10305 Lion Knights' Castle 90th anniversary set

[zoth33]

8 hours ago, DaleDVM said:

It is a variety of figs and heraldry that I am hoping for.  However, civilians go to the head of the class.  Not Kings and Queens, but... we will get those too.  I want regular civilians because you need them in multiples to populate castle MOCs more than anything. Just having soldiers and nobles populate a medieval city doesn't look good at all.  

Any new animal mold(s) or new color(s) would be excellent.  Another opportunity to include the sheep?  Lucky for me I already have a lot of goats, but I will not deny the demand for them in the community!  A new color of goat would be awesome! I would love a bird that is not a chicken too.  A pheasant, or just a small bird to put into trees?

I have no doubt the castle will be beautiful and the parts will be very useful to castle fans.  However, it is the little castley bits, prints, flags, barding, torsos, and minifig accessories that I can't MOC that I truly desire.  I will be buying in multiples.  And then buying whatever I can on bits-n-pieces because I have a kingdom to populate!

The hype is real!!!

A link to another article about this set.
https://brickshow.com/2022/03-12/

Now that you mention it a pheasant or quail would be a nice addition.  Any duck or goose would be nice too.  I also agree with the castley bits you said, it's alway nice to have a variety of flags, prints, bardings, torsos etc.  I do hope there are some nice civilians in this set.  I was going to do a large castle for my lion lords but I might wait and see what this looks like and start building for my falcon knights instead.  As for animals a fox, a wild boar, a wolf, would be good.  There is a cow coming in the city sets this summer so I'm thinking a cow or 2 could be in this set.  So many possibilities with this can't wait to see what Lego comes up with.  

[KristinnK]

This rumor makes a lot of sense when considering how many great looking castles have been rejected in recent Ideas Reviews, like Classic Castle in the third 2020 review and Castle of Lord Afol, Castle of Brickwood Forest and Fantasy Castle in the first 2021 review. Seeing how wildly popular the Medieval Blacksmith set is you'd have thought they'd produce at least one of these castles. Not wanting to dilute the market for a Castle anniversary set makes a lot of sense.

My wish-list for this is set is basically everything the Creator Castle is not. Light bley (as opposed to dark bley) stonework, massive looking walls (as opposed to stylized with reliefs and color contrasts), and multiple good peasant minifigs.

[Jiesdeo]

On 3/9/2022 at 10:44 PM, Bricky Steamboat said:

The counter argument is that the Castle fans got 3 votes to spread around those different Castle sub-themes, whereas Bionicle supporters were limited to just 1 selection and then had to pick something else or nothing at all.

So for me it didn’t then make sense to combine all of the Castle subtheme votes and present it as a top 4.

Anyway, I think they’ve adequately apologised for not thinking it through.

Someone linked to a blog post by StoneWars that did a comprehensive analysis of the voting. Even if you take that fact into account, both Castle and Space beats Bionicle.

[Follows Closely]

3 hours ago, Jiesdeo said:

Someone linked to a blog post by StoneWars that did a comprehensive analysis of the voting. Even if you take that fact into account, both Castle and Space beats Bionicle.

I suspect that the LEGO group wanted nothing to do with bringing Bionicle back. Think of the production impacts of producing a large Bionicle set.

[RichardGoring]

18 minutes ago, Follows Closely said:

I suspect that the LEGO group wanted nothing to do with bringing Bionicle back. Think of the production impacts of producing a large Bionicle set.

And yet they included it in the poll, which is just bizarre. They didn't include any Technic and that's been around for far longer than Bionicle and is longer lived than pretty much anything else.

[MAB]

37 minutes ago, Follows Closely said:

I suspect that the LEGO group wanted nothing to do with bringing Bionicle back. Think of the production impacts of producing a large Bionicle set.

They chose to put it in the poll. They also didn't say how big the set would be, or that it would contain traditional Bionicle parts.

[Maple]

LEGO relaunched Bionicle in 2014, I was at the NYC Comic Con showing. It ended up being a massive failure. LEGO included it to make people happy. They were never going to bring back the pieces. LEGO most likely just was curious to polling data.

[Aanchir]

2 hours ago, MAB said:

They chose to put it in the poll. They also didn't say how big the set would be, or that it would contain traditional Bionicle parts.

Agreed. If it had been selected, there are a number of different approaches LEGO could have taken for an 18+ tribute set, such as 2x or 3x scaled System models of the original Toa, or a set of brick-built Kanohi masks at a similar scale to the Star Wars Helmet Collection.

I should also note back when the polls were up, even some LEGO set designer were rooting for Bionicle on Twitter, including designers who have made their own System-based Bionicle tribute MOCs (like Nick Vás and Niek van Slagmaat). So it certainly seems that it was regarded as a genuine possibility like any other.

Notably, there were already various 80s and 90s themes/subthemes omitted from the poll which I suspect LEGO had ruled out in advance for various reasons. For instance, Islanders and Western featured insensitive portrayals of indigenous people that LEGO probably didn't want to remind people about in an anniversary set. Roboforce, Unitron, and Dark Forest were likely considered too minor to base an anniversary set on, since they were extremely small subthemes that never got a full global release. And although Fabuland was a long-running theme which has become a beloved "cult classic" in its own right, it was likely omitted on account of its preschool target age range.

If LEGO truly didn't believe that Bionicle would be a viable option for this anniversary set, they could have omitted it as well on any number of objective grounds. For example, they could have limited the poll to 20th-century themes and omitted themes of the 2000s like Bionicle or Alpha Team. Or they could have strictly limited the poll to System themes, since Bionicle was already the only non-System theme present.

Some Bionicle fans might've been bitter (what else is new?), but a poll like this was never going to please EVERYONE no matter which choices were included in the poll or which of them was ultimately selected for the anniversary set. So I don't believe for a minute that LEGO only included Bionicle in the poll to spare Bionicle fans' feelings. From every indication, it was a genuine option for the anniversary set, just not the one that they ultimately ended up choosing.

[cehnot]

I agree with so many on here that a set of this price would include roughly 15 to 20 minifigures. This could be a UCS set for fans like the Daily Bugle and offer 10 Lion knights and soldiers, a king, queen, peasants, forestmen, Wolfpack rangers, and a few other surprises. I purchased 7 Medieval Castle sets to use for parts in a custom castle moc I'm developing. I love the mods people built for this 3-in1 creator set using 2 or 3 sets. I want to build an UCS size set using their mocs as inspiration. With the idea we may be getting a large castle this year I'm am eager to see how detailed it will be. The creator set had a lot of playful features, but had too many exposed walls and I would love to have a castle with enclosed interiors like the higher end modular sets. 

I wish the Castle in the Forest was made into a LEGO ideas set, but excited I was able to purchase the pieces from LEGO when they released their piece list. I missed out on being one of the 10,000 customers, but I got my parts a few weeks ago and built that set from their free instructions online before many p3ople got the set in the USA.

I would love this anniversary set to include a few of these in modern two sided printed outfit designs. 

I found these online a while back and hope we see something like these on future minifig designs.

Anyways. I will love seeing what they design for an anniversary set and purchase it no matter what.

Edited March 12, 2022 by cehnot

[NoOneOfImportance]

7 minutes ago, cehnot said:

I agree with so many on here that a set of this price would include roughly 15 to 20 minifigures. This could be a UCS set for fans like the Daily Bugle and offer 10 Lion knights and soldiers, a king, queen, peasants, forestmen, Wolfpack rangers, and a few other surprises. I wish the Castle in the Forest was made into a LEGO ideas set, but excited I was able to purchase the pieces from LEGO when they released their piece list. I got my parts a few weeks ago and built that set from their free instructions online. I would love this anniversary set to include a few of these in modern two sided printed outfit designs. 

I found these online a while back and hope we see something like these on future minifig designs

I would expect a pretty large slate of minifigures, yeah - if only because of the price. Though I also think that the sheer amount of figures for a castle that the old sets had lends itself to a similar situation here.

Does anyone think we could see classic smiley faces for any minifigures? 

[cehnot]

3 minutes ago, NoOneOfImportance said:

I would expect a pretty large slate of minifigures, yeah - if only because of the price. Though I also think that the sheer amount of figures for a castle that the old sets had lends itself to a similar situation here.

Does anyone think we could see classic smiley faces for any minifigures? 

I doubt we will see that. I think they may focus on new printed expressions or give us reused minifig heads. I am expecting them to focus on new torso and leg printing. The one benefit they have is its a classic license and they do not need to worry about paying another company for such likeness. This may benefit us because that means they may focus on offering a few extra animal molds than if it were developed for a licensed series. 

My wishlist for the bow set

1. New forestmen 

2. King

3. Queen

4. Goats

5. New horses

6. Sattles for horses. 

7. New dragon mold. 

I will accept anything they offer us. I think the idea of multiple factions like Wolfpack, forestmen, etc would be a great way to show the love and appreciation castle impacted the 80s and 90s. 

[AmperZand]

@NoOneOfImportance, I also don’t think it’ll include classic smiley faces, or if it does, the heads will be double printed with alternative, non-classic smiley faces.

Classic smiley heads are ubiquitous and about 30 to 35p each on the secondary market, so easy enough to obtain if you want to replace any non-smilies.

It’s rumoured there will be an anniversary CMF series later this year (series 23) and I’m guessing that some of the minifigures in that series will be classic smilies. 

[zoth33]

On 3/11/2022 at 1:41 PM, Aanchir said:

Agreed. If it had been selected, there are a number of different approaches LEGO could have taken for an 18+ tribute set, such as 2x or 3x scaled System models of the original Toa, or a set of brick-built Kanohi masks at a similar scale to the Star Wars Helmet Collection.

I should also note back when the polls were up, even some LEGO set designer were rooting for Bionicle on Twitter, including designers who have made their own System-based Bionicle tribute MOCs (like Nick Vás and Niek van Slagmaat). So it certainly seems that it was regarded as a genuine possibility like any other.

Notably, there were already various 80s and 90s themes/subthemes omitted from the poll which I suspect LEGO had ruled out in advance for various reasons. For instance, Islanders and Western featured insensitive portrayals of indigenous people that LEGO probably didn't want to remind people about in an anniversary set. Roboforce, Unitron, and Dark Forest were likely considered too minor to base an anniversary set on, since they were extremely small subthemes that never got a full global release. And although Fabuland was a long-running theme which has become a beloved "cult classic" in its own right, it was likely omitted on account of its preschool target age range.

If LEGO truly didn't believe that Bionicle would be a viable option for this anniversary set, they could have omitted it as well on any number of objective grounds. For example, they could have limited the poll to 20th-century themes and omitted themes of the 2000s like Bionicle or Alpha Team. Or they could have strictly limited the poll to System themes, since Bionicle was already the only non-System theme present.

Some Bionicle fans might've been bitter (what else is new?), but a poll like this was never going to please EVERYONE no matter which choices were included in the poll or which of them was ultimately selected for the anniversary set. So I don't believe for a minute that LEGO only included Bionicle in the poll to spare Bionicle fans' feelings. From every indication, it was a genuine option for the anniversary set, just not the one that they ultimately ended up choosing.

I agree Lego was never going to appease everyone with this poll.  I think in 10 years at the 100 year anniversary they will have multiple sets to celebrate and probably several different things going on throughout the year.  

[zoth33]

13 minutes ago, AmperZand said:

@NoOneOfImportance, I also don’t think it’ll include classic smiley faces, or if it does, the heads will be double printed with alternative, non-classic smiley faces.

Classic smiley heads are ubiquitous and about 30 to 35p each on the secondary market, so easy enough to obtain if you want to replace any non-smilies.

It’s rumoured there will be an anniversary CMF series later this year (series 23) and I’m guessing that some of the minifigures in that series will be classic smilies. 

I didn't hear that the CMF series 23 is an anniversary one that's interesting if it is.  That would definitely produce some great figs.  

[morvit]

Day one purchase. Might buy two. Price is not a concern - if it was cheaper, it would've been a bigger concern.

It's been a decade since the last real castle. We are overdue for a modern, large and detailed one. 

Edited March 13, 2022 by morvit

[Something_Awesome]

19 hours ago, cehnot said:

I agree with so many on here that a set of this price would include roughly 15 to 20 minifigures. This could be a UCS set for fans like the Daily Bugle and offer 10 Lion knights and soldiers, a king, queen, peasants, forestmen, Wolfpack rangers, and a few other surprises. I purchased 7 Medieval Castle sets to use for parts in a custom castle moc I'm developing. I love the mods people built for this 3-in1 creator set using 2 or 3 sets. I want to build an UCS size set using their mocs as inspiration. With the idea we may be getting a large castle this year I'm am eager to see how detailed it will be. The creator set had a lot of playful features, but had too many exposed walls and I would love to have a castle with enclosed interiors like the higher end modular sets. 

I wish the Castle in the Forest was made into a LEGO ideas set, but excited I was able to purchase the pieces from LEGO when they released their piece list. I missed out on being one of the 10,000 customers, but I got my parts a few weeks ago and built that set from their free instructions online before many p3ople got the set in the USA.

I would love this anniversary set to include a few of these in modern two sided printed outfit designs. 

I found these online a while back and hope we see something like these on future minifig designs.

Anyways. I will love seeing what they design for an anniversary set and purchase it no matter what.

24 figures or bust. No reason there should be less than the Cantina, which I think has 22. And this castle set will have duplicate figures obviously (aside from heads).

[RichardGoring]

35 minutes ago, Something_Awesome said:

24 figures or bust. No reason there should be less than the Cantina, which I think has 22. And this castle set will have duplicate figures obviously (aside from heads).

Honestly I'd be far happier with fewer figures and a more impressive castle with decent detail and height. It would be a shame if it weren't taller than the blacksmith.

[Something_Awesome]

2 minutes ago, RichardGoring said:

Honestly I'd be far happier with fewer figures and a more impressive castle with decent detail and height. It would be a shame if it weren't taller than the blacksmith.

Per LEGO, minifigs are more of a "bonus" and the price is more a byproduct of the model. Look at Diagon Allery and the Cantina. I

With that said, would not expect the build to be representative of what we might expect from a $350, non-licensed set that we may have been accustomed to in the past. I am sure this $350 price tag is the price taking in to account this year's inflation.

[Roebuck]

8 hours ago, morvit said:

Day one purchase. Might buy two. Price is not a concern - if it was cheaper, it would've been a bigger concern.

It's been a decade since the last real castle. We are overdue for a modern, large and detailed one. 

I agree! I understand that people that can not afford it complain about the price, however a set below 150$ would have had a much higher chance of just ending up OK like:
With a price of 350$ on the other hand the chance of it becoming the best Castle set of all time is a lot higher, it imply they have spared no expense

7 minutes ago, Something_Awesome said:

24 figures or bust. No reason there should be less than the Cantina, which I think has 22. And this castle set will have duplicate figures obviously (aside from heads).

24 seems a lot, I would rather have fewer similar figs and more animals My guess would be:

1. King
2. Queen
3. Princess/noble lady
4. Prince/nobleman
5. Lion knight
6. Lion knight
7. Black falcon knight
8. Knight from other fraction
9. Farmer
10. Maid
11. Squire
12. Goatherder
13. Lion soldier
14. Lion soldier
15. Lion soldier
16. Lion soldier
17. Forestman
18. Soldier from other fraction

[Alexandrina]

On 3/11/2022 at 6:41 PM, Aanchir said:

Roboforce, Unitron, and Dark Forest were likely considered too minor to base an anniversary set on, since they were extremely small subthemes that never got a full global release

The most minor of minor nitpicks - but my understanding is that these themes (Roboforce at the very least) were released globally, they just weren't included in catalogues outside North America - but were available occasionally in toyshops.

[RichardGoring]

2 hours ago, Something_Awesome said:

Per LEGO, minifigs are more of a "bonus" and the price is more a byproduct of the model. Look at Diagon Allery and the Cantina. I

With that said, would not expect the build to be representative of what we might expect from a $350, non-licensed set that we may have been accustomed to in the past. I am sure this $350 price tag is the price taking in to account this year's inflation.

True, but minifigs still contribute to the production budget. Otherwise the Creator castle should have had way more figures than it did. Same with the pirate ship.

It would be a shame if this didn't compare well with Medieval Blacksmith and Ninjago City Gardens. Maybe smaller than the gardens (certainly in height), but too much smaller, and the extra $50 for inflation/price increases.

I've seem amazing castle MOCs with 10,000+ pieces, so clearly not that scale. But it does always feel odd the way that the Creator castle is smaller than the Blacksmith.

[Triceron]

I'm really hoping they stick with the classic Crusaders style lion emblems, in both yellow and blue.  They've done so many lion emblems over the years, but that one would fit alongside the recent Black Falcon updates the best.

Would be great if we got new Forestmen as well!

[morvit]

$350 should get us something like this but 2x wider with like 15 minifigures? 

Edited March 13, 2022 by morvit

[Wesley D]

54 minutes ago, RichardGoring said:

It would be a shame if this didn't compare well with Medieval Blacksmith ... But it does always feel odd the way that the Creator castle is smaller than the Blacksmith.

A castle that would feel right next to the blacksmith would have to be enormous.

The Medieval Blacksmith looks nice as a Medieval Fantasy building, but IMHO as a LEGO Castle set the blacksmith feels oversized. It is very out of proportion next to previous civilian castle sets, which scale I prefer, as you can see in this picture from the web:

[Wesley D]

1 hour ago, Triceron said:

I'm really hoping they stick with the classic Crusaders style lion emblems, in both yellow and blue.  They've done so many lion emblems over the years, but that one would fit alongside the recent Black Falcon updates the best.

The set's leaked name is Lion King's Castle, so I hope and dare to assume this will be the case.

In the fan vote for the 90th anniversary set, the only knights with a lion emblem were the Lion Knights. They had a King's Castle: