SpacePolice89

Those ships look fantastic! I like the minifigs with old and new pieces mixed and the sails look very realistic.

What happens when a set gets chosen as a BDP set, who owns the design, Lego or the designer?

I use the old grays for all my MOCs except large buildings and landscapes. Yesterday I built a small fort for the Imperial Soldiers and I used only old gray for the gray parts. I plan to build a large office building for my town display for which I need a lot of pieces and there I'll use bluish gray because of availability and cost. I also prefer to use the old brown when building MOCs but sometimes I have to use reddish brown if I don't have the piece I need in old brown. When I built the fort I ran out of muskets in old brown so I had to use reddish brown ones instead.

I believe this started in the mid to late 90s and was at its height in the very early 00s. The 80s and early 90s had very few specialized single use pieces and the total number of pieces back then was much lower than what it is today.

As long as it's keeping the fakes away I won't complain.

That sounds very plausible. Today Lego sometimes feels more like a American company that than a European one. Too focused on American movies and tv series. I wish Peter Eio never got so much influence over the company in the late 90s. Him and Poul Plougmann were a disastrous combination.

Yes, but the end product is not to my liking. It's like merging Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings into one single movie. It's too messy and too over the top. Castle and Pirates were mostly based on real things and that is something Ninjago is missing.

I feel the same way. Ninjago tries to be too much at the same time for my liking. I am happy for those that like Ninjago but for me it is the complete opposite of what makes a theme good.

For me it's almost the same except that I like the Dragon Knights and Royal Knights and regard them as quality subthemes. Fright Knights is the first Castle subtheme I regard as not so good and the start of the downfall of Castle. Knights Kingdom 1 and 2 were the low point.

I don't see Ninjago as a problem for a hypothetical new Castle subtheme. Castle was successful when it coexisted with Pirates and Space and all those themes were well designed and popular.

Castle got new sets and subthemes every year as long as they were good and people liked them. Knights Kingdom (2000) was so bad that it killed off Castle for some years. The same happed with Castle 2013. As long as the design was good there were no problems. The popular fantasy era and Kingdoms sets are proof of that. Castle stuff is always popular if the sets and subthemes are well designed.

Do we have any source for that? I know that the 2013 Castle subtheme is not that well liked but I've never seen any sales figures. And the fantasy era and Kingdoms sets are well liked and those were released just before the 2013 Castle subtheme so I don't think that kids suddenly lost interest in the Castle theme. The drop in design quality from Kingdoms to 2013 Castle was huge so that might be a reason for bad sales (if they were bad).

There are no minifigs in Friends, only minidolls.

I believe that the Castle theme would be very popular if they would release a full wave of sets in stores. Modern versions of Castle like Kingdoms and the fantasy era sets were very popular and sold in large numbers. Recent Creator sets from classic themes like the Medieval Castle and the Pirate Ship have also been successful, that is proof that we need full waves of sets from themes like Castle in stores ASAP. Stuff like castles and pirates are always popular with kids and would be much better sets and healthier for the mind than the Hollywood sets that are currently being sold. If Lego made a proper new Castle theme with sets in all sizes it would be one of the most popular themes and sell in great numbers.

I added some buildings

Yes. Everything is now working fine on LUGNET. The problem seems to have been fixed.

Played it for the first time today. It's really fun but the commentators are super annoying so I had to turn them off.

It looks great! Always nice to see Blacktron 1 builds. Very clever use of the banana pieces.

This one is very beautiful, like the pictures in the old catalogs but with a modern look.

Beautiful! I love the pieces that you've used. The tower makes me think about Aquazone.

I am already a supporter of this magnificent building. I hope it becomes reality because I like the build and the Paradisa colors.

That is good new because it means that the shooting cannon will be available in some standard Lego set next year. The only set that currently includes it is the Creator Pirate Ship that will retire in December.

Very nice fortress! I voted for it. Are the shooting cannons available in the latest BDP palette?

Yes, that one is very similar. Must be made by the same artist.

My reason for not including it was mostly the size of the set. I also left out sets such as 6078 Royal Drawbridge.