Haltiamieli

While the theme looks quite good and the dinosaurs are quite awesome I don't think I will buy any sets as I personally have zero interest in the vehicles. I would have hoped that they would have made at least the smallest set without any vehicle, like in the Pharaoh's Quest, but there's no denying that vehicles are always a selling point to most kids and afols alike... The dinosaurs will probably be very expensive in BrickLink, as the other parts of the sets won't offer much covering for the resellers. Dunno, I would disagree with that, to an extent. As I see it the dinosaurs have been a big thing among generations of kids (mostly boys, probably) long before Jurassic Park, which just took an already very popular subject and churned money out of it. Certainly it made dinosaurs all the more popular, but they were well on the map of popular culture before that, too. The backseat one in the velociraptor set? Good catch! I'm always on lookout for more Castle-worthy torsos.

Andhe noticed on the fourth page that the bride's torso (and the hairpiece, but not the face) is the same that was used in a Lego creation celebrating the British royal wedding back in the spring. Here we can see the hair piece from a partly profile view revealing that the hair is tied into a bun.

The swimmer will probably have a name and/or number printed on her back, otherwise that torso could make a nice upper part of a simple black dress (I think someone already speculated about the usability of the piece earlier in this thread). I think they would have chosen a different expression and more extravagant attire if they were really aiming for an opera singer. The dress looks quite accurate historically, even surprisingly so (apart from the helmet, obviously). That would be my guess, too. Not sure if I like the design or not (of course it's hard to say when we've seen only less than half of it), but as a rule it's great to have new heraldic symbols.

Maybe it hasn't been in the direst need, but it will certainly has it's uses. Other than fitting better into minifigs hands it will also make more compact and better looking vases of cut flowers (or potted plants) when combined with a 1x1 round brick, for example.

They are Medieval Market Village (Mittelalterlicher Markt), Winter Village Toy Shop (Weihnachtlicher Spielzeuglade) and Winter Village Bakery (Weihnachtsbäckerei). Sorry.

Awesome series, and what a surprise to get the picture! I wasn't yet expecting at all. My only gripe would be that they chose to do kilt differently in series 6 & 7, as the highlander has a printed kilt and the bagpiper a cloth piece. I think it's the highlander sword from Series 6, though the dark knight's sword is probably of a darker colour.

Flying Dutchman's boat is surprisingly cute, I'm nearly tempted to consider buying it. Dutchman's beard printed on the torso looks quite dumb, though. Lightningtiger's point about city parades is a good idea

FBTB has posted a hi-res picture of the Bat Cave.

Well, I think we have to give the project some time. It takes something like five minutes to post a "Bring back 6573 Arctic Expedition" suggestion, but much, much longer to prepare most of the more original suggestions, especially if started from scratch when the project was announced to have gone global. I'm considering whether I should enter my "Wagon of the Vagabond Jesters" just to bulk up the amount of Castle-themed sets and thus support the theme (still sadly underpresented), but on the other hand is it better if we just leave the few brightest stars alone so they can be found more easily?

I think it is "clearly" a fleur-de-lis-inspired depiction of a cluster of grapes, but why? If he had been introduced as a wine merchant... Could it just be symbolising his wealth? I could see that. Grapes are not unknown to heraldry, at least. As for the princess, she's dyed her hair if she's the same character as in Prison Tower Rescue. Maybe it's the rebellious younger sister who likes to unsettle her father by wearing the colour of their enemy? For my purposes she'll be a noblewoman instead of royalty anyway, so the colour won't have that much significance. I kinda wonder if that wasn't the designer's original idea too, but then someone decided that she should be a princess instead, for the purposes of the story outline.

Thanks a lot for this guide, it has given me a whole new view or at least better appreciation of your works! The thing that always bugged me in them, which has even made me react like "oh it's again a building by Derfel Cardarn, moving on to the next topic", is that your creations are so busy, so full of everything that mere pictures just can't handle it, as well taken as they are. Your creations would have to be seen live and inspected closely to really understand their worth, I think. But it appears that this guide is the second best thing, as one can see the scene building up slowly from the said details. And obviously there's a lot to learn from your well-written instructions (though I hope not everyone will start copying your round plate technique, because personally I don't like the look of it that much - just my personal taste of course). In my opinion the highlight of your guide thus far has been the water technique, which looks awesome. If only those 8x8 plates weren't so expensive and rare on BrickLink... As a recently woken (and poor) afol I can only envy your brick collection!

While I second the hope that Lego would release a dragon cave set* (I don't think it would necessarily clash too much with Kingdoms theme, after all we also have two wizards in this theme), I don't think Lego could achieve a good and proper, cave-y dragon cave without any burps, raised baseplates (which seem to be quite obsolete nowadays) or such. That would require too many pieces just for the landscaping. I'm not against burps if they are used well, out of necessity and partly obscured with smaller pieces. * What I'm imagining is a "dragonslayer set" in a vein of Saint George and other legends: with a dragon and its cave, maybe with a captive lady, and a valiant knight coming to slay it and, if included, rescue the lady. What, offtopic? Oops. While the Kingdoms Joust is not necessarily the last Kingdoms set released, it will very probably stay in production longer than any other Kingdoms set even if there's still one more wave in the coming summer, of that I think all the precedant cases are consistent except SW (obviously). So in that sense it could be seen as the harbinger of doom, if not an exact swansong.

Wouldn't that make it a pretty darn bad disguise? Dunno. When every new design rises the costs, why waste money on a piece that is hidden anyway? TLC has done that before, at least with the Crownie King who had an old viking torso under his armour. A noblewoman wouldn't be a (big) sell-point if it wasn't for her new design, while the Black Falcon knight will sell regardless of his torso print, because of his armour, shield etc. Personally I think "a disguised Dragon knight" would be much more lame excuse for not doing a new torso design than simple budgetary reasons. Whatever the reasons, I wish they had designed a new torso for the knight, because then those of us who are going to buy two sets for the completed tower gate structure could have made the second knight, stripped of his armour, a squire for the first one.

I think it would be a perfect tease, as I commented on another thread. Not to say that I would exactly complain if they do indeed release a Black Falcon faction next year, that would be awesome too (not least because it would mean Kingdoms continuing), but still it would seriously reduce the awesomeness of Kingdoms Joust in my view.

Maybe we could start new Cuusoo topics in the theme-specific subforums so people could advertise their own suggestions or others they have found? I for one would like to support any interesting Castle-related things, but I don't think I will have interest to waddle through the official Cuusoo pages very often, and the search function isn't that good either (at least if everybody doesn't use good key words). At the moment the most interesting suggestion I have found is a trebuchet, which could become a great set and something a bit different from the usual Lego catapults.

Gawd, should have read the fine print (if there had been any). That was the longest 20 minutes I've spent in a while. After the first few you didn't know if there was two or seventytwo still left (but it was certainly closer to seventytwo). And there wasn't any "Don't know / Doesn't apply" choice either.

While I wouldn't have minded that either, TLC apparently wanted to serve us a different sort of treat than the Medieval Market Village, and it would be quite hard to include a lot of interesting and impressive Lego building in a "medieval fair approach" without just putting in another MMV-style house or two. I think that's the reason why they chose the tower gate as the main structure. Last time they challenged us to design medieval houses, now they challenge us to castle building. I think that's very cool too. While more tournament participants would have been nice, I agree that they were rightly the expendable thing when the set had to be trimmed to an economically and marketably feasible entity. More participants are easily added from other existing sets, not to mention that TLC will certainly release new tournament-applicable mounted knights once in a while as long as the Castle theme keeps going. This is not to say that I would find the set perfect as it is. I would gladly change one of the Lion guards to a Black Falcon squire (though I understand the point about the mystery knight participating alone) or a random spectator/peasant or, well, just about anything really. A peasant at least wouldn't probably even make the set much costlier if they would have used parts already in production from the Mill Village Raid. Also, I'm not a fan of the blue shack. I understand that it's probably meant to tie the set to MMV, but the building just doesn't impress me (yes, I know it's small, I took it into consideration) and I think the pieces would have been better used elsewhere, like making the tents bigger or adding an archery range, a food vendor or a tree. Also, stairs. Where are they?

Frankly, I don't really understand why so many are expecting the Black Falcons to appear in the Kingdoms' next wave (presuming there will be one, obviously). For me the appearance of a BF champion in the Kingdoms Joust rather seems to signify that Black Falcons are not returning in the future than the opposite. Putting them in the sets later the same year would kinda make it moot to include one in the Joust set - what would be so exciting about him if the next wave (sold mostly at the same time) would be full of his faction? Of course it could be that TLC didn't even mean the BF champion to be as exciting as we think it is, but... Kingdoms Joust just seems too ideal an opportunity for a nod towards fans, and they have to know how much we like the Black Falcons. The champion is made so much more special when it's just that, not a foreshadowing of the next wave. In a way it's the best of both worlds, we get a new reimagined Black Falcon knight but the old original faction can still remain a legend that is not supplanted. When we first heard of the jousting set, I thought that if they are wise at TLC, the only good reason not to include an exclusive reimagined Black Falcon knight would be if they were planning to release one as a CMF someday. Apparently that's not planned, I suppose.

Have I missed something, or has there yet been no picture that would show the back printing of the torsos of the nobleman and the lady?

As in can the walls be connected? Yes and no. Both have the first and sixth brick as the connecting points, so it's technically possible without any modifications. But the walls of Kingdoms Joust are two bricks lower than the walls of King's Castle and of somewhat different and simpler style, so they may not look so good together.

All the pictures except the first one are of a single set. The first pic includes one whole set plus a second tower gate (attached to the back of the first one to make it four-walled) and the wall sections (a blue house and a stage). The picture does not include two complete sets, as all the minifigures from the second set are missing except the Lion guardsmen, as well as the second kingly spectator stand, tourney ground, tents etc.

It looks awesome, especially with two sets combined as in the first pic (though it's quite false advertising not to stress that point - it is not mentioned at all in the Lego Shop's Facebook pictures, for example). I'm really happy that they chose to include a Falcon Knight instead of a Dragon Knight, just as I wished! On other hand, it's a bit shame that only three of the minifigures are novel and interesting, but then the said three are all very beautiful indeed! If only they had changed one of the thirteen-in-a-dozen Lion guards to another peasant... Not as "dream come true" as Medieval Mill Village or Mill Village Rai (or Siskind's Blacksmith Shop), but certainly a "must buy". Or "must buy two", to be exact.

Lego doesn't think that people want only Alien Conquest at this time. They think that at this time might be a good moment to try a theme like Alien Conquest for a change, because whatever they do they can't sell all the possible themes at once anyway. They can produce only a limited amount of themes, they can market only a limited amount of themes, retailers are willing to stock only a limited amount of themes... And as a general rule, all the themes should be as different from each other as possible, so that Lego could reach the greatest amount of customers. With a little bit different Space theme Lego may attract some new fans, and probably can still retain most of the old fanbase, either because they like the theme or because they do not dislike it enough to stop them from buying it. And if Lego's predictions are wrong and Alien Conquest is a big miss for them, in today's quick circulation of different themes it's to be quickly forgotten when a new theme, maybe this time in deep space, kicks in. That's how it works in many other themes too. Most Fantasy Era fans are probably still buying Kingdoms sets even if they think those are a bit boring, and when the fantasy element inevitably returns to Castle, sooner or later, most Castle fans will buy that theme too, even if they would personally rather have a more realistic theme like Kingdoms. And kids, Lego's main customers, aren't that picky anyway.

But... aren't those pearl gold coins dirt cheap on Bricklink, like practically free? I'm so happy that I got true chrome coins in my London Escape straightaway, so I didn't have to bother with customer service. I still think the old chrome coins are the best ones around as the new coins have little too faint numbers, but they're nice to be around for variety. On the other hand personally I can't see much good in the pearl gold coins, if not the ability to amass big amounts of them due to their cheap price.

LEGO 4436 Patrol Car is a City set, while LEGO 3817 The Flying Dutchman is a Spongebob set. Both LEGO 9485 Ultimate Race Set and LEGO 9486 Oil Rig Escape $49.99 are Cars sets instead of Racers. LEGO 6913 Blue Roadster is a Creator set.