iragm

eBay auctions will fetch about half to 3/4 of their value, so don't do that. A good approach is to look at the bricklink average sale price for the last 6 months, add 10% or so, and use that as the buy now price on eBay. Post pics of the set built and placed against a white backdrop, list any damage, missing or substitute pieces in the description. If the item hasn't sold in 2-3 weeks, drop the price 10% and try again. Remember that eBay fees are ~13% whereas Bricklink is 1%. eBay does somewhere around 10x the volume that Bricklink does, and the buyers are less price-aware, so it is a much better place to sell stuff despite the fees. Make sure you have your shipping stuff (tape, boxes, a scale) figured out before you list items. If you value your time at nothing, you can sell bricks individually in Bricklink. This seems insane to me, I just box up parts I don't want and donate them to local schools.

Their pirate line is garbage, but I just looked at their castle stuff and there's a lot of stuff that looks amazing. I don't trust third party bricks, but I have a lot of bulk and their instructions are free, so I'll have to build a few of their designs and see if they hold up.

This would be a much more interesting poll without B-Bay, which is my favorite Lego set of all time, pirates theme or not. 6270 Forbidden Island is an also-ran, and while it was part of the original line, it's hamstrung by its trapdoor mechanism that doesn't work (the same one used in 6081 King's Mountain Fortress), and it's outshone by Rock Island Refuge and other later bases. Interestingly, this set looks better without the mast and rigging. 6276: Eldorado Fortress is one of the best sets of all time. 'nuff said. 6273: Rock Island Refuge is a solid base with some neat play features. It's probably the most realistic looking pirate refuge, and my favorite of the pirate bases. 6277: Imperial Trading Post is a classic, although the buildings by themselves are each simple and quite lackluster, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Great play features, the boat is an amazing build, and together the thing looks like, well, a trading post. Tied with Eldorado for the best of the classic bases. 6278: Enchanted Island is great. It's got pretty much everything the Islanders theme has to offer. It doesn't speak to me the way the Eldorado and the ITP do, and I can't quite put my finger on why. 6279: Skull Island has some great play features, but the goofy skull just doesn't work for me. Still, this is my second favorite pirate base behind Rock Island Refuge. There's almost no rare bricks here, so it's an easy set to Bricklink for dirt cheap if you have a lot of bulk. 6281: Pirates Perilous Pitfall is just confused. There's some OK play features, but the rope draw bridge didn't do it for my as a kid, and it still doesn't do it for me. I don't currently own this set, as (like most of the last wave of classic pirates) I consider it pretty mediocre. But hey, if you want to drop over a hundred bucks on a red trapdoor, at least it works, which is more than can be said of the one in Forbidden Island. 6242: Soldiers' Fort is one of the sets of all time. The same can be said for most of the 2010s pirates sets. I don't own any of these, and even the 10210 Imperial Flagship is IMHO not as nice as Skull's Eye Schooner.

I don't see the need for this. This is literally the best time - ever - in the history of Lego to be a castle fan. PAB makes army building easy and like $3 a figure. The castle is great, best castle since 6086, and maybe best castle of all time. The blacksmith was great. MOC quality in an official set. The Town Center is one of the best civilian sets we've ever had (arguably the Guarded Inn was more revolutionary just by being first and giving us those half timber bricks, but the current one is more detailed than MVR and MMV for sure). Castle in the Forest is the best forestmen set of all time, and can be bricklinked for somewhere around $200, quite an excellent deal given the quality of the build. The creator castle has spawned a whole wave of great MOCs on Rebrickable. Licensed stuff like Rivendell and DnD is there if you're into that. Plus those DnD CMFs in September look amazing. And the Viking Village. Brinklink provides reasonably affordable access to retired sets and parts to build your own MOCs. There's honestly so much stuff right now that I have run out of space for it all and am skipping the licensed stuff. Having a Friends or Technic castle wave doesn't interest me at all. Why would I want kid-focused sets when the current sets are targeted at me? I understand that some people want some smaller, more affordable, castle stuff but IMHO you should just go spend $35 on PAB and buy the exact figures you want.

Unbelievable that this didn't make the cut. I love castle stuff, but honestly the 3 castle designs accepted this round were pretty weak, and we've just gotten a ton of great castle stuff as official sets. Please submit it again next round -- this is one of the best frigates I've seen and I would love to build a ship other than B-Bay with modern techniques.

Not really a fan of fantasy or DnD, but these figures look amazing. I love the bird printed to look like a sparrow. I love that I can easily swap out the fleshie heads for yellow ones, and I won't even need to change the hands. There's a couple of good peasant torsos there, too. The set is a skip for me (the inn is so simplistic), but I do like the design of the Beholder and the dragon, and the "exclusive campaign" is a clever idea. I wonder if they'll work some building, or even alternate builds, into the campaign to make it feel more Lego.

Do we need more? We've now got 3 colors of goat, seems like plenty to me. I finally got my copy of the set in hand, and the minifigures are absolutely amazing. The old woman in the dark red skirt might be my favorite, she's at least as nice as the light blue cas490 from Mill Village Raid. And the tan peasant boy torso is a close runner-up.

For Lion Knight's Castle, I did. For Eldorado, I did not. Still, the box was pristine before I recycled it.

Looks great! The rockwork is a bit smooth on the back, the front is much more "rough" which is more visually interesting. The window from Eldorado is nice, but two of them is a lot for such a small build, and there's a LOT of white and dark red here, with not much yellow (not to mention losing the Caribbean "open air" feeling of the original set. And I would put another red and blue awning over the vegetable seller, to add a bit more color to the rear view. And it would be cool if the arch was made into a bridge like the other build linked above. But these are just minor, your build looks really nice! I'll put my instructions up on Rebrickable in the next couple days.

Here is a comparison shot next to Eldorado. This was built from parts on hand, so there are some very minor changes. I did notice that the 1x4 panel (part 30413) in the hidden stash caused the trapdoor to bind, so I replaced it with a tile. Also, the clutch strength on the Technic steering wheel is very poor, the palm leaves can easily fall off. I created some PDF instructions, as well as an updated IO file with these instructions and a Bricklink wanted list with minifigures removed to make building this easier. With permission from @Aanchir, I will post this to Rebrickable as well. The BL total cost without minifigures is under $100, so given the quality of the model I highly recommend adding it to your collection. I enjoyed the build much more than Eldorado, there were no boring parts, and it's packed full of amazing details.

At 3600 parts with no interiors yet, this doesn't stand a chance on BDP: you'd be competing with stuff like the mountain fortress or the ship Minerva for the $400 price point. I would cut out the tower and the house on the left, the red and black trader's house with a thatched roof is amazing. The tower is a good build, but there's a lot of towers out there already, and most fans have no shortage of castles. The other house is nice, but the blue shutters and red roof don't really work IMHO. Green shutters would at least be complimentary with the red roof, but that may just be my personal preference. Overall, I prefer the half timber style like the red house uses. The tree and vineyard mini builds are excellent, I would play with those and scale them up a tiny bit. But don't be surprised if this doesn't make it in the BDP given that the new village is out and this would directly compete with that, and without the draw of new/exclusive minifigures. Good luck and I hope you're able to make this a real set.

The dwarfs are nightmare fuel, the torso look like cartoon characters [admittedly..not surprising given the source material] and it's almost 1000 parts fewer than the village is. Still the building itself looks great (despite being only a front half), I will try to recreate it out of my spare parts bin once instructions are available. I do agree that the new Jolly Roger is awful compared to the old one. I'm actually quite happy about the colors used here, I have so many bricks in the classic colors that getting more modern realistic ones is nice. Is this bait? It's a box, just recycle it once you get it.

Yeah, everyone here would, but there isn't a market for that. I just think it's awesome that we're getting something, since there really weren't many castle sets that appealed to me between 1993 and 2022. This set, while deeply flawed, offers us some great designs, some of the best minifigures ever, and is pretty cheap.

PAB didn't exist in the same way back then. I'm fine getting fewer minifigures here given how many excellent torsos there are, and that I can load up for like $2-3 per minifigure from PAB. Plus, for an extra $10 you can get another minifigure, an extra goat, and pay $5 to a reseller!

It's white around the edges because TLG can't print all the way to the edges of bricks, and the oval shield was already in production in white.

Everything -- shutters, flags, the classic castle painting -- looks like stickers to me. High res photos are out. I give this a 6 out of 10, the buildings are very underwhelming to me. The colors are great, the minifigures excellent, but the techniques are just not better than what's in MOCs, and the set very much plays it safe with stuff that's worked before. In fact, I don't see anything that's not just a repeat of Lion Knight's castle (except maybe the gate on the goat pen). It is, however, the best set we've gotten since Lion Knight's Castle, and I will likely pick up two copies on day 1, as well as load up on the minifigures from PAB. Yes it is? People said this for Lion Knight's Castle, they said this for Eldorado. Why would Lego not take our money for these minifigures? This is the best summary of the set that I have seen. I would love to get all the original colors of forestmen again, as well as new ones like purple and light blue. I have an army of the originals, at least 50 or 60, but I would love to have more. If space fans can get all the colors of space men, when can't I get all the colors of forestmen? This build is meh. MMV wasn't a great build, but it was OK for it's time. MVR is a terrible build, made up for by the presence of some of the best minifigures of all time. I want next level stuff from Lego. Why are current fan designs so much better than this?

If this is what you're referring to, it was on PAB a few months ago in white. It's there in red now. https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=74528&name=Minifigure, Headgear Hood Basic Smooth&category=[Minifigure, Headgear]#T=P

Love the yellow castle and joust painting. Disappointed about the lack of double axe torso. The building techniques are lame, I wanted new half timber styles. Fan designs are miles ahead of this. Still, this should lead to some absolutely excellent MOCs on Rebrickable. I'll likely get a couple copies on day 1, sell the minifigures to recoup most of the cost and rebuy them once they hit PAB.

There's definitely a ladder in the tower. I haven't had a chance to build it IRL yet, I only got around to building Eldorado a few weeks ago. I believe I have all the parts for it, just sadly, not the time.

Hilarious visual storytelling!

Hard to say - I suspect that this is intended to work on a more subconscious level to make women see a bit of themselves in the set. She did not complain about the historical inaccuracy of women soldiers. I did poke her about a the complaints expressed on here (and none of them bothered her), she couldn't see the issue with the printing even after I pointed it out and showed her a 90s bluecoat to compare the white. Probably not, she enjoyed it as a fun thing to do after work, but hasn't expressed interest in doing more. She's already pretty tolerant of the thousands of pounds of bricks in the basement, so I'm not going to push my luck.

Great use of technic axles in the half timber mill. I am usually not a fan of mixing light and dark gray, but it works to great effect here. The water is stunning, do you have a picture from before you put down the tiles? The use of black to create deep water is just amazing.

I am hoping for this as well, especially with the "Broken Axes Inn", but since the double axe crest did not get updated in 10305 (unlikely most of the other crests that got a facelift), I am not sure how likely this is. I'd also be interested to see the black knights make a return, but since their plume didn't come back for Majisto's workshop and we've recently had the much-loved Kingdoms green dragon knights, I'm not sure how likely that is either.

Honestly if this is even close to the leak, I don't think there's any way I could be disappointed with it.

The ship saved the set for me. The techniques used in the fort are extremely uninteresting. The rock work was repetitive and needed a larger variety of dark gray slopes to look more lifelike. Compared to the Lion Knights Castle or Barracuda Bay, this set is 6/10. But the ship is great, very fun build with lots of great details and shaping. It's a shame the sails aren't on PAB. My wife - not generally a huge pirates or Lego fan - built most of this set and loved it, FWIW.