BrickJagger

Following Lego's now-infamous "price increase" announcement, do we think it will affect the rumored RRP for this set?

See but as I said, I don't think kids are able to tell the difference between "throwback" knights and "modern" knights. After all, even most of the more recent factions are callbacks to older ones. The point you make regarding Harry Potter confuses me a bit. If HP appeals to kids and adults, why doesn't Castle? Most young kids weren't even alive when HP was last in theaters, and the franchise seems to be dying with Fantastic Beasts. Castle's advantage is that it's tied to a historical period that won't fade away like a franchise, and for 30 plus years Lego took advantage of that. I'm not sure Ninjago is going strong, considering the storyline is wrapping up and they're going to reboot it. Who knows how that will go. But again, like Harry Potter, Ninjago's original fans are now adults, and it appeals to both adults and kids. There's going to be a sizable group of kids that don't want mechs and rob-tanks, hence why Nexo and Chima did not do so well. If I had to bet what is going to age better culturally between Castle and whatever Ninjago has going on these days, I'm taking the former in a landslide. +1.

Honestly, I don't agree with this at all. It's true that most of the sets in the current "line" are 18+, but the characters are no different from normal Castle figures. The last three Castle themes had battle packs that were similar to what @SirBlake was describing, as well as ~$10 sets that were solid army-builders. I don't think that a kid would be able to tell that today's Black Falcons are a throwback from the eighties when put side-by-side with, say, the 2010 Dragon Knights. There's no reason why Lego shouldn't branch out and try to draw in kids. I'm not sure what changed since 1978 that turned Castle from something that appealed to all ages to exclusively adults with money to spend.

But then there's the issue of the people who want Castle sets but won't shell out $350 for them. If you're Lego, would you rather they buy the battepacks (likely several), or nothing at all?

They seem to have tacitly admitted that Castle sets are popular at least, but for some reason every set they're making is prohibitively expensive. Since the current "revival," including the Viking ship, every set has been at least $100. I think it's pretty unfair, since most kids, and even your average adult, simply can't afford to spend like that. Lego claiming that kids don't like Castle would be a self-fulfilling prophecy, if not for the fact that the kids can't buy the sets. Make a $10 battle pack and prove it, then.

The fact that Lego is reintroducing horse bardings in the Queen's Castle makes me hopeful that Castle could be making a full-time comeback. I don't think that mold has been used since as least 2013, so I doubt they'd bring it back for one set and one set only. The Black Falcons have also graduated from a homage to a full-blown revival, as they've appeared in three sets spread out over two years. When you add in the Viking longboat and possible companion village, a lot of things are pointing in the right direction for the first time in what feels like forever.

Viking Village will win in a massacre. Based on experience I wouldn't doubt castle/historical people to vote in droves, they've never lost.

Goat-shaped hens would be absolutely terrifying. Let's do it.

More figures. There are always pieces coming out that appeal to Castle fans - just check the other thread and take a look for yourself. Figures are far fewer in between. In fact, I'd say our greatest shared frustration is a lack of new heraldry that ties together a group of figures or decorates a castle. Even at 3,500 pieces, the castle will be obnoxiously huge. That's more than two of the Kingdoms Joust, the most expensive mainline set to date.

Fewer than ten would be almost comical manning a castle that figures to be the biggest ever. I expect between 15 and 20.

This is an enormous leap in logic. One torso introduced to BAM means that there's a whole new faction coming? The article is filled with ambiguous terms, like how Lego is going to introduce the "White Falcons" as a full-on faction later this year without explaining how. Remember that lion shield that showed up in BAM three years ago? Currently, that's the same amount of evidence he has here. Of course, if this turns out to be the case I'd be thrilled, but it would require Lego to step well outside of its comfort zone and release an honest-to-God Castle theme.

This is a weird one. If he found it in BAM I'd say it's legit, but it's not in the Black Falcon colors at all. Like others have said, it could be a figure from the upcoming set, or it could just be a one-off if it's real. Does anyone have a picture of the wizard?

If that's the logic, it took them over 35 years to realize it, since they'd been following the exact same formula in terms of set distribution. They have the sales numbers and I don't, but I find it very hard to believe that small army builder sets were languishing on the shelves while the castles were flying off of them. There are two main groups of people who buy sets: Kids and adults. Kids only have enough money for impulse buys, like $10 and $20 sets. Unless their parents are rich, they're only getting castles as birthday or Christmas presents. Adults, who can afford the castles on a whim, are likely buying even more of those impulse sets than the kids, for army-building purposes. If that weren't the case, the "Post Your Castle Army Here" thread wouldn't be full of thousand-figure strong collections. Perhaps it's true that in terms of money, the castles are generating more revenue. After all, it takes ten Prison Carriage Rescues to match one King's Castle. But taking away those small sets cuts off most kids' ability to get anything at all from their favorite theme. You're telling me that if last year's castle didn't launch alongside a set with a catapult and two Black Falcons, it wouldn't sell like hotcakes? Lego's "strategy" is a self-fulfilling prophecy borne out of laziness.

Remember folks, never, ever post unsubstantiated rumors from a store manager regarding a new Castle theme, especially right after you've joined the forum!

The implication that they're turning down millions of dollars being practically shoved into their hands just to avoid admitting they were wrong is kind of hilarious. If this wasn't enough to get the message across, I don't know what would be.

Somewhat related, does anyone know how often the new Black Falcon parts are in stock on Bricks and Pieces? I assume they're usually sold out like they are now.

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

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.