Latest impact of other themes on historic themes

[GhostDog]

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Edited February 1, 2024 by GhostDog

[Aanchir]

I love that the new dragon wing is the same “style” as the ones from Vikings and Elves, just smaller and with a different connection point. It’s awesome to have similar parts with a range of different sizes to choose between. It could be wonderful for Elves sets or MOCs since it has the same type of connection as the pegasus wings! And if it got used in Elves sets that could be a great opportunity to see it in new colors.

Good to see the reed piece is still in use, too, since we haven’t actually seen it in Elves sets lately.

[AmperZand]

On 14/03/2018 at 2:45 AM, BrickJagger said:

This set is from the upcoming Fantastic Beasts movie. Just look at that Thestral mold! I could easily see that showing up in fantasy-themed Castle sets. 

I really like this set even though I'm not into HP/FB. As I've mentioned in the Licensed forum, I'm planning on using the carriage and demon-horse for one my vampires. The minifigures and accessories from this set will serve for parts. I'm particularly liking the new wand and dress pieces.  

I'm not sure but I think the body of the carriage and hand rails separate from the undercarriage to form a free-standing cabin. I also suspect the roof comes off.   

[AmperZand]

Fantasy MOCs using minifigures and parts from series 18 CMFs:

Edited April 3, 2018 by AmperZand
Reason for edit: typo

[x105Black]

Nice work on those minifigures!  It really shows the versatility of this series (and others).

[AmperZand]

23 hours ago, x105Black said:

Nice work on those minifigures!

Thanks, appreciated 

Edited April 3, 2018 by AmperZand

[Bardan_Jusik]

Those creatures look like they came from Final Fantasy. Cool stuff!

[Preuss]

I haven't seen any mention of 76085 - Battle of Atlantis. I noticed it was on sale at Walmart for CAD$ 15 (regular here is CAD$25), and thought it was a pretty good deal for 4 very repurposeable minifigs and a lot of sand green - including 14 masonry bricks.

Managed to get 10 of them, the most multiples I've bough of any set since Uruk Hai Army. Planning on turning the aquamen and guards into elf soldiers. The colour schema seems to go very well with my Mirkwood and Rivendell armies - hey, one of the guards even has Legolas's head already! Not sure what to do with the parademons, but those wings look good.

Incidentally, some of the 10 sets came with two sheets of wings, one without any wings. FInal count was 15 sheets out of 10 sets, so I'm happy.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Preuss

[x105Black]

11 minutes ago, Preuss said:

I haven't seen any mention of 76085 - Battle of Atlantis. I noticed it was on sale at Walmart for CAD$ 15 (regular here is CAD$25), and thought it was a pretty good deal for 4 very repurposeable minifigs and a lot of sand green - including 14 masonry bricks.

Managed to get 10 of them, the most multiples I've bough of any set since Uruk Hai Army. Planning on turning the aquamen and guards into elf soldiers. The colour schema seems to go very well with my Mirkwood and Rivendell armies - hey, one of the guards even has Legolas's head already! Not sure what to do with the parademons, but those wings look good.

Incidentally, some of the 10 sets came with two sheets of wings, one without any wings. FInal count was 15 sheets out of 10 sets, so I'm happy.

I have 3 of this set myself, it's a great set!  I plan to do something similar with my minifigures, they are good army builders.

[Aanchir]

Take this with a grain of salt, but it might be worth looking into whether any new minifigure designs show up at the LEGOLAND Castle Hotel. LEGOLAND doesn’t always use real minifigure designs, but a lot of the Ninjago-themed attractions at LEGOLAND parks and hotels (including brick sculptures, promotional graphics, etc) showed off the ninja’s summer 2016 costumes months before they were released physically.

[Agent Kallus]

The ninjago 2018 summer wave has plenty of use to historical builders, particularly of note is a new print for the knight armour piece , which shows burn marks and scratches over a dark orange painted on bull's eye, It would fit well with brigands and bandits.

[Exetrius]

 Notice the banners, the armour, the traditional(-ish) weapons and the printed shield. @Agent Kallus Yes, that printed chestplate is great!

[Agent Kallus]

5 hours ago, Exetrius said:

 the traditional(-ish) weapons and the printed shield.

The new weapons do look pretty great, and as well as the printed shield there is now an easier way to get the first order riot shield recolour than the UCS(ish) hulkbuster. 

On 3/4/2018 at 10:36 AM, Agent Kallus said:

The first order riot shield is coming in dark red with the large hulkbuster set, its a nice shield piece and I think that this recolour will make it more usable.

 

[x105Black]

1 hour ago, Agent Kallus said:

the first order riot shield recolour

What color is it in these sets?  It's really hard to make out details in these tiny images.

[Agent Kallus]

Just now, x105Black said:

What color is it in these sets?  

Dark red same as the hulkbuster.

Hopefully it won't take too long till we get one in black or brown.

[x105Black]

5 minutes ago, Agent Kallus said:

Dark red same as the hulkbuster.

Hopefully it won't take too long till we get one in black or brown.

Those and the pearl grey colors would be great.

[Artanis I]

I thought kids only like ridiculous bright colours

 

Why can't legit Castle sets use that kind of colour scheme?

[KotZ]

39 minutes ago, Artanis I said:

I thought kids only like ridiculous bright colours

Why can't legit Castle sets use that kind of colour scheme?

I'd like to think that these muted colors and length of Ninjago has shown TLG that more "realistic" castle themes are doable. If that includes orcs and elves, I don't care; I would like something that's not Nexo Knights and a little less bright than the latest Fantasy/Kingdoms line, although I do really love those green Dragon knights. But realistically, I think the next Castle theme will be colorful, but not as colorful as the JellyBelly Knights of Jayko and crew, although the last two waves were better for colors.

[Exetrius]

1 hour ago, Artanis I said:I thought kids only like ridiculous bright colours

 

Why can't legit Castle sets use that kind of colour scheme?

 

23 minutes ago, KotZ said:

I'd like to think that these muted colors and length of Ninjago has shown TLG that more "realistic" castle themes are doable. 

 

Target audience is key. Ninjago started out with bright colours, the theme matured along with its fans, thus developing a more muted colour scheme. Castle is targeted at younger kids, so it needs a brighter colour scheme.

Can we end the "new castle theme" discussion here? There are enough threads to turn to for that.

 

[x105Black]

49 minutes ago, Exetrius said:

Castle is targeted at younger kids, so it needs a brighter colour scheme.

Is that necessary?  Does Castle always have to target a younger audience?  Fantasy era, Kingdoms, and the Tolkien themes (and, well, Nexo Knights interestingly enough) targeted age ranges above the traditional Castle theme age ranges.

When I talk about a new Castle theme, I talk about anything that could fit under that banner, so Kingdoms and the Fantasy era stuff would be included.  So in my mind, Castle can target more than just the younger kids.

That said, we should get back on topic here and discuss elements from other themes that could apply to Castle themes.  It has been mentioned here before, but I've got 3 copies of the Battle of Atlantis set, and the minifigures and parts in that set are very useful for Castle builds.  I just need to replace the helmets with something that doesn't say "aquatic" specifically.  So instead of this:



I will use this:



From Hero Factory.  There may be other good Pearl Gold helmets to use (there are a couple of winged helmets that will look good), but these are nice substitutes.

[Wardancer]

I think it will be easy to use the new Indoraptor as a new DRAGON.

So far, it has been difficult to use dinos as dragons, because their body are short and fat, their tails short, army tiny and they don't have a long neck. So even if you added wings, it looked odd.

The Indoraptor, in contrast, has a very long tail, big arms and a slim long body. As its color is black, there are neck pieces, wings, and even heads available to complete it. This should work as a purist option.

Edited April 21, 2018 by Wardancer

[Agent Kallus]

The riot shield also comes unpainted in white in one of the jw sets.

[x105Black]

5 hours ago, Wardancer said:

I think it will be easy to use the new Indoraptor as a new DRAGON.

So far, it has been difficult to use dinos as dragons, because their body are short and fat, their tails short, army tiny and they don't have a long neck. So even if you added wings, it looked odd.

The Indoraptor, in contrast, has a very long tail, big arms and a slim long body. As its color is black, there are neck pieces, wings, and even heads available to complete it. This should work as a purist option.

Tat's a great idea.  Looking forward to seeing how this could turn out!

[Aanchir]

11 hours ago, x105Black said:

Is that necessary?  Does Castle always have to target a younger audience?  Fantasy era, Kingdoms, and the Tolkien themes (and, well, Nexo Knights interestingly enough) targeted age ranges above the traditional Castle theme age ranges.

You're right about the Tolkien themes and Nexo Knights, but Fantasy Era and Kingdoms were aimed at close to the same age range as other Castle themes and a decidedly lower age range than Ninjago. Like, look at this year's first wave of Ninjago sets:

• five $10 spinners for ages 6–14
• a $30 set for ages 7–14
• a $20 set and a $70 set for ages 8–14
• two $40 sets and a $50 set for ages 9–14

By contrast, Kingdoms (excluding <$10 impulse sets and D2C sets) had:

• two $10 sets and a $20 set for ages 5–12
• a $20 set, a $40 set, and a $50 set for ages 6–12
• a $70 set and a $100 set for ages 7–14

And Fantasy Era? The age range for many sets tends to be a bit higher than similarly-priced Kingdoms sets, but the overall spread of target ages isn't at Ninjago or Tolkien level:

• two $10 sets and two $20 sets for ages 6–12
• a $50 set and a $100 set for ages 7–12
• a $20 set, a $30 set, two $40 sets, a $60 set, a $70 set, an $80 set and a $100 set for ages 7–14

I think on some level the fact that you grouped Fantasy Era and Kingdoms with the Tolkien themes in terms of having higher age ranges pretty succinctly illustrates that getting a color scheme or aesthetic AFOLs like doesn't particularly hinge on what the target age range is. The target age range tends to dictate some stuff AFOLs care about, like whether the sets get advanced building techniques or heavy greebling, but not so much color schemes.

For the most part, the colors of the troll faction from Fantasy Era were about as muted as those of the dragon keeper faction from this summer's Ninjago sets. And the Kingdoms baddies and civilians, too, used fairly subdued colors — there were Earth Green and Warm Gold, but those weren't that much brighter than the Olive Green and Bright Orange used on the Dieselnaut. I don't think anybody's trying to make an argument that duller sorts of color schemes like these would no longer be viable in a newer Castle series.

And even among the "good guy" factions, Castle already tends to have a dingier palette than Ninjago. You almost never see Castle sets where bright colors cover most of their surfaces the way they do on many Ninjago buildings and vehicles. If anything, colors like Bright Red and Bright Blue only stand out as much as they do in Castle because most of the sets' surfaces tend to be black or grey!

Edited April 21, 2018 by Aanchir

[Aanchir]

Some better pics of summer sets with elements that might have historic applications:

• 41196 The Elvenstar Tree Bat Attack (Dragon wing and jaw recolor, canine head recolor, elemental diamond pieces without printing, leaf pieces in Warm Gold, new stickered shield, new book cover, and of course lots of nice tree building elements)
• 41195 Emily & Noctura's Showdown (Filigree piece in Transparent Fluorescent Green, Cinderella carriage wheels in Titanium Metallic, more of the big Bright Bluish Green mushrooms, canine head in White)
• 70653 Firstbourne (dragonbone sword, dragon sword hilt, a reasonably Western-style dragon)
• 70655 Dragon Pit (this one's been mentioned in the thread already; this is just a better picture)
• 10762 (Castle-patterned book in a cheaper set than the Disney Castle, 4x2x4 conical roof in Dark Red)