KristinnK

The Siege Encampment set is certainly a strange beast. It's not a single big structure, but in fact many different smaller ones, that would have made much more sense to sell as separate sets. It's almost like a whole Castle wave combined into one huge set, except it doesn't have any actual castle walls. I question the wisdom of having selected this set and selling it in this form.

I agree with the other poster that the Medieval Blacksmith has more the air of a adult target audience, while the Lion Knight's Castle has more the air of a large kids' play set. It's not about specifics, but rather about the picture as a whole. The first clue is that while the piece count is comparable (within a factor of two) the Lion Knight's Castle is much more 'expansive' for lack of a better term. The design of the Medieval Blacksmith is that of a much more realistic structure, i.e. an imitation of a building that could actually exist, with integral and coherent structure, at more or less the scale of a minifigure. It has four walls and a roof, doors and stairs to the attic level. This uses up a lot of bricks, and wouldn't be worth it for a kids' audience, but is appreciated by many adult Lego fans. The Lion Knight's Castle on the other hand is a facade, both in the metaphorical and literal sense. As displayed on the box it's only the gatehouse and a small stretch of wall, with the buildings attached to the wall being completely open on one side. Closed up it looks better, but introduces other problems such as that the main castle building wouldn't in that case be fronted by a large gatehouse. There aren't doors and staircases that connect different spaces and levels (the occasional ladder doesn't count). And the scale is off, towers and parapet niches are the minifig equivalent of a meter in width. There is a dining hall with two seats. There's a horse shoved in a small corner. None of this is naturalistic. It's an abstraction of the idea of a castle rather than the depiction of a specific plausible castle structure. None of that is to say that there is something wrong with the Lion Knight's Castle as a set. If you'd have to do even just a small castle (like lets say the Guédelon Castle) in a style and scale similar to the Medieval Blacksmith, you'd be looking at north of 20.000 pieces. This just isn't viable as a Lego set. The Lion Knight's Castle is a fantastic compromise that keeps a lot of the scale that a more naturalistic castle would have, without absolutely breaking the bank. But it's definitely more of a kids' oriented playset when compared to the Medieval Blacksmith.

I have to say I feel this set fails to live up to the promise of the original submission. In large part this is of course due to simply size constraints, they probably had to decrease the part count of the set by 30-40%. Unfortunately this leaves the house cluster especially looking quite sad, and the dragon is obviously also a big step down. I am however still reasonably optimistic about the minifigs. I love historically plausible (rather than necessarily realistic) minifigs with full torso+legs printings, and am too often thwarted by Lego's insistence on heraldry printings like medieval warriors wore freaking team jerseys. This set however, like Lord of the Rings sets, will have none of that, so I can't wait to see how those minifigs will look.

I would echo the sentiment that the buildings are a disappointment. I simply don't like the geometry/design of the buildings. What I always liked about the original MMV is the elegance of the buildings. Each of the two buildings have an integral and focused, almost simple design theme. These buildings are more of a jumbled combination of different design themes, and their structure is too irregular. I'm not a fan. Counterintuitively the buildings also seem to me less detailed/ornate compared to the 15 year old MMV which has half the number of pieces. I do like the minifigs though. I especially can't wait to get better pictures of the woman wearing the coif standing in the doorway on the right. And the tax collector looks really suspiciously like Boromir, which is one of my favorite medieval warrior/lord minifig. And that rogue figure of course is also interesting. I am less immediately interested in the other figs though. Regarding the animals, they seem to have taken the position that the large castle already has the cow, this set gets the goat, and horses are a dime a dozen. I don't think fans will necessarily agree with this reasoning, but they do seem to believe that this is an avenue for restraint in the design of the set. Also, perhaps this means they are planning a type of medieval farm set in the future.

What I could see happening is one or more diorama sets. There are so many iconic Lord of the Rings scenes that they can choose from, perhaps the most obvious being Merry and Eowyn defeating the Witch King (with the quote being either the "not by the hand of man will he fall" prophecy or Eowyn's "I am no man"). But there are many other choices, from Isildur cutting the ring off Sauron's hand, to Gandalf stopping the Balrog, to Sam defeating Shelob, to Gandalf upon Shadowfax "who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror" of the Witch King as he rides through the shattered Gates of Gondor (quote: "In rode the Lord of the Nazgul, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face."). That last one I'd buy in a heartbeat.

I really like the minifig prints, and I love the shields. I'm not a huge fan of the build, so I almost certainly won't buy the sets, but I will definitely get the minifigs and the shields on Bricklink at some point.

These leaks are absolutely insane. My opinion: The Rivendell set is basically everything it could possibly have been. Not just some minifigs, but literally every fig there possible could have been. The whole Fellowship, Bilbo, Elrond, Glóinn, Arwen, Glorfindel. We couldn't have asked for more. The set itself is also really pretty, with probably the best landscaping of any Lego set ever. The rumored price tag of 500 USD however is a bit hard to swallow, and I can't help thinking that they probably should have scaled back the set a bit, and try to keep the price tag around 350 USD. I don't like the 'huge, black tower' type of sets, so I don't really have much of an opinion about the Barad-Dur set. But it's certainly huge. The Medieval Village set does have a lot going for it. I generally always celebrate civilian castle/medieval sets. The Medieval Market Village and the Medieval Blacksmith are literally my two favorite sets. However, this particular set does look a bit lacking to me. It has a lot going for it, civilian figs, really nice trees, the bottom left house. But I simply dislike the design of most of the buildings. The scale is off, they look like facades rather than complete buildings, and they look more like East-Asian buildings (like in 70751) than medieval ones.

This is absolutely fantastic news! This model has basically everything a castle fan can wish for, a masonry wall and tower, a half-timbered building, some landscaping. I personally don't care about the dragon, but whatever. The big question in my eyes is about the minifigs. If they cheap out and just put in some Black Falcons/Lion Knights and a pirate the set will not be nearly as attractive for me. I really hope they make the effort of making some interesting and unique minifigs.

That's not a good explanation. It's not like TLG first produced 10,000 Castle in the Forest sets and then had people compete in a mad first-to-click-the-order-button competition. No. They first had people do the online madness, and then produced the sets. So the number of orders was completely arbitrary. All that is to say that TLG could just as well have collected order for lets say a week or two, and then set the production run for a number of sets equal to the number orders, regardless of if that would have been 10 thousand, 20 thousand or 100 thousand.

As someone who does love playing DnD, this creation perfectly captures the excitement and imagination of playing DnD. Amazing creation.

I too was first introduced to Lego Castle with the Black Monarch's Ghost, and consequently a knight in breastplate with visor helmet became my golden standard for a Lego castle figure. And seeing as in the 90's the only sets with breastplates were released in 1990-92, and my Castle collection was only added to by the time of the Royal Knights, the breastplate remained as a sort of untouchable accessory I would have given a lot to have more of. But today I much prefer great prints, usually those featuring some sort of armor with matching leg prints, or something like the CMF 20 Viking. Also, the period I like to build from is the early-to-high medieval period, while the breastplate and plate armor only arrived at the end of the high medieval period.

I actually agree with this, especially the dollhouse part. If I buy this set it would be simply for the parts. For examples of what direction I would have liked for Lego to go with this set look no further that the first 2021 Lego Ideas review. There were no fewer than three different castles I consider excellent, Castle of Lord Afol and the Black Knights, The Castle of Brickwood Forest and Fantasy Castle. I feel those castles all have a much better sense of proportion and layout. Part of it definitely is the fact that TLG decided to go with a fold-out design with well-developed interiors, both of which make it harder to make a coherent and good-looking design of the assembled castle. I do lament the fact that none of these three castles were picked up, likely because TLG knew they would have their anniversary castle hit the shelves in a similar time-frame.

I really want that wimple. And that fig in general. I'll be very disappointed if that was just a random render.

Adding my opinion to the "is it the upcoming castle in this promo video?" discussion. This is simply a medieval backdrop for a promo video, so a priori there's no reason to believe they would use the model of an upcoming set. The fact that official sets from the past are present is simply that (1) they are easily available as digital assets, and (2) they give the viewer a kick by recognizing them. The castle in the video has the (almost) exact same gatehouse as 6080. Nobody should really seriously suggest that TLG would release a new castle with the same exact gatehouse as an old set. Never mind the price difference between the two. So just from that fact alone we know that this castle isn't the same as what will be released. The only argument that could have some weight is saying that other aspects of the castle, like the geometry and/or design of the rest of the curtain wall, which is decidedly different, is from the upcoming set. However I don't believe even that is the case. It's just a simple grey stone wall. I don't see any reason why TLG would take such a simple design from an upcoming set instead of simply making a different one in an hour or two when they are always so concerned about spoiling sets ahead of release. When they did the promo video with a castle before the release of the 3-in-1 castle they didn't use the upcoming set either. I would wager against anyone that we see literally nothing from the upcoming set in this video.

This rumor makes a lot of sense when considering how many great looking castles have been rejected in recent Ideas Reviews, like Classic Castle in the third 2020 review and Castle of Lord Afol, Castle of Brickwood Forest and Fantasy Castle in the first 2021 review. Seeing how wildly popular the Medieval Blacksmith set is you'd have thought they'd produce at least one of these castles. Not wanting to dilute the market for a Castle anniversary set makes a lot of sense. My wish-list for this is set is basically everything the Creator Castle is not. Light bley (as opposed to dark bley) stonework, massive looking walls (as opposed to stylized with reliefs and color contrasts), and multiple good peasant minifigs.