Lyichir

It's funny you include Star Wars in that list, considering that the SPACE theme is usually considered one of Lego's core themes while the licensed Star Wars theme is often considered responsible for the Space theme's six-year absence between 2001 and 2007. Even if you don't consider Nexo Knights a "real" Castle theme, it'll still be three full years before the hiatus between Castle themes gets that long.

Personally I think the "life preserver" ring he has in that picture does have some advantages over the LotR ring... most notably, that it's more in scale with the figure, considering how large the rings in the games generally are relative to the characters.

Presumably a good portion of the CMFs will be supporting characters or villains even if there ARE a fair number of Bat-variants as well.

Oops, accidentally posted my thoughts in the 2016 thread. Might as well copy-paste them here. Very nice! The Wolverine and Magneto set is great all-around. The Iron Man and Thanos set is also great—I especially like the cartoony Iron Man helmet and Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet-mobile! The Spider Man and Scorpion set is less appealing. Like the Batman and Killer Moth set in the DC wave, it features a repeat character for Mighty Micros along with a minor villain who appeared in a regular set this year, but unlike that set neither vehicle is particularly impressive.

Very nice! The Wolverine and Magneto set is great all-around. The Iron Man and Thanos set is also great—I especially like the cartoony Iron Man helmet and Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet-mobile! The Spider Man and Scorpion set is less appealing. Like the Batman and Killer Moth set in the DC wave, it features a repeat character for Mighty Micros along with a minor villain who appeared in a regular set this year, but unlike that set neither vehicle is particularly impressive.

Yes, there's going to be a Lego Ninjago Movie next fall, and yes, it'll presumably get a series of tie-in sets (which unfortunately might mean that we don't get a new season of the TV series during that period). Still, considering how excellent the Lego Movie and its accompanying sets were, I am quite excited for the Ninjago movie. There are even rumors that, like The Lego Movie, there will be a series of collectible minifigures based on the Ninjago movie as well!

Frankly an airship would probably work just fine in either an ocean-based OR desert-based environment. That's the nice thing about airships—they can travel just about anywhere. I would also love to see an evil dragon (which would be a great opportunity to get another dragon at a similar size to the Queen Dragon), but I'd also like to see more of the original Five Sisters revealed at some point.

As an American, I don't see actually ordering Lego from the UK becoming more economical than the already low U.S. prices any time soon. That said, I have been considering the possibility of subscribing to a UK-based Lego magazine like Blocks, Bricks, or Bricks Culture while the exchange rate is in my favor.

No, I would guess that the Disneyland Castle or some other licensed D2C (new Death Star maybe?) would be the next one to be announced—possibly at San Diego Comic Con. The Winter Village sets have traditionally been announced around August (with several of the earlier reveals having taken place at BrickFair VA), and that's still more than a month away.

I imagine that Nexo Knights constraction figures would likely do something similar to Knights Kingdom II, but would maintain the simplicity of the minifigure faces rather than adding excessive details like noses.

My guess would be Ice. While he lacks the primary color of typical Ice sets (White), he does have the secondary transparent color used for them in G2 (Trans. Light Blue), along with Earth Blue, which may have been a common color for Water characters in G1 but has only been used on one Toa set in G2—Kopaka. The Trans. Fluor. Green accents are a unifying feature on all the Beasts, so I doubt they give any insight into his element. That said, the name Storm Beast suggests that lightning powers wouldn't be too much of a stretch of the imagination, and they wouldn't even have to be a primary element—lightning and thunder are not unheard of in winter storms.

Zane (the white ninja of ice) was already the main ninja on the boxart for the 2014 "Rebooted" sets, so I don't see him getting the spotlight again any time soon. If anything, Nya (the red and blue ninja of water) would be next in line for the boxart, considering she hasn't been featured as the main ninja since becoming a ninja last year.

I would not be surprised to see mermaids at some point (considering the first Elves episode mentioned them, there is already a minidoll-compatible mermaid tail piece thanks to the Disney Princess theme, and the Izdur Ocean remains one of the least explored areas of Elvendale that has been revealed up to this point (along with the Desertlands and Forest of Deep Secrets).

I'm fairly excited about this set. I'm not always one for these sorts of models but the Saturn V holds a special place in my heart, because one of the few specific MOCs I remember from my childhood was a large model of the Saturn V rocket. Looking back, it probably wasn't AS huge and impressive as it felt at the time, but at this point I'll never know for sure—the whole thing collapsed when my parents went to get the camera. In any case, this model should be quite the satisfactory substitute.

Yeah, we're almost certain to see SOMETHING about Ninjago at SDCC—it'll most likely have its own panel like it has the past few years, after all. Especially considering that in addition to the upcoming season of the TV show the Lego Ninjago movie is ALSO coming out next year, and with few details officially revealed so far SDCC would be the perfect place to reveal some more details and possibly even a teaser trailer.

It's possible. For the most part, while we know the full list of franchises for "Season 2", we don't know what characters we'll be getting apart from the ones we've explicitly been shown in product pictures and trailers. And of other Lego City Undercover characters, I think Rex Fury is the most likely one to show up—he's one of the most prominent characters in the story, has a very unique appearance, has a distinct array of vehicles, and has more unique abilities like super-strength compared to other supporting characters like Frank Honey, Chief Dunby, Ellie Philips, and Natalia McCain.

That alone would've probably been enough to promote that set to legendary status, but on top of that Bizarro is driving the same vehicle, but backwards! I love it! Anyone thinking that the Marvel Mighty Micros for next year might be revealed soon as well?

It's not just about eliciting shock and nostalgia. There's also the factor of starting with more simple concepts (ninja with elemental powers) before branching out into things like ghosts and nindroids, and the idea that some plot threads/story elements might be better served if saved for a future movie, rather than trying to cram all of them into one movie. Nya's training to become a ninja in the TV series was great, but if you start with that, not only do you get less of a chance to emphasize her own training (since you have to focus on the training of the other ninja at the same time), but you also sacrifice the chance to explore some of her earlier character development—for instance, her time occupying the role of Samurai X.

I certainly don't think Lego is under any illusions that adults who are solely fans of historical and historical fantasy themes would automatically accept Nexo Knights. But those people have very little in common with the much larger target audience for Lego in general and Nexo Knights in particular. From my experience, most kids are far less discriminating in their tastes and enjoy a wide variety of themes—especially themes that take their interests (like technology, knights, and monsters) and approach them in new and different ways. Using your Chuck-E-Cheese analogy, I think most kids would have a much better time there than they would at a fine Italian restaurant—and if Chuck-E-Cheese instead tried to evoke those more upscale restaurants to attract adults with more discriminating taste, it'd most likely come at the expense of their primary demographic.

Ah, thank you for that correction. I hadn't paid much attention to the orientation of the board (particularly since the whole thing is modular and as such could be rotated as necessary) but I should've verified everything was aligned correctly before I got the screenshots. Oh well. I'm not actually totally happy with how I did the black knights myself, but it was very tricky to create pieces that were "symmetrical" with the knights on the Nexo Knights side. I based the black side's knights visually on the "evil hover horse" from 70326 The Black Knight Mech, but the connection point used for the cow skull piece made it very difficult to get the head into a similar position to that of the regular hover horses, which have greater posability in their necks. The solution I came up with (the 1M Technic beam with balljoints) works moderately well for getting the head into the position I want without having to compromise the shape of the body, but I would've preferred something a bit less wobbly.

Pic 2 Pic 3 Pic 4 Pic 5 Pic 6 Album A Lego chess set based on the Nexo Knights theme. Altogether, including parts that aren't available on LDD (8 Scurrier figs and the helmets for the 2 Ash Attackers), this model would add up to 1022 pieces. The base features storage space for the chess pieces themselves, and two modular sections visually based on the good and evil factions in the theme. The board itself is also modular and separates into four 16x16 sections. The two halves of the board can be separated and stacked on top of one another for storage. The chess pieces themselves all have simple yet uniform bases that allow for easy color-coded identification. The "good" Nexo Knight faction features King Halbert (King), Queen Halbert (Queen), two Royal Soldiers (Bishops), two hover horses (Knights), two Nexo Shields (Rooks), and eight King's Squirebots (Pawns). The "evil" Lava Monster faction features Jestro and the Book of Monsters (King), Lavaria (Queen), two Ash Attackers (Bishops), two evil hover horses (Knights), two Shields of Absorption (Rooks) and eight Scurriers (Pawns). I would love to build this physically and/or submit it to Lego Ideas, but am hesitant due to how obvious the idea is. Lego has released many chess sets in the past, most of them based on Castle themes, so chances are Lego is already considering releasing a chess set for the Nexo Knights theme. I would not want to buy all the necessary figs and parts on Bricklink only for Lego to release a similar set on their own!

There's also the possibility that they want to leave later plot developments from the show for future movies. Even if the movies don't strictly follow the show's continuity or even take great liberties with it, it's possible that significant revelations about the main characters (like Nya being a water ninja or Zane being a Nindroid) could still be saved for potential sequels. Superhero movies do that kind of thing all the time, introducing characters in the heroes' "origin stories" who have more significant hero, villain, or sidekick roles in the comics, in case they want to use those characters more prominently in later installments.

Just out of curiosity... do you suppose it might be possible that Lego might try and rerelease some of the Wave 1 figures (particularly some of the more popular/better selling figures) with orange bases at some point in the future? That would be one way to deal with franchises that are already fairly saturated with characters (like Ninjago and The Lego Movie). It wouldn't have as much appeal as brand-new characters and mini-builds, but I don't see any reason it wouldn't be a possibility.

Awesome! Thanks for the link!

It does strike me a bit as odd that compared to say, Ninjago, we're getting a LOT of variants of those generic footsoldiers even in just this first year, and comparatively fewer variants of the actual named characters. Not that that's totally a bad thing! The variation in generic troops is much more in line with traditional Castle themes and will probably be much appreciated by anyone who wants to army build unnamed characters without them all looking 100% identical.