20240103: the History of LEGO Castle day 003.
383-2 / 6083-1 Knight's Tournament
(1978 / 1981, 201 pieces, 59 different parts)
Knight's Tournament was designed by Daniel August Krentz and was the second of three from LEGOLAND's first Castle theme. The original (383-2) was released in the United Kingdom in 1979 while the United States version was released in 1981 (6083-1).
This is very simple, small build consists of a pavilion for the royalty to watch the two knights on their two brick-built horses participate in a joust. While using the same seven basic colors of black, blue, green, light gray, red, white, and yellow, the Knight's Tournament still has a lot of fun details. The pavilion has a yellow throne against a blue background with a red fence and black supports for a white and red striped roof, all built on a thin green baseplate. Two red flags with either stickers or print with gold-bordering on a red background with a centered triangular shield of dark red, blue, and peach. Both brick-built horses have colorful barding, with the black horse sporting a blue and white checkered pattern and the white horse presenting black and red stripes.
The six minifigures in a Knight's Tournament are the first printed minifigures in LEGOLAND's Castle theme. Minifigures consist of two guards with the tri-color triangular shield pattern on their torso (found only in this set and a Castle Minifigure set 0016-1 from 1979 / 1982); a knight with a black torso, red arms, and a red and yellow quarter checkered pattern on a triangular shield (found only in this set, plus three Castle Minifigure sets 0016-1, 6002-1 from 1983, and 15-1 from 1984), a knight with a blue torso, white arms, and a red and dark red quarter checkered pattern on a triangular shield (found only in this set and a Castle Minifigure set 15-1 from 1984); the tournament prince with a red torso, red arms, and a gold border around the tri-color triangular shield (found ONLY in this set); and the tournament princess with a white torso, white arms, and a gold two string pearl necklace (found in 16 sets between 1979 and 2003).
The prince and princess mentioned in this set are the first examples of gendering in the Castle theme, but even so, the princess wears pants and has bright red hair with a pretty wild look for back then while the prince looks like he's wearing a bib. Additionally, the back of the box build has the most androgynous young human building the Knight's Tournament as can be imagined, which is exactly what LEGO marketing should be.
The "back of the box" builds for Knight's Tournament have a lot of really neat, very different options for different builds with such a small number of parts. Back of the box builds include a beverage stand, a hospital, a prince-bearing litter, a small bridge, a meeting at a well, and a small guard wall. For all that the parts for this are very basic and the builds very simple, these back of the box builds really do an amazing job of showing a minifigure story.
Parts lists for this set can either be found on BrickLink or Rebrickable, while scanned instructions can be found at ToysPeriod. If you want to know more about the designer, Daniel August Krentz, BrickSet did a really nice tribute and has a full list of everything he designed.
