BrickJagger

After seeing the pictures I'm impressed with the build. It's in the sweet spot between a bunch of wall panels and a sprawling behemoth covered in grebling. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect with how some people have reacted to this set. There's a group that is disappointed by the lack of wall panels or Castle-specific parts in favor of smaller and more generic bricks, which I understand. It's Creator, though, so I already expected that. On the other hand you've got the people who are saying that it looks like something out of a theme park because of how colorful it is. I don't get that perspective at all. In the Middle Ages, bright colors were a status symbol. These Black Falcons seem to be pretty well off, so why wouldn't they have a garish castle? The Tudor style bits sprinkled around the castle give it a completely different atmosphere than sets like 70404, and in a good way. I would have preferred dark tan instead of yellow for accuracy's sake but since it fits well with the original Black Falcon's Fortress it's fine by me. The feature that allows it the close up and connect with the alternate builds is clever and will assuredly convince some people to buy multiples if they weren't going to already. I think we're mostly in agreement that the minifigure selection is lacking. I appreciate the consistency of using the Black Falcons again because I'm not personally into bulk-buying torsos and such to create whole factions. Introducing yet another heraldry with this set would have made for more of a headache for me than anything else as I like to group my factions together. That being said, the current makeup of current Black Falcons are two old men and two women, with not a single fighting-age man which is a bit odd. I guess you could just switch a few heads out though. You can't do that with the "civilian", who is definitely an escapee from Barracuda Bay. Not cool, Lego. Overall, I'm glad that they made this set but I hope that they don't think they'll be set for the next few years with the Castle crowd. Now that they've shown us they're capable of producing $100 castles, just months after releasing an enormous civilian building, there's no reason for them not to either continue to make castle-themed Creator sets or just bite the bullet and revive the theme itself. Two of their most common arguments are now out the window: "Castle doesn't test well with kids" and "Harry Potter is taking Castle's shelf space". I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're ramping up to introduce Castle again in the meantime. Welcome back Artifex! The answer is currently no, but I'd love to get a Black Falcons blister pack or something.

Let's compare our misery It might be the bias speaking but I'm going to go with Castle. Until 2013 we had the expectation of yearly Castle sets and it was unceremoniously yanked out from under us with a dry spell that will soon become a full decade. Pirates' original run only lasted for about eight years and upon the discontinuation of the 2009 wave Lego made it clear that it would only be a part time theme. Pirates fans can reasonably expect to get something every few years, while we're basically staring down the barrel of the permanent discontinuation of our theme unless Lego says otherwise. At this point though, it's going to take action instead of meaningless platitudes or goofy excuses about Nexo and Harry Potter. I yield the floor.

You'd think that, especially since Harry Potter and Castle releases have overlapped several times before, but I remember that TLG designers hinted that it was unlikely there would be a Castle theme during the current iteration of HP. I suppose that the thinking is that Harry Potter has fantasy elements and a castle so it's a suitable replacement, but that's not really the case. I'm personally not going to spend $100 on a parts pack, especially since I don't build large MOCs. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if the two Castle releases this year are Lego's way of testing the waters for a full return. As someone else suggested, if Castle comes back it could very well be evergreen again and Lego is taking time to figure out the logistics of yearly releases. Harry Potter is in its fourth year and has just about wrapped up sets from the films, so it's getting a bit long in the tooth. I personally expect the Fantastic Beasts series to be cancelled due to production issues and poor performance as well, and Lego might see an opening, but that's just me.

I don't think that giving the next Castle theme a storyline and a bunch of named characters would be in anyone's best interest. For example, the Nexo Knights model wouldn't work in a normal Castle theme because it was difficult to army build one of the factions. You ended up with as many Clays and Aarons as you did generic Knighton soldiers. I suspect that people who are into Castle themes want to create large armies, which is starkly different from a small team that battles monsters in most of Lego's current themes. If there need to be named characters, just name the king, a knight or two and the main villain and be done with it. That would open up some roleplaying that would appeal to younger kids while the named characters wouldn't be spammed in every set. If it were up to me, the next Castle subtheme would be the last, because there wouldn't be a reason to discontinue it in favor of a similar take a few years later. Start out with two factions, ideally ones that AFOLs are familiar with but still appeal to kids as generic knights, like the Falcons and Crusaders. Over time, Lego could phase in new factions with fantasy elements and whatnot. While Lego could release 4-5 smaller sets a year to appeal to kids mostly, they could simultaneously start a modular-style series of village buildings or adult-oriented Castles to hit the older demographic as well. The CMF line could round it out by continuing to produce more loosely related figures like Romans and Vikings that wouldn't otherwise appear in the main line but are still desirable. It wouldn't be anywhere on the scale of a Big Bang theme, but it would be enough to keep the interest up and bring in a steady stream of fans to sustain the theme. 5-6 total sets a year with minimal design and/or branding turnover should appeal to Lego. In fact, they should feel free to take this as a pitch

Welcome to the boards, Daniel! Do you have any current favorite themes or sets?

Summer set images are starting to leak. No sign of the castle yet but other Creator sets have been published so it should be close.

I remember being surprised when I saw the first Creator set with a minifigure period. Hopefully the upward trend continues and we get four or more figures this time around. Three soldiers, a king or queen of some kind and a skeleton would do the trick. I hope that they bring the Black Falcons out of retirement full-time at some point but until then I would prefer a new faction. I would not be surprised if the Falcons show up again in this set though.

Congratulations again @povoq on reaching 10k supporters! The next review period could have the most projects coming from a single theme in the history of Ideas. There are several Castle projects that are pacing the reach 10k in the next few weeks: The King's Castle by BrickHammer https://ideas.lego.com/projects/2b61f410-1199-4022-bdbc-3ba34941385b Fantasy Castle by LEGO Monkey https://ideas.lego.com/projects/f7743e0f-cfbf-45b0-a89f-8e72680f7a02 The Tavern Under the Snow by Lego_Is_Art https://ideas.lego.com/projects/1a332343-0a29-4f8a-adeb-761836aa903f Please give these projects a boost to get them to 10k as well: Medieval Marketplace by DominikQN https://ideas.lego.com/projects/71efca0f-11ae-4695-8139-2825c891770b Medieval Harbor by Namirob https://ideas.lego.com/projects/ee5ee170-1f80-4135-a2b9-68561badc5a6 As far as I can see, Castle is now far and away the most popular category on Ideas. This is great news for those of us that are anticipating a fully-fledged return of the theme. Between the 90th Anniversary vote, the Blacksmith selling out in mere hours and the incredibly strong numbers on Ideas, we're making it clear to Lego just how popular Castle is.

Just got mine in the mail today! Looking forward to building it

I think it actually smacks of "More individual users voted for Castle themes than Bionicle, so it's only fair to add it to the final vote since it was really in first place by a landslide". https://ideas.lego.com/blogs/a4ae09b6-0d4c-4307-9da8-3ee9f3d368d6/post/6c5a05b4-e29c-47ec-8841-a2bce1f8933e I have nothing against Bionicle , but they both got enough votes to move on. If anything Pirates is the poser because it had the fourth most total votes.

I don't agree with this at all. Since then, Pirate and Castle Ideas projects have routinely reached the review stage, and they were two of the most popular themes in this poll out of a wide variety of options. In fact, the number of unique users who voted for Castle was nearly double that of any other theme. I doubt AFOL attitudes to Pirates or Castle have shifted much since 2013/15. That being said, I'm not sure why Lego is so hesitant to bring those themes back full time.

I was thinking the same thing. If I had to guess, we're going to end up competing with Bionicle in the last round, but we have to agree on three Castle subthemes that we all vote for in order to get there. I've ruled out Black Falcons and Crusaders (Lion Knights) because they're most likely coming this year, and I intend to vote for Wolfpack since we haven't gotten anything from them since the 90's. I'd like to hear from some people here before we cast our votes though.

Welcome to the boards! This is an interesting topic for your first post. We'll probably never know the answer but it's fun to speculate. Personally, I don't get why they went through the hassle of designing a similar, but inferior line in 2013 to replace Kingdoms. There was a brief moment when people thought Kingdoms was coming back instead of being replaced, which would have made more sense, and that red dragon could have been a green one just as easily. Given that he's a wizard, an old scroll referring to a modern army doesn't really work. There's even a baby dragon in the set

Yes, it's a summer theme for next year. The good news is that there's clearly a dragon in the trailer, and given Lego's current slate of themes, I think there's a pretty low chance that it's going to be similar to Nexo Knights. The bad news is that after reading the description I highly doubt that it's a Castle theme, or at least a traditional one. Like you, I think the whole "parallel universe" bit is a huge red flag. If I had to guess I think we're dealing with some sort of high fantasy theme, maybe with some magic thrown in. The minifigures are the biggest wild card here.

Trailer is out: https://www.instagram.com/p/CG2pjPkJysr/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CG2uWrjJ3p3/