Metanoios

There are six new orc helmets in the set (two of the more generic ones appear twice and the two unique ones each for Frodo and Sam) and also 4 of the new shields. One is used as an improvised bench in the kitchen, two in the armoury display stand and the one the olive green orc is holding. What the designers allude to here is that the decision to make the design an actual set might have been dependent on the success of Rivendell but they definitely didn't start designing it from scratch after the Rivendell release. The survey leak with Barad-Dur happened even before Rivendell was released, so it was already designed and almost finished before Rivendell was officially unveiled. Their might have been a few pieces like the new helmet molds that were just digitally designed and only in the prototype phase but the build and rough minifig selection was definitely completed at that point. Management at Lego can occasionaly scrap finished sets even last minute as can be seen with Inidana Jones Temple of Doom, Overwatch, Vidiyo (which had more than a complete wave scrapped just before release), when there is uncertainty of the financial viability or if there is fear of a bad impression on the brand identity

The pieces are indeed dark brown, reddish brown and few even from the nougat colour range. The lego model obviously follows the older Weta collectible very closely in colour choices, where Weta also had reddish brownish shading on top of the tower and also on some lower parts to simulate illuminated parts, rust and a generally more weathered look, not just mono-chromatic black. Some pieces like the speed champion slopes from last year in dark brown do not yet come in black, although you could leave them and only replace the nougat and reddish brown parts since dark brown is already very close to black. The use of brown pieces on the model around the eye etc. was also visible in the survey pic

Looks like the designers are using two light yellow 62361 Vehicle, Mudguard 1 1/2 x 6 x 1 with Arch https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=62361&idColor=90#T=S&C=103&O={"color":"103","iconly":0}

It's the sorcereress on the top-right side of the bridge, next to the displacer beast. She has a small staff (with the normal trans-light blue jewel and monkey kid handle piece), a spell book and a dress piece just like the left silhouette with a new hair mould (in the set in dark brown with medium nougat elf ears)

https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Myconid

Additional brick-built creatures besides the reddish-orange dragon and the beholder are an owl bear and a displacer beast. The minifigs seem to represent a Dragonborn bard, a warrior, white-haired druid, a rogue, a wizard/sorcerer and a black-robed figure with a staff on top of the tower (not clear if this is a kind of final boss character or also a player character like a warlock) It looks like the druid is using the white Gandalf/Dumbledore beard with the new goblin hair mould in white (with the long pointy ears)

Owl bear, displacer beast and a beholder are the 3 brickbuilt creatures. The dragon is now a red dragon with cloth wings. The minifigs are a green Dragonborn bard (recolour of vidyo dragon head), a rogue, a warrior, a white haired High-Elven druid, a conjourer with a book and a black-robed warlock on top of the tower by the looks of it. Furthermore there is a small myconid colony under the bridge (using the Dreamzz bodies for 2 of the myconids).

Oh man, you are right. Lego will probably leave out the 20 completely essential Mordor lava cows. Everyone knows that this is a key character in the Mount Doom scenes when the ring is destroyed. How will we be able to recreate those scenes, if they cut the budget and leave out all those beautiful cows??? The deserted wasteland surrounding Barad-Dur will be devoid of any farm animals that would have enticed me to buy the set 5 times

It had the funding in the first ten minutes after the sale went live. It is almost sold out. All of the projects have reached the funded state

The set introduces a completely new wooden-panel-style door piece which can fit a square window lattice piece or the small window glass piece. It can be seen on the right building part of the farm building (tan and brown building with the fences on the back of it and the dark tan roof). Also there are more hidden easter eggs that are not directly shown on the main product photographs. Including new nano-figs and exclusive shield printing. We are getting a ton of useful civilian torsos and exclusive prints (more than in any previous single castle set). For me personally this set is an upgrade compared to the previous Medieval Market village because the buildings are more diverse and detailed. I can understand the disappointment regarding the number of animals but most of the animals in the prelim were just plain boring reuses. I much rather like to see fewer animals with new recolours and "new" moulds like the dbg goat than a a dozen animals that were available for the last two years in other sets and on the Lego PAB online store.

The area around the eye being red and on the other box pic being grey on Basil the Batlord is no rendering error. The head of the batlord is white (or maybe glow in the dark) and has on the one side grey around the eyes and on the other side it is red printing around the red eyes https://imgur.com/a/5Ba7sN6 https://imgur.com/kPU9f7G

Think of all the already produced temple of doom sets that will end up in a landfill somewhere in Hungary, China or Mexico now, where they will pollute the environment for hundreds of years without ever having been touched or played with... maybe an archeologist will dig them out a few centuries later

It is still essentially 70 % of the original design. The only new things are two square towers and a simple tree. Funnily enough there is a reason this person didn't actually build the towers in real life and only showcases these digital renders. If someone actually did try to build it, the ugly plain black roofs alone would cost over 70 $, because the black corner slopes (Black Slope 75 2 x 2 x 3 Double Convex), the MOC designer chose so wisely for the roofs, cost a lot on Bricklink. Additionaly you would most likely have to use multiple sellers to get them in the quantity needed for this build and this would add further shipping costs. Or having to pay international shipping to get the amount from the few sellers, that offer larger quantities. So I hope some are at least intelligent enough to look up the part costs before they buy these instructions. Imagine being ready to pay 70 $ for two tiny roofs (consisting of roughly 100 black pieces) and then complaining about 399 $ for over 4000 pieces...

I am pretty sure you can actually do what you are describing with the new system pretty easily (click on a part and in the following pop up for the part, just click on the "Same brick" link and you will see listings of all colours and prices for this specific part/brick). I guess it is just so much easier to criticize a service than actually trying it out. Or rather Lego did hire some good UI/UX people, but they forgot to account for the DAUs out there that are hindered by the logs in their eyes. "Where's the beef?" Edit: Ninja'd by Sir Dano who also posted a picture showcasing the aforementioned link

Excited for the new Grindylow mould in the Lake task set along with the sleeping versions of Ron and Hermione, an updated Merpeople figure and an all new Krum! The fiendfyre snake in the DH2 Room of requirement will probably be a recolour of some of the basilisk parts or will be entirely brick-built (Promobricks only mentioned the inclusion of the fiendfyre, not how it will be integrated) The next part is speculation by me and not from the Promobricks news: I think the House banners could include prefect robes for each house or the house ghosts instead of the teachers this time

Great to talk to the utmost authority on this topic! My initial response was regarding the possibility of new moulds in the next Castle wave. Triceron said in one of his last replies to this thread that Castle was dead and would never get new moulds. Now, great "Castle"-Sensei, answer me this: Who does decide the budget distribution for new upcoming product waves or themes? Is it you and the "fans" or the Lego company and their upper management? That is why I made the argument (which in my eyes bodes well for upcoming castle waves), that if Lego considers Nexo as part of Castle, then the next wave might have a chance to include a lot of new moulds like the "last" Castle theme did (even if it gets only a fraction of the Nexo Knights budget). I am not opposing your view, that Nexo is not Castle (to you and many others).By pointing out that Lego seems to consider Nexo a part of "Castle", I was trying to instill hope that Castle might actually be not completely abandoned by TLG and that they might be still giving a sizable budget to the theme in the near future.

The instruction pages I am referring to are right at the beginning of the first of the two 10305 instrucion booklets and depict the history of "Castle" with pictures and years, starting at 1978 with the 375 castle going over various sets from the 80s, 90s and 2000s and ending on a picture of Nexo Knight set 70317 with the year 2016 written above it. The Medieval Market village from 2009 is also pictured in this timeline right beside the Nexo Knight Fortrex. So tell me again how Nexo Knight ended up in the 90 year anniversary "Castle" timeline, if it is a completely separate thing? There are no Lord of the rings sets depicted or other buildings that are modelled after castles like many of the Disney sets. But Nexo Knights is in this official timeline. Bricklink was acquired almost 2 years after the last wave of Nexo Knights was released. Your argument might have some merit, if Nexo Knights was classified while Bricklink was being owned by TLG. But alas this is not the case. TLG bought Bricklink as a platform for E-commerce and as a data source for market analysis, not as an official press release platform. Like I said previously, the opinions and emotions of fans don't change the intentions or plans behind sets released by the company developing them.

Pretty sure the last "Castle" wave from 2016 to 2018 had a lot of new moulds. Including previous hints and statements, Lego is considering Nexo Knights part of the castle tradition as is currently shown in the instruction leaflet of 10305. So the next Castle wave might have new moulds like the last. Just because you and a part of the castle fandom doesn't consider it to be part of the "Castle" theme, does not change the classification of the company actually producing the sets.

Yes but the Black Falcon shield printing does also not cover the entire shield and has a small border of unprinted surface (+ sometimes the print can be misaligned as well)

I'm pretty sure that the pic I posted is not a render because the left hind leg of the horse is not fully pressed down on the stud and there is a visible (albeit small) gap and corresponding shadow and reflection. I admit the picture quality could be better but it is zoomed in from a (in my opinion) real lifestyle shot

Yeah but in the picture below they look like prints. It could be that the decals are prototypes in some product shots (like the one from Brickset) and other photos (like the one I linked) were taken later once all prints and parts were actually produced

The Viking helmet from CMF series 20 appears as a recolour in gun metal grey in the upcoming Sanctum Sanctorum set (can be seen in the promo images on the upper most floor as one of the decorations of various magical artifacts). The Lion Knight's castle also features a new 1x4x3 arch piece in LBG and finally dark green leaf pieces

The backside of the GWP box (pic can also be found online) shows that there are pin connections in the usual place and heightwise the door frame pieces fit perfectly into the 2021 modular castle system on both floors. If you stack more than one GWP staircase on top of each other you would have to remove the small sand green roof sections and the tan inverted slopes from the GWP staircase build but it is possible with only small adjustments

It is all one piece but still technically can be attached on to a minifig head. It's a dualmolded "bearded helmet" with a printed on face and underneath is a unprinted regular (faceless) minidoll head. Here is a review of the set which shows the piece:

I remember a different discussion a few months ago about the hitherto exclusive Diagon Alley Harry appearing in the Advent calendar, which had a lot of people on here complaining about an "exclusive" figure coming in a now cheaper set and that it was diminishing its value. Now we get Percy for the first time ever in a "expensive" book and suddenly some of the same people are arguing that a new minifigure should be cheap and commonly available. I can't help but get a feeling by reading these discussions, that no matter what Lego does, someone will go out of their way to compain about it (even contradicting their previous train of thought by doing so). This is not meant to be derogatory - just a slight nudge, that might hopefully help remind some to see the positive in things rather than always search the negative point of view. It's nice that we get new characters like Pomfrey and Percy next year with new moulds and all new prints. Just my two cents on this matter.