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Hyped in a big way!

oooooh, that's a nice pickup. Little jealous over here all of a sudden!

This is a nice build Exetrius! The angles in the wall are really well done, and the lime green / neon green works really nicely as the acidic swamp. I do wonder what some tiles would have done to the inner sections of the walls though. All the studs in those sections are kind of jarring to me. Having 70% of the studs covered by tiles and/or foliage might have cleaned things up some.

I'm on board too!

I really like the house's walls, all the circular elements are fantastic, especially with how you flipped the studs around on the boat tiles.

This is a big deal. Food prices where I'm at aren't quite at the level of a Lego goat sold on BrickLink, but I'm certainly seeing increases. The global economics at the moment have got to be putting a constraint on household discretionary spending. I'm just happy Lego has enough stock of this awesome set for whatever reason it may be. Sure would be cool to see some more affordable battle pack-like offerings though.

https://www.newelementary.com/2022/07/86996-lego-plate-1x1x2-3.html

Nice work with the AFOL'ing of this set LordDan! The staircase is nicely done with the white boarder/railing winding along on either side, and I'm totally going to have to use that samurai helmet torch technique as it's genius.

The topic of baseplates in general still being an option for designers outside of the modular buildings series is strange, not to mention raised baseplates being an option, given that I thought Lego has communicated they are trying to phase them out of production. They technically are only partially "in system" and are expensive for a variety of reasons compared to plate elements; this is why in City we've got a new baseplateless standard for roads, sidewalks, and whatnot--that includes brand new elements to support the standard. Interesting that the designers said a new raised baseplate was not completely out of the question.

Here's another from our own @Ecclesiastes:

I voted for my favorites as they are today, but like Sir Dano above, I really, really like the variety of helmet, armor, and shield options we have. I not only use specific headwear for typical roles, but use these minifig accessories to help make each of my factions more unique/recognizable from the others.

My thoughts on factions run like this: Black Knights / Crown Knights / Crusaders / Kingdoms These are the top dogs and they're all pretty equivalent in my mind. Design and execution of these factions was on point. Great variety within the minifigs, plus a ton of sets that enabled Lego to show the factions off to their potential. I don't think this last fact can be understated in our perception of the factions, and it's huge in my opinion especially with respect to sub-themes/eras. Black Falcons / Dragon Knights / Royal Knights / 2013 Lions Starting with Black Falcons, they were just too similar to each other and this lack of variation pulls them out of the top echelon for me. Dragon Knights are really cool, and are in fact my absolute favorite theme; but the factions in the group above are more complete--even if they don't have Majisto! Royal Knights were a good expansion of Castle, and they gave us the crown piece, but other than that, I can't say there was anything special about this faction. The 2013 Lions were pretty good and certainly the spiritual successors to a couple early '90s factions. Despite some pretty good minifigures and variety the 2013 factions just feel a little too crisp and polished, if that makes any sense at all. Vikings Fantastic minifigures came out of this sub-theme! Dwarves / Trolls These I think were really cool innovations within an already really cool and innovative sub-theme/era of Castle. Great new pieces here and these factions expanded the art of the possible within a Castle sub-theme. Fright Knights / KK Bulls / 2013 Dragons I really don't think there was anything wrong with the Fright Knights save for the overly comical Willa, this faction just didn't get to be fleshed out as much as those above. KK Bulls had some really nice torso and leg printing--versatile too. Ultimately though, they were kind of a strange faction with the Dragon Knights helms used to hold horns and the attempt at "bad guy" faces didn't work in my opinion. The iconography of the 2013 Dragons was too cartoonish; and they did the whole "evil face" design thing with this faction that I appreciate just as much as I did with the KK Bulls. A better sigil and way less black everywhere would have lifted this faction up the rankings. KK Lions Oh boy.... These (and the KK Bulls) came out around the time Lego was really struggling with its business. The torso and minifig face design in this faction was generally a downgrade from everything that came before, and most that came after. KKII Scorpion Knights / Skeletons I think the Skeletons were actually awesome and very much in line with my thoughts on the Dwarves and Trolls above. There's just not that much they could have done here though. Scorpion Knights weren't horrible, but very monolithic. The baddie faction they evolved/changed into for KKII I think was better, but it was so limited that I'm not sure you can really call it a faction. KKII Jelly Knights I can't really rank Forestmen and Wolfpack against the "knightly" factions as they're totally different IMO. However, if forced, I'd add them to my list of #1s above. Forestmen were complete and cohesive, Wolfpack was just plain cool.

Oh, this idea sounds AMAZING! There were some really cool tensegrity MOCs with castle/fantasy themes that came out of that COVID building fad, but a much larger scale build like this idea definitely has my brain wondering about what that could turn into--especially since Dragon Masters are my favorite castle theme...

Simply an epic dio! Each building having its own design and architecture and interior really moves the eye around the MOC, and I love that longboat!

I don't see these going out of stock frankly. I went to a couple physical LEGO stores yesterday (looking for those White Falcon/Phoenix figs! Only got two.... The new pick-a-minifig wizard is pretty freaking cool too though*!) and they both had a ton of them sitting there. And since they're going to release them again in August, I'll bet the production run initially was quite large. *Makes the new Majisto in the Lion Knights' Castle really disappointing.