Overall 5 bricks : The third Castle in this theme and just as good as The King's Castle Siege in my opinion. Maybe seems a bit overpriced but not if you consider you can use this both as a closed Castle and an open Fortress, a bit in the style of Helms Deep. The set has great minifigures and huge playability, the only problem is finding it for a reasonable price. I only can advise if you find it for a reasonable price to get it, certainly if you are a collector.

Building 5 bricks : Like the other big Fantasy Era sets the built is modular.

• First the main gate : A great part to built with a mix of most dark and light gray small bricks en slopes and a big skull on the front center and 2 big torches on cones in front. Two massive wooden doors in front and 2 big axes hidden behind the doors.
• Left and right Tower with wall : Both parts are the same but mirrored. The down floor of the tower is the hideout of the 2 huge trolls, backside is made of two rockparts and sidewalls of small bricks light and dark grey and brown. The wall attached to it with hinges is a big rockpart with a wooden balustrade. First floor of the tower is a defence room built of two panels and small bricks, the top floor is built with brown parts which gives it a wooden look and has a good working big catapult.
• Left and right side wall : again two equal parts built on 2 plates connected with hinges. Not too hard to built because of the use of a panel, a big and a small wall parts. Brown plates are used as walk passages and some grey and brown bricks and plates as tilts. Both walls have a ladder as entrance and places to hide inside.
• Back center tower : The Troll Queen or Sorceress hide out is the best part. The down floor is formed by 2 small and one big rockpart and made solid with small bricks and is a kind of hiding place. The first floor, the Sorceress magic room, is made most of 2 wall panel and slopes and contains a Crystall ball etc. The second floor is the prison made of straight and bend fence parts, a door in front and removable fence on the back. The top floor is made in the center of brown (wooden) parts with a grey tower on each side, the Sorceress look out post. A big brown stair in front to enter the first floor. The tower can be used both loose as back center of the Fortress or as rear towerwall of the Castle.
• The whole Fortress is decorated with white teeth on brown cones and red teeth on the wooden parts and has several torches.

Parts 5 bricks : All great parts in this set. First the minifigures with a special remark for the Sorceress and the Troll King with Crown. A huge load of brown and grey 2x1x3 slopes, the rock parts are usefull too and the bigg skull is great too. Great use of colors being light and dark gray and brown.

Playability 5 bricks : I think I don't need to explain these 5 bricks, the result and content says it all. Besides that you could simply add this set to for instance a LotR scene, it would fit in great.

Value 4 bricks : a normal price for a used set like this should in my opinion be some €60,00 average. I think it wasn't sold as massive as for instance The King's Castle Siege so it's harder to find it used which explains the high average of €75,00 Bricklink offers as average. Overall, esspecially if you are a Castle collector, it is worth it I think if you can find it.

This set is out to dominate the world!

Pros:

• Troll lady
• Troll king
• Huge tatoo trolls
• twin catapults
• King
• prison
• Amazing to look at
• Bat and spider

Cons:

• Too much money
• Got retired too soon
• No others

When I first saw this at the 2009 toy fair, I had to have it, and when I got this set, I was so happy and excited. This set has so much in it! Instead of using my usual pro/con list, I'm gonna break this down a bit further into subcatagories!

Minifigures: This set offers some excellent minifigures! 2 Giant Trolls with printed on tattoos and armour marks (no stickers), a female troll mage with an awesome magic staff (with green lightning), the troll king with a copper crown and a new head and a double-sided torso. There is also the king used in the battle chariot (without the sword and plume), which means he has a new torso and leggings! It also includes 3 knights and 2 more trolls but it's nothing new!!

Accessories: There are certainly alot of them this time. There are 4 troll scimitars, a staff with a green-lightning tip, 2 dark brown spears, 2 halberds, a glaive, 2 dark brown clubs, a horse with head armour and a saddle, one big castle shield, and a little one, and a chicken leg (troll bribery)!! It's a little dissappointing that TLG only included one troll shield in the set.
Also there is a spider and a bat (I got lots of them!!)

Design: The design of this fortress is incredible. Much better in my opinion to the King's Castle Seige!! The design locks together in 6 sections: the gate, the prison tower, the 2 back walls, and the 2 front walls with the giant troll caves!! I'll have to break these ones down:

-The 2 front walls are really rocky and the towers on top of the troll caves have a brick-built catapult on top of each of them, which really work, and fire unbelievably far!!
-The 2 side walls are sightly thinner than the front walls and have less protection, but are still really sturdy and cool to look at.
-The prison tower very well designed. The only problem is that there is no 3rd wall on the lower section of the tower, which kind of dumb considering it is the back wall of the fortress. The prison like the one in the Pirates Soldier's fort: The back can be pulled off. Kind of makes it easier to place mini-figs in there.
-The front is designed with giant gates insstead of a drawbridge like in the Castle Siege, and they are working very well. A reoccurence in the troll sets happens on the doors where you need to use flat bars on a slant. Also in the front of the fortress are 2 of the new giant flames. (You can also give them to the giant trolls. They make great flame-swords)

Overall: This set is a lot a playability and if well worth the $129.99! I strongly reccommend this set over the Castle Seige. It offers better mini-figures, design, and definitely more playability!! If you get this set, you definitely won't be dissappointed, or ripped off.

Thanks for listening!!

Box/Instructions

The box are big and great looking but misguiding since the image of the fortress in the front do not match with the real fortress in built mode. The real built is more plain than the one in the front picture. Also, at the back side, the box barely able to hide the merely few playability of the set (which compared to other similar set is a pittance). Instructions comes in 2 booklets and easy to follow

Parts

Another great side of this set...so many cool parts : plenty of white horns, chicken thigh, skull, spiders, bats....too many to mention

Minifigures 5 stars

The minifigures are great with two giant trolls (ogres?) in two cool different color, the troll king (finally, we see the big boss) with cape, the troll wizard with same cool cape and a disfigured face (for having too much lighting spells, I guess) , two generic yet great looking trolls , the human king and assorted soldiers.

The build

The build are pretty boring with twice repeating sections (the tower and side walls) , however, the front gate and the tall tower with jail is pretty fun to build

The completed model

As mentioned in this review's title : it is a confusing set....too chaotic to be a castle but too structured and squared to be believable as troll's dwelling.

Overall opinion

I am disappointed with the overall look of the set. When I opened the box initially, I was expecting something as cool as the dwarves' mine set and what I actually get is something in between cool and boring. Thankfully, the parts are great , and also the minifigs just awesome and they still part of my collection to this day

I really like the orcs'n'trolls in this subtheme. I was stamped in my early years with the very first castle lego came up with and since then fantasy, knights, medieval etc. seems to be a part of me. So actually this set is rotating out of stores these days so you get a 50% discount on them, that would be 50€ for this set in Germany, wonder how long this will take. But with the original price of 100€ i would have been somehow disapointed (i think). I like the modular builds with no base plate which renders them somehow extensible. Actually i'm just thinking of getting another set for the discount brice to build a really big troll castle.

Pros

• great minifigs (2 kings (orc + crownys), shaman and infantry)
  
• modular extensible build
• great evil look
  

Cons

• no weapons and ride for the king
  
• much of clumsy wall parts
  
• original price
  

If you see this set for discout, go and get it. The green one (Trolls'n'Orcs) have nice prices today on ebay, which will raise if the rarity will increase over time.