Haltiamieli

Huh, does it? I've missed a confirmation/substantiated rumour of a Tolkien theme?

I'm pretty sure that the mouth piece of the saxophone is a normal tap. Also, I don't think it is very probable that Lego would put two new pieces like that into this set. Nevertheless, the set looks lovely. I will definitely consider buying it, even if the car and much of the minifigs are useless for me personally. It's nice that the roof is covered in snow in such a way that it's easy to remove in case one would want to use the house in a more summery setting!

Some possible ideas: candlemaker, carpenter, fishmonger, potter, armourer, saddler, scribe, shoemaker, weaver, brewer of ale, shipwright, tailor, bookbinder, glassblower, moneylender, jeweler, stonemason, healer/apothecary/herbalist?

A friend returned from an interrail trip and brought me 2 battlepacks from Copenhagen Lego Store (afaik the battlepacks have never been sold in retail in Finland, so it's was a nice chance), one for the Lion Knights and one for the Dragon Knights. I'm not that interested in army building, but this boosted up my fighting forces nicely. The quality doesn't seem to differ noticeably from my other figs either.

Bought a second Medieval Market Village, only 72 euros with shipping included! Happy dance! I'll probably use this one mostly for parts/moccing. And there's never too much peasant minifigs, of course. Also, impatiently waiting for the new Kingdoms sets to appear in Finland.

I wouldn't count on that source. The quote is from some Bricklist which just goes on to say "Look at lego batman on wikipedia." And true enough, a claim that Lego Batman would be relaunched was edited to the Wikipedia article by an unregistered editor, unsourced of course, in April and removed in June. If TLC had announced the return of Lego Batman in April, by now everyone and their pet rocks would know about it.

Nice collection, Sandy! At the moment I have eleven of those 18 in the latter picture (though iirc I don't have Willa's torso). Of those that I don't have yet, I'm still certainly going to buy the Fantasy Era princess and queen someday. Professor Trelawney has a wonderful and unique print that would fit quite well to my medieval setting, but the fig is so darn expensive in BL that I doubt I'll ever be getting it. I think Queen Leonora's torso design is hideous, so I don't know about that - could the dress piece (which on the contrary is quite nice) align well with any other torso?

I mentioned it on the first page, and nothing else It was the first thing that got my attention, admittedly that might be in part because it is so poorly attached to everything else. Anyway I really hope the figurehead will have some print, though I suppose it's not very probable. As someone else commented, using the feather piece as the bird in figurehead's hand is quite clever. I seem to be in the minority that quite likes the look of this ship, hopefully I will like it even more once it has passed the prelim stage. Compared to QAR, it seems less cartoony (no skellie heads or towering rear cabin, for example) and looks (to my completely landlubber eyes, of course) much more pragmatic and no-nonsense ship, one that has been built to do it's job well and not to look fancy. In my case the problem that some have with the set, that it looks like a ship and not "the ship from the movie" (and I can agree with that observation, to some extent), is rather a strength. Obviously I can also admit that the design does have some problems even I can notice, like the hind mast and the aforementioned non-attachment of the figurehead. This looks like a ship that might even end up to be my first big Lego ship ever. If I could find it for a low enough price, that is. So, probably not.

This is not a bad set, especially as I yet own only Harry of the figures included. And there's never too much trees. I was a bit underwhelmed by Narcissa's dress at first, but after these pics I like it somewhat more. Though that fleshy part might ruin it's usefulness for me. Why can't women grow big beards? It would make it so much easier to use female torsos from licenced themes! Voldemort will make a good lich lord to lead my (still very small) undead army.

I wonder what will the figurehead end up looking like - just a plain black/dark brown torso, dress piece, head and hair or something more interesting?

Today I bought the Brickmaster Castle book from a clearance in a local market, 10 euros. Still not the best price for the amount of bricks you get, but the assortment is quite nice, and having come late to the party it's nice the get at least few Crown soldiers for variety. The skeletal horse is much better looking than I had thought from the pictures.

Bricklink has set inventories too.

Yeah. King's Castle (7946) already has more than 900 parts, but nevertheless it is quite small, the walls are low and there's only two small towers without backwalls instead of a proper castlehouse. And the set uses a lot of big wall parts to achieve even this. The biggest Lego set so far has been (afaik) Taj Mahal with less than 6000 bricks, the Death Star had less than 4000. I think one can see these numbers in different lights, but I don't think TLC could really do a castle that would blow AFOLs' minds without vastly exceeding earlier records. And that would be sort of risky and problematic.

TLC used yellow bricks as hay also in City farm sets of 2009-2010, but in Medieval Market Village they used tan bricks, which works better in my opinion. Apparently they think kids like yellow hay better and adults prefer tan? Personally, I'm quite fine using tan bricks and not that interested in anything more, like a "hay piece" with a print/sticker or special mold.

Dunno about the likelihood, maybe not very high, but I don't see any reason for it to be impossible. If I remember correctly, the first series or two didn't yet have any figs with backprinting, for example? So CMFs are sometimes evolving and taking new steps. Honestly, I was already waiting for a dual-sided head to appear on the radiation worker of the last series, especially with the sly remark on official "biography". Black-eyed and beaten sounds a bit downbeat to be a good seller - and the boxer is on the very front of the advertisement pictures that we've seen.

You pose an interesting question. I remember Fabuland fondly from my childhood, so for me the nostalgia is inevitably a big part in explaining why I still like it (though I don't have much interest in building/playing with my few surviving Fabuland bricks and figs now). But I also do think Fabuland was quite a well designed theme, where most of the things that you list, normally abhorred by AFOLs, did serve the big picture and thus maybe redeemed themselves. The parts were big and specialized, but the theme was for younger and less building-oriented people than System. Less useful for serious building, but fine by themselves. The figs were kind of original and fit the theme, when Belville figs for example just look like poorly executed Barbie-ripoffs to me. And one thing that saves Fabuland from the usual negativity, I suspect, is also that it didn't replace anything, it wasn't really replaced by anything and it wouldn't replace much anything were it ever reborn. It was a separate thing, it existed in a different bubble. Any new Castle line will always be attacked/disliked because it supercedes the earlier ones "which were better", marks the decline of the whole theme, has useless parts or at least is a lot worse than our hopes and dreams for it were. Even Belville could be seen as a barrier that thwarted more AFOL-friendly "girly"-themes from appearing.

I think it's very, very unfair to compare the Mill Village Raid to the Medieval Market Village, at least as far as the details of the build go. The latter was an exclusive set marketed towards AFOLs while the former is a set from the normal Kingdoms line and as thus made first and foremost for the kids, Lego's main customers. As an AFOL I may be a bit bummed that the mill itself is so small and there isn't more everything. But these are things that have to be sacrificed in some measure to make this set marketable towards kids (affordable, easy enough to build etc.). Considering these realities of life, I think this set is a surprisingly successful compromise. Frankly, I never thought Lego would reach so far towards AFOLs in main line Kingdoms. I hope the gambit pays off and we'll see more civial-themed sets in the future. Maybe you will find something that will please you too, then. :)

After a long and watchful wait I finally found 7947 Prison Tower Rescue on sale, it was only €25 which is nice indeed considering that the MSRP is €60 in Finland. I bought two, and now I'm considering whether I should go back tomorrow and buy a third one, if there's any left. On the other hand I should probably save my funds for the upcoming summer wave of Kingdoms.

The whole wagon with the harness but without the horses and the jesters weighs about 280 grams. I suppose the wheels and axles can support that. Or at least I hope so I will try applying less flowers on the underside of the stage, but it will probably have to wait until August, as I'm spending the summer working in another city away from my Lego collection.

The carriage would have to be radically smaller to fit nicely with King's Castle. It's not only a question of the gate size but also the square inside is much too small for the carriage to park comfortably. According to the reviewer the carriage alone is 14 studs long, whereas the square is just 17(-18) studs. I suspect even the carriage from London Escape is too big to maneuver in the castle quadrangle, while it propably does fit through the gate. This is a good looking set, but like many others I might wait until sales to pick it for myself.

I suspect they are meant to be eggs, though sizewise they'd be more fitting for ostrichs from PoP than those tiny hens... Dunno why they didn't use 1x1 round plates instead?

You are certainly not alone, this same thing has been brought up quite a few times here. However, I think we can be quite confident that they will not spread to many other sets, their natural home is in the upcoming Heroica board games and they are designed to work there - as observed, they are somewhat awkward with normal minifigs. But on the other hand they add quite nice and even unique, as it is, diversity to the Blacksmith set, and not all of them are as bad as the bow, the worst offender. I'm not excited to get them, but I suppose I will find some use for all except that bow.

I don't know how you define KFOL, but 20-25 figures sounds quite a lot for kids apart from big fans of CMF series. After all that would mean something like 40 euros or more per series. I don't think very many kids have such amounts to spend on figs alone. I'm not even sure how many would have interest. While it's certainly true that some kids are obsessively into collecting and they must "catch 'em all" or at least try, there has to be also a great amount of KFOLs who just buy a few figs, either because they get all or most of the figs they are interested in or because they are disappointed when they do not get those figs. Having followed comments on EB and elsewhere I'd say that an average AFOL buying a case is at least a mild exaggeration too. For example when there was only 2 fishermen in Series 3 quite a many people complained that they could not split the box for three people anymore. I'm not sure if majority of these "splitters" would have turned to buying a whole box just for themselves after that. And then there's people like me who are too genre-oriented to have any interest in obtaining all the figs, because half of them would just be useless for me.

Maybe the purple bricks are red on the other side?