The Ice Castle Review (21186)

Hey everyone! Today I’ll be reviewing the LEGO Minecraft Ice Castle!

My first reaction to this set was surprise as the the box was pretty big. I expected it to be a smaller set but was happily surprised as the set is actually pretty large and detailed. As you put the baseplates together to form the base you can definitely see this. The main part of the castle is the inside, but there is also an icy area and a grass area outside the walls of the castle.

The inside floor of the castle is purple and is filled with lots of things from the game. There’s a brewing stand, (which is very oversized but still pretty cool) stonecutter, anvil and a crafting table. There is even a throne in the middle of the floor! Behind the throne there is a chest, but it has a new lid! The old chests used to have the classic curved lid, but LEGO has made a new flat lid, and it looks much more accurate to the real chests in Minecraft.

After the inside is decorated and finished, you move onto building up the walls. They’re made of a pretty complicated design of 1x1x3 pieces and lots of other smaller pieces jutting outwards and inwards to represent stairs, fence posts and walls from the real game. This type of stuff has been stuff that has often been made pretty inaccurately to the game in other LEGO sets, but in this one the designers have absolutely nailed it. You can easily see which block goes where and I’ve even seen people who have built this set fully accurately in the real game!

The top of the walls are made of white bricks to look like snow, and are held up by wooden fence posts (the 1x1x3 bricks) on top of the snow there are also some stone walls. On the front wall of the castle, there is a hole for the entrance, above this hole is a stone wall like on the sides, but on the two edges of the wall there are two dispensers. These can fire some flick-fire missiles that are meant to be arrows (but really look like jumbo missiles).

The final part of the build is the two watchtowers, which rise up from the two front corners of the walls. They are built in the same way as the walls with the fence posts and some blue blocks to look like ice. At the top of each of the towers there are three 1x1x3 grey bricks that are attached to some 1×1 snot headlight bricks. These attach to the side of the top of the towers to look like crenelations and they look really epic.

You might be wondering about the minifigs, but I haven’t forgotten them! I’ve left them last for a reason, because they are one of the best parts of the set. For a set of it’s size, it comes with a whopping 6 minifigs. There’s a Royal Warrior, who has a nice crown printed on their head, an even cooler Yeti, as well as two skeletons and two zombies for them to battle. In Minecraft, there is a version of skeletons who live in snowy areas called strays. It would’ve been good if LEGO put some of these in the set instead of normal skeletons. It’s a bit lazy really in my opinion. There hasn’t been a stray in a LEGO Minecraft set for a long time, so it would’ve been good for them to include some. Regardless though, it’s great to have 6 minifigs and you can actually have mini battles as if they are sieging the castle. Plus, who doesn’t love minifigs?

Overall Thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed this set. It’s accurate to the actual game but at the same time is fun to play with and gives an enjoyable building experience. The set comes with a great array of minifigs, and the castle is filled with items and things from the game, along with a new accurate chest! Along with the Llama Village which I recently reviewed, this was another amazing set to add onto what I think is one of the best LEGO Minecraft waves for some time.