KristinnK

I agree with the other poster that the Medieval Blacksmith has more the air of a adult target audience, while the Lion Knight's Castle has more the air of a large kids' play set. It's not about specifics, but rather about the picture as a whole. The first clue is that while the piece count is comparable (within a factor of two) the Lion Knight's Castle is much more 'expansive' for lack of a better term. The design of the Medieval Blacksmith is that of a much more realistic structure, i.e. an imitation of a building that could actually exist, with integral and coherent structure, at more or less the scale of a minifigure. It has four walls and a roof, doors and stairs to the attic level. This uses up a lot of bricks, and wouldn't be worth it for a kids' audience, but is appreciated by many adult Lego fans. The Lion Knight's Castle on the other hand is a facade, both in the metaphorical and literal sense. As displayed on the box it's only the gatehouse and a small stretch of wall, with the buildings attached to the wall being completely open on one side. Closed up it looks better, but introduces other problems such as that the main castle building wouldn't in that case be fronted by a large gatehouse. There aren't doors and staircases that connect different spaces and levels (the occasional ladder doesn't count). And the scale is off, towers and parapet niches are the minifig equivalent of a meter in width. There is a dining hall with two seats. There's a horse shoved in a small corner. None of this is naturalistic. It's an abstraction of the idea of a castle rather than the depiction of a specific plausible castle structure. None of that is to say that there is something wrong with the Lion Knight's Castle as a set. If you'd have to do even just a small castle (like lets say the Guédelon Castle) in a style and scale similar to the Medieval Blacksmith, you'd be looking at north of 20.000 pieces. This just isn't viable as a Lego set. The Lion Knight's Castle is a fantastic compromise that keeps a lot of the scale that a more naturalistic castle would have, without absolutely breaking the bank. But it's definitely more of a kids' oriented playset when compared to the Medieval Blacksmith.

I have to say I feel this set fails to live up to the promise of the original submission. In large part this is of course due to simply size constraints, they probably had to decrease the part count of the set by 30-40%. Unfortunately this leaves the house cluster especially looking quite sad, and the dragon is obviously also a big step down. I am however still reasonably optimistic about the minifigs. I love historically plausible (rather than necessarily realistic) minifigs with full torso+legs printings, and am too often thwarted by Lego's insistence on heraldry printings like medieval warriors wore freaking team jerseys. This set however, like Lord of the Rings sets, will have none of that, so I can't wait to see how those minifigs will look.

I would echo the sentiment that the buildings are a disappointment. I simply don't like the geometry/design of the buildings. What I always liked about the original MMV is the elegance of the buildings. Each of the two buildings have an integral and focused, almost simple design theme. These buildings are more of a jumbled combination of different design themes, and their structure is too irregular. I'm not a fan. Counterintuitively the buildings also seem to me less detailed/ornate compared to the 15 year old MMV which has half the number of pieces. I do like the minifigs though. I especially can't wait to get better pictures of the woman wearing the coif standing in the doorway on the right. And the tax collector looks really suspiciously like Boromir, which is one of my favorite medieval warrior/lord minifig. And that rogue figure of course is also interesting. I am less immediately interested in the other figs though. Regarding the animals, they seem to have taken the position that the large castle already has the cow, this set gets the goat, and horses are a dime a dozen. I don't think fans will necessarily agree with this reasoning, but they do seem to believe that this is an avenue for restraint in the design of the set. Also, perhaps this means they are planning a type of medieval farm set in the future.

What I could see happening is one or more diorama sets. There are so many iconic Lord of the Rings scenes that they can choose from, perhaps the most obvious being Merry and Eowyn defeating the Witch King (with the quote being either the "not by the hand of man will he fall" prophecy or Eowyn's "I am no man"). But there are many other choices, from Isildur cutting the ring off Sauron's hand, to Gandalf stopping the Balrog, to Sam defeating Shelob, to Gandalf upon Shadowfax "who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror" of the Witch King as he rides through the shattered Gates of Gondor (quote: "In rode the Lord of the Nazgul, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face."). That last one I'd buy in a heartbeat.

I really like the minifig prints, and I love the shields. I'm not a huge fan of the build, so I almost certainly won't buy the sets, but I will definitely get the minifigs and the shields on Bricklink at some point.

These leaks are absolutely insane. My opinion: The Rivendell set is basically everything it could possibly have been. Not just some minifigs, but literally every fig there possible could have been. The whole Fellowship, Bilbo, Elrond, Glóinn, Arwen, Glorfindel. We couldn't have asked for more. The set itself is also really pretty, with probably the best landscaping of any Lego set ever. The rumored price tag of 500 USD however is a bit hard to swallow, and I can't help thinking that they probably should have scaled back the set a bit, and try to keep the price tag around 350 USD. I don't like the 'huge, black tower' type of sets, so I don't really have much of an opinion about the Barad-Dur set. But it's certainly huge. The Medieval Village set does have a lot going for it. I generally always celebrate civilian castle/medieval sets. The Medieval Market Village and the Medieval Blacksmith are literally my two favorite sets. However, this particular set does look a bit lacking to me. It has a lot going for it, civilian figs, really nice trees, the bottom left house. But I simply dislike the design of most of the buildings. The scale is off, they look like facades rather than complete buildings, and they look more like East-Asian buildings (like in 70751) than medieval ones.

This is absolutely fantastic news! This model has basically everything a castle fan can wish for, a masonry wall and tower, a half-timbered building, some landscaping. I personally don't care about the dragon, but whatever. The big question in my eyes is about the minifigs. If they cheap out and just put in some Black Falcons/Lion Knights and a pirate the set will not be nearly as attractive for me. I really hope they make the effort of making some interesting and unique minifigs.

That's not a good explanation. It's not like TLG first produced 10,000 Castle in the Forest sets and then had people compete in a mad first-to-click-the-order-button competition. No. They first had people do the online madness, and then produced the sets. So the number of orders was completely arbitrary. All that is to say that TLG could just as well have collected order for lets say a week or two, and then set the production run for a number of sets equal to the number orders, regardless of if that would have been 10 thousand, 20 thousand or 100 thousand.

As someone who does love playing DnD, this creation perfectly captures the excitement and imagination of playing DnD. Amazing creation.

I too was first introduced to Lego Castle with the Black Monarch's Ghost, and consequently a knight in breastplate with visor helmet became my golden standard for a Lego castle figure. And seeing as in the 90's the only sets with breastplates were released in 1990-92, and my Castle collection was only added to by the time of the Royal Knights, the breastplate remained as a sort of untouchable accessory I would have given a lot to have more of. But today I much prefer great prints, usually those featuring some sort of armor with matching leg prints, or something like the CMF 20 Viking. Also, the period I like to build from is the early-to-high medieval period, while the breastplate and plate armor only arrived at the end of the high medieval period.

I actually agree with this, especially the dollhouse part. If I buy this set it would be simply for the parts. For examples of what direction I would have liked for Lego to go with this set look no further that the first 2021 Lego Ideas review. There were no fewer than three different castles I consider excellent, Castle of Lord Afol and the Black Knights, The Castle of Brickwood Forest and Fantasy Castle. I feel those castles all have a much better sense of proportion and layout. Part of it definitely is the fact that TLG decided to go with a fold-out design with well-developed interiors, both of which make it harder to make a coherent and good-looking design of the assembled castle. I do lament the fact that none of these three castles were picked up, likely because TLG knew they would have their anniversary castle hit the shelves in a similar time-frame.

I really want that wimple. And that fig in general. I'll be very disappointed if that was just a random render.

Adding my opinion to the "is it the upcoming castle in this promo video?" discussion. This is simply a medieval backdrop for a promo video, so a priori there's no reason to believe they would use the model of an upcoming set. The fact that official sets from the past are present is simply that (1) they are easily available as digital assets, and (2) they give the viewer a kick by recognizing them. The castle in the video has the (almost) exact same gatehouse as 6080. Nobody should really seriously suggest that TLG would release a new castle with the same exact gatehouse as an old set. Never mind the price difference between the two. So just from that fact alone we know that this castle isn't the same as what will be released. The only argument that could have some weight is saying that other aspects of the castle, like the geometry and/or design of the rest of the curtain wall, which is decidedly different, is from the upcoming set. However I don't believe even that is the case. It's just a simple grey stone wall. I don't see any reason why TLG would take such a simple design from an upcoming set instead of simply making a different one in an hour or two when they are always so concerned about spoiling sets ahead of release. When they did the promo video with a castle before the release of the 3-in-1 castle they didn't use the upcoming set either. I would wager against anyone that we see literally nothing from the upcoming set in this video.

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.

I don't know if they've changed it since you checked, but I now see it as rated PG-TV. This is equivalent to PG for films, which is even one category below PG-13, the category the films were in. This is great news, the younger the target audience the more likely there will be Lego sets.

Paint was very expensive in the Middle Ages, and the exterior of houses most certainly wouldn't have been painted except as an explicit display of wealth. Moreover castle walls where definitely never painted, I've never seen a single source indicating so. Rather they were whitewashed. On not all castles were whitewashed, and in other cases the keep or the main hall of the castle would be whitewashed while the curtain wall would be naked stone. In any case that is all moot, Lego castles conform to their own logic mostly based on aesthetics and the conventions that have been established over the years. If we would go by historic logic the 31120 castle would be get an F- straight away by having exterior-facing half-timbered sections.

Take a look at the the 3-in-1 Pirate Ship. The hull is a uniform solid reddish-brown with only small black highlights. The captain's cabin is a conservative red with small gold highlights. The sails are a simple white with black decorations. I think this is very comparable for what I would have liked this castle to look like, with uniform medium bley walls, a conservative tudor infill color and neutral roof color. And that ship looks good as all hell, precisely because it's designed with restraint and elegance. This castle not so much.

I've been googling "Lego 31120" for months now waiting for a leak, but now that it has arrived I'm unfortunately very disappointed. 1. The minifigs are basically 100% uninteresting to me. I prefer to populate my MOCs with neutral, early-medieval, semi-period-appropriate minifigs. So I don't use figures with heraldry, meaning the knights are out, and the civilian figure in this set looks like a pirate minifig, and is certainly far from period-appropriate for anything earlier than the early modern period. 2. I don't like the color scheme of the tudor parts. I just don't like the color in this context aesthetically, especially since it's combined with brown framing and a blue roof. Bright yellow is such a 'strong' color that in my opinion it needs more muted ones around it. It would have looked much better to my eye if for example the roof and/or framing was black. Black framing would also have had much better contrast to the infill compared to brown. 3. I don't like that the main color of the stone parts is dark bley. I personally only use medium bley for masonry. 4. I feel the castle lacks a sense of solidity. One corner of the watchtower on the right is propped up on a stalk, the window on the left-side gate-tower shows the landscape behind instead of showing into an enclosed space, the curtain wall is two stories lower than the towers, the tudor parts are too predominant rather than just being occasional highlights, the castle (at least in this configuration) doesn't actually close in the back. I would have much preferred if the castle would have saved on the height and stuck with two-story towers, only have tudor sections in one or two places, and made everything a little bit more bulky and solid-looking. The layout of the castle still wouldn't necessarily have been a problem, I could still have bought the set for the figures and bricks. But because neither the figs nor the colors (neither tudor parts not dark bley stone parts) appeal to me, this set is unfortunately a hit and miss for me.

My thoughts about this set is that it's overall fine. We must keep in mind that the original model was 3000 pieces. TLG decreased that by more than 30%. Assuming same price per piece the set would have cost more that 220 dollars if they hadn't changed it. Having said that I still have some gripes about the changes. I don't like the green moss on the roof. Just from a straightforward point of view of aesthetics. Also I don't like the tree. I know many here express their appreciation for the tree, but I would have preferred a "normal" tree like in the Ideas submission. These aren't big problems, they can be solved by Bricklinking Nexo shields for the roof and subbing in whatever kind of tree you like. However I think the minifigs are a big problem. Quality medieval minifigs are rare, simply because there haven't been medieval sets in almost a decade! There have been some nice CMF figs in this period, like the CMF 15 Frightening Knight and the CMF 20 Viking. But when an actual medieval set is released, especially a 150 dollar one, I expect multiple great figs. The 100 dollar Medieval Market Village had a full 8 figs, with two great female figs with torso+skirt printings, three copies of a nice commoner torso print, a so-and-so blacksmith and two normal soldiers. In comparison this set is 50% more expensive (lets say ~25% if you count inflation), but has only half the minifig count! The blacksmith and the two soldiers are admittedly better than the corresponding MMV figs, but Lego has improved their minifigs a lot in the intervening years, so the difference is to be expected. The archer fig however is not very interesting at all, the torso print doesn't look medieval and there is no leg printing. Subbing that one out for a female fig with printed skirt would have been a significant improvement. Preferably there should just have been more figs in general.

I agree with Klaus that almost certainly the alternate builds will be distinct builds rather than components of a larger castle. What exactly they'll be however I'm far from sure. I don't think a village square makes a lot of sense since medieval houses generally won't be made of stone like a castle. It could be some sort of stone manor I guess. Another option is a stone church/temple. Another possibility is that the castle isn't overwhelmingly constructed out of stone. Early medieval castles were generally made out of timber. For example a timber curtain wall around a stone keep would allow alternate builds that also use both stone and timber. Another question is the minifigs. Will they be more similar to classic castle figs, focused on heraldry, or more like CMF and LotR minifigs, more focused on armor and period clothing. Personally I much prefer the latter.

This is probably my favorite roofing technique. When built like this the angle of the shingles/cheese slopes is absolutely perfect, and the gently rounded corners of the cheese slopes gives such lovely but effortless detail.

The Viking is absolutely fantastic! Might be my all-time favorite CMF figure. His torso+legs are perfect early-medieval clothes. The spear with the metal tip is my absolute favorite weapon, which 90% of my martial minifigures use. The shield is fine, although I prefer the 3x3 technic disks from the Viking line (but those are cheap and plenty anyway). The helmet if it's a separate mold will be perfectly nice, but if it's a combined mold with the beard it will be much more limited as others have said. Unfortunately to me from this pictures it all looks like one mold, but we'll find out soon. The pirate torso isn't interesting to me though, and neither is the knight. And that sword is just comically oversized. But that Viking is really everything I wish for every time there is a new CMF series. I'll be buying at least 2-3.

I am very excited about this series. I'm a fan of medieval Lego, and depending on how the actual print looks like the Knight, Female Pirate and Viking can all be a-go. In fact, it would be the first time since the series 16 Rogue a full four years ago that I buy a CMF.

First I thought I was looking at Gideon's Nordana Castle. The genealogy is clear.

It's that time of year again. I'm a castle fan and I always look out for (historically realistic) medieval minifigs in CMF series. Last few series have been a disappointment, with the last properly good one being the series 15 Frightening Knight. What I'm really hoping for this time around is a medieval peasant, blacksmith or other civilian figure. While I wouldn't be disappointed by some sort of warrior figure, the medieval civilian figure is in much shorter supply.