If I run a dnd game again I'm going to include a architect named Shad, who's dream is to design a castle someday.

Dude, I just sat through 45 minutes of a guy lecturing me about the layout of a fictional castle, and by the end of it I was legit mad there wasn't MORE.............. I loved this so much hhhhhh

Shad's Winterfell: You need 10,000 men to man it. Honorguard: You best be prepared to sacrifice 10,000 men for every section you take.

As an architect who has used SketchUp professionally, I shudder to think of what the Components window for this model must look like, not to mention trying to use the Follow Me tool to get those walls in the right spots. This would take a 2-3 person team something like two weeks, working full-time, to get modeled at this level of detail. Hats off to you for the dedication and labor. Really impressive work!

One does not simply walk into Honorguard.

This is what happens when somebody runs a channel that features reviews and critiques on the pros and cons of various castle designs. Internet moron: "Oh yeah? If you're so smart, why don't you make a better one?" Shad: "Alright then, I will!"

If I ever become a billionaire I'm hiring Shad to construct md a castle.

37:15 Keep-Builder:"There is no access inside the keep itself, from these battlements." Rogue: **Shatters window**

14:15 - "Headphone Warning" Oh of course, thank you. *puts headphones on*

now we need him to make his own medieval town surrounding this with all his castle, who else wants to see that

"Zwinger" roughly translates to enforcer or cage, in case you'd prefer an english wording for it. The word Zwinger has also been used for attack dog cages.

I'm doing rewatch of old shadiversity episodes and I just gotta say in love all the sheer number of kite shields in the castle.

In this keep, every day is leg day.

We need to get this guy working on a Castle Tycoon game.

This is... mind-blowing. The amount of engineering and architectural consideration that went into this is insane. Downright impressive mate.

The sheer amount of thought and detail you've put into this castle is utterly staggering. I can barely keep up with the nuances and particulars of your design it's incredible.

I appreciate where you located your granaries. While people would have a point about locating them against your inner bailey wall if they were smaller, the central location has another couple points of merit. Acts of war aside, pests and moisture are problems for any food store. Having your granaries located exposed, across an open area and elevated makes them less accessible to pests such as rodents. The exposed location also keeps the structure from getting too humid from being next to a wall which would block air circulation around the building. Granaries are also one of the first places you would think to sabotage the strength of any enemy's fortified holdout. Your granaries are easily monitored by any of a large number of sentry locations and there are no particularly advantageous approaches to them for a saboteur to use.

"We have an ARMY!" ... "We have a Shad."

This has to be the best video on Shad’s channel. It’s so informative and unique

The word "Epic" is lost on this design. I love it! Double Ultra Legendary! Awesome work Shad!

As a former soldier, I was entirely unsurprised when you said that the soldier's mess was right on top of the stable. Some general would have insisted on putting the troops where it stinks.

As a plumber I'm well impressed with the effort to have proper water storage and sanitation, it's such a simple thing that many game developers simply ignore to install.

I was working as a guide in the museum placed in former castle, one of my responsibilities was open and close tower. When you are closing tower, you need to go all the way up (to look for visitors) and let me tell you, stairs at the medieval towers are uneven, narrow nightmares. I admire our ancestors to function in these structures on baily basis.

The biggest tower looks almost exactly like the one in my hometown. The tower was so large because the lord didn't want the church's tower to be bigger.

Tower highest rooms 25:05 - tower and feature window 27:25 - Ballroom - 30:24 - Bedrooms 32:43 - Donjon rooms 32:53 - Living rooms 33:33 - Public space 35:08 - Donjon room 36:46 - Servants rooms 37:52 - Basement 39:19 - Undercroft 41:30

If this is just a lords castle; I can’t wait to see the kings castle.

I like the idea of isolating the Military, Public, Administrative, Private, Servant, and Utility sections from each other beyond the bare minimum of access points.

I like a lot of Japanese castles, they have a lot of overlapping bottle necks, Osaka has a staging area that can be hidden from attackers and used to route breaches of the frontal attack. If we’ll orchestrated the defending squads could filter through the attackers then press them from behind through the staging area and into the deep water filled moat. Major Japanese castles often utilise zwingers I really like you’re design, I don’t know much about design principles so this has been a great video. I’d love to see you examine castle designs around the world not just European designs, (I’m a new subscriber from FNT, GDay from Adelaide)

I can see one benefit of living there: just by virtue of being there, you get no chance to skip leg day.

nobody: Shad: 3 drawbridges, 8 portcullises, a zwinger, and a warwolf equivalent, just to be safe.

Awesome job Shad! This castle is awesome!

That was simply THE quickest 45-minute long video I've ever viewed! I'm not kidding or exaggerating! I was like...NO! It's over already?! That was absolutely fascinating, interesting, informative, and entertaining! If I were a billionaire, you would most definitely be a consultant on my castle/fortress/palace/evil lair/fortified compound design team, for damn sure! Well Done! And thanks for creating and sharing!

He would be the best and worst person to play Minecraft with.

"Shad's First Word.. A Story" "Shad: Muh..mmm.. Shad's Mother: Oh my God, he's gonna say ma! He loves me! Shad, though more determined: Ma..maaa..maachhicolations! Shad's Mother: ???? Shad: DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, MOTHER. MACHICOLATIONS. THEY ARE CREATION ITSELF." To be continued...

when i first saw honorguard in your winterfell video, my jaw dropped because honorguard looks EXACTLY like the castle i built in my mind for a book that i am writing. this is such a beautiful castle. thank you for your time and research going into this!

Someone needs to make a supercut of every time Shad has ever said “castle”.

When I got into this video, I thought: 45 minutes? That's a long one. 45 minutes later: It's over?? Time flies when you're having fun :)

This was the nerdiest 45 minutes I've spent this year, and that's saying something! Nice work, Shad. I'd love to see it rendered in an FPS engine so we could walk through it.

This is still one of my very favorite Shad Vids. I return to it all the time. It's like ASMR for me lol

The most of the additions and tweaks to the castle made since the last video seem to be things that really could have been done to it if it was real, so the original could have been what it looked like before receiving those upgrades in the story. Awesome job, this will serve as reference for me in thinking about fantasy castles in the future! Thank you for your service to the internet!

I could honestly watch a full series about this castle alone; can't wait to hear more about it!

Wow. To break into this castle you are really put through the zwinger

this was really fun to watch, its awesome to see this guy so passionate about his designs and about castles. wholesome.

This video is genuinely so helpful for a writer like myself. A friend of mine who is helping me make a medieval-fantasy castle sent me this, and I cannot that both of you enough. We are building it in Minecraft (as one does) and intend to write a novel set in said castle. Also, you have an extremely calming voice!

The fact that you have some background in construction explains a lot. Thanks for this! I'll be saving it to check my work when I design castles for RPGs.

If there's one flaw in the neigh perfect defense of Honorguard it's the first and third gatehouses. Note, that's one flaw because it's only a weakpoint when taken in tandem. The first gatehouse is low enough that you could use siege engines to get on top of it. Not easily, mind, since you're going to need something like a 5 story siege tower with a 20 foot gangplank. After that you could batter down the door to the 3rd gatehouse or use siege ladders to get on top of it. Granted, you're still piling up the corpses of your comrades to use for cover against two flanking towers but it brings the difficulty from "Haha, no." to "You want to spend HOW MANY men?"

12 AM and I'm suddenly watching, in detail, how to build the best medieval castle possible... God, I love the internet!

WOW WOW WOW, so much thought & attention to detail in this castle, I’ll tell you what, if they built castles in today’s times, 100% this would be what every king/lord would definitely be looking for, you would be one of the richest people in the land, cause your reputation for designing the best castles would be the talk of the town. Well done sir, you’ve created one of the best castle designs ever

As a German and fan of medieval history as well as your content, I am glad you added the Zwinger. Also: False floors? Man and I thought this castle couldn't get any more awesome!

I'd hate to be a servant there, I'd get lost in the Keep for sure "What do you mean there's no access from here to there?!"

As a Architect who works with SketchUp this is a Marvel! And the work you put on details is amazing.

Man this channel is such a gold mine for fantasy writters i love it

If there isn't at least one instance of a character screaming "MACHICULATIONS!!!!!" in the book I'll be very disappointed.

i love how the shields in the guard rooms have your coat of arms lol.

Your top-floor ballroom reminded me of the ballroom/throne room at Kroneborg, Denmark. Top floor, 20 foot ceiling with massive exposed beams, floor to ceiling windows, 20 yards wide and probably 60 yards long. Just massive.

It could be fun to work together and create this castle in Unreal Engine so you can actually walk through it and even make cinematics with it. Great job so far.

As a civil engineer, I think the design of the bathrooms and waste management was most impressive, given the time period this would have been built lol

I like the sort of 'hard fantasy' stylings here. It's a functional, practical castle, with a couple embellishments to look awesome. That's honestly what we probably would have built had we gotten a bit more architecture practice under our belt before artillery obsoleted most medieval fortifications

This design would have probably made you an instant MVP for a king back then. Wonderful! Damn

That actually could be the most defenceable castle design I've ever seen and I've designed many!! Bravo Sir Shad!!

Can you please make a video on your design process? Did you start on the inside and work your way out, or with the outer walls and work your way in? How did you decide what rooms you wanted and which ones you didn't need in your castle?

I can't help but admire the level of love, dedication, thought and detail you've put into this design. Absolutely brilliant. If i were to build myself a castle, I would definetly hire you to be one of the designers.

Would absolutely love you to do a video about a hypothetical enemy possibly could take this castle. Massive fan of the channel - keep it up.

In your story telling, make sure that you include in honor guard’s history these little changes you made (aside from the oversights). There should be a telling of its history that while it was under construction it was attacked (maybe once or twice). That earthen mound to get past the first gate house is one important part. An attack that used this will have made it necessary to build those other walls. Same for the wooden floor in the keep being changed to stone. These little changes can be included in historical notes of changes to the castle.

Export this castle to Unity and do a first person walkthrough.

Meanwhilst in Castle Honorguard, master builder doubting his life's work. _"If dragons attack we cannot hold. We have to prepare for the worst. Thine enemy force is strong, my liege, machicolations 'tis required"_

Someone probably mentioned but the chapel and transitory hall to the great hall is one brick through the window away from the otherwise isolated soldier/rampart portion of the castle that was intentionally isolated. So if saboteurs/ninjas were able to infiltrate into the bailey, the game plan would be to go up the donjon stair to the side of the keep's drawbridge entrance, get through that door (assuming it's easier than the main draw bridge leading into the kill room). Run through and go up the stairwell into the battlement at 37:22 and throw a brick into the chapel and into the keep.

This is beautiful. I would love to read a book with Honorguard in it.

The most dazzling castle this side of Minas Tirith, for sure. Amazing aesthetics and relentless attention to practicality. I'd love to live there as much as I'd dread trying to attack it.

I can't wait to read your book.

I'm so happy to have found all this. I'm currently planning a fantasy game with a magic castle. But planning the castle is probably one of my biggest struggles. This will help me a lot.

Unironically, this is the best Minecraft tutorial video ever

just had to say a thumbs up to having all the stairs go the correct direction. People don't realize the direction of the stairs was also a defensive measure. the only time the direction was reversed was if the defensive direction was down, which was rare. Makes it so when you are attacking vs. defending it would be difficult to strike the opponent seeing as most people are right handed. I think this is one reason why they demonized left handed people.

It feels good to be vindicated that even if not for exactly the reasons I argued, you didn't move the granary. Even with a trebuchet twice the size of Warwolf they would struggle to get anywhere near damaging that granary, and it makes so much more sense for the sake of practicality to put supplies central. Love the design.

One of the most detail walkthroughs of a castle (real or imagined). I've ever seen. Excellent video.

Coming from the vídeo of shad presenting his terrain where he plans to build this castle

Somebody needs to recreate this in a videogame-like environment so it can be properly explored. I would love to just wander around in there for hours and get lost.

fantastic design, everything seems well thought out and it may be one of the most impregnable castles I have ever seen, sometimes I think hollywood and game companies should just ask you for consulting on their designs because my god man, I am in awe.

This was super useful, one of my stories has a character living in an old castle. And I love the design of Honorguard!

I wish I could leave another like. I watched this video when it was new and I've watched it multiple times since. Love it good sir.

I don't even need the headphone warning, i know you well enough Shad. Great Video, nice details and very well thought out. Your castle videos are my favorites.

I really love the fact that you exist and make videos.

Now we need a first person VR walkthrough of this castle which goes inside all of the buildings!

I've re-watched this video maybe a dozen times because I just love the detail. I've only got 4 critiques, but the ONLY real one is that at (37:17), you say there's no access to the main keep from the upper battlements. I'm afraid that there is at least 2 access points. The large windows for the chapel and the transitory hall between the chapel and the main hall. It would be great to see an update for this video, to incorporate anything you might have learned since making this video and then make the castle keep somewhat bigger and the castle footprint a lot bigger. This gets to the 2nd, minor, critique. Honorguard is a very big keep, and I would imagine that it would require just an a$$-ton of servants, a lot of whom would have to be available almost constantly, many more than what your servants' quarters seem likely to be able to house (just consider how many live-in servants were required for homes like in Downton Abbey, which are definitely much smaller). I know that some servants might live in the village outside the castle, but that's a long distance from the village (longer if you consider going uphill through a winding zvinger). So, I think you might either want to modify the keep to at least double the size of the servants' quarters or enlarge it some to make some more room. The 3rd, minor, critique is the same as the 2nd, but as it relates to the soldiers. I might be wrong on this, but it just doesn't seem like you've got enough living space for the number of soldiers that a castle like Honorguard would require. You also probably don't want to house your soldiers in the same kind of barracks like soldiers in boot camp, or homeless people in a shelter, just with cots that are right next to each other. You'd probably want to have a barracks more like a college dormitory, I would think, pretty small and spare of a lot of comforts, but just enough for one person (or two sharing) to call their own. My last minor critique/suggestion would be to move the chapel out of the castle, which I assume serves the lord's family, people living in the castle, and possibly the village and surrounding area. I know it's convenient to have the chapel in the castle so that the lord's family doesn't have to go outside when it's cold just to go to service, but you're giving up a lot of square footage which you spent a lot of time and money making very secure, which a chapel doesn't really have to be. Plus, if the chapel is meant to serve the larger community and not just people living in the castle, that's going to be A LOT of foot traffic in and out of the castle with EVERY mass and sermon, and a lot of opportunities for thieves, crazies, or other nefarious individuals to try to sneak into the castle for whatever reason. That means guards have to be pulled away from regular duties frequently just to monitor traffic in and out of the chapel. If you didn't want to enlarge the keep, I'd put a proper church inside the bailey, turn the castle's chapel space into a smaller ball room (smaller in keeping with the Lord's family's more auster beliefs (no white washing)), raise the roof on the old ball room so that it can be partitioned into two separate floors with multiple small rooms on each floor, each being a bedroom for one or two individuals, with soldiers on the lower floor and servants on the upper one. That would also be more in keeping with how servants would be housed, higher up in a structure and having a lot more stairs to climb. That would also let you house officers and higher ranked soldiers inside the keep, giving them status and reinforcing the division between officers and common soldiers, which is important. Just watch the movie Master and Commander.

A character I'm playing in D&D has an old family castle that he's trying to retake as his personal quest. Your videos have helped me greatly in designing that castle.

I know you are not a climbing expert, but castles were likely rendered with plaster because they are very easy to climb. You might think a sheer wall would be enough, but only a few millilitres is needed for an effective hold. Not only that, but plaster waterproofs a castle wall, and prevents freeze cracks, from water in the brickwork freezing and cracking the stone and mortar. Also, without plaster, a castle would need repointing every few years else ANYONE could climb it. Certainly weather causes a lot of damage to buildings if the temperature goes below 4*c which iirc is the temperature water begins to expand again. Seriously, please don't dismiss out of hand the defensive properties of plastered walls. My fiancee actually showed me how easy the walls on castles are to climb, she climbed halfway up Conwy castle's wall with no difficulty and no difficulty ahead (no climbing chalk or mat with us so it was too dangerous to go all the way up... and we did not have permission) And the wall we picked was no slouch either, it was a well restored piece of wall. I will also say even a perfect wall will be very vulnerable where towers meet the walls. if there is anything like a 90 degree interior angle in the wall, there does not have to be holds, there will be enough grip to chimney up the whole thing. And if you are not yet convinced, the Japanese sent whole armies up the walls by hand - you might say their walls are easier because they are sloped - the truth is somewhere inbetween, they are harder to climb than western castles, because they are specifically designed to make climbing harder, they have smooth plaster at the top, they actually curve up to near vertical, and have overhanging roofs and completely enclosed castles and towers. Oh, and waaay more machiculations. One easily implemented design feature would be to smooth out some of the harder corners with a 45 degree angle, this would make your castle much harder to climb. Also if you are not rendering your castle, don't use brickwork in the style of a de plastered castle! make that cut stonework really sharp and smooth, and have flush pointing. No sense in all that defence if people can zip up your walls in a minute or two is there?

Absolutely extraordinary. What a fantastic build, and a really informative video.

This is one of the nicest castles I've ever seen! With some modern amenities, I'd love to live there!

King of Honorguard: HAH i'd like to see anyone get through these amazing defences, we're finally safe from any enemy King of Honorguard *get's killed by poison*

You have to be the architect for those castles. It ain't so grand if not made by Shad.

14:15 is gonna be my ringtone I swear. This makes me laugh so hard.

I'd love to see another video like this. It's really informative and fun.

For the servant's entrance room with the false floor, you need to make the interior door flush to the inside walls of the false floor room. With the current design as seen in 38:45, if a considerably large army somehow managed to breach the bailey and siege the keep (and more than likely they'd bust down the servant's quarter's door first), then the first few sorry sods would certainly fall to their demise, but it wouldn't be too difficult for an army with siege equipment and siege engineers to take planks and build a makeshift bridge to the stone lip of the 2nd interior door. At which point, the servant's quarters once again becomes an area of defensive compromise. This potential problem could be absolved by simply making the interior doors flush against the wall, thus eliminating that lip.

So your castle is impenetrable?....BUT WHAT ABOUT DRAGONS?!!!!

I watch this like once a month. I miss your castle content. Would love to see another build/tour like this.

Jesus H. Christ, now THAT's epic! Hats off to you, kind sir, for this truly is a masterpiece, and I can only imagine how much effort did you put into this castle.

Those exposed beams also make a great place to hang the banners of your vanquished foes.

This is amazing and incredibly helpful as a learning tool for someone wanting to write a story that's fantasy, but grounded in historical medieval realism and practicality.

32:25 "long wooden paddle-like thing" a shovel, Shad, that's called a shovel.

I really loved this, but I noticed that something was missing: decoration! The first video on the channel I watched was one describing how castles would have things like carpets, tapestries, etc. At least for the private quarters or something. Also, I'd love to know, how many troops do you think could be stationed in Honorguard?