Nagyzee

I like the idea in general. But the werewolf is god awful and the monster is also worse than its CMS counterpart. The swamp creature is great though and as far as I know he will be in a small set, so I'll surely get him.

I really like your concept. And this MOC for example would have made a perfect set back then in the second half of the 80s.

Gimli, the hobbits and Aragorn all look fantastic. I'm a bit undecided about the rest though, especially Gandalf.

The Grand Emporium will be around for at least one more year most probably. Fire Brigade is a year older and that hasn't been discontinued yet either. So in my opinion you can save that purchase for later.

This invokes childhood memories. My BFF was also besieged by forestmen countless times.:)

Why not buy some on Bricklink? It's the cheapest and most available one from Series 1. You could buy one for less than $2.

Anyhow here's mine take on this comparison: So for me it's a draw at 4.5 : 4.5 despite 3 out of my 5 biggest favourites of Fantasy Era not even making it into the poll.

And that's with you having left out some of the best Fantasy Era sets from the comparison. Namely: Dwarves' Mine, Troll Warship and The Final Joust. Half of my favourite Fantasy Era sets are not even mentioned in this battle.

The dragon colour scheme is indeed nice. They have a bit too many chains on some of their torsos for my tastes though. And their bases were pretty badly designed and also the story of yet another evil faction lead by a wizard has become kind of overused by now. We certainly don't agree on the diversity. For me Fantasy was a lot more diverse though it's not surprising taking into account that that theme had a longer life, more sets and more factions. And some of those factions were very unique providing great opportunities for unique sets. We have never had a mine before, nor ships of proper size in Castle (if we don't count Vikings). For me these were the high points. And MMV of course. Various carts (including royal carts), castles, towers, gatehouses we get in every subtheme. From Kingdoms only VMR has this special novelty factor for me. And Fantasy Era was somewhat better in small sets, too. You can't beat The Knight (with the armour and extra weapon pieces) and especially The Final Joust. That was a little gem because of the horse barding in such a cheap set. As a plus for Kingdoms the new helm type is very nice but unlike the barding is not valuable enough to carry a whole small set.

Of course. I just stated my opinion, not an objective verdict or something.

Even though I wasn't really fond of Kingdoms I can still feel others' pain. The line disappeared way too fast, especially the last wave which was available for only a mere 6 months or so. And though I quite like LOTR I would have probably still preferred a return to Fantasy Era. The second half of that theme was great and got me into Lego again. I gave in when seeing the Troll Warship at a supermarket as it instantly reminded me of the intro of Warcraft 2. Anyhow back to topic: I think Kingdoms was not diverse enough. Most of the sets lacked the novelty factor to me. The Dragon Knights' two structures were quite awful imho and Outpost Attack was also weak (Tower Raid is a million times better). The Blacksmith Attack was an okay little set, and the big castle of this theme was better than the main castle of Fantasy Era though. Still the only set I'd really like to have is Mill Village Raid. Maybe colour scheme plays a big part, too. The dark blue of Crownies is so much better than the red of the Lion Knights.

Hmm, they don't seem to mix that well. Which is not really surprising taking into account that the Joust is a big gatehouse.

Nice review, thanks a lot. As a kid me and my brother got one each of both 1736 Wizard's Cart and 6020 Magic Shop. That's all we had from Dragon Masters. But I remember liking Majisto's Magical Workshop a lot and wanting one. Also we were awed by the traps in the Fortress set (we saw them in a Lego catalogue) and tried to incorporate similar traps into our Black Falcon Fortress sets. Looking back however my opinion on the Dragon Masters is not that positive. It was an okay theme but is far from my favourites. In my opinion the Den looks horrible, and while I still like the play features of the Fortress I don't really like its general look. The Workshop I still find nice but the lack of a door is a glaring oversight. The Wagon set is one of the best in its category though. I think the main thing dragging the theme down for me are the faces of the minifigures. I like the classic simple minifig heads and the current modern detailed ones, too. The Dragon Masters' faces are halfway inbetween in this regard and I think it simply doesn't work. They would have been better off without those ridiculous moustaches and stuff. Worst offender is this head.

I think it's rather nice for a change that the noble has a different emblem. In medieval ages every noble family had its own crest. And also there was no colour code either with soldiers wearing uniform colours and princesses having to dress exclusively in family colours. (That's why I don't really understand those army builders who are building huge uniform armies.) So in my mind she is just a princess / young noblewoman in a very nicely looking dress. And she'd indeed look great as an elf, too.:) The black falcon not having unique torso printing is a bit of a letdown though in such an expensive set like this.

It's in the 2012 Lego catalogue, doh. Seriously. Mine has a page on Series 6 and in the lower right corner there is a red box of Series 7 with red bags with all-yellow placeholder minifigs on them instead of the actual ones. It also states that it will be released in May. In my opinion Lego are way too fast with CMS btw. Series 6 is just hitting the shelves... Edit: Picture1 Picture 2 Sorry, somehow I couldn't place them inline with the img tags. Must be my stupidity...

Hmm, that's quite close to my estimates based on Hungarian prices. I think the Uruk-hai set is actually quite fairly priced considering how many minifigs it has. And a horse, too.:)

Really? Is this an astronomically bad joke? Apart from the Elf all the other chosen minifigs are dull/crap. At least in a sense that they are not sought after much and can be bought cheaply on the secondary market. Where are the Zombie or the Spartan for example which are in high demand and were fan favourites? Or some other figures from Series 1 as quite a lot of people missed out on those. Also all from Series 3? This can't be serious. Where I live several toy shops and supermarkets still have Series 3. I just bought 6 packs today. (3 of which were elves. ) Also in hindsight Series 3 was one of the worst if not *THE* worst series. It was very imbalanced with having only one really popular figure, a few okay ones and quite a lot of fillers. That's just my opinion though. By the way the most insulting of the bunch is probably the mummy. This will be the zillionth mummy in recent Lego history. (Correct me if I'm wrong but Monster Fighters will also feature one.) I can imagine the guys at TLG having some good laughs while deciding on announcing the mummy as a "fan favourite". Yeah, right. Or maybe the poll was conducted in a parallel universe. The only slightly positive thing about this will be if we get the elf hairpiece in a new colour.

I'll just directly convert each price to USD according to current HUF/USD exchange rate, that might be useful, too. (And give my estimates for the US prices in brackets.) Everyone please take into account that the prices below seem to contain 27% VAT. Also even net prices of sets tend to be higher in Hungary than in the USA. Gandalf Arrives Price: 3 735 HUF = $15.5 (remember this is with 27% VAT and generally higher European prices, I'm quite sure this will be a $10 or so set in the US) Shelob Attacks Price: 6 930 HUF = $28.7 (probably ~ $20 in US) Uruk Hai Army Price: 10 425 HUF = $43.1 (~ $30 in my opinion) Attack on Weathertop Price: 15 825 HUF = $65.4 (can't be more than $50, maybe even less) Mines of Moria Price: 21 150 HUF = $87.5 (my guess is $60 - $65) Battle of Helm's Deep Price: 38 085 HUF = $157.5 (which means a net price of $124 for Hungary, I guess it won't be more than $120 in the US) It doesn't seem that horrible after deducting that huge Hungarian VAT, now does it?

All 3 sets are fantastic. Despite this it was easy to place a vote for me. I only own the BFF from these, and what's more that was my and my brother's only bigger castle set in our childhood. We spent a lot of time playing with our two BFFs. This set brings back lots of memories.

Gosh, not another catapult.:D Though I guess this set is more about the minifigs. I rate this average as I don't like the chain-heavy torso of the green knight. And I have to agree with WhiteFang that 7009 was a whole lot better for a very similar price.

I'm not really a fan of Kingdoms but most of the other sets I find okay. But definitely not this one. I have to say that while the minifigs are great the set itself is very poor. Something's just not right with the architecture (and colour scheme) of this building. I guess maybe it's that this is meant to be a standalone fortification and not just the gate area of a bigger fort. But even if you take it as the latter it still doesn't really make sense with the stairs next to the gate and that badly executed prison cell sitting in the worst place of all. And it feels quite empty, too. I might still buy this one for the minifigs and as a parts pack if it ever becomes cheap enough for my taste.

I can't comment on that as I didn't want sets like the classics. I wanted to see quality in design on par with classics and that was present in the Fantasy Era, too. I don't see that much point in redoing the old stuff. Maybe except for revisiting the Forestmen as the brown colours would add an extremely lot to their structures fused into trees. (Though Dark Forest already accomplished this one partly, too.) FE was great in my opinion because the dwarves, trolls, etc. had their own never seen before unique style while the crownies could satisfy the needs of those wanting something classic. At least to me crownies were classic enough in architecture. On the whole I'm getting a bit bored with the same old castles and Tudor style buildings of the good guys and also with the black fantasy castles of the bad guys. In my opinion it would be nice if Lego Castle explored different eras and regions within medieval history a bit more bravely. There are lots of possibilities. Even if we stay in Europe distinct characteristics of regions and eras could offer sets/themes with a unique feel. The good guys could fight the bad guys with some 15th century cannons and arquebus in front of buildings featuring renaissance characteristics just as well or among longhouses or among Eastern Catholic style buildings or whatever. It doesn't always have to be English (/Western European) high middle ages. I wish the Viking line would have seen some distinct Viking architecture. There was virtually none. A longhouse would have been awesome instead of the tenth siege engine.

I'm not interested in the Atlantis theme the least bit but they'd better release that guardian with his fantastic armour and helmet in a small set. That minifig is awesome. I want one.:) That armour might look good on an orc chieftan / warrior, I'd like to check it out.

This one?

Well, if your presumption was that the content of the boxes is not uniform then it didn't really make that much sense to do a statistical analysis and count probabilities on a sample of one. That's a tiny, tiny sample size. Otherwise the review was great of course.:)