jodawill

It's obviously just a rough sketch, but it already looks 10 times better than the actual set. The biggest problem with the building was the proportions. Removing that railing completely helps a lot.

I'm not a fan of the pauldrons at all personally. They look comically large in my opinion. It's not a huge issue, obviously, because you can just choose not to use them. I think it would have been better to go with the foot soldier without them. Honestly, the black tournament helmet wouldn't have been a bad choice either - pretty much anything in black would have been ok. It's not the end of the world since you can change it, but I think that minifigure looks really silly on the box. The helmet is also an odd choice. I would have been excited to get it in black again, but even that wouldn't have really fit the Dragon Masters aesthetics. It's strange that they didn't take advantage of the pieces that are already available to bring back a proper Dragon Masters minifigure. It wouldn't have affected the budget whatsoever.

Yeah, I got mine too. I had to make several orders because the parts I needed to buy were all in stock at different times, so I didn't get the GWP. But I'm very happy to have finally gotten the rest of the classic space parts. I was worried for a year that they'd never show up on PAB. I bought the helmets, tanks, heads, and legs as soon as they were available, assuming the torsos would be available soon. Then they never were - until now, thankfully. It's curious that the printed brick from 10497 is still unavailable. I think they must have had a contract with Walmart that prevented them from selling the torsos. The set seems to have been a Walmart exclusive, although I never saw it advertised as such.

That's a funny way of putting it. That's true, but they could use their budget more effectively, and they have in the past. They shared the budget among the troubadour, 40567, and 10305. I think they could make better sets if they'd cluster them together like that each time. They could have used the CMF series to create the plumes. They wouldn't even need the dragon helmet. Use the blue dragon plumes on the workshop and give the soldier the black conical helmet. Then they could use those plumes again in a black knights GWP and a new Black Knights Castle. They could even use the same shield in all of those sets. If they keep doing a bunch of random one-offs, we're just going to end up with a bunch of lackluster sets. The Blacktron set was very well designed. But the sticker usage was pretty rough, especially on the textured wedge piece. Mine came off. It would be better if they'd release several sets in the same theme within a year so they could create all of the parts they need to do them properly.

Oh man. I'm really kicking myself now. I used to have 100 of the green classic space minifigures and I sold them all when the prices went up. (I paid about $1.80 each from Bricks and Pieces years ago.) I would have kept them if I could have gotten the proper helmets. I sold them right before they brought back the helmet mold. I hope they bring the torso back.

Fright Knights was always an amazing idea that was poorly executed. I don't want to see them redesign any of the original sets, but I LOVE the idea of making a completely new theme based on the idea. Imagine a proper Bat Lord's castle in gothic style.

I don't think there was any deep meaning to the decisions they made in designing those sets. I'm just talking about the cohesion the sets had. The '90s themes each had pretty well established styles that they adhered to across all the sets in a wave. There's no deep meaning to the fact the dragon masters had black helmets. They just looked good that way, and the faction had a consistent color scheme. It's really as simple as that. I don't think they were even intended to be bad guys. Black helmets, red and yellow shirts, dragons, and crossbows instead of longbows were some of the elements that created that cohesion. Any time they redesign an old set, it's difficult because everyone will immediately draw comparisons to the original. If it doesn't legitimately improve upon the original, it will make people wonder why they'd settle for the cheap imitation when they could just go buy the original. Why not create a new wave of castle sets with all new designs and new factions? That would be a lot more exciting in my opinion, and being different would be a positive thing instead of the negative it can be when comparing a redesign to the original.

I don't know how they get this information, but Brickset always lists the designers. The guy who created 10320 appears to be a vehicle expert. He designed the Maersk Train, which is a real classic.

If you like the set, I don't want to rain on your parade. I'm happy if you get some enjoyment out of it. I've been excited about this set ever since it was first rumored. Dragon Masters has always been one of my favorite factions. I tried to adjust my expectations to account for the lack of availability of key parts. But it's still disappointing. There isn't really an alternative either. It's just take it or leave it, so I've chosen to leave it. The problem isn't just the minifigures or the plumes. Just consider the proportions alone. The door, the railing, and the window are all different scales, none of which are big enough for minifigures. There already is a nice looking window currently in production that they could have used. There are so many different directions they could have taken this. It's just weird. I typed the last message on my phone, and it corrected "bean" to "beam" for some reason. I was referring to Knights' Kingdom II, such as this set. They could create sets of different factions, but there are a few key elements that they could bring back to get the most bang for their buck. If they brought back the dragon plumes, they could make new Black Knights and Dragon Masters sets properly. I was expecting this set to have the regular foot soldier with the black conical helmet. That would have been a great choice for their current parts selection. But if they brought back the plumes, they could have used them in this set, in a CMF, and a new Black Knights Castle. I'm actually surprised they chose to recreate Basil the Bat Lord's helmet before bringing back the plumes because the plumes are so much more versatile, and they had the opportunity there. Yeah, I'm surprised by the missing shield. I was really expecting it to be included both here and in the new Medieval Market Village. And yes, the scale of the door is wrong. They did recreate the shape of the original structure pretty faithfully, but there's nothing here that makes me consider getting this instead of the original. I guess the box is ok for a random free promo. It doesn't really do justice to the original, and the "LIMITED EDITION" text across the bottom really cheapens it in my opinion. It feels to me like this set wasn't meant to be special in any way. It feels more like, "Hey, we need another GWP. Should we do another bunny rabbit? Well, we have that wizard hat, so I guess we could do something with that." Some designers do care. The guys who created The Lion Knights Castle and the Galaxy Explorer are awesome. Some designers, not so much. It seems to be hit and miss. Some designers may be great at producing new things, but they don't understand the original source material well enough to revive old themes. The plumes on the building and the silver armor on the knight make me think the designer wasn't really familiar with the theme and the color scheme and general aesthetics of the theme were lost on them. Anyway, that's the end of my rant. I don't want to start an argument or anything. These are my opinions on the set. If other people disagree, that's fine.

Yeah, a brick built dragon would be too big to fit what they have here, but they could have done something that fits into the Dragon Masters theme instead of trying to covert this set from old parts into new ones one for one. It t just doesn't work. You can't (always) take an old set and just build it out of new parts. Removing the plumes doesn't really do anything to improve the set. There's just so much that's wrong with this build, you'd have to throw out the entire thing and start from scratch. To be honest, I think this is probable the worst castle set they've ever made, even worse than the jelly bean knights. I was really hyped for this set, especially after how great the Forest Hideout and Blacktron Cruiser GWPs were. The Blacktron Cruiser suffered a bit from the lack of printing and the trans red octagonal plates, but that wasn't the designer's fault. The designers really knocked both of those out of the park. My mind keeps going back to that survey that asked if we would pay for a subscription to have the opportunity to buy redesigned sets. I was excited about that after Forest Hideout. If Majisto's Workshop is a sign of how much effort they would put into the sets in that subscription, it would just be an incredibly frustrating experience. I think instead of bringing back old sets from random themes, they really need to focus on specific themes so they can afford to make new molds and prints. And they really need to hire designers who are passionate about Lego. You can tell that whoever designed this one didn't understand the theme and didn't care. It's just a day job. The same goes for the box art and the promotional materials for Eldorado Fortress. Whoever wrote the descriptions for the online listing didn't take 5 minutes to research anything about the original set. Whoever designed the box for this Majisto set... I don't know what's going on there. The problem isn't that it isn't a throwback box. It just looks awful. Yeah, but those are Chinese dragons. They don't really fit into the Dragon Masters universe.

You know, if we just ignore the minifigures, one of the things that bothers me the most about this set is the use of the blue plumes as a drop in replacement for the dragon plumes. That just shows how much the designer didn't understand the original set. They're not being used as plumes. The point is that they're dragons. It would have made a lot more sense to incorporate a dragon in some other way, like a brick built dragon head. Whoever designed this has absolutely no taste.

I'm still open to the idea that this "leak" is an elaborate hoax.

I've never owned the original, and I couldn't tell from the box that it used BURPs. That makes a lot of sense, especially considering that the other sets in the theme used them extensively. To me, everything they did seems like a downgrade from the original. We still have the goofy Barney torso, but without the helmet and plumes that made the original interesting. Majisto doesn't have any printing or a glow in the dark wand. The plumes on the building are tacky because they aren't dragons. The door looks goofy and doesn't appear to open. It looks like the shutters may be stickers. And with this being a modern reimagining, I would have expected them to close up the roof a bit. The whole set is just so goofy. It's too similar to the original in some ways because, and yet too much of a rapid departure in the wrong ways. My wife is happy because I won't be spending $250 to get this. I may pick up the torsos if they're available, just to have them, but like I said, this is a hard pass for me personally. In retrospect, I think I got my hopes up way too high for this. The set so iconically and prominently features parts that aren't in production, it just wasn't reasonable to expect this to be any good.

The images dropped on Reddit. This is hilarious. I was just talking to a friend recently about how that one Dragon Masters torso is the goofiest one of all time, and here it is. It looks like they didn't even update the design. It's just a straight up reprinting that of the original. This set is a VERY hard pass for me. I've been looking forward to this set for so long. I can't believe how much they messed this up. This set sucks on so many levels. Even the building is awful. It honestly feels like someone is trolling us. It surely can't be this bad. It's even built on two BURPs and the door doesn't open. What the heck?

Yeah, that would be huge news. That part is expensive and it's always been one of my favorite helmets (in that color in particular). I really doubt we'll get that, but I would be very excited to see it happen.

The Majisto minifigure is a huge letdown, as is the lack of a dragon shield. If it's any good, I'll buy the dragon torso in bulk, but it will be very disappointing if they don't produce a matching shield. This set does sound like a huge letdown, but we'll see how it turns out.

I think the minifigure is purple, not blue. Still, it's never been available in this form.

The way I see it, I want the set to include exactly one of each minifigure part. The more variety, the better, because we can order however many we want. We just need them to appear in a set to be able to order them in bulk. So I'll be very happy to have a single knight appear in the set as long as it's a faction that isn't currently available. Including a lion knight or black falcon would indeed be a wasted opportunity.

Related to the color of the yellow castle, they also had difficulty getting approval to include any weapons. The official story is that they were only allowed to make the swords by calling them cake cutters and not depicting any kind of violence in the box art. They also weren't allowed to make bad guys for many years, so they started making factions in different color schemes so kids could fill in the story themselves and decide which ones are the baddies (like the black falcons). There are a lot of interesting stories like this in red book that was published a year ago.

This is a good point because they did push Pirates heavily in 1989 with animation, a comic book, four children's books, and more, and judging by what I've always found in bulk lots, that seems to be the most successful year for Pirates by far.

Annoyingly, they actually do have tracking numbers for standard orders. They just don't give them to you. And if you contact customer service, some people will give it to you and others say they can't. But they do have it.

Most of the parts haven't been in stock at all yet. It could be any hour now! The white space torsos are available, but not the red. I'm going to wait until I can get more than that. I already ordered stuff this morning and now they're doing this to me!

Pretty much EVERYTHING is listed now! They even have space babies! The classic space torsos are finally listed. The white one is in stock, but not the red. Even the Eldorado Fortress parts are up. By the way, the troubadour's torso and head are also available.

I want a new Black Knights Castle also. I've always wanted one but I've never pulled the trigger on it because it's so expensive now for the size it is. It would really have to include the original plumes. The ghost wouldn't be as much of a hard requirement, but it would definitely be a nice to have. I've always loved how the black knights had the printed breastplate underneath the larger one. It confused me when I was a kid, but that's one of my favorite torsos. I'd love to see that one brought back. The Viking one is somewhat similar, so I bought a couple dozen of those.

That's because you're only showing the in stock parts.