Same League as MMV

[Falconer]

What sets would you say are in the same league as the Medieval Market Village? That is, if I wanted a tableau that included MMV and 2-3 other sets, what sets could I choose that wouldn’t look bad in contrast to the amazing MMV?

I have some thoughts, but I thought I would throw it out there and see what you guys think.

[hiroki]

The one who designed the MMV also designed Diagon Alley. Maybe add that?

[mephistopheles]

Wait until the Haunted House arrives. I think that will be the set that even tops MMV.

[Legonardo]

Wait until the Haunted House arrives. I think that will be the set that even tops MMV.

I agree that the haunted house will top MMV, mind you LEGO is (IMO) in a golden age right now and their sets are getting much more elaborate, so who knows? we may have MMV become our set standard for some time!

[Hive]

In my opinion, nothing else is in the same league as MMV. Though the closest will probably be the Kingdoms Joust, which fits in style and, of course, theme. Mill Village Raid is a decent fit as well.

[tvih]

My plan is to place MMV in the same Kingdoms diorama as Mill Village Raid (and either King's Castle or Joust), though it doesn't seem like a perfect match, as MMV just looks much better. Also planning on adding a small additional MOC house in the style of MMV, already designed it in LDD (not that there was much design needed for such a basic house). I've not yet made a thread here about the diorama, because I won't have the bricks to build the terrain for the next several months at least To give an idea of the size, it currently seems the largest construction base I have available is 128x96 studs, though I would've wanted even more space.

Anyway, as far as fitting companion sets go, I'd definitely go with Joust, since as Hive said it fits not just by style, but also theme.

[user_mat]

Definitely Joust. Actually, if you eliminate the jousting portion and the side walls and instead frame the MMV buildings around the castle portion you have a pretty neat little medieval city scene that fits nicely on a shelf.

[The Blue Brick]

I definitely agree the Joust set and the Mill Village Raid go great together. They are all part of the same theme and have a similar amount of detail that make them look in place.

[Yope]

In my opinion, nothing else is in the same league as MMV. Though the closest will probably be the Kingdoms Joust, which fits in style and, of course, theme. Mill Village Raid is a decent fit as well.

That would make for an impressive display! I have to say though that I think Diagon Alley would easily be in the same league as MMV, just my opinion

[Hive]

That would make for an impressive display! I have to say though that I think Diagon Alley would easily be in the same league as MMV, just my opinion

I will give you that it is indeed a very impressive set. But in my mind, nothing else is (currently) quite as good as the MMV.

It's a different style though and the buildings are of a newer nature. So if you want to do a medieval setup, I think they need to be severely modified to fit with the MMV. But that's just my opinion, of course.

[mephistopheles]

Btw. am I the only one around here who doesn't like the Joust? I think it is far beyond MMV's level.

[Stiel]

Nothing comes really close. I guess Diagon Alley or Kingdoms Joust look fine in the same diorama. Haunted House is not close (that said, it's still one of the better exclusives).

[tvih]

Btw. am I the only one around here who doesn't like the Joust? I think it is far beyond MMV's level.

While I like it, I'm having a slightly hard time figuring out how exactly I'm going to integrate it into my village diorama. For one, I'd possibly need two of them to make the towers closed. Secondly I don't think the wall buildings would really work that well. Unless I end up doing with the whole thing what I might have to do with the MMV buildings - put them at the edge of the diorama so that you still get access to the interior semi-"realistically". But that would indeed limit overall placement of the whole thing quite a bit, and in a way I'd prefer not to leave buildings open. Meh. If I were to use two of them and ditch the wall segments, I suppose it'd end up being an "Arch of Triumph" style of building.

[Hive]

Btw. am I the only one around here who doesn't like the Joust? I think it is far beyond MMV's level.

No I agree with you, to me it was a huge dissapointment. Only really good parts are the exclusive Black Falcon stuff and the green princess. The buildings doesn't impress me hugely, though the actual jousting scene is decent enough. I hope they do a MMV II some day with new buildings in the same style.

[smitty9999]

In my opinion, nothing else is in the same league as MMV. Though the closest will probably be the Kingdoms Joust, which fits in style and, of course, theme. Mill Village Raid is a decent fit as well.

I agree with this. I have all three sets and they intertwine very nicely. The MMV is where the MVR farmers bring their stuff and it can be set up around the joust to provide entertainment

[Falconer]

Thanks for the responses, guys. Though Diagon Alley and Haunted House don’t really work for me (since they are non-medieval).

Interesting that some people think MVR is the perfect add-on to MMV, and others think MVR doesn’t meet the standards of MMV. Having seen the pictures of MVR, I’m afraid I tend towards the latter view. I think it would actually detract from the perfection of MMV to put a MVR next to it. Though it’s hard to resist buying MVR anyway, for the animals alone.

MMV is the set that brought me out of a 22-year Dark Age. It’s the set I always wanted; it’s gorgeous to display. Middle-earth sets are the other thing I always wanted, and I do like them very much, but currently I have The Mines of Moria set up nearby MMV, and unfortunately MOM looks pathetic compared to MMV. (But they don’t belong together anyway.)

An Unexpected Gathering looks really good, though. Definitely out of all the Hobbit/LOTR sets so far I will want to display it next to MMV. I hope it doesn’t look bad in comparison to MMV.

Kingdoms Joust without the Joust, used as a framing set for MMV (turning the Village into a Walled Town) is a neat idea. I’d like to hear more opinions on just how well these two sets look together.

[Deathleech]

The price of MMV is also phenomenal. It clocks in at just over 6 cents per piece. That's ridiculous when most sets nowadays are 0.10+ cents a piece. I think that definitely helps the set out. I mean its a great deal and because of this they included a lot of pieces for all those details and such that really make it stand out.

[Vindicare]

For theme unity, 7189 Mill Village Raid would go well and bulk up the civilian buildings. Then throw 10223 Joust as the backdrop of the outer wall dividing the commoners and the kingdom. That would make for a great diorama.

As far as same league as 10193 MMV, 10228 Haunted House I think will edge it out. Looking at the detail pictures, wow!

[tvih]

The price of MMV is also phenomenal. It clocks in at just over 6 cents per piece. That's ridiculous when most sets nowadays are 0.10+ cents a piece. I think that definitely helps the set out. I mean its a great deal and because of this they included a lot of pieces for all those details and such that really make it stand out.

While I agree that the price is quite nice, one has to remember that it also has less large parts than many sets. For example if you compare MMV and MVR, the MVR barn is as big as the MMV buildings, and while the windmill is smaller the MMV also has nearly a 1000 more pieces!

But in any case MMV is still definitely good value. I'd love to get a second one, but might not be able to.

I feel like I'm going a bit offtopic again posting about my MMV/MVR/Joust/etc diorama... so I'll put it in spoiler tags to make it optional

Here's a screenie from the slightly updated original designs for my diorama to give you an idea of how the sets look together, sorry if it's a bit messy since it doesn't have proper positioning for the smaller stuff, it was only meant for personal reference material

The Joust was supposed to be a front wall for the village. Now obviously if I were to do the diorama this way, the wall sections would have to be modded, plus a few MOC walls added for the wall to be the width of the entire diorama. Though it feels weird having a supposedly defensive wall with a huge "hole" in it, since the Joust arch doesn't have doors. Unless I'd mod 'em further.

I'd rather keep the MMV buildings closed as I mentioned before, but then I'd probably need at least another building to go with them. The hinges on the LDD models didn't seem to work so I couldn't close the buildings to demonstrate (without manually moving them). Already added is a MOC house to go with the MVR buildings, it's supposed to be sort of the living building for those folks, done in MMV style (needs a few mods for that yet though).

At the moment I don't have the MOC house or the Jousts, hence LDD instead of real pics. And I can't do it this big at the moment as it'd be at least 200 studs long with the Castle, so I've been thinking of making a separate battle diorama for the castle - assuming I can get two Jousts to begin with. Originally the idea was to have a Green Dragon army bust in during the market & jousting event to raid the place and lay siege to the castle. An additional problem with the castle was that it's quite small compared to the tall civilian buildings - as well as the Joust - and while I was planning to have it elevated and augmented with rock slopes to boost its defensive prowess, without actually building the terrain it's hard to say how well it'd work.

[Hive]

I think the "Joust set as outer wall" idea is great in principle, except that it's a 100 % open arch. Not very defensible.

The King's Castle doesn't fit with MMV at all due to it's size and somewhat lack of complexity.

What I'm going to do myself is get a Helm's Deep set and mod it with pieces from King's Castle (which I will sacrifice for parts, as it doesn't fit with the village at all in my head) to form an outer wall for the village that can be laid siege to by Dragon Knights. The village itself will be MMV, MVR and some other assorted buildings. If I ever get the Joust set, I will probably add the actual jousting scene but use the rest for parts. At the other end of the village, I will have a harbor and, if space on my table allows it, an attacking ship.

If you don't mind fantasy elements, Hagrid's Hut from Harry Potter would make a great witch's hut. I bought it for that myself after seeing a picture here on Eurobricks by a member who used it for exactly that purpose, which I thought looked great.

[tvih]

I think the "Joust set as outer wall" idea is great in principle, except that it's a 100 % open arch. Not very defensible.

Exactly. As I mentioned it would be possible to mod doors to it, but it probably wouldn't look all that good... might have to give it a try in LDD though. But I feel using it as anything but seems kinda strange too. Arch of Triumph perhaps, but why would such a thing be in a very small village. Then again the same can be said for an elaborate outer wall, I guess. So indeed the main weak point of this set is integrating it sensibly with other sets!

The King's Castle doesn't fit with MMV at all due to it's size and somewhat lack of complexity.

Yup, one of the primary reasons - aside from space issues - why I figured I'd use it separately. I mean I like the look of the KC for the most part, but compared to MMV and Joust it's a bit plain, there's no denying that. I also toyed with the idea of mashing Joust and KC together to form a nicer castle, but I think with how many wall elements KC uses and how different the two are in general, the benefit would from using up the KC that way would be small Of course I also toyed with the idea of an entirely MOC castle (which I still probably will do at some point, but not for this diorama), but in the end I bought the Kingdoms sets because I liked them as such, so it kinda makes no sense to not use them as they are! It would've been nice to get all sets into the same diorama, but I guess I'll have to compromise.

[smitty9999]

Saying there is no wall which makes the place open for attack is a pretty poor reason for not liking the combined sets, in my opinion. If anyone is really concerned about that, you can use 7948 Outpost Attack to fill in some gaps

edit:

I'll post a picture of my desk. I have the joust, MMV and MVR as well as the blacksmith.

My apologies for not having a more visually appealing set up, but space is very limited

Edited July 16, 2012 by smitty9999

[Hive]

Is that a Pokemon in your barn?

[user_mat]

I'll try posting a picture of my shelf layout later this evening.

My biggest issue with the Joust set is that the rooms inside the "castle" are so small. They are just barely big enough to fit a single minifig into. On the other hand, the King's Castle, which I just built is much more playable, but less detailed. I like that the King's Castle also is four walled, even if the walls are rather short. I'm in the process of setting up KC on baseplates. Just adding landscaping and a moat already makes KC look more detailed.

[smitty9999]

Is that a Pokemon in your barn?

Heck yes