[REVIEW] 10193 Medieval Market Village

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How would you rate this set?

Excellent
16
84%
Average
3
16%
Poor
0
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Total votes: 19

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hatcher
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[REVIEW] 10193 Medieval Market Village

Post by hatcher » Wed Sep 28, 2011 5:28 am

Indexed

Set Name:Medieval Market Village
Set Number: 10193
Theme: Castle
Year: 2009
Pieces: 1601
Minifigures: 8
MSRP: $134.99 (CDN) $99.99 (USD)

Description from Shop@Home:
Expand your LEGO® Castle kingdom!

This classic medieval village with marketplace is a perfect match for any LEGO® Castle. Full of authentic features, fun accessories and all-new animals to expand and enhance your kingdom; it includes two complete buildings with detailed interiors like a blacksmith’s shop with waterwheel-driven hammer, a food stand, tree, table, cart, cows, chicken, rooster, duck, peasants, knights, rare elements and colors, and more!

Play inside! The 2 two-story buildings feature a hinge system that allows you to open and close them as you wish!
The yellow building contains the stables, blacksmiths shop and his home upstairs! Help the blacksmith forge the swords with the water powered trip hammer! Don’t forget to close the stable gates and feed the horse some carrots!
The classically European styled blue building features a cozy tavern on the first floor and welcoming bedroom on the top floor.
Lots of authentic touches: fireplaces in the bedrooms, pictures on the walls, dressing tables, working doors and windows and other interior details!
The soldiers and peasants alike shop and eat in the marketplace filled with baskets of fish, apples and flowers. Sit at the table for a meal of cheese and whole turkey but stay out of the way of the soldiers carrying the kings treasure!
Includes 8 minifigures: blacksmith, 2 soldiers, 2 male peasants, 2 female peasants and a boy minifigure!
Buildings measure over 7.5" (19cm) tall and over 9" (22cm) long when open wide!

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Medieval-Mar ... ByCategory

The Medieval Marketplace. I for one wanted this set the moment I saw it online. And finally, I got my hands on one. I can't believe that this set is still available almost 3 years after its release, especially considering the Castle line was replaced with the Kingdom's line last year. But does the set live up to the hype? Short answer, HELL YES! For the long answer, lets get on with the review.

First, some obligatory shots of the box. The front shows you everything you get in the box. This set has a lot of pieces, but be warned, a large number of them are 1x1 round plates.
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The back of the box shows us the insides of the two buildings, and some play features, such as the water wheel that powers the blacksmiths hammer.
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The contents of the box. I kind of expected this, but it was still upsetting to find non-numbered bags. This means sorting the pieces before starting. And I strongly advise that you sort them. Trying to hunt down those 1x1 rounds plates over the 16 (not counting the cows bag) bags (not to mention the smaller bags inside some of the larger bags) would be a nightmare. The instruction booklets and the dreaded sticker sheet are bagged and boarded for protection. I wish all the sets did that.
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The pieces sorted. I sorted by colour for the most part, but I also put all the minifigure parts in a bucket, and the special pieces such as wheels, in a bucket. I then split the black into separate containers, one for roof pieces, and the other parts. The brown also got split into multiple containers, as there is a LOT of brown, and a lot of it is small pieces, including something like 45 of those 1x1 round plates. Sort first, it will save your sanity later. Those tubs are mostly cottage cheese or sour cream containers. Save them, they make great lego sorting cups.
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The instructions and stickers before being removed from the shiping bag.
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The stickers sheet. Fortunately, its a small one, and if you are planning to put this set together (and why else would you buy it?) you really need to put them on to get the full effect.
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The instruction books
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A random page from the instruction book. The steps are numbered, and the parts you need are shown separately. This is a very complex build (not that the build is difficult, but there are a LOT of tiny pieces), and being able to grab the pieces you need speeds things up immensely (as does colour sorting).
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Ok, onto the build. First up, the minifigures. This set has 8 of them. Here are the first 4, an old man, the blacksmith, a man, and a child. I think the child is a boy, but my daughter is convinced its a girl due to the hair. Anyway, the old man comes with a walking stick and a backpack, the blacksmith is holding a piece of ore, the man has a drumstick and a goblet.
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And the same figures from the back. All the torsos have printing on the back.
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And the other four figures. Two women, and two soldiers. Both the women have the same double faced head, and one of the soldiers has a double face also. The soldiers are similar to the ones found in the other Castle sets. The women come with skirts instead of legs.
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And from the back without hair/helmets to show the double faces. Only the black dressed woman has back printing.
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A horse and two cows. I believe this is the first appearance of cows in a LEGO set. They are similar in function to the horse, having the spot for a rider (or to pull a cart) and heads that go up and down. The cows also have horns that are removable.
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And now some of the smaller parts of the set. Here we have a weapons rack, a treasure chest, a table and a stool. The table and stool go in the top floor of the blacksmith shop.
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A cart for the horse, complete with bales of hay.
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A food stand and a table complete with turkey. The table is smooth with no studs, so everything slides off it if you try to move it. Otherwise, looks quite nice.
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A bucket of apples, a bucket of fish, and a bucket of flowers, with pricing sign, and a rat, no doubt spreading the plaque or something. My only complaint about the apples is they don't have any way to attach them to other pieces of LEGO. Not a big thing, but still.
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The birds. I know that the newer sets have realistic looking chickens in them, but I love the fact that we have brick built birds. I believe we have a duck, a hen, and a rooster here. Cool!
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The tree. While it does look kind of cool, I hate this tree. Putting it together was a nightmare. You put even the tiniest bit of pressure on it, and it falls apart. The branches doesn't stay on if you breathe on them, etc. The tree is what costs this set its perfect score.
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Moving on to the two main buildings. First up is the blacksmiths shop and stables. Since there is a lot of steps in the building of each of these buildings, I took a lot of pictures. Both buildings split open for alternate display options, and to access the interior. Here is the main floor at an early stage.
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Here you can see the blacksmith shop taking shape.
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The mechanism to make the water powered hammer is taking shape here.
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After relocating from the floor to my LEGO work bench, we have finished the walls of the first story, and you can see the water wheel on the side.
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The walls of the second floor are a real pain to assemble. The finished product is totally worth the effort. I must say I'm certainly not an expert on medieval architecture, but these buildings seem much too impressive for the time period. They look more like Renaissance style, but I digress.
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Some of the windows are now in place.
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In this picture, the second floor walls are complete, all the windows are in, and the fireplace has been added in. It has a door that opens, and there are pictures on the walls. There is no staircase to get to the second floor, so I'm not sure how people get up there, but it looks nice.
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Beginning to assemble the roof. Again, some very interesting building techniques in use here, making this a really impressive building.
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The roof nearly complete. I like how they used black car mud guards to make those circular window toppers on the left side of the building.
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And the completed blacksmiths shop/stables from the outside. Like Charlie Sheen would say "Winning!"
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And from the inside. There is a table and a few other items to be added to the second story, but basically this is it. I think this building completely lived up to the hype.
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Now, lets move on to the second building, the tavern. Here's a shot near the beginning of construction.
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In this shot, we can see the beginning of the window frames and door.
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Windows and doors are in place now. The first floor is kind of plain in comparison to the upper floor.
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The first floor is now complete, the second floor is coming next.
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The second floor is baby blue in colour, and has a lot of cool architectural features.
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In this shot, the window wells can be seen. The buildings look very impressive, but they are tricky builds.
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Here is the inside shot of the building, windows and fireplace are complete.
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The second floor is nearly completed here, and you can see the staircase leading to the upper floor doorway.
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The roof is partially on now, and the building is nearly complete.
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The completed building from the outside. Looks very nice.
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Once the building is finished, we add the interior features. Here we see a dresser, stool and table in the left room, and a bed in the right room.
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And the tavern stuff is in now in the bottom, a keg on tap, and a bar complete with goblets.
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And the two buildings folded up. They both look awesome open or closed. Total win here LEGO. Way to go.
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The completed set. A picture is worth a thousand words. Following are some close up shots.
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And finally the extra pieces. Mostly 1x1 round plates (shocking that,as they make up the majority of parts in this set) and other interesting stuff.
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Conclusion. This set lives up the hype, no question. The buildings are beautiful, have really interesting details and building techniques. The figures are excellent, and you get cows! :-) The price is right, especially in American dollars. Even Canadians are getting it for less than 10 cents a piece. (They even dropped the the Canadian price from the original price of $150, and even that was within the golden ratio). It has play features like the water powered hammer in the blacksmith shop, and is going to look great on my shelf, so its a must have for AFOLs. If you are buying it for parts (and I can't imagine why you'd want this and NOT have it set up) you do get 1600 parts, but be advised a lot of them are 1x1 round plates, and another large chunk of those are 1x1 bricks and 1x2 bricks. This set gets a 9.9/10. Get it before its gone. You will not be disappointed.
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Last edited by hatcher on Thu Sep 29, 2011 5:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Knobby Plastic
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Re: [REVIEW] 10193 Medieval Market Village

Post by Knobby Plastic » Wed Sep 28, 2011 7:49 pm

Wonderful review, really enjoyed it. ;)
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Re: [REVIEW] 10193 Medieval Market Village

Post by NIGELTTF » Thu Sep 29, 2011 5:28 am

Minor quibble. This set has no 1x1 round tiles. No set has 1x1 round tiles. I think you are talking about 1x1 round plates. And, yes, the set is lovely, even if I bought it for the pieces, someday I will use them to make a late 1960's "Steak and Ale" restaurant

If only there was 1x1 round tiles, sigh.

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hatcher
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Re: [REVIEW] 10193 Medieval Market Village

Post by hatcher » Thu Sep 29, 2011 5:37 am

:oops:

Thanks for pointing that out. I think I've corrected all references.
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Re: [REVIEW] 10193 Medieval Market Village

Post by atmail35 » Thu Sep 29, 2011 12:05 pm

Thanks for the review, nice job.

I really was kind of excited to see a glimpse of your storage system in the background....care to share a bigger pic? Are all those bins filled w. LEGO? :up:

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Re: [REVIEW] 10193 Medieval Market Village

Post by hatcher » Fri Sep 30, 2011 8:45 am

LOL, yep all filled. I'll post some pictures in another forum once I get the room cleaned up a bit. Basically I have table with 5 of those parts bins you used to hold screws, etc around the edge of the table, and a 6th one on the floor, plus one of those tower or drawers on wheels next to it. That and all the unsorted pieces that I've trying to wade throught.
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