Sir Fred

Thematically I don't think Power Miners really has anywhere to go from here without driving headlong into the realm of insane. They dug to the center of the Earth for a couple years, made it, dealt with the tremors, had a tea-party there (What, you wouldn't?) and then lived happily ever after. Maybe they could make a Power Miner's tea-party at the Earth's core set! I never got into Power Miners, but if I see one of the sets with a Rock Monster in it for cheap, I intend to get it simply because I like the Rock Monsters and can imagine a few interesting uses for them.

I'm fairly settled into the Castle/Kingdom's theme. Pirates and Star Wars have been known to tempt me out on occasion though. I may pick up a couple Prince of Persia sets as well since they look like they have useful Castle stuff.

This applies to parts they already produced as well?

I'm fairly boring since I have Fantasy Era sets almost exclusively, but I've got: Large factions: The Crown Alliance: Crownies, Dwarves, Sir Fred, Danju, Jayko and a lone Royal Knight (About 60 in all) The Cult of the Damned: Trolls, Orcs, undead, Vladek (About 60 in all) I also have a few smaller factions: The Imperium: Darth Vader, stormtroopers and clone troopers armed with cutlasses (About 10 in all) Bandits: Pirates, my lone ninja is their leader (About 15 in all) Red coats: Red coats (About 10 in all) When I've actually got my Lego with me not stored away (I hate how tiny dorm rooms are...) the Crown Alliance has a castle along with some smaller outposts, the Cult of the Damned has a castle as well as a ship, the Red coats have a small base, and the bandits have a ship. Sometimes these are MOCs, sometimes they're just the standard sets built by the instructions. I intend to get some Vikings as well as a bunch of the knights from the upcoming Kingdoms line.

The new bow looks pretty neat, since they've changed the mould on it, does that mean there's going to be more sets using the bows now? Ok, I just really want some bows. Either way, the Robin Hood looks pretty nice.

I am perfectly willing to believe the statement about these being of normal quality, if it turns out I'm overly optimistic/gullible about that, then so be it. Now I'm just going to spend some time wondering how much I am going to wind up spending on these, after all, I feel my collection is solely lacking for not having a single forestman.

I kind of like the hand drawn look of that box-art, although it seems the Advent calendar has way more Lions then Dragons. Either way, it's looking pretty nice, and even better, it should actually be available in Canada this time around! Still no sign of regular bows though...

You just convinced me to get some mimes. Anyone else seeing some sort of Thermopylae battle MOCs thanks to Prince of Persia and that Hoplite? I'd like to make a decent sized force of hoplites, but I foresee them being stupidly expensive, especially if Lego is mean and makes that the rarest fig of the line.

With actual bricks? I think my high for during classes is about 2 hours a week. However, I spend an awful lot of time on Eurobricks during really boring lectures. Doesn't help that I have so little Lego in my dorm room, I spend more time wanting all the stuff I've got at home since my builds right now are really fragile.

So it seems that the "bad guys" although having less figs, have more than enough shields while the "good guys" have more figs but far less shields. Also, no longbows. The new window piece will be interesting... Okay, now that that's out, time to say good things. The main castle looks quite sturdy and does not have a portcullis sticking out of the top. Lots of plumes. I note some gold armour in the first picture, but that fig looks very out of place. The new unicorn helmet looks neat. The small catapult looks really well-made, since catapults are seemingly mandatory now, that's the best we can ask for. The gate piece on the very nice looking prison tower new?

1. Castle 2. Pirates 3. Creator (There's just something about some nice bulk brick) 4. Star Wars

I've got some Iroquois in my background as well as pretty much any country in Europe that you can name. So I'll just call it Canadian, since I don't really have a dominant background.

I'm just curious, has anyone else found Wal-Marts to suddenly have good selection? The other day I was in the Wal-Mart in Fredericton and they not only had good selection, including almost all the 2010 sets, but Brickbeard's Bounty on clearance for 80$. They even seemed to have more than the Toys R Us.

Those neck brackets really are versatile, another excellent use for a strange part.

I had a problem with Troll Warship and Dwarf Mine because of tying the string, that net and basket lift fell on me a lot and still do whenever I have those sets built. The Medieval Market Village was probably my longest but it wasn't that frustrating building it since the only thing that would break was the roof, after I finished however the cat kept batting the tree off the table and chewing on one of the large leaves.

Assuming the numbers are assigned based on a counter that increments by one with each new colour released, there are a lot more colours than I thought there were. I suppose this means I need to stop calling it "bley" and refer to it as "Stone Grey" now.

Even if these figs do have the Mark, it's possible that they're still good quality. For all we know, the Mark could be a new thing being done with figs and that the first time it was seen was just a colossal screwup (That's the polite term, right?). Or I could just be being overly-optimistic about things.

I like alternate builds using just a couple sets, there's always been something about using only certain pieces and making something nice like this. Do you have any better pictures of the interior?

I have to go with grey since it's the only ninja I have.

My Dark Age (that come to think of it, only really lasted about five years, that sadly included Vikings) slowly trickled to an end when I one day picked up a Zellers flyer and saw a buy one get one half off on Lego. I picked up The Finaly Joust and Knight's Catapult Defense. Then shortly afterwards I got a Storm Trooper Battle Pack, just because stormies are that awesome. Then I got most of the Fantasy Era sets in a three week period and it was very over.

I always build a set properly at least once after acquiring it, even if I do it just to make sure all the pieces are there. I find it relaxing to just follow along with the instructions. However, within a few days I find myself grabbing more and more parts from the new set for whatever it was I decided to do that particular day. Someday I want to build all my Castle sets as per the instructions just to see what it looks like set up, but I know that day is a long way away. In short I usually start off with the set following instructions then move towards a bunch of small MOCs with the occasional decent sized one.

My first Castle set would have been this Space/Castle value pack. For the longest time it was my only Castle set, yet I still made castles/fortresses the most and just had armies of people using improvised weapons. I had a few Islanders as well.

I really like the idea of a fully chromed out knight, or at the very least lots of chrome accessories for Castle would be nice. Chrome guns could work fairly well. I'd say make everything chrome, but that would get a little ridiculous in the cost department and I'd prefer chroming stuff that could legitimately be chrome, but that might just be me.

Personally I would like to see some sort of archery range type set with lots of longbows seeing as I have so few of them. Maybe like a few Liocorn knights being trained in archery and some Dragon knights disrupting that endeavour. An accessories pack with various equipment would be pretty nice as well.

I use cows as troll cavalry as well as a stegosaurus and a triceratops from this set. I find the big trolls mean that cavalry isn't quite as necessary.