Grover

I hear you on trying to stay positive. It hasn't been easy this year. I, too, am concerned that the blacksmith shop won't sell well and TLG will then think that Castle as a theme is a failure. However, I think, based on the general comments here, that it will sell well. I also think that the reasons people are disappointed may not be minor since TLG may have missed the mark on what Castle fans are looking for. If TLG takes a swing at Castle and then misses, that's not the fault of Castle as a line, but rather the design. While the set may get support, I think it is worthwhile for us to comment on what we do and don't like here, and what drew us to the IDEAS set in the first place, since it is good information for TLG to have and ways to keep the excitement of the people who supported the set initially. That is why I asked my questions in the first place, because I wanted to know why people were drawn to the set and what they expected. I would love for some Castle sets that are of the value and quality of PoBB to be produced. I was very excited about that set, and it remains one of my favorites. I was unaware that pirate people thought it was to 'castley'. That's hilarious! I hope that you are correct. I am very interested in seeing the official images when they are released. My expectation was that it was 'medieval' based on the name of the project. I was unaware that the original submission meant for the set to be muti-dimensional with respect to time. I will have to see the parts list to see if this would be the case for me or if it would be better to buy individual pieces on B&P. That will largely depend on the price point and content of pieces.

The box pics are leaked on IG etc. One husky and one tan horse.

I would not describe it as hate at all. Disappointment, yes, especially when compared to the animal-laden original, which arguably put the expectation there. As for the realism, I would not have been surprised at all to see many animals of various types indoors, especially in winter, to keep them warm (something common in the medieval times), especially in a standalone, non-urban dwelling that this structure appears to be since such a location would need to be more self-sufficient. I did not see tongs or shears present in the build (the more common tools of a blacksmith). All arguments about realism aside (let's face it, this is a caricature and could be a fantasy medieval setting), I have always maintained that the set was good (despite some of my disappointments compared to the original), and my only question is of value. Depending on the real price point, I will have to make that decision to pay or not for this as a set. As you say, the set is fine. I would even call it good. Whether a set is good or not in its design is inconsequential to me when evaluating its value, and that will entirely depend upon the price point. I thought the PoBB was outstanding as a design and also had a great value. This set is good, and I am unsure of its value. The characteristics above outline parts that I find valuable in a set, and what I'm willing to pay more money for. I think that the City Main Square set is very good, too, but there's no way I'm paying $200 for that. I certainly agree with you, 2020 sucked. I'm looking forward to all that Lego has to offer in 2021, and I'm hoping that when the official release comes out the price point and more detailed pictures will help me find some more value in this set so that I can help support castle type builds. I always mention that TLG should bring back a Castle themed line to customer service when I call, and I would encourage all castle fans to do the same!

Ah, I see it now! It's amazing how much room staircases take up. I think that they can't be scaled down as easily as large rooms since they are only designed to fit one person at a time, so they have to be minifigure scale, whereas most house rooms are scaled smaller. Unless you're willing to build a house the size of that Simpsons House that came out a while back, houses will necessarily be smaller. In any case, great job, and keep up the good work!

I generally order 10 of something I want for bad guys since they tend to be less organized. I'm going to order as many of the black falcon torsos from the upcoming blacksmith shop as I can though! Good guys tend to be more organized and uniformed. And what are you talking about? A large build only uses 12? You're not building large enough! Get the addiction like the rest of us!

As a castle fan, I had a lot of hope and expectations for this set. I have been disappointed, and my excitement for the new set has given way to this disappointment, which I found somewhat confusing. Rather than complain on here, I thought I would be constructive and try to analyze why I feel disappointed. To do that, I realized I had to look at why I had voted for the set in the first place. So I would like to ask each of you as well: 1. Did you vote for this set on Ideas? 2. Why did you vote for this set if you did or why didn't you if you didn't? I will begin with my answers. 1. I did vote for this set. 2. I had several reasons for voting for this set. They were, in descending order of importance: a. Animals! I really liked the idea of the horse, hare, goat, chickens, and owl. Something like 2/3 of all livestock in the medieval times was fowl, so chickens were a given. I am glad to see the horse was included, and it is probably my favorite part of this set. The husky feels like a cop out to me, as if it were thrown in as an afterthought. I would much rather have seen a few chickens. b. The minifigures. I liked the idea of two civilian minifigures, and was looking forward to new prints of civilian medieval minis, or at least reprints of old civilian minis, such as those in the Blacksmith Attack or the Mill Village Raid. I was disappointed in the reuse of two civilian prints that are not even very medieval. While the nod to the black falcons in the troops was fun, I don't feel that this set needed them. It doesn't feel like pandering to the classic castle base, but I also feel that one of the reasons I liked the set was because it was civilian and not military, and the inclusion of troops kind of erases that. c. The dark color pallette. Although I am likely in the minority, I liked the dark color palette, particularly the dark blue on the roof, the fall foliage colors, and the olive green grass base. Of these, only the dark blue roof remains. Brightening up the overall palette would have been spectacular with fall foliage in my opinion. I would have loved to have seen all the printed brown, or at least dark brown timbers as the framing, as I was quite excited about it. d. I am desperate for castle. As a castle fan, I am ready to take just about anything at this point. If you remove the black falcon troops, the only real indication that this is a medieval set are the swords and shields in the forge area. If they added a small coffee bar or tea shop where the forge is, you could throw a car out front and have a small European coffee shop. So while I am willing to take just about anything medieval, this set for whatever reasons, does not have a lot of medieval feel to me. I am curious why others did or did not vote for this set. I think if you had voted for this set for different reasons than I did, you may be more excited about it. I think that the set is still a good overall set, but I'm just not sure if I want to shell out that kind of money or just buy an equivalent amount of tan horses and black falcons parts on B&P yet.

Very well done. I love how you have used primarily the masonry bricks but have incorporated some of the off-color plates for detail without getting too chaotic. The roof and outside vegetation are fantastic, and I love the garage. You have made great use of the limited space inside, and the whole thing feels very much modular scale. You do a great job designing buildings that fit the Lego building scale. I wish that they let you design sets. My only question is where is the famous staircase that Harry lived under? Maybe I'm just not seeing it?

@Niku, I think you describe it well. I feel that Barracuda Bay is a great set, lots of awesome minis, cool parts, great design, for $200. If this really is $150, I feel that we get two cool minis and a horse. The building is nice, and despite some of my reservations about the moss, is a good building. But for $150? This does not feel like a throwback to me, more like they threw a few falcon prints on torsos and shields and called it good. I'd like to see either a more medieval set or a real nod to classic castle. This may hit the mark with the general market, but I kind of feel like it snubs the castle crowd. This could also be called 'blacksmith shop', since it doesn't have a very medieval vibe to me. The two 'medieval' characters (the soldiers, since the blacksmith and the female character could be from just about any time) could easily be Cosplayers or Ren Faire goers with their comical armor, and little else about the build screams medieval to me.

Ah thanks! I have mixed feelings about this set. My opinions are below. The good: - Falcon shield - Falcon torsos - Good use of the orange hair and beard on the blacksmith - Tan horse! - The bearskin rug - Good interior architecture - Good furniture The bad: - NO GOAT! (Not a realistic expectation but still disappointing) - A husky? Really? Is that even realistic for medieval settings except in far north reaches? - No other animals like rabbit, owl ,etc. - The shoulder armor looks cartoony and ridiculous. It was fine for Ninjago or Marvel since they are cartoons, but these guys look more like Nexo to me and I am not a fan. They will definitely be removed if I buy this. - The polearm looks ridiculous. @Robert8 has it right, they should have just remade the old halberds - Reuse of the female pirate torso? I agree with @Aurore, it doesn't even look very medieval - No tiling of the floor. Few sets leave that much exposed stud now and the bearskin rug looks unusual there. - Lots of reused mini pieces: Larry the Barista's legs on the blacksmith, and maybe some Ninjago legs on the knights. Reused winking face on the woman. Disappointing. I haven't decided if I'm actually going to buy this set or just buy parts on B&P. At $150, it's hard to put down as a must buy since $150 would buy a lot of minifig parts and horses... I had been planning on buying multiple copies of this set, but the more I see, the more disappointed I am and I'm not sure I'd even buy one now. It feels more like a medieval parts pack than anything I'd put into a medieval city of mine.

Is there an official release or is this just on IG right now?

Don't forget Bricks and Pieces. They sometimes have pieces cheaper than BL and they have cheaper shipping.

I ordered mine in February and it was the same price as it is now with the same element number. It's unusual that it was "W Gold", but who knows? You'll have to tell us if the rings are still chromed or not.

I've ordered that element before. It's the chrome gold one unless they've changed it.

When I was a kid I thought 6081 was cool. Then I got the set, and despite a few cool things, like the drawbridge and the doors, and the hinged window that opened, I felt the castle was kind of lame. You get a gatehouse that's small without a portcullis, a tiny tower in the back, and then this lame super low wall that surrounds a pit with very little modification possible. This was one of the first castle sets that I modified heavily and wound up adding an entire wall around plus another tower in the back. I think that 6086 was a much better version of 6081, although I think one of my favorites is still the Black Monarch's Castle. From 1984, the King's Castle (6080) is great too.

I have struggled a lot with lighting myself. It's a really hard thing to get just right without a professional setup, since as you say, there's all sorts of problems from monitor brightness to post editing color to trying to light the shot without glare on the polished plastic bricks initially... there's definitely an art form to it!

Aww, not nearly as exciting as I had hoped. I was imagining a Lego dealer sending in kids with cash to buy sets just to get the GWPs like a meth cook sending smurfs in to buy one box of Sudafed at a time!

This forum is a little wonky. The WYSIWYG is a little weird here, so it does screw up the BBC sometimes, but I haven't been able to figure out what it does and does not screw up. It seems to be a little capricious. I usually use PMs to others to test BBC since PMs do the same as posts and I don't annoy people with various test posts, although you could pick a thread like this one and use it as a test thread I suppose. One of the things that I've had a lot of trouble with are tables. You also cannot insert HTML into these forums (security reasons I'm pretty sure).

Ironically, I can't type it out here, even in the code format, since the WYSIWYG editor screws it up. However, if you look in the link, you can see the bracketed code. It's kind of like a cut-down HTML if you're familiar with that.

You're welcome! It's what these forums are for, in my opinion. I always appreciated the feedback I got from others and try to pass it along. Don't forget about Lego's Bricks and Pieces service. For parts that are in print, you can sometimes get better prices on B&P than Bricklink, especially after shipping. If you need thousands, it's no good, but for specialty parts you only need a few of, it's great!

The forums run on BBCode, so if you like hard coding it, you can use BBCode. https://www.bbcode.org/examples/?id=10

Welcome to the Guilds! I love the story. It's open-ended and intriguing. You have a great attitude about learning, and I think you will find the members here are friendly and helpful! As for the build, you have a lot of nice things going on here. The border is solid. The flowers on the vine are probably the standout element on the wall. They look very good and your use of one flower color for the whole vine is great. The mini is fun, although mixing the flesh head and yellow arms is a little unusual. I like how you grouped most of the olive green grass near the well. The well is simple, but it serves its purpose, and the upside down 2x2 plate inside it for water is great. Being parts limited is tough, but you've done well with what you have. As you get a few more parts, it will get easier. One trick for keeping the MOC looking uniform is to limit yourself to 2-3 shades of one color. For instance, if you have browns for dirt, you may use dark brown and reddish brown, but if you used medium nougat, tan, and dark tan as well, it would start to look a little chaotic. In your case, you have green, bright green, olive green, and lime green all in the same build, which is getting to be a little much for the eye. If you replaced the lime green with regular green you might have a little less distraction. I like the wall and how you limited it to two shades of grey (as opposed to adding tans and other colors). As for photography, a white or light grey background can help. Even just a white sheet laid behind the build can help. Very nice work! Keep it up, and I look forward to seeing more of your builds and story! Oh, and don't forget to post a link in the Free Builds thread!

I thought the same thing. If sand blue and LBG were used it would be OK, but I think the sand blue is just too light compared to the dark blue to make a good transition. I'm thinking that putting some of the small limb pieces over the blue tiles will help the transition and add more texture. I wish the limbs came in sand green though!

That would explain a lot!

Thanks! What a great collection! It seems to me that most of the sets are pretty close to the original. A few (the mickey boat) seem to be better. Barracuda bay and the blacksmith shop seem to be the most changed (edit: The Bonsai changed quite a bit too). Sesame Street changed quite a bit but they also have a lot of source material to work with. Overall, I'm usually happy to see the final product. I'll be interested to see that with the blacksmith shop too.

That picture does a great job illustrating how the lichens/moss/whatever begins growing in the low spots and how the low spots are darker (presumably due to the dirt etc.). They did a good job on the blacksmith roof making the lower slope darker. Something about the bright blue next to the lichen/moss/whatever doesn't look right to me since the lichen/moss/whatever seems to grow in the dirty areas. Maybe the seam of the top of the roof gathered dirt and made it grow, I don't know. In any case, I didn't recognize the green as moss. It looked too regular and out of place to me, and only after someone mentioned it did I say "Yeah, maybe". I think I'll replace some of the green there with various small olive limbs.