DaleDVM

Thanks Brickster for the review! I thought this set was a simple little build and makes a nice parts pack to improve the King's castle. The catapult is pretty well built as well. It does lack for ladders and other small details. Obviously the figs are great! I definately like all of the bling included in the set. It comes with a ton of cheese wedges in dark green, red, and pearl gold! These are the first pearl gold cheese wedges made by Lego. The two dragon shields are a big plus but I would have liked just one for the Lions as well. It looks like your figure suffers from the pinkish issue? Mine from this set looked good but the other sets had more of a pinkish hue. How does it look in real life?

Thanks to everyone for their nice comments. The large metaparts or POOPs or whatever you call them have gotten smaller than they were in the past. I am thankful those parts are more useful than past panels included in these castles. I think the walls on this castle look more decorative than most past lego castles. Even the classics had panel upon panel with no bricks in between. As for the horses, yes they are lacking. I think the LEGO company was trying to meet the demands for the castle design before adding in a lot of extras. Whether this set is a good value can be debated but its design seems to be a pure win in my opinion. Comparing this set to the Medieval Market Village is not very fair. That was a set designed for AFOLs with children more as an afterthought. Castle theme sets are geared directly at younger children but still obviously have a lot of appeal to us adults. You could not build a large castle like this at $100 USD using small pieces like those included in the MMV. yOu could probably build one very detailed tower using parts like taht but that may not be as attractive to the target audience.

Good call Fenrir. Yes it is due to the white printing on red plastic. The red showing through a little. It doesn't matter what angle you look at them it is still pinkish. Both of the styles of horse barding suffers from the same problem as well. The shields also appear to have thin paint, but since they are on a light bley piece it doesn't bleed through. The flag piece is white so only the red is painted on. As was mentioned earlier the jester does not have this problem at all. The print job on him looks great! I don't think the new figs look bad. In fact I think they look really good. The sad part is that they could have looked fantastic.

Brought to you by popular demand. The photos are now in medium flickr settings. I kept them small originally because not all sites allow for 500 wide photos on the forums. Luckily it was easier to change than I thought. Thanks for all of the comments and I hope you all enjoy the new sets!

It does have a classic feel to it but I wanted to let everyone make that judgement for themselves. The porticullis goes up and down incredibly smoothly! I would never have guessed it with such a simple gear mechanism. It did impress me. There are some pics of the backs of the gatehouse and towers in my flickr account. The gatehouse has a narrow ledge and actually a little table with a cup. With a couple of long plates this area of the castle could be improved quite a bit. If you know your classics well, I can get full fledged nerdy on you. The gatehouse interior is about as good as the original King's Castle 6080. It is not as good as the Black Monarch's Castle or Black Knights Castle gatehouses which I consider the best ever built for roominess. However, this is the first gatehouse to actually hide a porticullis since 1995 in the Royal Knight's Castle 6090. And IMHO it is much better that the one in the Royal Knight's Castle. Again Kudos to TLG. I think if we want castles to continue improvement in design and completeness they will have to stay small or break over the $100 USD point.

That would be correct. I went back and looked at my Royal Knights for a comparison. Definately more pinkish than those old mini-figs. I think the Dragon Knights have similar amounts of paint or ink but it is not noticable as the pale green is not really comparable to anything. The white stands out and is noticable. Thanks for pointing it out Username. I remember the white issue being discussed in the past but forgot to mention it in the review as that was months ago.

I was glad to be able to purchase all 7 of the new sets on the first day of the Kingdoms release. I jumped right in and started building the King’s Castle as it had most of the new pieces I was eager to check out. All of the pictures are links and there are some extra photos from other angles at my flickr account. There are photos of the stickers on the account as well. I apologize for not putting them on for this review. I didn’t want to put them on at this time as I do want to MOC with these pieces soon. Stats: King’s Castle Set # 7946 Parts 933 Mini-figs 5 Lion Knights and 3 Dragon Knights Price $99.99 USD At the store I noted the back of the box had photos of the play features included with the castle. It also showed several configurations you could arrange the castle in. I was excited as this set appears to be very modular and shows flexibility for expansions! The side showing the new minis. They are mostly smiling so maybe the weapons are just for show? Three instruction manuals. One big one and two smaller ones. I don’t remember ever getting different sized manuals in the same set? It needs to be said, I don’t get around very much and it isn’t all about size anyway… The instruction manual has different configurations of the castle as well. The all important parts list. Look at all that good stuff. Some new pieces surprised me! I only included photos of new stuff not seen before. I like the new wall piece in light bley, I think it will be much more useful. I didn’t get any pirate sets last year so I was excited. 16 are included in the set. A 2x4 red brown tile. 8 of the 1x3 dark bley tiles. 10 of the new 1x2 cheese wedge pieces in dark bley. 1 red 2x2 tile with a center stud. 2 of the new tiny catapult pieces. The modified bricks with the slots for the portcullis have been changed a bit as well. I noticed the new door a couple of days ago in the high res pics. It is thicker and sturdier than the old door. The hinges are definitely more stiff as well as the door no longer swings open very easily. I like this so my doors will stay open and or closed on my MOCs when I travel with them. Aesthetically I like the old doors better. The thickness at the edges of the door seem to be wrong in some way. I think I will put in a bricklink order for some older doors. The new diagonal corner panel took me by surprise. I am not sure how stable this new configuration is going to be. The lack of connection slots at the bottom of the piece makes the front of the panel look smoother so it looks nice. It is more open on the back side which might allow for a little more flexibility in use. The new window tile will allow for centering a window in a 2 stud space. I will find this very useful but I wish it was a full brick thickness and not a panel. The new portcullis is more bulky than I thought it would be. It seems to be rougher as well. I like the articulations but not the texture of it. Note the strength of the lion soldier to hold it up all by himself. Obviously he took safety into account as he is holding the sharp points away from his body! The new octagonal plates could be very useful for adding stability to towers. Interesting that a hole was included right in the center. That could be a useful feature. The lions, their king, and the king’s trusty steed. The horse barding is incredible. Mr. Ed would have bought himself an outfit like this with his fees from residuals. The figs look great and there is a nice variety of torsos too. Sorry to announce that the king has the same torso and legs as the prince character in the advent calendar. At least the prince has a different face and hair? The ever outnumbered but brave dragon knights. One of each torso is very nice (except for the Mad Max chain torso). I really like the dragon logo on the armor and torsos. I can’t even describe how beautiful the new dark pearl is. It is an amazing color for armor and weapons. My only wish is that we got more of it! I am a fan of the new great helm as well. The printed armor is just great, and as an extra bonus it covers that chain heavy torso very well! This shows the completion of step 2 and the interesting design to make the gate go up and down. Using tiles attached to the portcullis they designed a simple geared mechanism to a set of spinning levers. Step 3 adds the gatehouse and the drawbridge mechanism. The mechanism is similar to Kings Castle Siege in design which I like. It is much more attractive with a proper gatehouse on top! Kudos to TLG. Step 4 makes the corner towers and Step 5 the side walls of the castle. I like the battlements on the towers better in person than they look in the photos. The towers are wide and minis can actually move around on them. I am not a fan of the random placement of cheese wedge pieces. I would put them either on all of the merlons or none of them. Something easily fixed with some extra parts. Of note is how the walls when put together fit seamlessly and create a repeating pattern of wall panels in light bley and slopes in dark bley. You could repeat this as often as wanted to create quite a large castle. A decorative yet simple repeating pattern that doesn’t give you the ugly grey wall syndrome. The back wall has this same design as do the walls extending from the gatehouse. I hope TLG has modular expansion in mind for the Kingdom’s castles! Step 6 is the keep. I love the fact that it has a door. The upper floor is open on the back for playability but I wish it was closed for increased defense. The decorative elements are nice. Step 7 is the tall tower. I think this is absolutely stunning looking. The roof is completely solid as they included filler bricks. The door and the two windows look incredible. This section is also open on the upper levels in back for playability but that could be changed if you like with a few bricks. The throne and treasure chest are standard fair for any castle. Thanks to the LEGO Group for 8 of those 75 degree double convex slopes. Those were over a dollar a piece on bricklink. Step 8 is the rear wall with the escapable prison cell. The removable wall piece has a convenient handle on it for those incredibly strong minis I mentioned earlier. And here she is all together. There are more photos of the completed model from several angles and the insides at my flickr page. There are a lot of new parts in this series… some of which I didn’t see coming at all. I am not sure of the last time the LEGO Group changed so many staple parts in a theme at the same time. Possibly they never have. There are new wall panels, corner panels, window panels, doors, large octagonal plates, a new portcullis, and corresponding slot bricks. New accessories including the great helm, barding, horn, and several classic castle accessories in a stunning new (dark pearl) color. The new decorative elements (cheese, and tiles) are very useful across themes and there are plenty of them included as well. I am really excited to try MOCing with these new pieces! The build took a couple of hours plus a couple of hours playing with the new features and taking pictures. The castle is a bit smaller than the King’s Castle Siege. I really like that this is a solid castle with no real defensive weaknesses. The enemy couldn’t just walk into the place like some past castle sets not worth mentioning. Like most castle fans I imagine the gatehouse is a big plus for me. It is a narrow gatehouse that really can’t hold mini-figs but it is better than no gatehouse. The keep and tower are what make this a classic for me. The doors and windows and a large sloping tower roof really make this a beautiful set. The design has no glaring weaknesses and that is really saying something! It has been quite a while since I could say that about a large castle. I think this set is beautiful with some great mini-figs and accessories. The parts are most useful to castle but light bley is used in most themes. I would highly recommend this set to all castle fans. Non-castle fans could probably find more useful parts elsewhere but don't let that stop you!

The Kingdoms sets are available at the Schaumburg LEGO store here in the Chicago area. Just went on the shelves a few hours ago. It looks like we have a USA release date and that is today!

I am really looking forward to Brickworld this year. It sounds like there are going to be a lot of interesting events going on. I just hope that my MOC doesn't fall apart this year so I can actually partake in all of the grand festivities! Thanks for all of work everyone does to make this event so great. In 2008 it was the first convention I ever went to. I was absolutely blown away! In 2009 the quality jumped so high I was blown away all over again! I look forward to meeting you Hinckley. Stash2sixx "Adam" says good things about you.

Sweet Sassy Molassy! That printed hat and tile look awesome! I really like the leg printing as well. Black beard and all this is a great little set.

Don't get me wrong. I love the set and my 11 year old nephew likes it too. But he has also already pointed out that the carriage "won't keep that lion guy in" in his words. For playability's sake, I think the escape could have been managed by the knight coming to the rescue. I think kids are a bit more sophisticated than we often give them credit for. Kids are so darn tricky... Thanks again KimT for the great review and for your time. I love that you respond to just about all posts and questions.

Thanks Kim T for the preview/review. Also thanks for the follow up answers and parts pics. Those were what I was waiting for. The prison carriage is a great little set. Most of the draw comes from the great minifigs and accessories. The armored torso on the lion knight is incredible and leg printing to match. This fig is not very customizable but it just looks great. I would never want to cover that up torso with Euroarmor. The prisoners torso is the most versatile of the bunch and a change in arm color can make this guy part of any faction you would like. I like the head printing and two of these are completely new to the castle line. The accessories... The great helm with red plume and black spear I really like. A shield from each faction! The helmet with neck protector and a sword in dark metallic grey. Yummy! The horse, the barding, and horn are fantastic. The only accessory missing in this set is a saddle for the horse to increase playability. The carriage build is rather simple and has really big flaws for holding a prisoner. There are no bars between the cage and the guy driving the cart. Maybe you can put the screaming head on the driver and his head on the prisoner who is choking him. Or perhaps he will just climb right out of the top. Now I understand making a proper carriage at this price point is probably impossible, but... all of the flaws in the carriage design could have been covered up by just including a pair of handcuffs. The open design would not matter if you cuffed the guy to the bars. Why didn't TLG think of that? To TLG: I am available for consultation on future sets. The parts included are great for MOC use. Mostly made of plates this is a great set for small pieces. You can never get enough of the telescope in dark brown, flames, or dark green wedges for landscaping. The gold cheese wedges are new and perfect for dressing up those old crownie strongholds! The modified brick with clip in dark green is new as well, not as useful perhaps but new all the same. All of this in a $10 USD set. Fantabulous IMHO and a good value since decked out figs go for $3 a piece and horses for $1 or more. Overall I would give the prison carriage a 4 out of 5. I, of course, will be buying in multiples. Enjoy everyone!

I do agree that the dragon knight is a bit heavy on the chainage... I don't think they look evil but a bit on the fantasy side. I would like that scale mail very much if the chains weren't included. The front and back printing is fantastic. I am glad for this change with minifigs. I like the face printing and the new great helm is very nice. The weapons in the dark metallic are a welcome sight. A shield for the dragon knight would have been a nice addition. I find the tiny catapult and weapons stand decent designs. I certainly like the wheels on the catapult. The part selection is great and I find all of those small pieces very useful. I love all of the plates that we get and some choco brown slopes as well. I like the new bucket for the catapult. The old version was way too big for most applications. The smaller one will look much better especially when TLG puts catapults right on the castle walls. And we all know how TLG likes catapults on those castles. I noticed that the fulcrum is very close to the bucket on this new part. We will only be able to make small catapults with the new piece. I am not quite sure if another use for this part has been found but it should be easier than MOCing with the old one. I would give this set a 4 out of 5 mostly for the figs and good part selection.

I am quite disappointed in the makup of the battle packs. I would like to see the archer torso for the dragon knights and definately the great helm on one of the lion knights. Last but not least one piece of euro armor with the lion knights would be fantastic.

It is possible these factions may yet see more sets released late in the year or next year. Remember this is just the start of Kingdoms. I agree it would be nice to have a ready supply of those printed pieces of armor. If you do not have access to the battlepacks I am sorry. I did look at your profile but you have no location listed. Living in Chicago I have access to 4 LEGO stores and a LEGO discovery center. I also hit stores in other cities when I visit and or go to conventions. I must admit I am lucky in my access to LEGO products. IMHO one thing is certain... the battlepacks are not overpriced. $3 per figure loaded with accessories is pretty reasonable. On the topic of the wizard in the calendar. I do agree that a red wizard would have been nice. However, I would have preferred a white wizard. Oh... how sweet that would look!

Very nice armies Asterios. I do like the heads with only chain and no helmets. I wish they made more of those type of heads so we could make armies with different faces. The factions look very accurate. I feel like I am watching Kingdom of Heaven. "God Wills It!"

I do agree that the lack of a mounted Knights in the sets and especially for the Dragon faction is disappointing. TLG has never released more than a couple of the euro armor pieces in a single set. I suppose you could ask for more but it sounds like you are saying this years sets are lacking. Historically it is pretty consistent with past castle sets. Also the dragon battlepack comes with a piece of chest armor. I find any complaints that there are not enough dragon soldiers is kind of silly considering you can buy one battlepack to make up the difference. I give TLG props for letting us buy battle packs so we can reach any balance of soldiers from each side that we like. I also wish the dragons had a large oval shield. There are 2 grill helms in the lions battle pack. I have a feeling you haven't seen the battle packs yet... they are on page 49 of this thread. The new wizard is interesting. His coloring is a throwback to Majisto. I don't mind the lack of torso printing since the beard mostly covers it anyway. However, a cape would dress him up a bit and give him a little more flare.

Thank you for the photos. Upon closer inspection, I'm not sure I like the dragon knights torso. A little heavy on the chains if you ask me. Since this line is adhering to a more historic look, this torso looks very "fantasy" to me. I will have uses for the torso but IMO it doesn't look proper for a historic human faction.

Yes that is the set with the flick fire missile. I couldn't even tell what that attack cart was supposed to be. I can only assume it was a medieval rocket launching device. I got em on clearance too. 30 of them and now I have a gaggle of cart wheels. Shows you how bad this set really was since everyone was able to buy them at half price. I hope TLG learns from this and starts to make the small builds something people would actually want.

Yes the advent calendar is going to be a must buy. I also like the idea of putting exclusives into the calendar as long as it available widely. This new castle line just gets better and better.

I do agree with you that the hinges do allow some flexibility. I definately like having castles built with angles other than 90 degrees so hinges would be apropriate. If they went that route on one castle line and kept this line with the straight additions that would be OK by me. Hinges are not too tough to add to a castle if needed. I was just pointing out that the current castle really looks as if they are looking to incorporate our modularity ideas. I just hope they give us add ons at some point. I don't think buying two of a wall section is such a big deal if they keep all of the additional sets the same length and they also offer a cheap plain wall section. One thing I noted with my Black Monarchs Castle when I opened it up is you needed quite a bit of castle wall to close it back up again. However, that was built on large baseplates and not the smaller plates they are using today. I didn't try to expand the troll fortress. Fred has comfirmed some of my worries. I know comparing castle, to trains, to Star wars, really just doesn't work. The failure to sell the trains does not absolutely correspond to modular castles we are discussing here. But the Lego group does take note of these things. I just don't think generic looking castles and modules will sell well to kids. We absolutely need the kids to buy up the sets so we can keep castle going and going. I still think selling castle modules to expand the Lion knight castle could sell really well and still give us most of what we want. Perhaps at a later date they could sell the conversion pack to change the roof color of the castle and some shields, flags, cheese wedges, needed to convert the castle at a reasonable price. One thing TLG should certainly do is put pictures on the back of the packaging about how the castle modules go together and expand your castle. Put on a slogan like "Add this armory to your castle to increase the defenses" or "Expand your castle to hold more troops with this castle wall section" Kliq I can't agree enough with you about the lone tower. Why not make it tie in with the castle? Again, put a photo of it added to the castle on the back and it will sell better. I know we AFOLs can MOC the tower into the castle but kids like to be shown that they can do this easily. The port in the skeleton ship attack was not easy to add to KCS either. A real waste of an opportunity if you ask me. The carts and terrible builds are a sore point with me as well. How about that troll impulse from a couple of years back. EEKS! I have to admit I really liked the Skeleton Prison carriage. It was very well built and had the three undead horses to pull it along. I thought that might be a new direction they were going to go with carts/wagons but alas we are back to simple crappy ones again. I understand they are trying to keep these small sets within a certain price point. If that is the goal they should not get overzealous with what they are trying to build with those 20 bricks. Simple supply carts are what they should stick to when they are making really small sets. Prison carriages and transport wagons need to be a bit bigger and should be reserved for the 15-20 USD range. I would kiss some serious booty for a nice wagon pulled by two brown horses. AFOLs would buy in bunches just for the horses.

Don't get me wrong... I would buy up all of the modules everyone else is suggesting. I just don't think LEGO will do it nor do I think they should. Shelf space at most stores is at a premium. Walmart will not pick up a LEGO line that needs to be put on shelves in a group so a complete set could be made. Now such a line of products aimed at AFOLs and being a LEGO exclusive might work but they will likely not sell well amongst the younger crowd. A complete castle would likely end up costing $250.00 to $400.00 USD. I would personally love it but I don't think it would make LEGO a lot of money. Tyrant I think your first method is the tact that LEGO may take. However a castle with hinges is not the way to go IMHO. It is still too limited on the way the castle can be configured. I think you should take a look at the newest castle again in these photos. Castle 2010 You will note that the walls, gatehouse, towers, mini keep, are all seperate. They break apart in the middle of the double wide dark bley slope sections of the wall. Each section has a single thickness of the dark bley slopes at the end of that particular section. You will also note the double wide dark bley sloping part is repeated in the center of the wall sections making for a great looking repeating pattern. With this configuration you can build the wall sections as long as you would like before you put in a tower or other section. The pattern of light bley wall and dark bley slopes will repeat at regular intervals. I think the new 2010 castle is perfect for building a modular castle and I doubt TLG built it this way by chance. I think this is what TLG has planned over the next year. Now all they have to do is come out with the stables, armory, blacksmith, inn, etc. sections in future releases. Remember that Kings Castle Siege was available for three years in stores. I think this castle will also be available for a long time. As long as the line sells well I think TLG is planning on releasing sets to expand this castle. I will be one happy castle collector if they do. One of your ideas that I think TLG might be amenable to would be a castle conversion set. This would be an exclusive set from LEGO to convert the faction a castle belongs to. Including Flags, shields, decorations, and maybe even roofing pieces. This way they can still make castles more playable looking for the kids but also allowing us to change the color scheme of the castle later. A bag of pieces like this would be a low cost solution to the problems you mention without the risk of trying to sell neutral looking castle sets that kids may not take to.

As a collector of castle, (and as painful as this may sound) I have to admit to owning the entire KK line of sets. Less painful is talking about Vladek's Dark Fortress. IMHO the best large set of the Knights Kingdom era and that is including KKI and KKII. In fact this set and its expansion sets are the shining jewels in several years of sets made of coal. Set: The set is definately imposing as a wall. I was not quite able to make a great castle out of it. However, if you purchase a couple of the Dark Fortress Landing sets and the Scorpion Prison Cave they all went together very well making for one very large and highly defensive fortress. The construction of the base of all 3 of these sets is the same so they fit together rather seemlessly. A trend I hope LEGO starts again in the castle theme. Parts: Although made up of a lot of poop pieces this set came with some more interesting large parts. The BURP and mountaintop pieces are in brown and those are hard to find. The large sloping brick pieces are definately more aesthetically pleasing than most prefab pieces. The rest of the bricks with a lot of dark tan, dark red, and black are very useful. I also like the accessories, windows, lots of flags, this set has a lot of nice touches. Not including the ugly colored swords that came with the Jellies, the set comes with a large aray of weaponry and a lot of Pikes. Not the best castle parts set but overall not too bad either. Figs: As for figures the shadow knights and Vladek are some of my favorite figures in the castle line! The Jelly Beans... well... not so much. If you had a classic castle faction or the Crownies attacking this fortress with better designed siege weapons, this set would be one of the best of all time.

As an AFOL I absolutely love the modular castle idea. However, TLG seems to really strive for each set being playable right out of the box. I understand their thinking. When a child looks on a store shelf or opens a gift, TLG wants the set to be immediately recognizable as something a kid would want to play with. If it would take linking several sets together to make product playable it is less likely to sell. For the trains I could see this working a bit better since they are geared towards a slightly older audience. At the very least parents usually give guidance and help with train sets for their kids. This is because trains have to be built in a certain way to make sure they function. Also a train is playable whatever color you tend to make it. Castle is a theme almost completely aimed at children of a younger age. It may be possible to make wall or tower sections that are not faction specific but I can't imagine TLG selling them without any figures to make the set playable immediately. I imagine if they go with more modular castles they will stick with a big castle set and make small additions like the blacksmith shop, battering ram, guarded inn, siege tower, etc. sets they made back in the 80's. Even modualr sets like that would make me very happy.

Tyrant I like several of your ideas and some of the others as well. A lot of people write down ideas that just will never fly and wouldn't sell well at all. The most important aspect of any set has to be that it would be profitable for TLG or they will never make them. Remember the castle theme is mostly for kids and not AFOLs like us. I think that unless LEGO makes a copy of a real cathedral (like they have with other historic buildings) we should just come to grips they are not going to make religious buildings at all. Nor are they going to make crusader type of knights like the templars. It is much too controversial. A creator Castle could be very interesting and I would buy several as a great parts pack. I suppose this might be plausable although I am not sure of its "sellability" among non-castle fans. As for a modular castle, with smaller sets to make a larger castle. I think the new release is going in this direction already. Did you see how the walls and corner towers are put together? This new castle looks incredibly modular and I would be very surprised if future sets aren't going to be incorporated into the Lion's castle. This is a great idea and I think lego is already onto it. The minifig packs that you speak of in the original post do not sound like a good idea to me. Personally I like the battle packs they are already making. By having each faction have their own packs you can build up whichever faction you desire. Mixed packs force you into a certain ratio of figures in each faction. I especially hate any figure packs that put in characters like kings, princesses, wizards, etc. Those pirate packs just sucked... how many pirate captains do you need? Can you imagine how well a packs of red soldiers, blue soldiers, or nonspecific pirates would have sold if each had their own pack? My god lego couldn't have made enough of them! The retro castle packs could be of use, especially for those who have missed out on figures from the past. However, since I have about 4000 castle figures I would lose a lot of money because my older figures would become worth a lot less. Your specific set requests blacksmith, trade caravan, etc. all sound good to me. I really like the idea of making a large knights tournament set. I would like to see some peasants knights and squires. I would even like to see TLG make some tournament tents for the knights to stay in. This could also be a venue to bring back some old figures to be in the tournament. Having a tourny with 4 or more factions is better than just 2. It would be an expensive set with everything in it, but it would become an instant classic if done properly. I also like the idea of an expensive keep. For $100 USD you could make a very proper keep. However, it would likely make the regular castles look bad and I'm not sure LEGO would do that at all.