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9 minutes ago, iragm said:

I would be delighted to be wrong, but there isn't going to be a third castle that would cannibalize sales of 10305.  Gone are the days when Wolfpack Tower, King's Mountain Fortress, Forestmen's River Fortress AND Black Knights Castle were all available at the same time.

Personally, I would be thrilled to have a Guarded Inn remake with modern techniques.  I found a few, but none that capture the charm of that set.

I totally get that.

I'm personally torn between remakes and new stuff.  On the one hand, I'm a sucker for seeing before-and-after comparisons between something old and what it could look like today, like the Forest Hideout and the Galaxy Explorer.  On the other hand, having something new wouldn't compete with people who actually have the old sets and want to display them alongside the new ones, like the new Castle being its own thing instead of just a remake of Lion King's Castle, or a thematic remix like Barracuda's Bay or Castle in the Forest.

I have a lot of nostalgia for Wolfpack Tower and Majisto's Magic Workshop, and I think I'd prefer those two remaining fresh in my memory rather than be reimagined into something modern.  I'd rather they do something fresh like the Ideas Blacksmith, where they can take something niche and give it 110%.  Mix it up like a Medieval Village 'Wolfpack Village Raid', or a modern tensegrity Majisto's Floating Fortress.

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1 hour ago, BTappel said:

That’s the one!  Altho out of all those sets I want the 6 minifig pack the most 

I actually got that when it came out.  Those were all great sets.  I remember looking at the little scenes in the leaflets and trying to re-enact them.  

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3 minutes ago, zoth33 said:

I actually got that when it came out.  Those were all great sets.  I remember looking at the little scenes in the leaflets and trying to re-enact them.  

Same. Thankfully, my parents had enough closet space to store them all, still assembled, in cardboard boxes for 20 years. I came out of my dark ages about a decade ago and had an instant classic castle collection. I feel very lucky on that one. 

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1 minute ago, SirBlake said:

Same. Thankfully, my parents had enough closet space to store them all, still assembled, in cardboard boxes for 20 years. I came out of my dark ages about a decade ago and had an instant classic castle collection. I feel very lucky on that one. 

That's nice.  Mine were all together in a bin in pieces.  So after I got out of college and got my own place they brought the bin and I sorted through and got all the minifigs out.  Now  I might just make updated versions of the older sets.  

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1 hour ago, BTappel said:

That’s the one!  Altho out of all those sets I want the 6 minifig pack the most 

Unfortunately as a 12-13yr old i stole probably 5-7 of those minifig packs. I dont have any of my stuff from when i was kid so i have paid back that debt by buying everything all over at 5 times the price lol.

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5 hours ago, Triceron said:

I totally get that.

I'm personally torn between remakes and new stuff.  On the one hand, I'm a sucker for seeing before-and-after comparisons between something old and what it could look like today, like the Forest Hideout and the Galaxy Explorer.  On the other hand, having something new wouldn't compete with people who actually have the old sets and want to display them alongside the new ones, like the new Castle being its own thing instead of just a remake of Lion King's Castle, or a thematic remix like Barracuda's Bay or Castle in the Forest.

I have a lot of nostalgia for Wolfpack Tower and Majisto's Magic Workshop, and I think I'd prefer those two remaining fresh in my memory rather than be reimagined into something modern.  I'd rather they do something fresh like the Ideas Blacksmith, where they can take something niche and give it 110%.  Mix it up like a Medieval Village 'Wolfpack Village Raid', or a modern tensegrity Majisto's Floating Fortress.

If we get a new Castle set in the next few year, I want something new that fit with MMV and MVR as part of the village or a farm. I must say I prefer the civilian figs there over the ones in the Castle this year to be honest :blush:

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On 6/21/2022 at 9:15 AM, MAB said:

You can still get the CMF S13 King and S15 Queen for not too much money. Both are ideal colours for this set.

Good suggestion!

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On 6/21/2022 at 10:15 AM, MAB said:

You can still get the CMF S13 King and S15 Queen for not too much money. Both are ideal colours for this set.

Where can you still get them for a reasonable amount?

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18 hours ago, Triceron said:

I totally get that.

I'm personally torn between remakes and new stuff.  On the one hand, I'm a sucker for seeing before-and-after comparisons between something old and what it could look like today, like the Forest Hideout and the Galaxy Explorer.  On the other hand, having something new wouldn't compete with people who actually have the old sets and want to display them alongside the new ones, like the new Castle being its own thing instead of just a remake of Lion King's Castle, or a thematic remix like Barracuda's Bay or Castle in the Forest.

I have a lot of nostalgia for Wolfpack Tower and Majisto's Magic Workshop, and I think I'd prefer those two remaining fresh in my memory rather than be reimagined into something modern.  I'd rather they do something fresh like the Ideas Blacksmith, where they can take something niche and give it 110%.  Mix it up like a Medieval Village 'Wolfpack Village Raid', or a modern tensegrity Majisto's Floating Fortress.

I think remakes like Barracuda Bay, Forest Hideout, and Galaxy Explorer (or even full redesigns/re-imaginings like some of the Ninjago Legacy sets) can be LOADS of fun! It's amazing to see how well today's LEGO designers can retain older sets' charm while also making monumental improvements using newer parts or building techniques — even in cases where they go out of their way to maintain the general proportions of the original

At the same time, I have spent quite a bit of time over the years trying to come up with my OWN redesigns of classic sets on Stud.io. And in the process I've learned that a lot of sets don't necessarily feel worth remaking years after the fact. After all, any long-running theme tends to end up with a lot of repetition in the long run (especially among sets that mostly serve to fill a particular price point in their respective waves) and it's often harder for those sets to stand out as unique or distinctive in hindsight than it did at their time of release.

It's partly for this reason that I think the designers of the Galaxy Explorer made a good call by including remakes of 918 and 924 as alternate builds of the main set. Those are ships that'd have a harder time justifying "throwback" sets of their own — to a modern buyer who didn't grow up with Classic Space, they might very easily seem like smaller, less iconic versions of the same general design, with fewer unique play features.

I could definitely picture Castle taking a similar approach with some other modern-day remakes/throwbacks that might have a bit of a hard time justifying a remake on their own, but make good "companion models" to larger builds from their respective subthemes.


And of course, I'm also a big fan of sets like the one this topic focuses on that take a totally different approach, going above and beyond any of the sets from the particular subtheme that inspires them! After all, the expectations of buyers (AFOLs in particular) have changed a LOT since the 80s or 90s, especially thanks to sets like the Modular Buildings Collection that pushed the limits of the level of realistic detail that a LEGO set can offer!

Plenty of folks here have brought up how much larger the scale of the Medieval Blacksmith is than traditional LEGO castle sets, but it's entirely in line with the scale and standard of detail from many of these other "premium" sets. And I feel like the Lion Knights' Castle is the first actual castle (at least outside of licensed themes) to approach a similar standard of detail, inside and out.

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4 minutes ago, Aanchir said:

Plenty of folks here have brought up how much larger the scale of the Medieval Blacksmith is than traditional LEGO castle sets, but it's entirely in line with the scale and standard of detail from many of these other "premium" sets. And I feel like the Lion Knights' Castle is the first actual castle (at least outside of licensed themes) to approach a similar standard of detail, inside and out.

Yes it is in scale with modulars etc, but not other Castle sets and the scale really do not work in a castle setting since sets like castles need to be HUGE to match it. However it is a nice set and I think the designers did a good job making it a little smaller then the original submission..

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44 minutes ago, Follows Closely said:

Where can you still get them for a reasonable amount?

Bricklink. Although the cheaper ones have just about all gone now. The Classic King set sold approx 30 per month in March, April and May but almost 400 in June. I imagine that has a lot to do with the Castle without a king.

Castle stuff is flying right now. A couple of days ago I parted out a Kingdoms chess set, at prices decently above recent sales. More than half has sold in two days.

Edited by MAB

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2 minutes ago, MAB said:

Bricklink. Although the cheaper ones have just about all gone now. The Classic King set sold approx 30 per month in March, April and May but almost 400 in June. 

Looks like around $25 for the king and $6 for the queen, plus shipping.  (Gotta check both the figure and the set it comes in, looks like both have pretty good volume recently)

For that kind of money, I can grab a 10 pound box of unsorted bricks which I would have much more fun with than 2 minifigures.

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1 minute ago, iragm said:

Looks like around $25 for the king and $6 for the queen, plus shipping.  (Gotta check both the figure and the set it comes in, looks like both have pretty good volume recently)

For that kind of money, I can grab a 10 pound box of unsorted bricks which I would have much more fun with than 2 minifigures.

Go back in time a week to when I first posted it. 

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1 hour ago, Roebuck said:

Yes it is in scale with modulars etc, but not other Castle sets and the scale really do not work in a castle setting since sets like castles need to be HUGE to match it. However it is a nice set and I think the designers did a good job making it a little smaller then the original submission..

I'd say that the Blacksmith is not in scale with the modulars. The Blacksmith is about the same size as the modular buildings, but they're supposed to represent more modern, larger buildings, whereas the Blacksmith would, in real-life, have been much smaller. The castle probably does scale well with the modular buildings. It's the Blacksmith that is out. That's not to say that I don't think it's awesome. Or that I won't put the two next to each other. And the fact that the scaled down versions of the Blacksmith show just how little detail you can get into it in comparison is reason enough for the Blacksmith to be at a different scale. But I do think it's different. Same with the Home Alone and The Simpon's House, which are all a larger scale than the modulars, but you wouldn't want to make them smaller just to fit in.

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1 hour ago, Aanchir said:

I think remakes like Barracuda Bay, Forest Hideout, and Galaxy Explorer (or even full redesigns/re-imaginings like some of the Ninjago Legacy sets) can be LOADS of fun! It's amazing to see how well today's LEGO designers can retain older sets' charm while also making monumental improvements using newer parts or building techniques — even in cases where they go out of their way to maintain the general proportions of the original

At the same time, I have spent quite a bit of time over the years trying to come up with my OWN redesigns of classic sets on Stud.io. And in the process I've learned that a lot of sets don't necessarily feel worth remaking years after the fact. After all, any long-running theme tends to end up with a lot of repetition in the long run (especially among sets that mostly serve to fill a particular price point in their respective waves) and it's often harder for those sets to stand out as unique or distinctive in hindsight than it did at their time of release.

It's partly for this reason that I think the designers of the Galaxy Explorer made a good call by including remakes of 918 and 924 as alternate builds of the main set. Those are ships that'd have a harder time justifying "throwback" sets of their own — to a modern buyer who didn't grow up with Classic Space, they might very easily seem like smaller, less iconic versions of the same general design, with fewer unique play features.

I could definitely picture Castle taking a similar approach with some other modern-day remakes/throwbacks that might have a bit of a hard time justifying a remake on their own, but make good "companion models" to larger builds from their respective subthemes.

I like this idea - I think a 1400-1800 piece set  (like the creator castle) with alternate builds that would allow you to build 2 or 3 older castle sets could do the trick. I would love to see the old Battering ram, Royal Drawbridge and siege tower in a set would be cool as alternate builds.

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1 hour ago, RichardGoring said:

I'd say that the Blacksmith is not in scale with the modulars. The Blacksmith is about the same size as the modular buildings, but they're supposed to represent more modern, larger buildings, whereas the Blacksmith would, in real-life, have been much smaller. The castle probably does scale well with the modular buildings. It's the Blacksmith that is out. That's not to say that I don't think it's awesome. Or that I won't put the two next to each other. And the fact that the scaled down versions of the Blacksmith show just how little detail you can get into it in comparison is reason enough for the Blacksmith to be at a different scale. But I do think it's different. Same with the Home Alone and The Simpon's House, which are all a larger scale than the modulars, but you wouldn't want to make them smaller just to fit in. 

I mean, the real-life equivalents of a lot of the Modular Buildings would be considerably larger than Medieval Blacksmith, I feel that's because in real life they'd be more than two or three stories tall. And I still feel the Modular Buildings, Medieval Blacksmith, and Lion King's Castle offer more or less the same size/amount of detail per floor. That's the reason I consider their level of detail comparable.

By comparison, sets like Medieval Market Village or Mill Village Raid scale better to a typical LEGO castle, but their level of detail per floor is simpler even than some Friends or Creator 3-in-1 sets, and certainly far simpler than the Modular Buildings, Old Fishing Store, or other 16+/18+ buildings along those lines.

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1 hour ago, Aanchir said:

I mean, the real-life equivalents of a lot of the Modular Buildings would be considerably larger than Medieval Blacksmith, I feel that's because in real life they'd be more than two or three stories tall. And I still feel the Modular Buildings, Medieval Blacksmith, and Lion King's Castle offer more or less the same size/amount of detail per floor. That's the reason I consider their level of detail comparable.

By comparison, sets like Medieval Market Village or Mill Village Raid scale better to a typical LEGO castle, but their level of detail per floor is simpler even than some Friends or Creator 3-in-1 sets, and certainly far simpler than the Modular Buildings, Old Fishing Store, or other 16+/18+ buildings along those lines.

Not really sure about size, the castle rooms are pretty tiny compared with the blacksmith. 

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3 hours ago, Aanchir said:

I mean, the real-life equivalents of a lot of the Modular Buildings would be considerably larger than Medieval Blacksmith, I feel that's because in real life they'd be more than two or three stories tall. And I still feel the Modular Buildings, Medieval Blacksmith, and Lion King's Castle offer more or less the same size/amount of detail per floor. That's the reason I consider their level of detail comparable.

By comparison, sets like Medieval Market Village or Mill Village Raid scale better to a typical LEGO castle, but their level of detail per floor is simpler even than some Friends or Creator 3-in-1 sets, and certainly far simpler than the Modular Buildings, Old Fishing Store, or other 16+/18+ buildings along those lines.

Certainly see the point about the level of detail. But that's the thing with these models, they are all somewhat impressionistic, and not accurate scale models. And I wouldn't want to lose the detail from done of these sets, just to make them 'fit', size-wise, with the others.

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It seems like a lot of people are getting bent out of shape for no reason. They are different scales. Simple as that. 

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57 minutes ago, SirBlake said:

It seems like a lot of people are getting bent out of shape for no reason. They are different scales. Simple as that. 

Yes, but bent by how much? And how does it compare to other issues that we've argued about? Would you say that this is a 3 compared to a 7, or... :head_back:

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10 minutes ago, RichardGoring said:

Yes, but bent by how much? And how does it compare to other issues that we've argued about? Would you say that this is a 3 compared to a 7, or... :head_back:

Hah! I had a similar thought as I was writing that. Plenty of excitement (both good and bad) going on right now. This scale issue seems like an easy one to leave behind so we can focus on the morality of blind packaging and predatory GWP, lol. 

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6 minutes ago, SirBlake said:

Hah! I had a similar thought as I was writing that. Plenty of excitement (both good and bad) going on right now. This scale issue seems like an easy one to leave behind so we can focus on the morality of blind packaging and predatory GWP, lol. 

I don't see the scale thing as being as issue. It's just interesting. I've build several modular SEC models and would like to build some of my own relatively soon, so it's interesting to think about how LEGO achieves the look of a full building without it actually being to a real-life scale. As I said, just interesting.

Blind boxes however. What a pain. How silly. Bags was bad enough, but this is such a poor decision.

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2 hours ago, Poco Lypso said:

Not really sure about size, the castle rooms are pretty tiny compared with the blacksmith.  

It's certainly broken up into a larger number of smaller sections, but they still tend to be reasonably spacious when folded closed! The hinged layout plays a big part in making the individual chambers seem smaller at a glance — the kitchen/granary/pantry, dining room/living room, playroom/bedroom, dungeon/treasury, and gatehouse/armory are all essentially single chambers rooms split in half along the hinge.

If the Medieval Blacksmith were split along the center that same way, its interiors would surely seem a lot less spacious themselves! After all, its ground floor interior (stripped of all furnishings and fixtures) has a 14x12 floor space. That's about the same size as the ground-floor chamber that houses this set's kitchen, granary, and pantry! The main difference is that the Blacksmith's interiors get incrementally larger as you ascend, while the castle's get steadily smaller.

On a bit of a side note, I'm also impressed with how much this castle gets out of its interior space by moving its main stairwell OUTSIDE of all the chambers that make up its west wing — much like Parisian Restaurant did in the Modular Buildings series — and using ladders instead of stairs to connect the chambers that make up its east wing. Stairwells are a feature that's given me a lot of trouble in my own attempts at larger castle MOCs, so it's good to see the designers working them in so effectively here. After all, it'd be pretty weird if the king/queen/lord/lady had to climb a ladder just to get from the dinner table to their bedroom!

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Something I noticed on PAB online.  Seems like all the primary color legs that used to always be available cheap are no longer available at all (red, blue, black, green, white).  I guess since the change over though I haven’t checked legs in a long time.  Most plain legs are 73200.  So I searched “lower” and screened for minifigure parts and found blue is available but listed as 88584.  And the price is 1.47, almost triple what it was.  I checked the specific element number (4583501) on bricklinks to confirm it is plain blue legs.  88584 doesn’t show.  So not sure why they would give it a new number and triple the price.  Then I remembered some people wrote on here they used black legs for the BF and wondering if LEGO is anticipating people using blue legs for the LK.  Also wondering why they took all those other colors down.  Not new parts and currently being used in sets.

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