Kingdoms 2012?

[andhe]

A few things that would have made this set a bit more exciting in my opinion...

A dark green hood - this could have been used on a dragon 'bishop'

A green jester - probably not in keeping with the dragon knights, but would have been nice to complete the set of crown/lion/dragon jesters.

A dragon King - wouldn't have taken much effort, a torso printing would have been great, but even sticking a bronze crown on a dragon knight would have show a bit more thought then re-using the wizard.

A dragon Queen! - either a full printed skirt, or even using the full 'barmaid' with Queen hair (or that dark green hood) would have been cool.

A red wizard hat - ok I can dream.

That said, if this hangs around long enough, I may see if I can pick one up on clearance, and just build my own 'dream' figures :D

Do we think we will see more Kingdoms products like tic-tac-toe etc? May be a way of using up figs whilst LOTR dominate the castle set theme.

[Wardancer]

Well spoken, andhe. It leaves the impression that they had lots of figs left and did not want to make new ones.

What I like about it is that all the pawns have this nice helmet. Its not rare, I know, but the more interesting than the others. Also, I like every set that puts more green capes in circulation.

If I were expanding my kingdoms army, I would get it, but I don't. TLG chould have released this a year ago, then I would have masses now. After the advent kalendars, I guess, most demand for figs, especially special figs like the queen, has already been met.

And yes, the plastic looks cheap. Thats a pity, one could have used it for bignettes.

[DarthSion]

I hope the chess set is not a US only deal, I hate chess but that is a nice collection of mini figures.

[Gryphon Ink]

Sounds like I'm the only one here who would like this as an actual chess set. It does make a sweet army builder, for sure, but I'd rather keep it to play chess. Which doesn't mean the figs can't still be used as reserve forces for the grand battles we have around the house from time to time!

I'm pretty sure whoever took the pictures for the box art does not play chess. The jesters are most likely supposed to be bishops, not knights, since the Lions already have actual knights. If so, the Lion bishops and knights are in the wrong positions.

[Nagyzee]

Well spoken, andhe. It leaves the impression that they had lots of figs left and did not want to make new ones.

I don't think that's how it works. In my opinion this chess set will be Chinese plastic. The very favourable price also indicates that.

I'm pretty sure whoever took the pictures for the box art does not play chess. The jesters are most likely supposed to be bishops, not knights, since the Lions already have actual knights. If so, the Lion bishops and knights are in the wrong positions.

You are probably wrong. On both sides the knights in breastplates are the bishops. It would be even more awkward if the same type of figures were in different roles on the two sides.

[Suspsy]

I don't like the jesters as knights at all. Better to replace them with a couple of regular knight figures with the grille style helmets.

[MakutaNocturn]

Nice to see that set! It's a good battle pack for a Kingdom's army! I'm gonna buy it ASAP :D

[Hive]

No new figures and a ridiculously horrible baseplate makes the chess set a huge dissapointment to me. I definately won't buy.

[Carson Haupt]

Do you know if the base is all one piece?

I do agree that the timing is odd and I think this set would have done better if released with last years wave of Kingdoms sets. That being said, I still think the old adage of better late than never is applicable here. The set is an excellent army builder for our existing Kingdoms collections. Personally, I will still be building up my lion knight and dragon knight armies long after the themes premature discontinuation. To my knowledge, there is no other chess set on the S@H so it still fills a useful gap in the market.

Maybe they are bringing kingdoms Back?

That would be cool!

I recently began to be interested into castle & kingdoms LEGO, and I was wondering why it's so hard to find some good set...

As a lots of people I hope that it won't be replaced by the LOTR theme.

So far I've bought a lots of missing bricks on bricklink, but I really want to find some good looking castle's set! I'm not so gOod to create them by my own...

Hope TLG will release some kingdoms set in 2012!

Practice makes perfect you know.

[Artifex]

What a surprise! But it sounds like a nice battle-pack to my ears. =D

[prateek]

That prefabricated base is a big buzz kill.

[Haltiamieli]

That prefabricated base is a big buzz kill.

Dunno, most Lego chess sets haven't had any better bases (read: no base at all except the baseplate), obviously excepting the Castle Giant Chess Set. I'm not sure if adding a lame prefabricated base makes it much worse.

I'm not that much into army-building and very skint at the moment, so I won't probably buy this. But it's nice that Kingdoms still lives on, in some way. And congrats if there's somewhere a guy who has always dreamt of building an army of jesters - those guys will soon be dirt cheap in BL!

[Zeya]

I think there's something more significant here than the chess set itself. The release of that set seems to be proof that Lego has not given up the ability to release castle sets during the LotR run. I thought that Lego might have agreed to a clause in their contract with the LotR intellectual property people that they would not release competing products such as this.

So I'm hopeful that we may see future Kingdoms products as well. There might be more beyond the chess set and the exclusive joust set.

[DaleDVM]

Only the vikings chess set had glued parts. The plates were glued onto the baseplate and the rooks were glued in a couple of spots as well but were made of LEGO parts. No minifigs were glued. The lack of glue on minifigs may be due to Ben Ellerman and the crowd at Classic Castle. There is blurb about this period at Brickwiki. You can find it here.My link

I do not agree that this is some sort of last minute release to get rid of extra minifigs. Why would they mold a special base (even if it is ugly) if this was some sort of throwaway product? That took some time and planning. Chess sets make nice Christmas gifts and makes for a nice set to compliment the joust on shelves.

[Nicker]

I plan on getting at least 1 if not 2 of these new Kingdoms chess sets once they have a free shipping promo again. The thing that still irritates me is that the Canadian price is $60 vs $50 in the US when the cdn dollar has been on par with the US dollar for years now.

Edited May 15, 2012 by Nicker

[LRDark]

Only the vikings chess set had glued parts. The plates were glued onto the baseplate and the rooks were glued in a couple of spots as well but were made of LEGO parts. No minifigs were glued. The lack of glue on minifigs may be due to Ben Ellerman and the crowd at Classic Castle. There is blurb about this period at Brickwiki. You can find it here.My link

I do not agree that this is some sort of last minute release to get rid of extra minifigs. Why would they mold a special base (even if it is ugly) if this was some sort of throwaway product? That took some time and planning. Chess sets make nice Christmas gifts and makes for a nice set to compliment the joust on shelves.

Thank you, DaleDVM, and Whitefang for the info! I didn't think this one would be glued, but I'm a little pessimistic, so the thought of glued pieces crossed my mind

I'll agree that the chess set doesn't seem to be a last-minute decision. It seems as if historical lines have all had chess sets since Vikings (though that isn't too long), and this is just following that path. I'm fully happy with the figures provided, although I don't think I ever wanted that many of the Green Kingdom. I feel that it has an excellent selection of figures, even if it doesn't bring much new to the table; it seems exactly like the Kingdoms line to me.

[Nagyzee]

Only the vikings chess set had glued parts. The plates were glued onto the baseplate and the rooks were glued in a couple of spots as well but were made of LEGO parts. No minifigs were glued.

According to Bricklink the Queen figures were glued in some runs (probably skirt to torso). Also according to Bricklink the horns were glued to the helmets. Though I don't think it's relevant since luckily it seems they have given up on gluing their chess sets a long time ago.

Edited May 15, 2012 by Nagyzee

[Gryphon Ink]

You are probably wrong. On both sides the knights in breastplates are the bishops. It would be even more awkward if the same type of figures were in different roles on the two sides.

You could be right. Either way the design is a little odd. Both of the Dragon guys could easily be knights or bishops, and the Lions as well. I might want to do some tweaking to make it a little more obvious who is what.

[AndyC]

Interesting, albeit a bit unexpected. Curious to know what the fig quality is like. I'm not normally one to buy into the whole "chinese plastic" scare stories as I've rarely seen a noticable difference in most cases. However I bought the last Pirates Chess set and the figures in that were a very noticably poorer quality. If the same is true of this, I'll pass but otherwise I would quite like it (though that cheapo plastic basepiece would need to be modded out, plus some rearing LotR horses maybe....)

[legomonk]

I am pumped for this set. Honestly I dont see it as a sign that classic castle line is still active. It seems like a bone being thrown to a hungry dog. This dog is thankful for the bone but its just a bone none the less.

[Bilbo Baggins]

I just hope that the mini-figures are made of the great quality LEGO's have.

[DaleDVM]

Thanks Nagyzee, I forgot about the horns in the helmets. Although the viking helm looks pretty aweful without the horns IMHO, so it never affected me. My queens weren't glued and I did not know some were. thanks again for the info...

[Graysmith]

I made a brickbuilt wall in LDD comparable to the plastic one that this comes with and it came to about 240 pieces. So those complaining about that plastic wall piece (which doesn't seem to be needed to keep the chess board together, i.e. you can throw it away if you so wish) should keep that in mind. If this set had come with a brickbuilt wall it probably would've cost at least $25-30 more.

Edited May 16, 2012 by Graysmith

[kermit]

After giving this set several more thoughts I think it would of been better if Lego had included horses (black and white ones respectively with the while being the lion knights and the black the dragon knights) for the knight pieces and wizards for the bishops. The minifigures should of also came with the new swords that you get in the Lord of the Rings sets instead of the old ones which look too unrealistic. And also it appears that the board is a 32x232 green baseplate, which makes me wonder if it is glued to the plastic mold frame. That would be a big disappointment.

[Mencot]

Hopefuly nothing will be glued here on this one. Yea to minifig choices could been better but what can one do. I don´t think TLG wants to put any more design into new minifigs for Kingdoms when its (un)/officially discontinued.

But what I meant to write was:

Hey I don´t think its fake when its in the official Lego shop but its only listed in US and Canada. I contacted Lego about this yesterday to ask if it will be available in Europe(Finland), will see what they will answer, probably tomorrow or tuesday I can expect an answer

So this is the answer I got:

I can see from our system that the LEGO® Kingdoms Chess Set (853373) will be availabe in Finland, but we do not have a lauch date for that one yet. So, in this case, I would recommend you to regularly check our website for that set as it will be announced on our website as soon as the set becomes available for our Finnish fans.

So we will be seeing it also in Europe, soon hopefuly