Echo

Eight bags and five books (Packaged with cardboard!) for the base and four bags and two books for the mobile HQ. Getting started on the mobile HQ now.

Got the base and mobile HQ at TRU today. I'll build them tonight and let you guys know how they are.

Got Tremor and Toxikita. Building Toxikita now. FYI, her copter is Keetongu yellow, not plain yellow.

It is just unfortunate that none of the helicopter pilot minifigures are wearing a hat similar to MacReady's.

Anyone seen the show yet?

Glad to see Agents return. I never got any of the originals because the heroes were a bit too gaudy for my taste, but this more subdued suit-based look is much better. Probable purchase.

This set has had me very concerned ever since I first saw clear pictures of it. It appeared just to be a tiny stunted tower with a stand for the dragon attached to it. So when I found it at TRU, I must admit that my expectations were quite low. I love LEGO wizards so I had to get it, but I was very afraid that I was wasting my money on everything that was not the wizard figure. So how does it measure up? Let's find out. This is 70403 Dragon Mountain. (376 pieces, $49.99. I don't know the price in other currencies.) First up is the box. I love the box art for this theme. Brilliant backgrounds and I love the gold brick bits. Box back. Nice again. Minifig art on the sides. Everything right out of the box. We'll start with the figs. The figs are spread out throughout the bags. Somewhat odd. First are the lion knights. I like these dudes well enough. Back and double sided printing on the knight's head. The dragon knight and the princess. The dragon dude is solid. The princess is well done. I like the use of the Friends hairpiece to allow for use of a tiara. Back printing and double sided heads. And here is the guy I bought the set for: the dragon wizard. Big fan. I love his black Sensei Wu beard. His big freaking staff is kinda cool too. Without the gear. His head has been used on other dragon knights in the theme, but it looks especially good on the wizard. His robe looks all evil and metal, with his big freaking dragon necklace, evil potions, and skeleton of some little creature. Awesome. Back. The dragon. I don't have my Fantasy Era dragon readily available for a comparison, but this guy seems very similar. The much discussed fire chin. Yeah, the fire comes out of a hole in his chin, not his mouth. That is the silliness, but other than that, I like him. I personally prefer this type of dragon to the Ninjago brick built dragons. I guess this will be a love/hate sort of thing for people. Random instruction page. Nice looking and good color contrast. Bag one contents. The catapult. Brilliant. After the very poor dragon knight siege engines from the other sets, this is a breath of fresh air. A decently constructed and relatively realistic looking siege weapon. Nice. Bag two. The princess and dragon soldier are in this one. The first tower part. It's a smaller prison tower atop a ruined something. The ruined bit. Looks nice. The stairs are cool. Mouse and mouse hole are funny. The top of the tower. Evil red crystal thing on it. Perhaps this a lighthouse? Probably not. HOLY MEGABLOKS A FURNISHED INTERIOR?! Amazing! I adore this! Anyways, as a whole, my opinion on this part is mixed. The bottom bit with the interior is nice looking and well constructed and the very top bit with the crystal is nice, but overall, it's too small.This was the issue I had with this set when I first saw it. The tower looked far too small and underdeveloped. The furnished bottom helps to alleviate this concern, but the smallness remains. Not my favorite part of the set. On to the third and final bag. The dragon platform completed. I like this bit better than the other side. Solid angular build with well utilized LURPS. The wizard has a laboratory behind a spider web here. Clever skeleton leg torch and, once again, I'm just happy to see a room in a castle set furnished. Treasure chest containing four coins and a gold bar attached to two dark tan 2x2 jumper plates out front. Why it is there is a mystery to me. A trap of some sort? If that is the case, it is a stupid trap indeed. The purpose of this area of the set is to give the dragon a place to stand. I guess it works fine for that. The bridge section to connect the two larger parts. And a catapult because we have to have catapults EVERYWHERE. Oh well. At least we're past '05 KK where they were mounting catapults on freaking horses. I like the ten red slope pieces we get in this set. (Not going to bother looking up what they're called.) Other side. Princess locked up. Big issue with this bridge that I forgot to photograph. One cannot cross from one side to the other using it because the tower is right next to the bridge, preventing passage over to the tower's side. I think you can see well enough in this picture though. And this one illustrates it too. Man, I just LOVE having furnished interiors, even if they are sparse and basic. Complete set. Empty tower. Extra parts. Notables are an extra new mold sword and light bley visor. So my opinion on the set. It's not as bad as I feared. I had extremely low expectations for this set and they were exceeded pretty easily. The lion knights' catapult is great, the figs are very solid, and the lower levels are well done. Still though, I don't feel that I got my money's worth. I know the price is inflated because of the dragon, but even considering that, this is underwhelming. It seems very small and feeble for a evil villain's lair. The wizard is a well designed villain who looks legitimately intimidating and menacing, but he gets this little outpost? No. This should be more impressive than it is. People often compare this theme to Kingdoms, and to illustrate my point, I shall do so as well by comparing it to 7947 Prison Tower Rescue, the Kingdoms set that involved two good guys trying to rescue a princess from two bad guys in their evil tower. The difference is pretty readily apparent. 7947 is a much larger and more imposing set. With the big gate, impressive height, and cohesive colors and design, it looks the part of the evil lair. 70403 falls well short of this, and it is unfortunately because of the issues I initially had with the set. While I like the idea of the villain's HQ being built on the ruins of an old structure and while the bottom sections are my favorite parts of the set, they are also the set's undoing. The more eye-catching black and red parts are a small part of the set in comparison to the greys and dark tan, making the main tower part look outright diminutive. I'd even go so far as to say the the proper tower section looks like a $12 set that someone stuck on top of the foundation of some other set. It looks puny and silly. It doesn't help that the set's mass is divided between the tower part and the dragon platform section, which spreads out the parts and increases the appearance of smallness. The catapult and dragon are nice, but in my opinion, they shouldn't be in this set. They take away valuable parts and plastic that should have gone to bulking up the main feature. The design flaws of the bridge to nowhere and the treasure chest out in the open don't help either. On the positive side of things, the figures are all excellent, the dragon is nice, and the catapult is surprisingly well designed, but that is not enough to save this set. Unless you can get it on sale, I do not recommend this set, and even if you do get it for cheap, don't expect much. Despite the nice figures and catapult, I'm afraid I must give this a 4/10. This is a decidedly below average set and a very feeble attempt at a villainous base. There are some nice parts and it is nice to see a furnished castle set, but the design is very disappointing. Take the money you would have spent on this set and go use it on The Gatehouse Raid and Forest Ambush instead, or if you want a good evil tower, go Bricklink 7947.

I'm not going to post a full review of the castle, but I will say that I quite like it. I am having difficulty displaying it though because the Dragon knights have no siege engines. The catapult from the Gatehouse Raid is laughable and the battering ram/catapult hybrid from the castle is only slightly better. I would have preferred a large siege tower to the very underwhelming looking Dragon Mountain. At least the Dragon dudes would be able to mount something of decent assault then.

Just got the castle. I'm at Star Trek right now, but I'll try to get a review up later.

I don't own it, but from what I can see in the pictures, the Kingdoms castle has about the same amount of pre-fab wall pieces as the 2013 castle. Heck, I own a fair amount of '90s castle sets and they use pre-fab walls too.

i wish people would stop comparing the new castle to KK2. Have you guys forgotten what KK2 was like? This new stuff is NOTHING at all like KK2. I also can't fathom why everyone is so negative about the new castle when it is so incredibly similar to the Kingdoms castle that everyone has put on a pedestal. The only things that one can really say are <insert that tiresome argument> in comparison are the blue cheese wedges, but that isn't a major part of the design or structure. (I will admit that the Kingdoms castle's tower is better though.)

I like the castle well enough, but one thing that really bugs me is the "throne room." That looks incredibly awkward. The king is just perched on an open platform that he gets to via a ladder? Uh, no. That will need to be fixed. Anyone have any opinions on how to integrate the Gatehouse Raid into the castle?

I talked to an employee at TRU today and he said that Chima is simply not selling. That is just one store of course, but...

This is my first review and I'm afraid that it is lacking some of the pictures you may be used to in Eurobricks review, but I was ill-equipped to do anything more in-depth at the time. Anyway, 70401 Gold Getaway ($19.99, 199 pieces.) is the latest in the long line of LEGO Castle sets involving prison wagons and/or wagon robberies, both of which are occurring in this specific set. So how has LEGO fared in this latest attempt? Let's find out! We'll start with an overview of the full set, which includes the baddies' prison wagon, a small turret, a ballista, and three minifigures. Here are the figures. No leg printing or double-sided heads on any of them. The two good guys have very widespread heads while the baddie has a new head. I like the torso prints a lot for all of them, especially the baddie. I also like the baddie's shield a great deal and the good guys' lion heraldry is growing on me, although it is inferior to the Kingdoms lion knights' heraldry. Back printing for them all. The baddie without his helmet. Next is the small turret. Not a fan. Just some random light bley castle parts and two blue cheese wedges tossed together. This and the ballista are the irrelevant throw away parts of this set. Back of turret. At least it has a frog. I like the frog mold. Here is the flick fire ballista. Not much to say. The flick fire missile works, but the weapon itself is meh. Two more missiles are stored on the back. The ballista can probably be pulled by a horse. Now on to the main attraction. The wagon is very nice. It's the proper size and the red cheese wedges on the top help it fit the dragon motif without being overly silly. I like the padlock printing on the flat 1x1 gold round disk on the door as well. I think the gunmetal wheels are new. The wagon has an action feature. See the dark bley axle there? Push it and it fires the flick fire missile part from the inside of the wagon... ...Which is attached to the chain keeping the door closed, thus allowing the prisoner to escape. There is a treasure chest on the back attached by two 2x2 black jumper plates. It can be removed and opened to reveal seven gold pieces and three gems. The removal on the chest creates an opening in the back of the wagon big enough for the prisoner to escape from. Unfortunate for the baddies. Overall, this is a decent set. The build is nothing very interesting and there isn't much in the way of interesting parts, but the figures are good, the price/piece ratio is excellent, and the final build, at least of the wagon, is solid. I give it a 6/10, which seems a bit low, but if we are to assume that five represents an average set, six is pretty accurate. It is a somewhat above average set that is a decent representation of this type of model. If you are a castle fan, I'd recommend picking this one up.

Got Gold Getaway and Forest Ambush at TRU today. The employee I talked to said to check back in about a week for the rest. I'll get a review of Gold Getaway up later.

LEGO.com says that 200 have been found so far.

Look who I found at Target today!

I've been rather underwhelmed by the Chima sets I've gotten, but I adore that gorilla mech. I'll certainly be getting that.

I am having a very difficult time finding flaw with this theme. When it is over, I think it may end up being one of the most overall solid themes I can think of. The only other thing I can think of that I'd like is a $200-$300 super ship or base released late this fall to send the theme out on a bang, like LEGO did with the MF Haunted House and the MMV.

The standard soldiers appear to have crown emblems on their torsos rather than the KK2 lion facing forward emblem seen on the shields, so it should be pretty easy to simply replace their shields with Crownie shields. That would probably look quite nice.

The guy driving the carriage does appear to have a white head, red eyes, and fangs. I hope that they are indeed vampires rather than regular guys or skellies. A vampire army would be awesome.

Damn. I think I'll get all of these.

Also, everyone should stop comparing this to King Leo's Castle. I own King Leo's Castle, and it's totally different from this in every possible design aspect other than somewhat similar heraldry.

All of this moaning and whining is unjustified. Yeah, it's probably not as good as Kingdoms, but only by a little bit. I think it looks like standard LEGO castle at it's most prototypical. Is it new and exciting? Hardly. Does it suck? Certainly not.

Does anyone know how Monster Fighters did financially?