DaleDVM

Great looking compound bow. I hope you don't mind me using it!

I can see the lion barding being expensive. But the Dragon barding is in a $20 set. Anyone paying those prices is crazy!

I would guess there is a chance that the battle packs may become available again. I highly doubt any new ones would be made with the same Kingdoms factions. As far as castles go, I would imagine King's Castle will remain available for another year like the King's Castle Siege did in the fantasy lineup... At Brickworld TLG is unveiling a new product. I hope it is the UCS Jousting set that has been speculated about. It would be so apropos because my layout has a giant medieval tournament with an large medieval city built around it.

2 Weeks and counting. Update: I have put in about 30 hours of building but strangly enough... I still have about 100 hours of building left to do? Hey Stash are we doing the pizza event again; and if so which night are we doing it?

I have a room for Thursday through Sunday nights at the Westin. So far there are two people in the room. We are looking for a third to cut down on costs. The invite is extended to any Eurobricks members including Ras Al Ghul.

This forum has been rather quiet lately. I was hoping for some status reports from other Eurobricks members. These last few weeks are often hectic! 3 weeks from today we will start unloading our creations. Are you ready? Do you have last minute orders that need to come in? Lets share the pre-event rush. Personally my repair of last years disaster is almost complete. I have one Bricklink order that I need to get in the mail to finish. Why is it that Europeans have all the good rare bricks? I have about 100 hours of building left but I should be able to pull it off with no problems.

Hey Stash... You know I will be there and my sigfig will be with me. Can't wait and thanks for all you do for the Eurobricks community. Dale

Welcome fiction. You came out of your dark age just in time to catch up on the Kingdoms line. A couple of more months and some of the sets would be gone. I am now up to 50 elves. Just 4 more to go. Then I have to get geared up for the Vikings from series 4.

Thanks for the support KristofBD. You captured my feelings exactly. Even though the mill set is not the cheapest set as a price per piece is concerned. I find it to be the most valuable set of them all. The number of new and exclusive parts in this set is amazing! Even some of the bricks are new and in different colors. The animals, peasants, and highly sought after dragon knights just put it over the top. I feel the set is appropriately priced. The carriage however could have come in at about $30 to be a good value.

I hate to quote myself but I thought this was a post worth repeating since it seems pertinent to the current conversation. I would agree that the carriage really is lacking in value. The rest however I find a decent value. Especially valuable with all of the minifigs and animals in the sets.

Wow, it is incredible. I find it absolutely amazing how the six of these creators were able to keep a similar style. It must have taken quite a bit of planning. It all goes together so perfectly. Thank you for the hard work to bring this creation to us! The castle and town are great. However, I am drawn to the landscaping. The detail is great. I like the brown under the grass even on top of the hill. The road being sunken into the terrain is fantastic. The foliage, waterfall, cave, and the crypt are just money! Congrats to the entire group. I will be bringing a similar setup to Brickworld this year. Hopefully it doesn't fall apart again... I hope people like what I have done as much as they do your creation. Thanks Whitefang for sharing their work with us.

I am up to 44 elves and still need to get 10 more to complete my units. I also picked up 40 of the collectable indian chiefs spears off of bricklink to arm my elves with.

I can see the original posters point. The blue on blue is not flashy by any means. However, this is much less of a debate and just a personal preference issue. I personally found the crownies incredible. They were the first faction to bring back the checkered quarters pattern. The dark blue and light blue with gold accents was just money to me. I agree that this faction looks more regal than past factions. Their armor and weapons are brighter. In my LEGOdom this is the merchant faction that trades with all other factions. I have more crownies than any of my other "good" factions. I think appropriately since they also seem to be the richest. I have large armies of every faction TLG has ever made. It is in my best interest that the crownies were very different than past lego factions. I do not need more of the same. I have already collected those in the past and done that. Every new faction has made me happy since they all differ appreciably from the classic castle factions. I hope the future factions look just as wonderful.

Aanchir you and I will never see eye to eye. Your feelings are hurt if someone questions TLC's performance in any way. You defend TLG and the status quo in almost every post you make. You even defend the quality of the see throught plastic on the minifig legs. I'm sorry but as much as I love LEGO I can't turn a blind eye to mistakes. Fact is that with a case of 60 average availability is 3.75 for each figure. The army building figs are easily underepresented. This is especially true in comparison to the demand they will command. The hockey player, viking, and musketeer at 3 a piece fall in the low probability category. The hazmat suit guy is in the middle at 4. Sure TLG included 5 sailors and I noted that in my post. I gave TLG kudos for that. However, that fig has no fancy printing and an accessory that is a common part. Likely one of the cheapest minifigs to produce of the entire series. And that is likely why they made that fig so common... Most of the most commonly available figs have the least number of parts. The parts intensive figs usually are least represented in each series. They did not make 5 sailors available to fix the disparity in minifig availability we have seen in the first 3 series. If that were the case the musketeer, viking, hazmat suit guy, hockey player, and sailor all would have 5 or more available. The musketeer very well might not command the same interest as the spartan or the elf. However, it does have a desirable torso, plume, hat, and weapon. I guarantee you this. A year from now musketeers will be very very hard to come by. Evil scientists will still be easy to aquire. According to your thinking the scientists are the rare ones. Time will show just like in all of the past 3 series...

Thank you for the fantastic review. Great close-ups of all of the figs. Too bad about the figure distribution. Once again the army builder figs are the least frequently represented. Atleast the hazmat has 4 figures and the sailor has 5. I would imagine anyone with access to bricklink will be able to get most of these figs below market value pretty quickly. The mad scientist might be expensive for a month or so but his price will settle down. The musketeer will most likely be the price driving figure.

I rebutted your arguements on the thread for series 3. Now I will repeat again. I find it especially annoying that you put words in my mouth that I never typed at all. Actually TLG is exactly creating an artificial rarity for the figs because of the tiny percentage range 3% to 8% per box. I never said I wanted them to balance out the minifigs in a case. I want TLG to more closely balance the availability to the actual demand for the figs. Talk about selfish. It is not a problem for you who only wants a couple of each fig. You buy a case and you are golden. What about people who want many multiples of a certain figure? By the way you could accomplish getting a few of each by buying an entire case with my distribution as well. However with my distribution the extra figs you get will actually have some value. If demand isn't taken into consideration when LEGO plans the distribution of figures, then the minifigs are going to have drastically different values as soon as they are opened. This does not make for happy fans. It ruins the whole idea of collectable figs which is to trade them for one another. If the figs were in packaging that noone could decipher (like you suggest) the problem would actually get worse! If noone could pick out army figs they would be in even more demand on bricklink and prices would be even more out of whack! If it was truly a random purchase, you pick out a circus ringmaster open it and magically it dropped by 50% or more in value immediately. Are you happy? Did you get value for your money? You could have just bought it on bricklink for half of what you spent. Demand and popularity aren't synonymous? What are they opposites? I never made that arguement in the first place but... Wow I am so sorry I used the word popular. I will correct myself and say I know which figs will have the highest demand. I am not omniscient. You don't have to be particularly bright to figure out which figs will be in high demand. Well actually I've now got 44 elves and only need ten more to finish my collection. But thank you for your concern. I like how you assume that I have been personally offended and that can be the only reason I would point out the problems with figure distribution not equalling demand. Actually I am not angry at all. I will always be able to get what I want as I have a lot of money to spend on LEGO. Actually what bothers me is that I see people on the forums who I know can't just buy what they want and find it impossible to afford an elf/spartan let alone get several of them for themselves. So what you are saying is that if a box contains a lot of the high demand figs it will not increase the chances for casual fans to be able to get some? Really? If the distribution was closer to demand resellers would never even go to stores to cherry pick figs at all. There would be no money in it. Army builders might still take them and I cannot speak for them. Personally I wouldn't take them all. If on a trip to the store I could pick up 20-30 out of just a couple of cases I would be more than satisfied. In a few trips to the store I could get a large collection. As it is right now I make the long trip to the lego store and get a few and sometimes even none. Do I leave any behind? No because they are just too rare and hard to come by. Wow you really think I am self centered. I wasn't even referring to army builders but to all collectors. I was talking about buying a whole case of figs here. Some people actually do that and do trade away or sell their extra sets. My post said that? Go back and read it again. After this statement I shouldn't have taken your post serously at all. So if they put 1 of each figure and fill out the box with punk rockers it is okay because someone is going to be upset anyway? Why wouldn't you think that if the ratio of figs in the cases was closer to the actual demand, it would be a good thing? Do you like the fact that people are having a hard time getting the figs they want? I find it sad. I'm not even slightly worried about it, but again thanks for your sarcastic concern for my well being. I will get a couple of complete sets and about 50 vikings no problem. Not sure if I want to collect a bunch of muskateers or not. By the way the hockey player, hazmat suit guy, wolfman, and to a lesser extent the football player will be in demand as well. Why? Because all of them can be used in larger numbers. (i.e. army building) In my distribution there would have been extras of all of those figs along with the 2 complete sets. But alas I am crazy!

Gedren y may very well have meant the blacksmith was still working on the weapons. I'm not sure. I could read that sentence to have both meanings... Is the blacksmith working for the Dragon Knights? Could very well be. The weapons are not dark pearl grey but the armor certainly is. Perhaps the weapons are that dark grey color because the blacksmith isn't finished...

I wrote in my post that I hate to see AFOLs turn on one another due to problems caused by the TLC. And then you turned on me... I took that exactly how you meant it. I am going to try not to let you make me feel like a selfish bast__d. This will be my first real argument on Eurobricks! Sorry to be so blunt... Aanchir you are obviously being defensive for a company you love. Heck I love TLG too. Unfortuantely your defensive posture has led you to faulty reasoning and worse yet you put a lot of words and arguements in my mouth that I never even said. I hope you are being naive due to your love of TLG. Otherwise... well... I can't say what I think cuz I want to be nice. I will try not to escalate the demenor of this discussion and will be only be equally as rude in the same places you were. I will show how my opinion differs from yours point by point and welcome a logical and less emotional reply. As for my self interest. I am not collecting zombies, spartans, or several other army builder types of figs. My interest honestly is for everyone who collects these figs and cannot get them except at outrageous prices. I think it is a shame that TLG has turned collecting these figs into a game that only the well to do can play. If that makes me selfish then so be it. a) Really you are going to argue that clowns, crash test dummies, etc. were going to be popular and rare? Really? I know perfectly well that some people will collect whole cheerleading squads and baseball teams. However, even sports figs will not be collected in numbers much over 10 to 20. In fact none of those figs you mentioned will be collected in large numbers. I'm not saying that noone in the whole world will want a large number of them. But it will be a very rare occasion indeed. Here is the reason that TLC should have known what was going to be popular. Since I and dozens of other members on this forum correctly predicted the most popular figs before they were even released, I think TLG had an idea as well. They are actually smart people over there. The members here didn't even use focus groups AFAIK. b) In your first point you say TLG couldn't know what was going to be popular. In your second point you argue it would be silly to increase production of the more popular figs even if they did know? By that reasoning they should keep cranking out the pharoahs quest sets and just stop making star wars stuff. Why should TLG cater to people who actually spend a lot of money on their products? Who cares whats popular? With that type of thinking TLG will be pushing towards bankruptcy again. If there were 2 of every fig in a case instead of 3 that would really leave casual collectors in the dust? Do you honestly believe you would get screwed over and not get that magician you were hoping for? You would still be able to trade all of your elves, spartans, etc. for a crash test dummy any day of the week. c) Hmmm. I never argued once that they shouldn't have uneven ratios of figs. I argued making the most plentiful fig one that nobody wants more than a few of is a joke and I stand by that. Did you honestly believe for one second everyone would be clammoring to get themselves a bunch of race car drivers? Do you really have to let the market do its thing before you can figure something like that out? I know TLG has smarter personel than that. d) Sorry to be blunt again... but the real joke is your reasoning. If there are more elves/zombies/spartans, etc. in each box the odds of a kid finding them goes up no matter what the behavior of collectors is. I know for a fact that if the price on the secondary market was not driven up, many resellers wouldn't go to cherry pick in the first place. I don't resell and only collect. I don't want to go from store to store looking for figs. If I could pull 20-30 desired figs from a display of 120 or 180 total figs. I would actually leave a few behind for other collectors. However, as it is now I drive 45 minutes each way to pull out 3-6 figs. I do take them all because they are too damn rare and sometimes I waste my time and find none at all. Personally, I would rather just buy my armies on bricklink if they were reasonably priced. I never said lower aftermarket prices would give LEGO greater profitability. In fact I said the opposite. TLC purposefully drives up the prices so they can sell more boxes of figs to resellers. I will show you my incredible Nostradamus skills. In a couple of years there will still be weightlifters a plenty at very low prices on bricklink while Spartans will be almost impossible to find and at very high prices. Why did those resellers buy all of those weightlifters? So they could sell the Spartans at a premium and make money. TLC sold tons of unwanted figs due to the proportions of figs available per case. Thus they made more money. According to my distribution schema, the people who buy the most figs would have the most made for them. You find that controversial? That would make the figs just like every other product TLG makes. They make more product for the stuff that sells well. Crazy idea huh? Did you just type that? I would say "at the very least" you do see army building as a problem. Is this the reason for your hostility towards me? Well now I know why you were so angry. However, you shouldn't have had a problem with me. I never suggested at all that we should be able to tell what kind of figs are in the packages. In fact I don't think many people would care nearly as much as they do now if the figs all had a similar value when trading and reselling them. You should be on my side in this arguement because the only way people won't care about what is in the package is if they can easily trade what they don't want for what they do at a relatively equal value. The only way to achieve this is if the figs are produced and distributed at somewhere near their actual demand. As long as supply and demand are not balanced people will do anything they can to get the figs they want because they know they will not be easily traded or sold. I don't want TLG to cater to my favorites and never suggested that they should. I said they should cater to the demand on the market. Facts are that figs that are gobbled up in huge numbers I.E. army building are the ones that are hard to find and have high prices. Why was it silly? Because they were wrong! Simple as that. I was laughing at the mere mention on the forums that the fisherman was going to be rare and highly sought after. I knew then as did some others that the 2 per package does not come close to the effect that army builders have on the market. The fisherman is not in high demand and it is not rare by any means whatsoever. Even at 2 per box there were plenty to be found. I can find them every time I go to a store. Elves/Spartans not so much. I looked through about 200 packages of series 2 yesterday at the LEGO Discovery center here in Chicago. Every single fig was available in many multiples except not a single Spartan. I think fans would be happiest if they knew the figure they were buying had some value after it was bought. Who wants to pick out a magician or a race car driver that immediately loses more than half of its value when you purchase it. You would have to trade 6 or more of them to get one army building fig from anyone who remotely knows their value. And let me tell you this a lot of kids know perfectly well which figs are valuable and hard to come by. They are looking for elves and spartans just like the AFOLs. As far as a Fanboy defense, using little if any logic, (confusing my arguements with others you have read on this thread) your post is just rank.

I bet if we grease up that carriage and get a good running start it would make it through! The weapons are dark bley because they were never designed for the kingdoms anyway. They were designed for one of the games and TLG made good use of them by releasing them in kingdoms as well. I would guess what we have seen is very close to the final product.

Good point and a distinct possibility. The carriage is a 6 wide construction but the wheels extend out another full stud atleast on each side. It might fit through the gate but the wheels will definately have to ride up on the side supports of the drawbridge! Perhaps it would be best if the King just got out and walked in the castle? As for the discussion of the dragon knight with the barding. I understand people wanting many multiples of that piece. I do too. I for one am glad that it was not put into a $50 or $100 set like the lions barding was. Worse yet the best barding (IMHO the silver barding) from the dragon prison is in a set that has 365 parts for $50. Not the best bang for your buck in the first place. Also the black panels included in it are pretty useless to me. I don't really build black castles. I will get many multiples of the dragon knights barding when it comes out. As for the lion knights barding... I'm just gonna keep hoping for a jousting set and hope the silver barding is the one they include in it and hope it isn't too expensive. That is a lot of hoping!

I know which figs are going to be most popular... just like I knew it in all of the past series. It is not rocket science. It has little to do with the quality of the fig or the number of parts or even the new molds. In this series it is the Viking, Musketeer, and perhaps the sailor. To a lesser extent the Football and Hockey players. I can't believe people are still confused about this? You put a hundred collectors in a room and ask which figs they want. In general you will get a good mix with a variety of demand. Then you ask how many of those figs they want. Almost all of the 100 people will want the Kimono girl. (it is a great fig!) but noone will want more than a couple. Several Kimono girls all looking exactly the same is about all you want. Most of the 100 people will also want a viking. However, there will be 10 collectors that want a hundred vikings or more each. The demand for that fig just went 10 times all of the other cool figs. Why? Army builders can use hundreds or thousands of minifigs in the exact same uniform. I predict that just like in the previous series when the distribution of figs is released the army building figs will have minimal representation in the case. Just as in the past the LEGO group will try to drive up the price of a few figs to increase sales of all of the rest. This greedy practice has many bad consequences. Collectors and secondary market sellers will pick through boxes so that those figs will be harder to get for the average fan. There will be hard feelings about this and disappointed fans and children. I feel that a box of 60 figs should contain two complete sets of the series. One for keeping and one for trading. I think the remaining 28 figs should have come from the army building figs. I define an army building fig one that someone would want in multiples larger than 10.

I am very late to the game on this thread. I have a couple of complete sets of series 3 and now have 30 elves as well. I am a castle collector and have thousands of castle minis. I am collecting these for myself and not for resale. I read through the entire thread over a period of several hours because I wanted to see what other peoples take was on the army collecting figs. In this series the elf obviously is the offending figure. I saw a lot of arguements on both sides over should purchases be random or not. Should the bags have identifying marks on them? Should people buy up all of the figs they want leaving none of certain figs for anyone else coming in to buy them? I really didn't see any arguements that come from my point of view. Before the first series was even available anyone with half a brain knew that the army building figs would draw prices on the secondary market much higher than the other figs. All of the arguements on this thread were a result of a rarity caused by the lack of certain figures. Namely figures people army build with. The fact is that no matter how cool a figure is very few are needed in multiples in the tens, hundreds, or even thousands. However, one person building an army of hundreds can throw demand for certain figs completely off. There would be no arguing, no unhappy children, etc. if the figures were available more in line with demand. I place the blame for rarity of army building figs and all of the subsequent problems squarely on the LEGO company. If a kid wanted a spartan or elf and couldn't find one, I feel the LEGO company denied them access to the figure by creating a rarity of the figure. This was done so they could drive sales of the unwanted figures and make more money. To blame consumers who desire a product and are doing there best to purchase what they want is ridiculous. To even blame the secondary market for buying up the figs is silly. The secondary market wouldn't be profitable if people were able to get the figs they wanted at retail prices. TLG are the only ones who had a say in production and packaging and all responsibility rides with them. I feel that a box of 60 figs should contain two complete sets of the series. One for keeping and one for trading. I think the remaining 28 figs should have come from the army building figs. I define an army building fig one that someone would want in multiples larger than 10. In series one Forestman, Ninja, Indian, and Zombie. Perhaps the spaceman and robot as well. In series 2 only the Spartan really fits the definition. In series 3 the Elf, Samurai, and maybe the cyborg qualify and the prices on bricklink show I am right. All the talk about the fisherman being too rare is silly. It may be the rarist fig but demand for it is just normal and it balances out. The price of the fisherman is at retail on bricklink. The elf is going for 2.5 to 3 x retail prices. 5 racecar drivers with the exact same uniform per case? What a joke. You won't even be able to give them away. If you think TLC didn't know exactly what they were doing when they put out this product then you are really naive. Don't get me wrong. I love all of the collectable figs. I love LEGO products. But I hate to see AFOLs turn on one another for a problem that our favorite company started. We should be holding them accountable not the fans of their products.

In his best Ron Burgundy voice... I love Castle. I love Castle. Castley, castle, castle. Here it goes. Down into my belly. Mm mm mm...

I guess I am kinda crazy but I will get approximately 4 mills, 2 carriages, about 15 prison sets, and 10 or so blacksmiths. However I will wait to get 20% off during Brickworld for the purchase. I might get one of each on the day of release to write some reviews. I can't wait to feed the chickens and pet the goats!

Elander I understand your desire and even share interest in this period of history. LEGO will not do historical sets from that era for the very reason they will not do a church moc. The crusades are all about religion and the killing that was done in its name. Generic forestmen raiding from the king and giving to the poor is very workable, but what you are asking is outside anything LEGO has ever done in the past. TLG does not replicate historical castles even ones not involved with the crusades. Why? To do so with a $100.00 limit on parts would be an insult. You can barely even build an accurate keep with $100.00 worth of parts and likely designers wouldn't even be able to include minifigs. Such a product wouldn't sell very well. The best we can hope for is an expensive UCS castle that is more realistic than the current castles we recieve and geared toward AFOLs. I would desire such a product and I think LEGO would seriously consider it. Personally I am glad LEGO will never try these type of products. Even though I would really enjoy them, it would be controversial at best and possibly catastrophic for long term sales. The long term health of the company is more important to me than a few sets I would like to see released.