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Just2good: thanks for a fantastic review with great pics! To answer your question about the jumper plate in the top of the tree: I think it's where the squirrel can perch and hurl insults at all who enter his domain. At least, that's what the squirrels in our yard do... I love how they used ice cream tops as acorns for his ammo.

This is a gorgeous build -- such a nice silhouette. Your use of turntables for cannon wheels is brilliant, by the way. I've picked up a small bow and stern and single hull section, and am experimenting with building my first ship. You've provided me with some wonderful inspiration! Best of success completing your fleet!

I completely agree that Classic Spacemen were special -- although the red guy wasn't my favorite, and the black-suited one confused me as a child. (Why would an astronaut want a suit that would be hard to see if his tether broke?) Of course, that issue didn't bother me once Blacktron came out. Kids and logic... My favorites were always the white and blue guys. Now we've got the new green ones to love, as well. When the Space sets came out under the City umbrella a few years back, they didn't have the same charm for me as the old Classic Space sets, and I had no desire to get any of them. I don't know if that's nostalgia speaking or not. However, when the Exosuit came out, I picked one up the first day! Now I've got the theme for "Space 1999" stuck in my head... Martin Landau and the gang wore red suits whenever they left the station.

Thanks for the great review, woofmcmoose! Sorry not to have posted earlier, but I didn't find your review until today. I saw the Arctic sets in the catalogue last week and fell in love. Never had any interest in City sets before, not even as a kid -- but this one is a must-have. Stopped by TRU on the way home from work and confirmed that these are fantastic. Totally agree. And I think the very fact it has a home base, as well as some smaller vehicles and cute animals, might make it popular with girls as well as boys and AFOLs.I love the fact that this set has crisp, appealing colors, a generous complement of new animals, lots of new minifigs with great printing on front and back, and best of all, no built-in conflict and no tacked-on storyline with named characters. It's a great springboard for imagination and modifying. The conveyor belt just screams ""Seeds of Doom" (Tom Baker Doctor Who ep). Add CMF Yeti or two and you have a 2nd Doctor ep in the making... :-)

It's interesting how different factions/color schemes appeal to different eyes. I absolutely love the red/silver Kingdoms Lion Knights and green/gold Kingdoms Dragon Knights. For me, they're both brilliant factions. The blue Fantasy Era Crownies and blue Lion/Crown guys aren't as appealing to me. I'm not a fan of the crown motif. But -- that's the beauty of Lego -- next time, there'll be something new! Who knows -- maybe wolves or eagles or tigers or owls? (Probably not -- but there's always a chance...) I do wish this latest Dragon crew were dark red/black instead of red/black, though. My nephews are a little confused as to why the old good guys and new bad guys have the same primary color. I ended up changing out all their red bits for black or grey/bley.

It's Cavalry. Someone either misspelled it or got auto-corrected.

Love the Blacktron Mech! And my Second Doctor will get a Yeti. :-) This is a great series, with fun characters and lots of useful bits. I honestly like them all, except for the Scarecrow and Female Robot, both of which I find kind of creepy. I suppose the Female Robot would be superb as the maid in a Jetsons moc... Hmmm... the Jetsons' maid, a waitress from Happy Days, Jake from the Blues Brothers, Conan the Barbarian, a Yeti from Classic Doctor Who, and the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz... kind of a TV/film theme going on here. How many other figs from this series are straight out of Hollywood/BBC?

Out of curiousity, I picked up a Friends set several months ago (the Karate one) and built it, just to see if the flames were justified. My rating: it's a cute, fun set, with about the same amount of building as most of the "standard" sets of the same size. The only issue I had with the minifig was the legs -- they don't separate, which makes them a little static. But the set itself was a nice build, with some clever uses of bricks.

*sigh* I suppose you're right. Galaxy Squad is such an incredibly cool concept. Shades of Futuron, Starship Troopers, the Fly, the 4th Doctor's episode "Ark in Space", and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, plus cute robot sidekicks -- how phenomenal is that? It's more than just an evergreen Space theme -- it's a treasure trove for creativity! Maybe we'll get a Red team polybag this fall? One can hope...

Perhaps this isn't the right place for this vent, but I'm a little perturbed that Galaxy Squad got only 1 page (and only 2 sets) in the Summer catalogue. Chima got 6, count'em 6 pages; and Ninjago got a double-page spread of all the same sets that were in the previous catalogue. Why isn't LEGO showing any love to Galaxy Squad?

Great minifigs, Kliq! They've got a lot of personality. What is the torso on the guy in the middle?

Great review! I picked up one of these sets when it first came out, and was very happy with it. Love the mushroom and bottle; and the hood and sans-flesh torso are fantastic. I was delighted to get an elf with hood, as opposed to one with hair/ears, as I convert all my fleshies to yellow. (Anyone interested in a bag of flesh heads and hands?)

Castle 2007/Fantasy Era had some great aspects to it -- I love the chain mail torsos, and thought the use of four factions was brilliant. (And the peasants and cows!) However, the blue/blue and the crown sigil just never appealed to me. The dwarf sigil, though, with the gold winged helmet -- that was pretty cool. I love Kingdoms, with bright red and white rampant lions vs forest green and gold dragons. (And even more peasants and livestock!) Even though lions and dragon had been used a lot, these two sigils looked fresh and exciting. Kingdoms Lions and Kingdoms Dragons are my favorite "modern" factions. Black Falcons will forever be my very favorite. :-) "Castle Gold" would indeed be a fitting name for this new series -- every soldier seems to be a highwayman after the treasure!

Wow -- that is gorgeous, and so wonderfully detailed!

The blue guys have armpits that show the color of their tunic underneath -- so for the mail/gorget guy, it would be difficult to switch out the arms. The other blue guy might work with bley arms. Or I suppose you could do one white and one blue arm, since the jerkin is half blue and half white. But the dragons -- they look wonderful with different color arms! Black arms, or dark bley/grey arms look fantastic on the torsos with the shoulder armor. The torsos with the larger dragon and no shoulder armor look great with either black, dark bley/grey, or light bley/grey. (I tried the lighter bley/grey on the shoulder armor guys, and it didn't look right.)

Great review, with wonderful photography! The blue armored knight's face is from Dino, I believe. It's a great face, with a lot of character.

I just picked up a couple of Forest Ambush sets and a Gatehouse set -- the latter primarily for the horse barding and the two knights' breastplate armor. Very happy with both breastplates -- slightly disappointed with the horse barding. It's so very, very, vibrantly red, expecially when combined with the oversized horse helmet. It's like a Medieval Darth Maul. That said, the look improves greatly when you remove the horse helmet. It improves even more when you replace the knight's bright red arms with black or dark grey/bley, and replace his red plume with a black one. After changing out the arms of all six of my new dragon knights, they looked great, and fit in nicely with my Kingdoms Dragon knights. The blue guys look OK. I don't understand the Crownie/Royal Knight pastiche. Not a single blue guy has a lion on his torso -- they all have crowns, either as belt buckles, or as plate armor. Yet, the breastplates, shields and flags have lion heads? I'd prefer they stick with one of the other. Nonetheless, they fit in well with Crownie troops. The Gatehouse is a nice build -- completely modular, so you can switch it around how you like and mix and match it in with other sets. And the mounted knight can easily ride through the gate -- hurrah!! However, it does seem a tad pricey, at $30. The Forest Ambush is well worth the money: four minifigs, a dog, extra weapons, and a clever little ambush site with the falling tree. These are nice little sets -- I hope they release a peasant set later in the year!

My beloved 6074 Black Falcon's Fortress came with two archers, two other soldiers, and two knights on horseback. It only had two shields, too. But oh, what a wonderful set it was (and is.) Wouldn't part with it! :-) It is a little tougher to build armies now, since Lego doesn't keep sets going for as long. But this new Castle theme has the Forest Ambush set as a ready-made army builder. Four soldiers, two shields, four or five weapons, a little treasure cart, and a DOG! That's a lot of stuff for $10.

You need bad guys? There's nothing badder than Blacktrons! (The original ones, anyway...)

Thanks, LuxorV, Kristel, and Maya, for the kind words! :-)

From the video posted on the speiletest.at site, it appears that the armored blue Lion knights might have a completely different torso than the other three knights. The belt on the hips have some sort of printing. (It might just be the chain mail torso on armored leg assembly, though, as it looks like a crown belt buckle peeking out from under the armor.) The armored Dragon knights appear to have the same torso as the conical helmet knights: the torso with silver shoulderguards and a silver belt. So it looks like the Dragons get two torsos, and the Lion/Crowns get three or possibly four torsos. Although I'm not a fan of bright blue, it is nice that we'll be getting bright blue plumes for the first time. The Dragon torsos, armor, and barding look great -- but they'd look even cooler in dark red rather than bright red. I guess bright red and bright blue is more kid-friendly. Looking back over recent years, the "bad guys" have tended to get the better barding: Vladek's excellent dark red and silver barding, the Kingdoms Dragons' gorgeous dark green and gold barding, and now this Dragon's red and black barding. I'm not as keen on the Fantasy Era Crownie King or Knight bardings, the Kingdoms Lion King's barding, or this Lion/Crown barding -- and KK2 Mathias's periwinkle barding was just strange -- but I did like the Kingdoms Lion Knight's barding. Saving up my money for August...

Here's my mod. First off, I adjusted her color scheme. The original little shelf and bench build was great -- it just didn't hold the katana properly. So, I built her a weapons rack wall for a bo, jo, and katana. (And yes, technically, each weapon would be cradled in two supports, not clipped to the wall...) Since her breaking station was huge, I adjusted it to look more like what we use: two cinder blocks. Also changed her board from white to brown. LEGO has done a great job with these Friends sets -- they're cute and they're fun builds. (And fun mods!) karate set by seven7mice, on Flickr

Just got mine yesterday -- what a nice little surprise! I had no idea VIP members got free stuff; thought it was just for points and the occasional discount coupon. :-)

With a slight mod, you can build a new weapons rack wall, holding the katana horizontally. Add a reddish brown long bar (Gandalf's staff) and short bar (lightsabre blade), and you have a great bo and jo to display also. I couldn't resist this set -- it's now modified in tan, red, black, and white, with a full weapons rack, and is displayed in my office. When clients come by with their kids, both the boys and the girls have enjoyed playing with it.

Since the Blue Lion breastplate knights have different legs than the Crownie plate armor guy, I'm hoping they have different torsos under those breastplates. That would be really nice -- four different Blue Lion/Crown torsos. The Dragon torsos, breastplate, and horse barding look superb. The more pictures I see, the more this series is beginning to grow on me. I'm not particularly fond of the bright blue color or the huge Crownie plate armor, but the other three blue knights (breastplate, mail, tunic) are gorgeous. If the mail and tunic guys didn't have crowns on their belts, they'd be wearing black helmets and would be part of my Black Falcons in an instant! :-) Thanks to everyone who has posted pictures of the sets, and especially those great close-ups of the minifigures.