGO has gotten quite good at ensuring a smooth building experience for all levels of builder.
And here’s the other side of the shop with the roof on. So far nothing too exciting, but we’re just getting started…
Next up is the tapestry weaver’s cottage. This starts out with a dark orange tiled floor with diagonal rows of reddish brown jumper plates, a cobblestone entrance, a small wooden stove with the beginnings of a chimney, and Tudor-style walls with dark red windows. These windows use the black latticed insert, which is more common. The windows, however, are much rarer in dark red, appearing in 4 previous sets.
The interior gets a splash of color with a rack of what we’ll guess is wool thread for weaving the tapestries. Dark green seems to have been left on the floor. And the chopsticks piece must represent knitting needles or wooden weaving hooks!
A support structure is put in place for the roof and then covered over with the rock-textured slopes that were used in 10305 Lion Knight’s Castle and look great here too. Some clips and bars make it possible to angle roof sections around the arched dormer window as well.
Before turning to a bit of landscaping, we build a loom, which has lots of functional-looking arms and such. The large sticker from the sticker sheet is shown off here nicely, though the jousting knights from 383 Knight’s Tournament are obscured by the front bar. The full classic yellow castle is fully visible though, along with what might be an alarmingly red sky… perhaps the tapestry is prophesying a catastrophic event? Like… the end of the Classic Castle era, until a generation later, a builder arises…. Ahem.
A beehive and a solid vegetable garden finish off the exterior of what is a very nice cottage. Two out of three sections done!
The third section of this building is the cheesemonger’s cottage. After a stone tiled floor with some interesting mixed part usage and a foundation, we start building up another Tudor-style wall. Here’s a breakdown of how these are done throughout the build: a 1 x 1 x 1 2/3 brick with studs on the side gets paired with a 1×2 plate in a contrasting color, a 1×2 brick in the original color, and capped with a 1×2 plate in the contrast color. It all fits in the space of 3 horizontal studs, making it easy to place them using modified 1×4 plates with 2 studs (a smooth surface is required under everything but the 1 x 1 x 1 2/3 brick with this technique).
The cheese shop has plenty of backstock to make sure that the market stall is always well supplied, along with that nice varied floor, a kitten being rewarded for its work keeping away mice with a bowl of milk, and a stove where some new cheeses are under development.
The roof uses a similar technique to the woodworker’s shop, but this time there’s one large unified support instead of three separate ones.
Add some fencing, a water trough, and other landscaping details, and we’ve got a nice looking cottage here. The roof looks a bit sparse compared to the tapestry weaver’s cottage, though. This roof and the roof for the woodworker’s shop are the plainest in the set, and they do suffer a bit compared to the thatch look of the tapestry weaver’s and the other building. You might be forgiven for focusing on something else in that yard though…
Well hello there, little goat. If you’re wondering, yes, dark grey is a realistic color for a goat. If you doubt that, Google might send you to goatspots.com, and while we cannot in any way vouch for the accuracy of their information, there’s a whole lot of words talking about genetics that seem convincing. Anyway, hold up – is this fence actually going to hold a goat? Seems very unlikely.
After locking in the hinges for the cheesemonger’s shop, the first building is complete.
The last bag of this half of the set builds a tree. It seems like there’s at least a pond somewhere in the village of Felsa (as the instruction books tell us this town is named), since the tree is on a shore of some sort. The posters and bulletins pinned to the tree are fun, though the one about the price of a goat feels rather targeted at aficionados of 7189 Mill Village Raid.
The build – Book 2
The next instruction book starts off with the base for the Broken Axes Inn. The dark red tiles and dark orange plates, along with dark green accents and furniture, make for a rich interior palette. A lute is ready for someone to provide some music, and a keg of ale has been tapped. Outside, cobblestones and torches accent the building.
Olive and dark tan continue to add the now familiar Tudor stylings to a second floor of the Inn. Inside, a crab, a whole hanging fowl, bread, various greens, an oven for making hardy bread, and a pie cooling in the window fill out the Inn’s kitchen.
Sliding next door, we start on the shieldsmith’s shop, which also includes a very rocky base for the village watchtower.
As soon as the red and black Tudor pattern starts taking shape, the comparison to 6067 Guarded Inn is inevitable. Not only did LEGO base this on one previous medieval market set, but we have a direct and lovely callback to one of the only prior “regular life” focused Castle sets, another Inn.
The roofs and watchtower make up a really, really nice sight here. The color usage, finishing, and roof thatch is top notch. Check out the gallery for details on where the Tax Collector hides his winnings – or embezzlement…
The minifigures
Referred to only as a “Crook”, the first of these is a revelation for Classic Castle fans – a Wolfpack rogue! This minifigure gives as much of an upgrade to a classic castle figure as the Black Falcon and Lion Knight torsos and legs have provided over the past 2 years. Both of these figures come with cloaks, but both also have nice back printing. Neither has an alternate facial expression.
The Woodworker and Tapestry Weaver are some of the prominent artisans in this vibrant village. Both have detailed hair pieces, though only the Woodworker has an alternate expression. Both get good back printing.
The Innkeeper and Shieldsmith round out the adult artisans, both looking like updated versions of much older figures. The belt pouch, in particular, is a spot on reflection of older castle minifigures.
Finally we have a lion knight guard – nothing new from the castle – and an urchin with a spoon who might be the village cheesemonger? I’m not sure who else fills that roll, and there is most definitely a lot of cheese, so there must be a cheesemonger.
And then there’s the GOAT.
I’m no mold expert, but looking at the original Mill Village Raid goat and the two new goats from the Series 25 Minifigures and this set, I don’t see any obvious shaping differences. It’s a clear choice by LEGO to avoid any confusion with the original goat; are they concerned about the BrickLink secondary market? IMPORTANT NOTE, ONLY THE DARK BLUEISH GRAY GOAT IS INCLUDED IN 10332 MEDIEVAL TOWN SQUARE.
Miscellany
With a set this size, there’s always a few thoughts that don’t fit neatly with everything else. First a geometry appreciation – the 3-deep plates that make the counter of the cheese stand interact with the angled front display so that on a hard surface, there’s only one possible angle for the hinge. LEGO geometry is so cool.
What are we transporting in this barrel.. ?
This instructions error is absolutely inconsequential but fascinating. How does the instructions generating software end up with a picture of the wrong submodel? Those are the woodworker’s shop’s roof support sections shown, not the wall sections we’re actually building.
The finished model and comparisons
Well this is a lovely set. Here’s an extended scene with both buildings, folded out, the tree, cheese stand, and the included minifigures:
And with this set explicitly based on 10193 Medieval Market Village, how do they look together? Here are some photos of the buildings from the original set along with this one, and then the interior of one of the buildings from each. There is definitely sophistication that’s happened in 15 years, denser parts usage, nicer roofs, finer details – but the scale is about the same. As my sweetie said, the new buildings could just be from a more recent, more prosperous generation of the village.
The recent LEGO Ideas Blacksmith’s Shop though seems a bit larger and out of scale. Not by a huge amount, but the scale of the single blacksmith’s shop compared to several combination buildings is off.
Make sure to check out the gallery at the end of the review for a few more comparison photos!
Conclusion and recommendation
The flat plate roofs with bits of texture from slopes and grille plates are disappointing. Nothing else is. This definitely a worth successor to the Medieval Market Village – those buildings just used slope bricks for the roofs anyway! – in terms of price growth over time, the piece count, and the schmancy buildings. Do you need a GOAT? Are you also called to non-battlement pieces of communal life? This is a gorgeous set and we recommend it to anyone for all of the above reasons.
10332 LEGO Icons Medieval Town Square includes 3,304 pieces and 8 minifigures, and will be available from LEGO.com and LEGO retail stores for Insiders on March 1st, and to everyone March 4th, for US $229.99 | CAN $299.99 | UK £199.99.
The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.
Check out our full gallery of images:
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