Itaria No Shintaku

"Castle lines never die" or "what made me change my mind and believe in new exciting castle lines".

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On 28/03/2018 at 9:39 PM, MAB said:

I think the goal of NK was to make money.

 

Really? I thought the goal was to annoy classic castle fans :)

 

On a more serious note, the suggestion of bringing the line “back to basics” with smaller scale sets and army building packs would be a good way to test the water for reintroducing classic castle.

 

Of course, i’d love to see more complex builds and ideally a D2C large set at some stage, but I’d accept a basic line just to see classic castle come back.

 

Same goes for other neglected classic themes like Space and Pirates (although the Pirates line is still being served through PoTC tie ins so can’t complain too much there)

Edited by ElectroDiva

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4 hours ago, ElectroDiva said:

Really? I thought the goal was to annoy classic castle fans :)

 

On a more serious note, the suggestion of bringing the line “back to basics” with smaller scale sets and army building packs would be a good way to test the water for reintroducing classic castle.

 

Of course, i’d love to see more complex builds and ideally a D2C large set at some stage, but I’d accept a basic line just to see classic castle come back.

 

Same goes for other neglected classic themes like Space and Pirates (although the Pirates line is still being served through PoTC tie ins so can’t complain too much there)

It would seem that way!

I agree that a back to basics approach could be a smart idea for Castle.  I'm just hoping I will want what they release, if they release anything.  I've been waiting so long for Castle LEGO now, I would hate to be disappointed by their next iteration.

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Small sets are great for figures and introducing new elements but it would be nice to see some medium sized, more technical/advanced building technique sets that have a good range of useable parts and less things like BURP/solid walls with stickers and more small pieces. Something that would really sell just for a decent ratio of color and useable piece counts.

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3 minutes ago, LordBevis said:

Small sets are great for figures and introducing new elements but it would be nice to see some medium sized, more technical/advanced building technique sets that have a good range of useable parts and less things like BURP/solid walls with stickers and more small pieces. Something that would really sell just for a decent ratio of color and useable piece counts.

Absolutely.  Small sets would be great if they wanted to test the waters, but ultimately a lot of us want a larger set or 2.

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6 hours ago, ElectroDiva said:

On a more serious note, the suggestion of bringing the line “back to basics” with smaller scale sets and army building packs would be a good way to test the water for reintroducing classic castle.

Out of curiosity, what sort of "smaller scale" are you talking? Castle sets don't tend to be that big or expensive to begin with, aside from the flagship castles and D2C sets. I feel like if you made Castle sets much smaller than what we saw in 2010 or 2013 you'd wind up with something like the 2015 Pirates wave, which was affordably priced but largely lambasted by AFOLs for not being big enough.

Certainly I understand that a wave of sets doesn't need its biggest castles to all hit the $100 price point to make a positive impression — after all, I quite liked last year's Goblin King's Fortress at the $70 price point and this year's Noctura's Tower at the $60 price point. But with the sort of price points that the most popular themes are hitting these days, I'm not too convinced overly large sets or high prices are what's been holding the Castle theme back from achieving lasting success. If anything, I actually find myself wondering how long LEGO can continue to cap the price of non-D2C Castle and Pirates sets at $100 like they have since Vladek's Dark Fortress in 2005.

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3 hours ago, Aanchir said:

Out of curiosity, what sort of "smaller scale" are you talking? Castle sets don't tend to be that big or expensive to begin with, aside from the flagship castles and D2C sets. I feel like if you made Castle sets much smaller than what we saw in 2010 or 2013 you'd wind up with something like the 2015 Pirates wave, which was affordably priced but largely lambasted by AFOLs for not being big enough.

 

Well - there was a great example on the other castle speculation thread:

6059-1.jpg

 

A wave including a couple of sets of that scale (incl. ideally a remake of 6059), a “good” faction battlepack and a “bad” faction battlepack, and maybe a mid scale range topper along the lines of Mill Village Raid would be a nice simple way of reintroducing classic castle.

 

 

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6 hours ago, x105Black said:

Absolutely.  Small sets would be great if they wanted to test the waters, but ultimately a lot of us want a larger set or 2.

I would be okay with a Castle theme with four total sets: a small set with a carriage and two figures, a $12 set with a section of wall for the good guys, a $30-40 set with a decent sized structure for the bad guys, and a $80 Castle for the good guys with a blacksmith shop inside and a small siege engine.

If Lego made all of the sets affordable, it might attract more customers who would be more willing to take a "risk" on a theme that they might not like as much as the bigger themes.

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I may add these, after months.
I thought about that today because I now know most of the 2019 sets, and the ones I was awaing the most, the TLM2 ones, are a total disappointment in my own perspective.

  1. I hope the benny lenny kenny jenny set sells a lot. And fot a lot I mean a huge lot. So that TLG may try to do some fanservice regarding castle or pirates in future too.
  2. I acknowledge that this is what most TLG employees have to say, but in a recent question about a future castle theme I've been answered "You never know what's coming before it's coming". As I said, I ack that they would never say "give up your hopes, no castle theme" but that answer leaves me some room for hope.
     

Good ol' pal @BrickJagger asks me to do the "best castle set" and I think I will do that in a near future just to drag some people here, plus it's been a lot of time since I did the last game.
I hope some of you would play.

Edited by Itaria No Shintaku

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3 hours ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

I may add these, after months.
I thought about that today because I now know most of the 2019 sets, and the ones I was awaing the most, the TLM2 ones, are a total disappointment in my own perspective.

  1. I hope the benny lenny kenny jenny set sells a lot. And fot a lot I mean a huge lot. So that TLG may try to do some fanservice regarding castle or pirates in future too.
  2. I acknowledge that this is what most TLG employees have to say, but in a recent question about a future castle theme I've been answered "You never know what's coming before it's coming". As I said, I ack that they would never say "give up your hopes, no castle theme" but that answer leaves me some room for hope.
     

Good ol' pal @BrickJagger asks me to do the "best castle set" and I think I will do that in a near future just to drag some people here, plus it's been a lot of time since I did the last game.
I hope some of you would play.

I would love to play.  I have most of the sets from the eighties and nineties.  That sounds really fun.  As far as the TLM2 sets some are not my cup of tea but those blue raptors are pretty slick.  I hope some castle stuff shows soon.  And I hope this time around people will eat it up to show lego castle is still a viable cash cow for them instead of getting the people that complain the sets are too childish or not what they are looking for.  I know some people would die for castle sets now.  Its funny how people miss things when they are gone.  But when we had castle all people did was complain and now we got nothing.  I hope we do get something, the Harry Potter sets have some good stuff just not castle enough for me to fill the void.  I like alot of the Ninjago stuff especially the Hunted line with the golden dragon armor, bone swords, and other new swords.  But still not castle, only time will tell.

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12 minutes ago, zoth33 said:

I would love to play.  I have most of the sets from the eighties and nineties.  That sounds really fun.  As far as the TLM2 sets some are not my cup of tea but those blue raptors are pretty slick.  I hope some castle stuff shows soon.  And I hope this time around people will eat it up to show lego castle is still a viable cash cow for them instead of getting the people that complain the sets are too childish or not what they are looking for.  I know some people would die for castle sets now.  Its funny how people miss things when they are gone.  But when we had castle all people did was complain and now we got nothing.  I hope we do get something, the Harry Potter sets have some good stuff just not castle enough for me to fill the void.  I like alot of the Ninjago stuff especially the Hunted line with the golden dragon armor, bone swords, and other new swords.  But still not castle, only time will tell.

I think it's encouraging that Harry Potter and FB are only getting one wave of four sets next year. Lego clearly isn't trying to make it the next Star Wars, and I see a clear opening for a new Castle theme. After all, HP is currently the only thing with remotely historic influences, and even that is a stretch.

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Just now, BrickJagger said:

I think it's encouraging that Harry Potter and FB are only getting one wave of four sets next year. Lego clearly isn't trying to make it the next Star Wars, and I see a clear opening for a new Castle theme. After all, HP is currently the only thing with remotely historic influences, and even that is a stretch.

Yeah I've bought some of the FB sets for the thestrals and will buy newts suitcase for the pieces and creatures.  The HP sets do have some great pieces and a lot of tan bricks.  I'm mainly buying sets for the figs and pieces for my moc's now.  I've bought 7 Aquaman and the battle of atlantis sets for the atlanteans and the Aquaman torso and legs for a custom elf army.  I actually kinda miss Chima for all its great figs and parts.  I also am bummed about the end of the Elves line so many great pieces, especially hair pieces for my elves and they had nice dragon designs.  Although the Ninjago dragons are nice I think I liked the Elves ones better.  Anyway hope castle comes back by the end of next year.  

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9 hours ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

I may add these, after months.
I thought about that today because I now know most of the 2019 sets, and the ones I was awaing the most, the TLM2 ones, are a total disappointment in my own perspective.

  1. I hope the benny lenny kenny jenny set sells a lot. And fot a lot I mean a huge lot. So that TLG may try to do some fanservice regarding castle or pirates in future too. @BrickJagger
4

In a sense, they already did for castle in the first TLM:

70806-1.original.png

 

I think Benny's spaceship sold well, and so Classic Space gets more sets this time. Whereas the set above didn't sell so well.

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48 minutes ago, MAB said:

In a sense, they already did for castle in the first TLM:

70806-1.original.png

 

I think Benny's spaceship sold well, and so Classic Space gets more sets this time. Whereas the set above didn't sell so well.

Perhaps it didn'ìt sell well because that faction is neither black falcon / crusaders / lion knights / wolfpack / forestman.

If they gave a chance to one of these, maybe we would be telling a different story now.

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2 hours ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

Perhaps it didn'ìt sell well because that faction is neither black falcon / crusaders / lion knights / wolfpack / forestman.

If they gave a chance to one of these, maybe we would be telling a different story now.

Yes, they were definitely more modern castle than classic castle. If the torsos had been an older design, then yes the story may well be different.

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10 hours ago, BrickJagger said:

I think it's encouraging that Harry Potter and FB are only getting one wave of four sets next year. Lego clearly isn't trying to make it the next Star Wars, and I see a clear opening for a new Castle theme. After all, HP is currently the only thing with remotely historic influences, and even that is a stretch.

Arguably also some of the Disney Princess IPs, but again I don’t get the sense that those would rule out in-house Castle properties considering they were able to coexist for four years with Elves, which had a much more similar target demographic and design language.

4 hours ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

Perhaps it didn'ìt sell well because that faction is neither black falcon / crusaders / lion knights / wolfpack / forestman.

If they gave a chance to one of these, maybe we would be telling a different story now.

Highly doubtful. Play themes like The LEGO Movie derive most of their success from kid appeal, not from banking on nostalgic 25+ year old AFOLs. The nostalgic references and Easter eggs we do see in kid-targeted themes like The LEGO Movie, Ninjago, Friends, City, Space Police 3, and Nexo Knights are usually a mix of self-indulgence on the part of the designers and treats/shout-outs on our behalf, not a critical staple of those sets’ success strategy. If anything, that set being less popular than Benny’s Spaceship probably stems from its lack of highly recognizable LEGO Movie characters and its blink-and-you-miss-it appearance in the movie itself (compared to Benny’s Spaceship, which contained four of the movie’s main characters and was an iconic part of one of the movie’s most iconic scenes and the resolution of a memorable running gag). Additionally, Castle Cavalry has a lot more sets to compete with at the same price point, whereas Benny’s Spaceship was the entire LEGO Movie theme’s flagship set and as such very specifically positioned as the ultimate set on many kids’ and adults’ LEGO Movie wish lists.

On that note, don’t forget that we have yet to see any of the summer sets for The LEGO Movie 2, which based on precedent will probably include some of the theme’s biggest sets. Nor have we seen the collectible minifigures series, which is likely to include a lot more civilian/supporting characters who don’t relate as closely to the central characters and conflict, and who haven’t been as heavily promoted in trailers.

Overall, though, I think it’s important to keep in mind that the LEGO Movie sets are driven primarily by what the movie’s story and core concept calls for, not just AFOL fanservice. So that encourages more focus on sets like the Party Bus and Sistar Starship which tie in with some of the movie’s implied messages about gender roles or the post-apoc stuff that relates to possible messages about Finn getting older and feeling alienated from that sense of youthful innocence he had at eight and a half years old than sets like we saw in The LEGO Movie which were more tailored to a different set of messages about creativity vs. conformity.

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I also think Castle Cavalry was intended to be a sort of bridge to the concurrent Castle theme. While that theme did not seem to gel with most of us here, that would make sense.

With LEGO's increased portfolio of D2C, I hope perhaps they will feed us a nice nostalgia of a Black Falcon D2C Castle. Even if Castle comes back, I doubt it will have the target age range where the design is more AFOL friendly.

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There's one thing that I don't understand, but I guess that there are reasons for this mystery.
I don't get why lego "ignores" the old fans and why they don't offer any nostalgic sets. But of course this is no mystery, as they cannot waste time and effort on stuff that will sell only to a small part of customers, and they also cannot cannibalize the HP/LotR/PotC lines, at least not far too much. Yet I still think that sets similar to MMV would sell well, and they could be generic enough to not interfere with HP&Co.
An eighties party would be lovely. Considering there were three to six or even more factions of the 80's-90's classic (depending on where you draw the line "ain't classic anymore"), there is a potential for a few sets, even a year or two of "full" production. Imagine a few midsized sets for summer holidays, then a big set for Christmas. Yep, it'll be hard to fit all the factions in say four sets, and making tons of castles might be a stretch, but they started with two factions back in 1984 and only added others later. It could be done like that, maybe compressed into two or three years withe two or three faction castles for Yule, not gigantic ones, but somewhere in range of 300-600 pieces with 3-6 figs. Is it even doable?

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@Itaria No Shintaku tagging you here because I don't want to derail the other thread.

What does, for example, "1HY" mean? I dont yet understand the acronyms from your post.

I don't know what is replacing Nexo Knights but it surely needs to be replaced with something, but not necessarily a Castle theme.

Big bang themes can be anything right? So probably an in-house IP but not necessarily Castle.

I hope it is Castle though, with battle packs of the various factions including a full battle standard, standard bearer minifig and a 3D crest mounted somewhere in the pack. Pack would contain 4-6 minifigs. This is my dream.

Also, tagging @BrickJagger as you were in on the convo from the Community forum.

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11 hours ago, Aine said:

There's one thing that I don't understand, but I guess that there are reasons for this mystery.
I don't get why lego "ignores" the old fans and why they don't offer any nostalgic sets.

 

It is because there are not that many old fans compared to the kids that normally buy sets / have sets bought for them. Then there are considerations like clashing with other product lines (eg having classic castle out at the same time as Nexo Knights wouldn't work), and competing lines that are designed for older LEGO fans (modulars, architecture, etc).

They also do occasionally do nostalgic sets (like the recent anniversary ones).

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28 minutes ago, leafan said:

What does, for example, "1HY" mean? I dont yet understand the acronyms from your post.

Hopefully you don't mind me stealing the spotlight here :pir-skel:

1HY normally means 1st half year which is around the times of sets that's released before summer. If I'm not mistaken, it's also known as the winter waves but probably 1HY also covers spring releases too. From summer onwards it'll be 2HY as in 2nd half year which will be covering the summer waves and/or autumn releases

Hope this helps!.

Edited by JJ Tong (zfogshooterz)

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@JJ Tong (zfogshooterz) @leafan @Aine @x105Black @ElectroDiva @Aanchir would any of you be interested in playing Itaria's "Greatest Castle Set" game? If so, please vote in this poll because we don't have many votes at the moment. :classic:

7 hours ago, leafan said:

Also, tagging @BrickJagger as you were in on the convo from the Community forum.

I guess we could continue that Nexo Knights conversation over here if you have any questions. We were derailing that thread a bit. :tongue:

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@BrickJagger Re: The game. I don't know what it all involves - is there a link to somewhere that explains it all?

In regard to Nexo Knights; am I correct in saying that it is not carrying over into 2019? If so, I have not heard of a new original IP to replace it, and I find that kind of exciting.

Lots of announcements lately with the Lego Movie 2 and the latest Star Wars/Ninjago 2019 sets, so maybe we can expect news soon. Any thoughts on that? I'm hoping for a Castle line, but I'd also be down with another Vikings line.

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17 minutes ago, leafan said:

@BrickJagger Re: The game. I don't know what it all involves - is there a link to somewhere that explains it all?

In regard to Nexo Knights; am I correct in saying that it is not carrying over into 2019? If so, I have not heard of a new original IP to replace it, and I find that kind of exciting.

Lots of announcements lately with the Lego Movie 2 and the latest Star Wars/Ninjago 2019 sets, so maybe we can expect news soon. Any thoughts on that? I'm hoping for a Castle line, but I'd also be down with another Vikings line.

The game is pretty much a tournament to determine the best Castle set of all time. Every few days there will be a poll between two sets, and the winner moves on to the next round. It's pretty much like March Madness. 

NK was discontinued this year. Some people think that Overwatch will be replacing it, but I don't think that's true because it only has six sets and no gimmicks like the other Big Bang themes. There's no real "Big Bang" theme coming next year because of TLM2, maybe we'll get one in 2020?

There's literally no historic based themes whatsoever next year in January, and I think we're overdue for a new one in the summer. Nexo Knights and Elves were both discontinued this year, and Harry Potter is only getting four sets next year. Perfect opening for a new Castle theme IMO. If there is one, we likely won't hear about it until late December because Lego has been tightening up their leaks. 

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