ziljin

My only medieval military knowledge is from wikipedia and Medieval 2 total war. But I think that not all of them used lances. Some used lances and swords, some used spears. and some only used swords/axes/maces/and other short range weapons. And wikipedia says later on infantry were able to sufficiently defend against cavalry charges so later on the horses were merely transportation and the knights dismounted and fought with swords and whatnot instead of using lances.

Magnus the Great Yea from what I read Crusader's printing fades real bad. =(. Makes me hesitant to buy more. Next purchases will be Shadow Knights, Black Falcons, and Vikings though. Going to try to bulk up my armies in rotation based on who has the least minfigures. Those conquistadores are awesome. And nice idea with the Fright Knights shields for a vampire army. Are they all vampires or just the Baron? I was thinking of doing something like that. buy the CM vampire and use him as Fright Knights leader. Or no vampires and just make them bloodthirsty barbarians, just given some vampireish qualities. And another smallish army. My Dark Forestmen.

An amazon type faction would be great.

if anything the recent factions are more unique. The older factions reuse the same colored legs, arms, helmets, plumes/feathers, and streamers.

Good read but you need to fix the link.

oh okay. For some reason I read it like this "upcoming is lack Falcons so here is a preview of Black Falcons" And then I did not see any Black Falcons.

For a second there I was afraid my lego collection was going to be destroyed. 5.8 earthquake in Virgina.

Ogre I hope you don't mind but I might be copying your idea. Well I want make to the PCR into some sort of chariot. I don't have enough saddles to make them into light cavalry. Maybe I should buy some saddles. And I have been meaning to do this for some time now. My Crusaders Army. And I decided to use the faded torsos and damaged helmets as "battle damage". Crusaders are the only minfigures that have heavy fading from bricklink so far. the rest have no or little fading.

I can't say much about the structures since I only have recent sets and am only interested in the minfigures. For the minifigures at first I thought the newer ones are so cool with the fancy printing. But now that I have over 200 of various older castle factions. I have learned to appreciate the older ones. The great helm is amazing. And dark pearl gray is a great color for equipment. And the new armor pieces are great, both minifig and horse. But I also miss the old chin guard and that classic visor piece(5+ dollars each on bricklink = no way I am getting any soon) was pretty cool. Newer minfigures have more armor, more elaborate printing, and a more uniform look to the minifigures and equipment. Older minfigures have a more simple yet still awesome printing (I have to get more Black Falcons!), less armor and less organized look. It's like the castle minifigures are evolving over time like real life history (loosely of course) with the adaptation of newer equipment, more organized uniforms, and more emphasis on armor.

And another came in. not as much as the previous one.Obi Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, White Shogun, and 3 Dark Forestmen.

Those minfigures are so awesome. but the preview looks like a preview for Black Knights?

I guess not very since realism is difficult to achieve in the lego armies. It would have to be like everyone uses the same helmet since the helmets are from different time periods. And specific factions using specific shields/weapons. For now I will leave them the way they are I guess. Then later on if I get to the point where I have hundreds of them I will decide.

Magnus the Great those two scorpion factions look great. I did not realize they had a different colored shield. TheLegoDr Well if I buy the 100 Vladek polybags that means 100 older minifigures are safe for now. Hm, I am still torn on the older castle minfigures where there are so many different legs/arm/plumes. I can't decide if I should leave them the way they are or try to make them as uniform as possible. like the scale male minfiigs some have blue arms red legs, red arms blue legs, blue arms blue legs, red arms red legs. I could leave them as they are or try to make them match up to red arms red legs and blue arms and blue legs as much as possible. Choice overwhelms me with WHAT IF.

Very nice description but who is the person on the left? Looks pretty non-human.

Right now the only bags I have in bulk are the bags the lego pieces come in from the sets. BUt I threw most of them out now because they took too much space. And not sealable like ziploc. I might have to use the ziploc sandwich bags once I run out of the mini ones.

haha indeed. my black knights army was zero until like 2 weeks ago. then 10, then 20, then 40, and then now 76. Seems there are a high supply of black knights compared to say black falcons or forestmen. I was afraid that by now there would only be like 5 forestmen or etc left. Luckily still a few dozen or so in the US. I guess I might just move on to newer factions that should have hundreds or even thousands of minifigures left. I know that one seller has like 2000 vladek polybags so I don't have to worry about shadow knights running out. EDIT: I was putting my minfigures in the mini ziploc bags I got but I am already running through them and still have like 200 mifnigures to organize. Not sure how I should store them. And going to have another 100 more once i get those vladek polybags. =(.

So has there been any news on a chess or tic tac toe set? I am very sad that they stopped making those for castle. At least they made a Advent Calendar in the US for Kingdoms.

haha definitely. I mentioned this somewhere on EB I am certain. But next month I hope to get 100 Vladek polybags off of bricklink (making my shadow knights my upcoming largest army). one seller has them for 2.98 each but 2.74 each if you buy 100 or more. So I will get 100. That saves me like 20 bucks which should cover the shipping and a little extra. And if I have any money left I will try to get some Black Falcons or forestmen or Vikings. I also ordered 1 Evil Dwarf to get a yellow dragon plume. Now I think I should have just bought like 2 cheap minfigues instead and get a 50 cents yellow dragon plume instead of the 33 cents yellow dragon plume and 6 dollar evil dwarf. Also a viking with that order I think. I am thinking of getting a few of the evil dwarfs to make chaos dwarves or just dwarf variant for dwarf army. Don't know why dwarves cost so much. =(. They are like 5+USD even though the battlepacks ere only 3USD each! No doubt lots of resellers bought them up and charging 6USD each for huge profits. EDIT: Also the reason I am buying up so many minfigures at once is because I am afraid there won't be any more left if I wait any longer. I could have been ordering from bricklink months ago or even years ago but I never did. I regret it now. I am going to be a poorman's Madoka. He has like 600-1000 of every minfigure faction. I am going to be happy if I can reach 50-100 in each faction. But if I get 100 minfigures per month which I can easily afford. I should smash my 100 minfigure quota for every faction in about a year or so. If I had to guess. 1/3 are at 40+, 1/3 are at 10-30, remaining 1/3 at 5 or less.

Hoboman Great chinese army. The guy in the middle with the stick and straps looks like a city minifigure though? de Gothia Awesome armies! I see that you split up the crown knights for the Royal Lions. Looks like you have custom shields and brickforge pieces too. (How you do the custom shields anyway?) Those banners are custom correct? Either way they look so cool. And nice usage of troll torso and helmets for bull knights. Ogre Wow seeing so many of those prison carriages are is so cool. I am tempted to rebuild mine (I think I have like 10 of them?) or convert them into some pseudo chariot. Add even more cavalry to my dragon knights!!! If I ever get a new shelf to display my lego I will definitely do that!!! And wow, I am in love with bricklink now. I was going to post my Black Knigts Army when I had like 20 of these guys but for some reason I decided not to. And now I have 76!!! Some are actually Crusaders/Royal Knights/Black Falcons but I find it easier to just lump them together with the Black Knights.

Yea I am definitely more concerned with the printed torsos. I can swap different colored helmets later or buy some. I guess same with plumes/feathers but some of those are more expensive than the helmets!!! But I looked at the minfigure catalogs and some of the factions do have random legs/arms. Like Black knights all have different colored hips/legs. And then one minfigure has solid colored legs. At first I was like wait is this the wrong legs? But nope its correct. Maybe I will swap it out later.

Hm, Wow I did not realize Normans were descendants of the Vikings. And Vikings are just another Germanic tribe. The main distinguishing factors from the other Germanic tribes being they come from the north, were more pagan and are stereotyped to have horned or winged helmets. Wow. And obviously they did sea raids instead of land raids.

Well if I rework the choronological release story I will probably just have them as raiders in foreign lands. I just wanted them to have a reason to stay in the strange land. I don't know about Europe but I know that they were the first europeans to discover the Americas but they only made one settlement. I do know that they did heavy raiding and looting. Wiki says they settled a little in europe. Viking Expansion

I only played Warcraft but I still like seeing warhammer armies and reading about their factions and units. Oh yea and the unit information cards in the Total War games. Which is where I copy my spear phalanx formations from. But I am sure that is fairly common in miniatures. And I didn't say this earlier but great map. I could never do something like that but I was thinking of reworking the story so that the factions are from specific regions. And locate the factions by region. Some historical basis. Like Ninja army from the eastern kingdoms, and Vikings from the north. And have dwarfs and vikings allied because of norse mythology with dwarves and vikings. And if they make Marvel Thor minifgure I iwll get that any any Aggardians as part of the Vikings army! And probably have trolls to be in the north as well, since I know Norse mythology has trolls. And crown knights have similar torsos to vikings/dwarves so maybe they can be more advanced northmen and allies of vikings/dwarves. Bull Knights, and other barbarian factions can be from the west inspired by germanic tribes. I am thinking South Kingdoms would be Crusaders/Royal Knights, old and new Lion knights since lions live in warmer climates? And I guess persians can be from near the south too with the deserts. Other factions can be filled in later. That would be my alternate story not taking chronological release of themes into account.

Yea I saw those too. I love reading this kind of stuff. Normally I hate reading books, but stuff like that were its a backstory/history is awesome. The Starcraft and Warcraft manuals are great because they have a little background fluff for every race, and then every faction and every unit. Even the neutral and non-playable ones. I also look up those wikis for warcraft, warhammer, and lotr.

BY THE STARS! That was incredibly epic. And the nice pictures to go with it. I was thinking of doing something like that but you did it much better than I could have. I will have to rework my storyline but yours is way better. I was going by the chronological order of the factions being released but I think that might be silly and difficult to make a solid history out of. It can still work but I have to rework some details. Also nice custom minfigs.