Ardelon

Good to see more material from you, SirSven7! Dragon Masters were the faction that drew me in to LEGO Castle, so they have a special place in my heart. I had some Black Knights sets, but they didn’t spark my interest in LEGO much. As such, I couldn't even see the DM as bad guys, what they probably were supposed to be, according to the backstory. I don't know if I mentioned this somewhere already, but I explained away the similarity of DM and Black Knight shields as Majisto recruiting his force from the Black Knights, who simply repainted their old shields. It fitted with the DM appearing after the Black Knights as well as the Dragon Master in the Royal Knights drawbridge set having a Black Knight shield. And lol at the commercial: Maniac not Included!

Trader Steve is his name I believe. He's my favorite too, for the same reason - versatility. My 2nd choice is Ironhook.

I was wondering what face could be used for Velma, as I didn't know of any female faces with glasses. Good job!

The problem with this for me is that I'm a fan of continuity and epicness, and short themes can't deliver on this. I wouldn't mind so much If TLG kept cyclically adding to older themes instead of creating new ones - for example, if they made a new wave of Johnny Thunder Adventurers instead of PQ.

The thing is, this is a forum for die-hard Kingdoms fans, pissed off at LotR for axing Castle. For the opposite viewpoint, glorifying LotR, there is the LotR thread. And its better this way, rather than both camps clashing in the LotR forum. I would expect a solid run of 3 years, with anything more a big success.

This should do it: link to Monster Fighters 2012 thread I agree this thread should be locked.

I´m not too sold on the jumbled color scheme or the heavily armored blacksmith, but that can be modified, and civilian buildings are rare as it is. I would guess it was chosen based on piece count, difficulty of build, playability, and other practical considerations for TLG, which have little to do with what I as an end user see in the set. Does anyone know any details? Why was it chosen to be produced, anything about the contest or how was it chosen, any runners-up?

I see the new redcoats as being the same faction as the Imperial Armada, just set a century later, as both have red coats with blue trim (as well as the leader having a different color coat, whether green of dark blue). That way I get three factions - redcoats, bluecoats and armada. I manage to ignore the difference between both types of eyes, which is more than I can say about fleshies. His hat and torso are from Hector Barbossa, as seen in the 4192 Fountain of Youth set, while his head belongs to King Leo, from the Castle 2000 subtheme Knights Kingdom (1).

Agreed. Actually, the first wave indicates TLG will go on that direction. Now if they only made as many army builders and/or battlepacks...

Are you sure? It would be unprecedented, but there's a first time for eveything, even using CMFs in normal sets.

Possibly, but then you would get a huge hole in your castle wall where the joust archway is - not the smartest defense design!

There are some good ideas in this thread, so I won't post all of the ideas I had, just a few small ones: - a "Siege of Minas Tirith" small army builder set, similar to the 9471 addition to Helm's Deep. With: a piece of wall with Gondor archer, Gondor spearman, 2 orcs, and a troll with a catapult (play feature! ) (hopefully TLG will still produce battlepacks alongside these small army-building sets) - Mount Doom: small vignette of a ledge over some lava, with Frodo, Sam and Gollum (and maybe a great eagle) - a Lorien tree with a flet/talan, 2-3 Lorien elves, 2-3 Moria goblins (who would be pursuing the fellowship - a scene from the books, not the movies, though could be a nice army-builder and Lorien expander) Alternatively, it could have more elves and any member of the fellowship who won't appear as often in other sets, or only in big sets. - a "Lighting of the beacon" set with a small tower structure, 1-2 Gondor guards, Pippin, and probably Gandalf the White (it could also include the leprechaun pot in black, for the oil used to light the beacon) - a mumak (either brick built or the elephant mold with some bricks added - I prefer molded animals, but the mumak would probably be too big for that) with: 2 riders of Rohan, an elephant driver, 1-2 Haradrim archers I have tried to keep the minifig count as low as realistic (= low) as possible. I have also contcentrated on generic figs, as I would prefer more of those for army building, rather than the main characters. I wonder whether TLG wil do Orthanc, and how they will solve the scale issue vis a vis minifigs and Ents. It would be possible to make an OK-looking Orthanc with regard to minifigs, but even Treebeard, who should be at least 3x taller than minifigs, had to look up to Saruman on his balcony. And the balcony was still in the lower part of Orthanc... BTW, my post count is eleventy-one today!

At least it isnt a coal mine! My thoughts exactly. Hopefully it won't be a long wait. But as I find it unlikely TLG would release a hospital in one wave and wait till the next to release the rest of any medical subtheme, I guess we will have to wait another few years for a new medical subtheme to come around. Maybe I'm too pessimistic though, here's to waiting for 2013 pic leaks! Lego Town/City healthcare evidently has a low budget. The powers that run the place probably allocate all the money to police and fire. Maybe it's because everyone is made of near-indestructable ABS plastic. Agreed.

This makes me a bit worried that TLG will only see long-term potential in licensed themes, while non-licensed themes will only get a short 1-2 wave run without growing to their full potential, like PQ, AC, etc. Core themes won't suffer this fate of course, but they could be subject to long hiatuses like space between the Mars themes, and we'll see what happens to Castle. Ninjago seems like a long-term thing, but as it's not my cuppa tea, I'm not too heartened by it.

Shame TLG didn't do a whole hospital subtheme, with sets like operating room, x-ray room, intensive care ward, general practitioner, etc. Bonus points if these sets were modular and able to attach to this or another hospital. It would've been more unisex than mining too, what seems to be a concern nowadays thanks to Friends. Though the coming hospital might not be so bad, depending on what details will be inside.

I'm hoping for some Rohan swords at least, I have long wanted to see a sword without the big handguards. As for the other swords, the old chrome sword and new highlander longsword would be OK for Andúril/Narsil, Glamdring and Boromir's sword in my view, with the gladius for the Hobbits. Only Sting merits a new mold. Of course, if TLG does new molds, I won't complain.

I remember someone asking what color the are the lips on the space girl. It does seem to be different from pic to pic. Any definitive words on this from those who alreay got the fig?

I think that whether TLG makes all the dwarves depends on their screen time. If the movies will be faithful to the books in this, most of the dwarves would hardly get a line of dialogue in. So I wouldnt expect to see many of them. Heck, TLG might even make only generic dwarves (aside from Thorin).

Point taken. I was a bit disappointed with his plain torso too. As for Kingdoms continuing, it seems to me that sadly, General Magma is right. Hopefully, we might still see some tiny Kingdoms sets in the first HY.

A problem with Rohirrim battlepacks might be that the bulk of their army were horsemen, so the battlepacks would either have more horses to the detriment of minifigs, or would be mostly infantry.

I'm glad to see science put in the service of something as useful and noble as LEGO. I personally would go for the the history figs, as I've always been a history junkie. Otherwise though, good point.

Why does the swamp monster need underpants?!

I've known this site for at least over a year; I stumbled across the EB set reviews a few times when googling for specific sets. At first, I just read the reviews and moved on, but thanks to the quality of the images and the humor in the reviews the site started to become familiar. In the summer (2011) I finally decided to take a closer look at EB and after a few weeks reading reviews and discussions and looking at MOCs, I decided I wanted to weigh in as well, so I joined. What drew me in were the pleasing visual design, easy navigation, (usually) great quality pics, interesting discussions with "insider information" and points of view I haven't considered, and the civility and humor of the discussions. Since I joined I usually visit once or twice a day. So far, as a college student i didn't have the time or money to build up my collection or offer any presentable MOCs, though maybe that will change in the near future, with the inspiration and motivation from EB. EDIT: And this being a fitting 100th post, I have now acquired full citizenship rights!

And monarchs are not getting repetitive? And knights, foot soldiers, castles, princesses, towers, ... Seriously, I think being led by a wizard is a nice alternative to being led by a traditional king/warlord/...

I don't want to get too deep into this debate (I got pretty lost trying to follow it anyway), suffice to say I dont see a problem with the color scheme or concept behind the sets. As my points would be the the same as those of other posters before me, there's no point in repeating them. However, I do think LEGO took a pro-action and pro-conflict (and thus, stereotypically pro-boy) turn somewhere in the 90s. Sets like the 80s civilian houses (nice article about those here), or civilian sets in general, were extremely rare to nonexistent this last decade. Not to mention the Pradisa line, which I saw as fully integreted with Town. I guess that's my answer to the problem of attracting girls to LEGO - more civilian sets like the houses and Paradisa, with more female minifgs (and kid figs, with short legs). Friends seems to me the best step yet in this direction, and I'm willing to put up with the polly-figs for that, if the targeted girls don't like regular minifigs. If they really don't like minifigs, it does raise the question of whether they will move on to "mainstream" themes, but the input here from AFFOLs and daughters/nieces of AF(F)OLs has been encouraging. If the whole thing fails, the new parts and colors will have made it worth it anyway. I don't know if the builds are simpler than in other lines, but even if so, I wouldn't see it as condescending. the Businessweek article stated the girls valued role-play more than the building experience, so TLG is catering to their tastes, and doing it without compromising the basic principle of actually building the play set first. Incidentally, I had some Paradisa sets as a kid, and I never considered them a girls theme. I took the pink for granted as just another color, and I never noticed any relevance in the pastel scheme or that there were more female minifigs. BTW, completely beside the point, but the color scheme seems heavier on purple and pastel blue than pink! EDIT: link inserted