Back in March, Lowlug hosted the Mega Medieval Moc Mania. A castle contest with several categories. One of those categories was Flora and was won by Sjoerd Jochems aka Brick-Rebel with his Wolfpack Ambush creation.

The build undoubtedly suits that Flora category perfectly as the lush vegetation and the vibrant color choices make it a very realistic-looking autumn setting. But although it might look peaceful at first glance, a tree in the middle of the road is never a good sign…

Underneath the layers of moss on the forest floor, there are secret spaces that provide excellent shelter for staging an ambush. This gives this build an appealing twist because there is a before and after scene. Often builders just go for one static scene to tell the story. But these subtle changes with the looters coming out of hiding add another dimension to the whole creation. And we asked Sjoerd for just a little more insight about this great piece of Flora!

Marco: Congrats on winning the Flora category, it was well deserved! Most of the contestants use the opportunity to build fantasy-related stuff. You, as one of the few, went for a more realistic approach. Where did your inspiration come from?

Sjoerd: Since I had done a few fantasy-style MOCs already (and, come to think of it, mostly tree-related), I did not want to do yet another tree-house or something, but I really wanted to build a MOC in the style of the older LEGO Castle sets. So I decided to go for two ‘regular’ army factions that were facing off in a forest.

For inspiration, I usually look online for concept art (this was my main inspiration), and sometimes I go through the MOCs I saved in my Flickr favorites-album.

Lastly, I wanted this MOC to be about the forest as much as possible, so that’s where the idea of the camouflaged hideouts (trap doors) came from. It gave me the opportunity to show the forest road with just the knights passing through, as well as the ambush by the Wolfpack soldiers.

Marco: Did you have a preference for the used factions, or did you use those by coincidence?

Sjoerd: As I only truly came out of my Dark Age in 2016, I missed out on all the LEGO Castle sets from a decade ago. So the most Castle figures I own are from the recent Collectible Minifigure series. I really love the Tournament Knight from Series 20, so I decided to use that one, also because the Bright Light Orange in his tunic stands out really well against the forest greens.

Using the Wolfpack was a no-brainer really, as I happened to have a lot of the CMF series 16 Rogue figures, and a few older Wolfpack soldiers. But I didn’t want them to look too much like an organized army, and more like the ‘Brotherhood without Banners’ from Game of Thrones, so I spent one evening figbarfing to create the different Wolfpack look you see in the MOC.

Marco: The trees and plants look very natural. Did you use any reference material?

Sjoerd: Thank you. Again, I looked at a lot of photos of firs, pines and spruce trees as references. The other foliage I mainly created by just using the plant materials I happen to own in bulk. As a general rule, I did not want the foliage on the ground to be too distracting from the action happening on the road. That’s why I did not use any flowers on the plants, for example.

Marco: What really steals the show are those wonderful spruce trees. Did you make those especially for this MOCc or were you finally able to use those?

Sjoerd: It was the other way around, actually. I already had the (basic) design for the spruce trees lying around for some time but had yet to use it in a MOC. When the MMMM contest came along on LowLUG, with one of the categories being ‘Flora’, I knew just what to do!

I created the design when I was fiddling around with the Plant Stem piece, looking for a way to make a more ‘natural-looking spruce tree design. Most MOCs that I had seen were using a trunk made of four-sided SNOT bricks with the plant stems sticking out sideways, which works just fine, but I wanted to do something different. Then I noticed that most spruce trees have branches that slope downwards, so I started to experiment with ways to accomplish this in LEGO form. I went through a few iterations before I landed on the current design.

If anyone wants to check out my technique, I posted a tutorial on my Flickr/Instagram accounts.

Marco: The pinecones are all different—my favorite is the one with the swirl plate. This part is still quite new in this color, is that why you use different designs?

Sjoerd: That’s right, I was looking for some suitable Reddish Brown parts to create the pine cones (other than the flower petals), and I came across the Swirl piece. I only had a few of them, but they worked really well, so I decided to mix and match the pieces. In nature, there are a lot of different shapes and sizes of pine cones as well, so I felt it was only logical to mix them.

Marco: Do you have anything that you would like to add, maybe something we would easily miss between all that vegetation?

Sjoerd: There are a few things in the MOC that are a bit hard to spot in the photos, like the owl that flies off when the battle begins. Also, one of the trees with Dark Red and Dark Orange leaves was created by jamming several Reddish Brown flex tubes in a barrel and fixing them with the leaves, which gives the tree trunk a ‘natural’ look.

I received a lot of positive feedback about the mushrooms, which are Dark Orange minifigure beanie hats on 1x1 tan cones.

And what you can’t see in the photos, is that the spruce trees are actually really solid! You can pick them up from the baseplate and even drop them on the floor without them breaking or falling apart. That might not seem like anything special, but I kind of have a reputation for not building sturdy, so for me, this really is a big deal!

Marco: Thanks for the insight! Now time to experiment with building some pine trees!

What kind of tricks have you used to set an ambush? Let us know in the comments section below!

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