Every Piece Is a Space Piece: The Travels of LEGO Neuschwanstein Castle
The newest LEGO Architecture set 21063 Neuschwanstein Castle was just released and today I get to play with it! It is the second-largest set in the LEGO Architecture series so far, just about 900 pieces behind the 21051 Notre-Dame de Paris set. LEGO was kind enough to provide BrickNerd a review copy, and the editors thought I should review it for some reason...
Image via LEGO
Though if you are reading and know the author, you might be wondering, that’s a bit odd… why would you give Simon (Si-MOCs)—a well-known sci-fi/mech builder—a castle set!? Let me tell you a story…
In Defense of Castle
Hey! I castle too! It might surprise most readers to know that I did dabble in “Castle” early in my career. (Medium Stone/Light Bluish Bley) brick-bricks are great for castle AND space!) I was also actually one of the co-founders of the Guilds of Historica. It is a role-playing LEGO building game that is hosted on Eurobricks.
So I definitely know a few things about castle. (Though I’ll save the story of how a sci-fi builder got involved in a castle-building RPG which has lasted over a decade for another day.)
In addition to me being a “poser castle builder,” I’ve actually been to Neuschwanstein Castle! Back in 2017 on the way to the opening of the LEGO House, I stopped off at this famed Disney-esque castle before retiring to the other big Munich tourist attraction: Oktoberfest.
Though I will admit, while castles are exciting (I took hundreds of photos of Templar castles in Portugal!), the jet lag hit me hard when I was there… So maybe I wasn’t the most qualified builder to review this particular castle.
Taking a nap at Neuschwanstein
But I have a plan. And more importantly, a captive audience…
Enter Simon 2
Who better to build and evaluate the most famous German castle, then German Simon?
Simon-Mocs (no relation) is a German builder most well known for his greebly decayed New Hashima builds and a self-proclaimed space geek (trust me, I’ve heard his 1-hour deep dive at the SpaceX complex). So who better to build this German castle… on the way to the epicenter of space—Cape Canaveral… in a car. Vroom vroom?
With the advent of Waze and Google Maps, the role of the road trip navigator/French fry feeder has diminished, so why not have the shotgun seat passenger try to build a LEGO set during the drive?
This isn’t the first time I’ve built a set on the move. Ironically, in the same year as my German trip, we did the exact same thing with a much spacier set: 92176 Apollo Saturn V.
But Simon and I were going on a quick North American standard road trip. Between BrickFair Virginia and Cape Canaveral, Florida, we had plenty of time to tackle this massive architecture set during the 12-hour/800-mile/1,300-km trip.
The other Simon and some spaceship
Dashboard Engineering
Building in a car isn’t for everyone—but it should be! One thing that is necessary is some sort of tray or bin to keep your pieces. Building without a surface while cruising down I-95 at non-autobahn speeds isn’t ideal.
The build started easy, but we quickly realized that the set is quite large if you only have a lap to build it on. Simon eventually determined the dashboard was the best option for storing the build and sub-modules.
While the SUV lacked the rocket acceleration to dislodge the build from the safety of the dashboard, braking the car, on the other hand, caused a few problems. But we devised an improvised lightweight coupling to the dashboard. AKA frog tape. Problem solved!
The build took a few hours with some tactical naps thrown in between, but Simon got it done. I asked Simon his thoughts on the build:
Simon (2): The angled sections were the best. Kind of impressive how they all came together in the end. Building the trees as the last part was a bit boring. It’s not that exciting, as the main build is basically done. The most annoying part of the build was that you couldn’t press anything down, so you always had to push as well from the other side to make it work (especially in a moving vehicle)… Oh yeah, and dropping parts was not fun.
Simon (1): Speaking of dropping parts… I found a window printed tile on the floor of my car last week.
Simon (2): To be fair, that’s only 1% of the parts on the floor of your car. I also didn’t miss it while I was building, so maybe it was an extra?
And thus ended our car-build. Yet, we were going on a trip to see spaceships! There was more to be done.
Can It Ship?
What fun is just building a set when you can build something else with the same pieces? So to reinforce my belief that “every piece is a space piece,” I knew what I needed to do. Neuschwanstein Castle has lots of seemingly castle-specific pieces in it, with windows and towers and rockwork galore. So, will this castle spaceship!?
Well, that depends on what you define as a spaceship… and who you ask and when. During SHIPtemeber, the yearly 100-stud build challenge, the answer is pretty open. As long as it’s something in space that moves and is 100 studs long, then it counts.
My favorite borderline SHIPtemeber entry was built by Adrian Drake (brickfeenzy). Known for his minifig-scale Serenity, Adrian asked if Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster counted as a spaceship. It did indeed launch into space and is currently zipping around our solar system… so yes!
And there have been some less obvious spaceships like Chris Perron’s (ctperron) classic rock SHIP that ranks among my favorite non-traditional ships:
But for me, a spaceship needs engines. Honestly you could Wyle E. Coyote-strap some engines on a rock and it’d work for me. Maybe that’s not gonna be a stellar SHIP, but it’ll be fun? And isn’t that what shipping is all about?
Given the amount of castle-like pieces in Neuschwanstein, I felt a Warhammer 40K-esque gothic castle ship might work. For those that don’t know, this is a classic example of “gothic space.”
Warhammer 40k example
While all pieces are “Space Pieces (™)”, not all pieces are engine pieces… this set proved pretty problematic with only a few elements that would work effectively. Thankfully, there were some Technic pieces that added a bit more greebles and flair. And we now have our engines!
The rest of the castle took on the feeling of a flying rock castle with a few greebles. Greebles are almost a given in ship builds, but with the pieces in particular, we must skip this particular archetype. Instead, I focused on the concept of a castle ship: building a castle, on a rock hill (like Chris), with engines.
The hull proved my second big stumbling block… how was I going to build the rock-hull? There are no inverted slopes in the set, though it did have quite a few regular slopes. So I decided to use the few precious SNOT pieces to create an inversion for the lower part of the ship.
The rest was easy, adding micro castle details to the alt build. Frankly, this process went the quickest, having addressed some of the structural issues already. All I had to do was add walkways and windows… and maybe some fork turrets.
Before I realized it, my Neuschwanstein Castle alt build spaceship was done and even floating in the air!
And That’s Why I’m Not Allowed to Review Castles Anymore
So, what did I think of Neuschwanstein Castle? It’s a solid Architecture set with some surprisingly fun parts. The new window elements really help sell the castle’s scale and detailing, and the overall build was a good reminder of my old Guilds of Historica days, back when I still pretended to be a castle builder.
But what stood out most was how easily those same parts worked for something completely different. Windows, towers, slopes—they’re just waiting for engines and a little imagination. Because in the end, any piece can be a space piece… you just have to believe.
LEGO Architecture 21063 Neuschwanstein Castle is available now for around $280 US | $350 CA | €270 EU | £240 UK | $400 AU.
DISCLAIMER: This set was provided to BrickNerd by LEGO. Any opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
Have you ever done a castle/spaceship alt build? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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