Theme Review: KKI

Discussion of official LEGO Castle Theme sets and products
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Spongey
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Theme Review: KKI

Post by Spongey »

After a week long hiatus, the theme review is back. This week's review is of Knight's Kingdom I, which was the last of the castle sets before KKII arrived. Some sets included King Leo's Castle and Bull's Attack. Also, the promotional Royal King's Castle included some heraldry from KKI. Please feel free to review sets, figs, and the overall design of the theme.

Personally, I wasn't a big fan of KKI. I believe that it started a real downturn in the quality of LEGO castle. The Bulls faction was okay, but all in all, it was a mediocre theme at best.
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Re: Theme Review: KKI

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Spongey wrote:Personally, I wasn't a big fan of KKI. I believe that it started a real downturn in the quality of LEGO castle. The Bulls faction was okay, but all in all, it was a mediocre theme at best.
I thought the theme was great. It was better imo than the Dragon Masters, and as for the preceeding Fright Knights, lets not even go there.

A lot of the sets had generous helpings of armour and weapons, and the structures of the actual sets were great, again, before worse things were to come. The factions may have been a little odd when placed together (umm... the dragon?) but it was definitely a great line for pieces and minifig equipment.
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Knight David
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Post by Knight David »

I thought the theme was great. It was one of my favourte theme's. my favourate st would have to be the castle because it had such good pieces and mini figs.

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Post by Patron of the lego »

In truth this theme was a theme, I always loved it was the first theme I collected. The quiver was still in common use, and the castle could be easily fortifed useing guarded treasuy and the joust. Plus troops, they were extremely cheap, in my opinion. Also the crome sets were a big cheap army builder bonus. Overall I thought kk1 was much better than kk2. Easy made army and a more realistic castle. I should know, because I have both Morica and leo's castle. 10/10 favorite theme besides Royal knights P.S you can't make a morican army unless you buy battle of the pass or that blue crossbowman which is overpriced.
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Spongey
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Re: Theme Review: KKI

Post by Spongey »

RichardAM wrote:
Spongey wrote:Personally, I wasn't a big fan of KKI. I believe that it started a real downturn in the quality of LEGO castle. The Bulls faction was okay, but all in all, it was a mediocre theme at best.
I thought the theme was great. It was better imo than the Dragon Masters, and as for the preceeding Fright Knights, lets not even go there.

A lot of the sets had generous helpings of armour and weapons, and the structures of the actual sets were great, again, before worse things were to come. The factions may have been a little odd when placed together (umm... the dragon?) but it was definitely a great line for pieces and minifig equipment.
I guess that, since it did have good weapons and figs, I may have underestimated this theme. However, it's still not as good as Black Falcons or Lion Knights.
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Post by Zacku »

I was ecstatic when the theme was first introduced after a two-year Euro castle drought (Ninja was cool, but I couldn't use them with these guys). That said, I loved the sets at the time. But now looking back at them, I have to say I like the minifigures more than the sets themselves now. The Bulls were awesome, but didn't really get a chance to shine, considering all they had were a couple siege weapons and no real "home base".


And I LIKED Dragon Masters! :evil:
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Post by Chrislad77 »

I own the complete line of KK1 and I overall I am pleased with it. It's obviously not on par with the great old stuff but it was an improvement from fright knights and clearly better than what came after it. The Bulls were a great faction in theory, but unfortunately you get so many dupilcates of the same 3 guys and so much siege gear it's pretty linear. I'm not certain but is it the only force never to get some sort of "base"? Alot of people don't like all the colors (red, dark grey, black, brown), i think it looks alright when on display but it hard to use for anything else.

For the "good guys"..... I really liked the detailed look of knights and the wide brimmed helmets. Definately a good approach by lego. On the sets King Leo's castle is so-so, not as good as earlier castles, nice to look at but hard to play with, and not very innovative.

The smaller sets were interesting, I'll give credit that they weren't just remakes of older ones. They tended to lack a lot of figures, which in part was due to the huge limitation that creating charcters makes. One thing I really liked is that they had a 99ct bagged archer set, 3.99$ war cart thing , and 8$ catapult. I cannot say it enough, cheap sets are so important for the line. Makes for easy army buliders and most importantly lets a kid buy some legos with his allowance not his life savings.


So to finish
Likes:
Classic weapons
Nice mini-figures
Small sets

Dislikes:
"Good" vs "Bad"
No defensive structure for Bulls faction

I think this is a theme that will be easier to review in the next couple of years. Seeing if the patterns that started with this continue.
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Post by Emperor James »

The figs ruled. The sets, not so much- lots and lots of huge prefab walls and such. The chrome series was really nice.
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Post by Count Blacktron »

I love the original Knight's Kingdom series for figures, parts, decorated pieces, arms and armor and AVAILABILITY of many low priced accessory sets with figures that could be either character specific or generic troops. Don't forget that without Knight's Kingdom we would not have gotten the last Castle Expander Accessory Pack, Castle Minifigure Accessory Pack, Chrome Knight's Kingdom sets, polybag archer (LOVE THAT HELM!!!) or the magnificent Legends Blacksmith Shop by Dan S. (courtesy of TLC).

Knight's Kingdom may not have had the best set designs but it was the best for MOC builders, and side by side with Star Wars and Harry Potter (almost) we had all the peasants and townsfolk we needed. Just no pitchforks. :wink:

In it's era and as it's usefulness to my own Castle world, I'd give the original King Leo and his Knight's Kingdom a 10 out of 10. Can't touch this. :P :lol:
Last edited by Count Blacktron on Mon Mar 26, 2007 1:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Coatsy »

Knights Kingdom I is interesting. It has some great mini fig designs. I especially liked the female knight toros and the "Roun Heads" helmet was a great touch. To me the sets were hit or miss for me, but I did get all of the sets.

Having the 'good vs. evil' theme decided for the consumer was lame IMO, but I liked the designs of the Bulls. I have about 20 of them kitted out as Heavy cavalry with halbreds and broad swords.

The main detraction for me was the raised baseplate for King Leo's Castle. I just do not like the design. The baseplate makes it tough to construct certain types of castles. But that really did not stop me from making what I wanted with the set.

I think it would have been great for TLC to continue with the Cedric the Bull and King Leo KKI instead of going jelly bean. I think the designs for both factions were solid and warrented more more sets after the initial wave. It would actually be interesting to see how many sets of KKI were sold in comparison to KKII.1

I give the entire series of KKI a 7/10.


I really want to get more round heads!!!! They are great foot soldiers.
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Post by Rusty Brick »

I really enjoyed this theme. As has been stated, it had great low price sets and good piece selection.

I wasn't bothered by the Bull faction not having a defensive castle--I liked the focus on a seige type army. A tower would have been nice, but I prefer my sets to have the "good" faction defending against an agressive "bad" faction.

This is the first theme that I had the purhasing power and the interest to buy all of the available sets.
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Post by Jojo »

Hello!


”How boring this Castle is looking“, was about my first thought when I saw these (then) new[*] Castle sets in the catalogue. And I turned the pages to reach the Star Wars section in the catalogue…

[*] For me Knights’ Kingdom will always remain ”new“. That’s because I’m old. Sigh.

Well, in retrospective these Knights’ Kingdom sets weren’t that bad. There were two female minifigs (of which one is my all time favourite Lego girl), and that’s about two more than there were in the Castle line the whole ten years before. The rest of the figs is pretty fine also.

Compared to any of the lines that follow(ed) KK1 at least came with a lot of useful parts. Sure I hate the one-piece-turret parts and those useless one-piece-catapult-arms, but the rest of the parts was nice. Nicegrey to be specific. The structures weren’t exactly great, though.


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Post by Emp.Justinian »

Torsos!!! In my opinion the KKI was the high point of Lego torsos. They were incredibly detailed the armor was very realistic. Also I believe that this may have been the first line to really get into design on the legs. The knight’s kingdom armor was also good for those who really didn't like the heraldry (personally I didn't have a problem with it) because with the exception of the king none of the lion knights had the faction logo on their bodies. The sets had some creativity (namely the chrome) but were probably a step down in design from royal knights. :( I give it an 8.5/10.

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Mr Tiber
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Post by Mr Tiber »

I think it was a quite a good theme.

The "new" torsos and helmets were very cool, I especially liked the torsos. As for the classic weapons.
But, like mentioned before, I don't really like the good vs bad thing and the fact the Bull's had no castle.
I also didn't really like the good guys castle, but it wasn't so bad after all.


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Chrislad77
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Post by Chrislad77 »

seems like everyone has a moderate view of KKI, not offensive but doesn't really motivate them.
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