Subject:
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6085 Black Monarch's Castle compared with 6080 King's Castle
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.reviews
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Date:
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Thu, 4 Oct 2001 03:35:40 GMT
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Viewed:
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3048 times
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In lugnet.reviews, Bruce Schlickbernd writes:
> If you (or anyone) can make a comparison of the 6080 and 6085, I'd be
> grateful. They are vieing for my next major castle purchase (I really like
> the two 6074s I got).
Well, here's a quickie. . .
For comparison: the King's Castle
http://guide.lugnet.com/set/6080
and the Black Monarch's Castle
http://guide.lugnet.com/set/6085
On the balance, I'd say the 6085, but that can vary depending on what you
want. The two castles are in many ways isomorphic: both occupy three smaller
baseplates that together make about one standard (32x32) baseplate[1] and allow
the castle to be opened outward. Both castles are built with the 1980s Castle
1-Technic-pin modular system (which makes a floppy fit, but works well with the
Guarded Inn, Blacksmith Shop, etc. and the various castle wall segments). Both
castles feature large "gatehouse" towers front and center which accomodate a
portcullis (strangly without winch in both castles) and the winch for the
drawbridge (6085 has a more realistic-looking Technic wheel
http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/4185
while 6080 uses the more user-friendly winch piece
http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/73037
), and both castles have small towers in the back two corners. Both castles
have a garrison of 12: four archers, four foot soldiers, and four horsemen.
Basically, 6085 is what the designers came up with after 6080 had been on the
market for four years and TLG wanted to freshen the Castle lineup.
On aesthetics, 6085 wins hands down. In 6080, the designers became enamoured
of their new castle wall piece (Juniorization comes to Castle. . .) with the
fervor that has since brought us trans-orange flames galore and a skeleton in
every other set. The result is that 6080 is very boxy. It at times seems like
an exercise in how many castle wall pieces may be fit into one set. Corners
are unremittingly square, and the gatehouse is another box that rises with
sheer walls straight up two stories. 6080 as a whole is black with grey
highlights, but the overwhelming impression is of grey. 6085 is black with
gray highlights, but while it is definitely a "black" castle, it is not as
unremittingly monochromatic as 6080. It makes good use of the new 3x3 facet
bricks and panels to give a more rounded appearance to the castle; the rear
towers, for example, appear more like the turrets they were meant to be than
the boxes-sitting-on-the-wall one finds in 6080. The gatehouse is a
multilevel, tapered affair that is visually more interesting than the 6080
gatehouse, being full of details (like the grey arched windows on a black
background) that the castle wall collection of 6080 cannot match. 6085 is the
result of designers maturely improving the 6080.
In two ways is 6080 structurally superior to 6085: it actually has stairs
connecting two levels (almost unheard of in TLG designs, of course) (although
the favorable impact of those stairs is less since they have a huge seam down
the middle where the two halves of the castle flop apart---yes, one Technic pin
without friction is not sufficient to hold a castle together), and it has a
better door. To explain: both castles feature a cell in the far right corner
(from the perspective of a 'fig entering through the front gate) where the
baddies might presumably be locked. In 6080 this is a neat construction to see
arising, with a square door
http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/3644
and a well-constructed drawbar to keep it closed (see
http://www.brickshelf.com/scans/6000/6080/6080-05.html
). For whatever reason, in 6085 the designers copped out and just used the
boring, 100% Idahoan
http://guide.lugnet.com/partsref/search.cgi?q=4611
barred door, making for a much less satisfying build.
Both sets have good parts. 6080, of course, has lots of grey (always a good
thing), including grey castle walls. 6085 also has a surprising amount of grey
(especially the ultra-desirable large plates and slope 75s), although the
castle walls are, of course, black. 6085 also features rare architectural
pieces like black macaroni bricks and several grey "Slope Brick 45 2 x 2
Inverted Double Convex"s
http://guide.lugnet.com/partsref/search.cgi?q=3676
On a practical note, 6085 comes with the useful 2x2 Brick Corner, which
strengthens structures but was not available to the designers of the 6080.
6080 comes with four crossed-axe minfigs and four rampant-lion minifigs, which
are nice but not that unusual. More interestingly, it comes with several black
axes (more rare than brown) and very rare one-clip saddles in white, black, and
yellow (yellow has since become available in two-clip, particularly in set
10000, but black and white remain rare). Both sets have the forgettable
silver-vest guys for cavalry. 6085 features four of the now-common red
scale-mail chaps, and four of the very rare (appear in only three other sets)
blue scale-mail guys. It comes with two brown horses, with rare brown manes
(6080 predates brown horses, so it just has the dime-a-dozen white and black),
the rarish black and blue dragon barding, and the extremely rare red and blue
dragon barding. 6085 also has the 2x2 dragon flag, which has since become
common thanks to 6057, 1888, and 6086.
As a set, I'd give the call to 6085. For parts, it depends on whether you want
scale-mail or Crusaders, or just really want grey.
TWS Garrison
[1] Actually, 6080 uses a 32x16 and two 16x22s, while 6085 uses a 32x16 and two
16x16s, but 6080 doesn't actually seem to use the extra space. Note that the
16x22 green baseplate is unique to 6080.
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