Nagyzee

I like the new horse design at it's a nice touch by TLG that we can use the old bardings with them. They are not cheap so I would have felt let down if that wasn't the case. I regret the helmets not being compatible though. Some of them were quite nice. I hope TLG comes out with new ones relatively fast. If only they put the black and reddish brown horse as well on the online PAB for some time as a goodbye gesture. I'd grab several of both colours for sure...

The female is pretty easy to identify as the reissue figure is from China. So if it has that paint mark on the neck then it's original, if it doesn't then it's the reissue.

That's quite nice. I was just thinking about transforming some black metal album covers into Lego form the other day. There's one I'll surely build sooner or later.

Very nice. Also it's quite unique since it's not this type of castles that are usually made in Lego form by fans. Hats off.

Both number 1 and number 3 of these are headdresses typical for higher ranking woman, they would be way off on a shepherd. Also being a shepherd was typically a man's job in medieval times (and later, too). It would be a very odd choice for a female minifigure.

The point is that there are already several peasant torsos out there which you can use for farmers, woodcutters and stuff. Sure, there would be place for even more but it doesn't really sound CMS material. Also to be honest the nobleman and other fancy clothing selection seem quite a bit smaller and so does the selection for medieval middle-class. (Merchants and the like.)

Small percentage change? There will be 66% more out there from space marines and evil knights than from the rarest figures. I'm pretty certain that the Aztec will come out on top in terms of price though these two will probably still sell above the average. And opinion has been a bit mixed about the evil knight, I don't particularly like it either and I'm not the only one. (Red eyes, plain torso, too much ornamentation on other parts. It's just not that useful.)

Not really. Both the violin case and the hat are easy to feel for. Series 5 doesn't really have any particularly hard to identify figures. The Monster from Series 4 was a bit hard as it has only one give-away piece and it's lucky we still had barcodes on Series 1 because the Super Wrestler doesn't have any identifying pieces whatsoever. By feel you could only find him through the lack of headgear and accessories.

It's not painted. The building went through a decades' long renovation during which most of the old discoloured, dirty and degrading limestone blocks (that are used to cover the brick walls) were removed and replaced by new ones, and the few that remained were cleaned.

Can you at least use those other 100 minifigs? If you are specifically after Gladiators you'd have been way better off buying a few on Bricklink. For the price of 100 random packs you could have bought 50-80 brand new Gladiators.

The Series 1 Forestman torso might work for a civilian fig as well. From Series 1 I'd also point out the Clown's legs with that big patch. I think it works great on a jester for example. From Series 4 I'd point out the Lawn Gnome, he has a nice torso, works well on civilian (miner) dwarves for example if you are into a fantasy setting. From the Viking it's the leg part that's good for civilians. Series 5 Ice Fisherman and Series 7 Grandma Visitor could also be useful. The two sets to look out for if you want to build up the civilian side of your castle world are 10193 Medieval Market Village and 7189 Mill Village Raid. They come with lots of civilians and also several animals. If you want to build civilian medieval life they (or at the very least the civilian minifigs from them) are must buys. MMV also has a great price/parts ratio and will be discontinued soonish. Then there is the classic civilian Castle torso which comes in green (forestman), blue (Majisto) and light grey (peasant). You should also take some time and stroll through the minifigure selection of the following themes on Bricklink: Pirates, Adventurers (Orient Expedition), POTC and Prince of Persia. You'll most probably find torsos of interest to you in there. The Harry Potter theme might offer a female dress or two, the Star Wars theme a few Jedi robes.

Yeah, pearl gold is a weird choice for a spear. But the minifigure itself and the shield are pure awesome so he is still my favourite from this series.

The boar is nice. They have gone overboard with the silver lining/ornamentation on this figure though. At least in my opinion. The head is not that useful either (red eyes), and the helmet is also one of the less nice ones that Lego produces. I'll probably collect only 1-2 of this. The Aztec on the other hand is awesome. The Valkyrie is quite excellent, too.

With the Space Marine and Evil Knight at 5 / box it has to be the Aztec Warrior. The Bride will be a distant second in my opinion. And the Evil Knight is not that nice in my opinion. The ornamentation on him is a bit over the top. I'll be content with owning one or two despite being a Castle fan.

Thanks for the great review. So this means they are coming out in a few weeks? Too soon, way too soon. They are going overboard with the CMS. It's good to see that they made some of the army builder type minifigs more available (space marine and knight at 5 each). My guess would be that the Aztec Warrior and the Bride will be the most sought after with regards to supply vs. demand. And I have to say I don't really like the Evil Knight despite being a Castle fan. Too much silver ornamentation on him, it's over the top. The Valkyrie is very nice but it's a small let-down that she comes with a plain shield.

Nice. Where's the head of the orc with the breastplate from? I could't find it.

?? Does not compute.

My question is: why aren't already existing animals more available? If I need horses I can buy white ones on PAB for less than 1 USD. That probably means it's profitable for Lego to sell them at that price. What's Lego's thought process behind not providing camels, cows, etc. for sale around 2-4 USD?

It's quite welcome though this most probably means that for several years the (new) horses will also be quite pricey. I'll probably have to sell a kidney if I want to build a cavalry from new horses.

@Legoist: I agree. I can accept that according to Lego's surveys a zoo theme wouldn't be popular enough. On the other hand it is always claimed that new moulds are extremely expensive so I don't understand why they don't leverage that cost over more items produced in case of some animals. If some of the rarer animals appeared in the online PAB after their novelty factor wore out I'm sure they'd sell tens of thousands of camels, goats and cows or later bears even if they were on PAB for 2x or 3x the price of horses. That's lots of potential sales and a significant potential profit missed.

Btw I was surprised how small the boxes of this theme are. For example the cannibal escape and the mill sets had way smaller boxes than some half the price City sets. While I think this is a welcome change it does give one an "oh, this is way overpriced" feel when you see the box and might have contributed to the poor sales. Of course in this case that feel was spot on, too. The Cannibal Escape set for example has a retail price of about EUR 40 here which is crazy. (The others weren't much/any better either except maybe for the biggest sets.)

You seriously ripped that poor lady off with that $20 you paid. To balance out your karma, you could sell it on to me for $40. 100% profit is rather nice, no? Just kidding. If you are not really into Lego then I think your best bet is to simply sell it on ebay. I'm quite sure it will fetch at least $200 in an auction. @CallMePieOrDie: none was sold at those crazy prices in the last 6 months.

I think the main problem nowadays isn't so much with the lack of variety in animals but more like with their availability. Several animals are commanding quite high prices on Bricklink for example simply because they were only available in more expensive sets, and not because how much it cost TLG to make them. Just for an example I don't think a camel is 5-7 times more expensive to produce than a horse. I understand though that when an animal mould is new they are restricting it to bigger sets as it's a selling point. But after the novelty factor wears out / the sets they came in are getting phased out they could very well make them available on lego.com's PAB for example.

This strategy works with US prices, especially if you get sets at a huge discount. The problem is, prices in Europe are generally significantly higher and at least here in Hungary big sales are few and far between. If I lived in the US I'd surely be doing what you did to expand my collection. Oh, and Lego definitely doesn't have an outlet here, nor do we have any official Lego stores. There's an in-factory store at the Lego plant only available for their employees but that's all.

Well, keep in mind though that the cake here is an official Lego model. The structure itself has seen minimal changes. The icing (dark blue - red colour changes mostly and an update on minifigs) was changed to make the set fit into Kingdoms. I'm really looking forward to Hives' take on other, less easy to Kingdoms-ify sets. Those will be more of his work and less of Lego's and thus more interesting MOCs/MODs. This MOD is a nice warm-up though.