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That's a Dragon Masters torso. And lots of GWPs have one-off torsos. Personally, I would be fine with Black Knights not coming back if we got a new faction like the raven, griffin or kraken. I grew up in the era of Black Knights and they are fine, but honestly the dark green dragon knights from kingdoms are cooler in every way except for the plumes. If the dragon plumes came in black or dark green...

Put the birch trees at rule of thirds or golden ratio points, have 3 of them instead of 2, and put them on a Technic pin under the ground so they are slightly angled and direct your eye around the build, and they would be a lot better. The path is well detailed but the flagstones aren't flagstones, they're more like something from the giant's causeway. One other thing that jumps out at me is that the logs "supporting" the floors are too high on the left side, they're in the middle of the room instead of underneath. I don't normally comment on stuff because I have very little to add, but I like the minifigures, they are a breath of fresh air from the usual black falcon/lion knight guards in other builds, and have a sort of timelessness about them with the modern hats, the pirate torsos and the general medieval feel of the build. A lot of this build is a bit detached from reality (the Yoda quote, the angles above the stonework, the blacksmith's glasses, the chimney angles, etc.) and the minifigures really help sell this as intentional.

The video interview with the designer says that multiples of the set can be connected. The original Blacktron sets had "male" or "female" connections, but they weren't consistent about the cockpit always being either "male" or "female", which sometimes made things awkward. This looks like any connection can be attached to any other, which is much more flexible. Right -- they're available in black, a color that can be used in just about any theme. That part isn't coming back in yellow. I would have expected a ribbed hose or something, though.

Why? I've found 4 Renegades in bulk buys and all of them had trans-yellow hoses. Both this set and Battrax came with either trans-yellow with black ends or solid yellow with black ends. But the chances of that style of hose coming back was always pretty slim, I think. I would have liked to see one of the currently-in-production types of hoses used, re-colored in trans-yellow if possible, or in just yellow. The "hexagonal flag" or whatever this piece is called is awesome. It's a wing, a tail fin, part of a geodesic dome, whatever. It will make for some really amazing MOCs. Yeah, for real. Blacktron I's modular system was pretty lacking, and most of the alternative configurations just aren't as cool as what the ships look like "out of the box". This lends itself to a lot of customization. I will load up on the printed parts when they hit PAB. There are some great ones here for sure. I'm bummed that the 2x2 yellow printed tile didn't come back -- that and the space wing returning in yellow would have dropped the price of original Blacktron sets by a ton. I posted this on Reddit and I'll post it again here: Most of what makes Blacktron good is that it's aged like a fine wine. The sets at the time were futuristic, but they are now so old that they look retro-futuristic in the best possible way. I love the 8-cylinder diesel engine on the Battrax, and all the hoses. Where are the hoses on this set? But the original set designs are just not that great apart apart from the 80's-ness and the color scheme. The modularity is a great concept, but was done much better in Blacktron II. The designs are very much a product of late 80's Lego, and have a certain awkwardness about them (so do the Futuron and SPI sets from the same era). I actually didn't like the theme at all until I stumbled across the Message Intercept Base in a bulk lot, and it instantly become my favorite space set of all time (well, tied with the Mega Core Magnetizer, I guess). Anyway, my point is that this is fine, the original wasn't "best set of all time" material, and this nicely recaptures the 80's tech feeling of Blacktron. I'll buy it when it's on sale.

Yes, that's what I did. I used their contact form which required a mailing address. I have not heard anything back yet, I assume they are swamped with orders and will get to tickets after the 18th when Christmas shipping slows down.

This is absolutely, unquestionably, the case. It's much cheaper for them to ship it to the 1 in 1000 customers who request it than to go to all the extra work of including it when many people won't notice. Capitalism. But, to be honest, if I didn't hang out here, I wouldn't have noticed the issues either. Make sure to request the correctly printed tiles, too, mine had the typos. Edit: they haven't actually asked me for proof that I bought the set yet, I assume they can see that someone with my email did. So you can/should open a ticket with support now even if you don't plan to open the set until Christmas.

Same here, country also MX, the sticker on the outside of the box also said "v39". I have the tiles with the typo and the yellow stickers. I have opened a ticket. Kinda annoying to need to open the box and verify this stuff, I was hoping to keep this one sealed for a couple of years until I have space for a proper layout. Seems likely to me. Yeah, for real. This set seems like a pretty good deal to me at 20% off. 2 of the best looking 8 wide passenger coaches around, designed to the standards of an official Lego set, for just $125 each, plus a pile of free parts that you can use to MOC an engine. And if it's not selling well, the aftermarket prices should be utterly insane once this retires. I will buy whatever the limit is if it goes 40% off before retirement next year.

Are the instructions for these no longer available?

Paying $10 for a used piece of string on Bricklink is insanity. I'm mostly a purist, but make an exception where sails and rigging are concerned. Take a bit of string to your local fabric store and ask them what they have that's close. Chances are you can get a good amount there for less than the cost of something off aliexpress, plus if you see it in person, you can match it. My local store had something that's (as far as I can tell) identical and it was $3 for a roll.

Real life got in the way this year.

My favorites: B-Bay Skull's Eye Imperial Trading Post Eldorado BSB 6271 OG Imperial Flagship Enchanted Island [Eldorado redux somewhere around here] Caribbean Clipper Rock Island Refuge I like the simplistic charm of the original sets. I wasn't really into them as a kid, I got into them as an adult after completing 80s/90s castle stuff and looking for similar things to scratch the itch of guess what sets are in bulk lots on the goodwill sites. I don't consider pirates as good as castle (I know what forum I'm on, fight me!) but they share a lot of techniques and designers (Daniel August Krentz gets a special mention for also doing my favorite space set, Message Intercept Base).

All parts for Castle in the Forest (except stickers) are available on PAB/Bricklink, so it can be parted out for relatively little. Highly recommended build, it's one of the best castles of all time.

Am I the only person who thinks PAB is pretty much perfect? Any non-licensed figure you want, as many as you want, for $2-3 each? And no need to purchase stuff that you already have, like heads or weapons? For the cost of a couple big sets I have all the castle figures I'll ever need.

Cautiously optimistic. It's definitely a couple hundred years later than I'd like it to be, but a sailing ship done with modern techniques has a lot of potential to be a fun build. B-Bay is my favorite build of all time, I think. Hoping this has cloth sails and is minifig scale.

The pine tree technique with the palm leaves is so simple but effective. Not sure I've seen it before -- outstanding work. The rest of the build is very nice, especially Leshy himself.

I too own (or have owned) all the original pirates sets and I have built and sold many of the POTC sets as well as the 10210 flagship. The OG Eldorado and Trading Post are of similar quality to this, despite being 30 years older. The raised baseplate takes away a lot of what makes this build tedious, and those sets don't have printing issues with the minifigures. (The printing issues are wildly overstated in this thread, they don't really bother me, but I can see why the original figures are printed on white torsos). I would love to hear your reasoning for what puts this set in the top 5. B-Bay and most of the original ships are more visually impressive. This is a good set, I do recommend it, but it's flawed in many ways. More interesting angles like the Lion Knight's castle had, molded doors, more secrets and more variation in techniques used in the rock baseplate, more detail in the interiors, and finishing off the governor's office would have all gone a long way towards making this an excellent set.

I am in the US, so I'm not sure if you can see this or not. https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805190632211.html, pick 20 mm / 0.3 mm / 3 mm edit: @Converge

I cannot believe the specs for these springs are nowhere to be found on the internet, so I'm bumping a decade-old thread with this info. I grabbed some calipers and measured one of my existing springs: Outside diameter: 0.135 in / 3.44 mm Wire diameter: 0.01 in / 0.3 mm Max extended length: 3.24 in / 82 mm (for large forklift) Body length: 0.5 in / 12.8 mm Free length aka length: 0.72 in / 18 mm The leespring link earlier in this thread wanted $8 a spring which is absolutely highway robbery, makes the BL sellers for this part seem reasonable. On Aliexpress, I found some 20 mm length, 0.3 mm wire diameter, 3 mm outer diameter springs, 10 for a dollar with free shipping. I won't link to the store directly as Ali sellers come and go and stores tend to raise prices if they get linked to often, but a simple search for "Tension spring 20 mm o hook" ought to find you some good options. If the 20 mm ones are not available, 15 mm ones should work too. And 4 mm outer diameter is probably also fine. These work great; they are a couple mm too long (duh!) the loops at the end are every so slightly smaller than the original (but still loop fully over the pin and stay on just fine), and they require slightly more force to extend than the original. But, if I didn't have the original spring to compare them to, I doubt I would be able to tell the difference between these and the OEM springs. I would say these are just about perfect, and recommend them highly.

Some kind of controller, like an Arduino or an ESP8266, a distance (e.g. SR04) or hall effect sensor to detect the train, and a relay to translate the 3.3 or 5v controller signal to 12v to drive the Lego parts. You can probably rig up a purist solution with a PUP hub and pybricks if you skip the 12v stuff, although honestly this is more expensive. As Lok24 pointed out there's a lot of edge cases, changes in speed, varying train lengths, what happens if a train reverses in the middle of the crossing, etc. But these are entirely solvable with software. (The simplest thing to do would be to set a timeout to raise the gates, and any time a sensor is triggered, extend the timeout, which would cover most cases.) This is a fairly doable first project, you can probably put it together in a couple of weeks and for less than $25. There's a lot of good Arduino tutorials out there.

This is correct. r/legoleak keeps a spreadsheet of retirement dates. These are taken from the Lego website (they aren't visible to people, only to a script). These dates are generally accurate, and this set retires at the end of this year. Don't wait if you want it. It's a good build and I'd be sorry if I missed out on it, although it's just not as good a set as Barracuda Bay was.

One of the Pick a Brick developers posts to on Reddit on r/legocastles and r/lego, he confirmed that it usually takes 5-6 months for stuff to become available. There's a 100% chance the Wolfpack torso will be available, Lego will make a ton of money from people army building it, and they're not going to pass up that chance. As others mentioned, expect it to sell out quickly for the first couple months, then it'll be in stock more often as time goes on.

Yes

Steve seems too niche, I can't believe he's leading the polls. But, he is perhaps my favorite pirate minifigure..a contest exploring him would be amazing to see.

As others mentioned, this seems unlikely, it would directly compete with the town square for people who are interested in the "civilian" side of castle. Peasant life is already a pretty niche interest, and we're already pushing our luck. Lion Knight's castle is set to retire at the end of 2025 per the r/legoleaks spreadsheet. (This, combined with the release of the town square, speaks highly of the sales numbers!) Fingers crossed on a new Black Knight's castle.

There's one from Paradisa: https://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=30032&in=S Both the falcon and the new foal are completely different from the ones that existed in the 90s.