Castle 2013... meh?

Discussion of official LEGO Castle Theme sets and products
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Bruce N H
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by Bruce N H »

How dare you refute us with logic and reason?!?!? Fie on thee, Blue.

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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by Bluesecrets »

How dare you refute us with logic and reason?!?!? Fie on thee, Blue.
*smiles innocently and shines her halo*

Hey...sometimes logic is a great and powerful thing. Got to love those truth tables!

But I still stand by my "meh" on most castle sets with or without the logic.
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by AK_Brickster »

Yeah, set designs really don't interest me that much anymore. I look at new sets and think, "Hmm... what can I make out of those parts?" and, "What can I do with those minifigs?"

With that criteria in mind, I'm perfectly happy with the new castle line. Sure, the old "Lions vs. Dragons" bit is pretty well played out, but the torso prints are good, and the helmets, heads, etc are all perfectly usable. Other than the big castle, most of the sets generally have nice generic castle parts that will be useful in a multitude of future applications.

I think very few people at the AFOL level buy the sets just to build them and display them on a shelf. I personally build the sets once just for the experience, but after that they get thrown in with the rest of my parts, so for me, crying about poor set design is a useless endeavor. Like Blue said, this is a toy which is first and foremost designed for little kids. You have to take that into consideration in your evaluation process.

As long as there is a good piece count for the price, and not too many panels, I'm pretty happy just to have castle stuff available.
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by Athos »

Bluesecrets wrote:So sure "meh" applies. But then be honest...go back and look at the so called "classics" they were pretty "meh" too and we tend to over look that fact just because we love them for they were our first love.
I agree to a point. But at the same time, I did not feel this way about the crown knights or the Kingdom sets. Sure there were a few stinker sets in there, but over all they were pretty good. But this line, just isn't doing anything for me.

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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by SSchmidt »

It must just be different preferences, because I for one (and I still love Kingdoms regardless), feel the figs and two factions are superior to Kingdoms. Then again, we all like different things :)
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by Bruce N H »

So, this thread raises another question on what sets are actual good building experiences from an AFOL/TFOL perspective. I started a separate thread on this question.

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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by ForestFriend »

Overall, I have to agree with the general feeling that the Castle 2013 isn't inspiring to most of 'us'. Yet, having struggled to build a respectable castle,myself, there is some merit in the Castles on offer. After 3 months of exposure to many amazing LCC castle MOC's the 2013 Castle looks way to simple and with obvious flaws. Windows at ground level in the wall for example just aren't realistic etc. Would have liked whole thing to sit on a large grey baseplate. I do like the walkways which are three studs wide . Yet the colours are attractive to the eye if you're a youngster moving on from Duplo Land . I'd buy the Castle myself as it at least teaches me how to construct a basic castle and to a young FOL probably is attractive. I appreciate the LEGO strategy in supplying a "base" for younger FOL's to start from. :)
I believe that the LOTR sets are better designed for more experienced AFOL's and look pretty good. I think LEGO is offering basic castle stuff but there's more profit for them in the other types of 'fanatasy' sets they offer. My wish would be for a reissue of some of the 'older' factions such as forest knights , robin hoodsters, vikings etc. Maybe we should all write to LEGO about this ? Lastly, it would benefit both LCC ad LEGO, if they referenced the LCC website, so that new FOL's could see what experienced AFOL's are building. This could really ignite the interest of junior FOL's (over 16 ?)and attract them to our LCC . This in turn would benefit LEGO as well. Lastly, I love all my minifigs, good, bad and ugly. :)
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by Jaffleman »

Considering buying the 70404 castle for parts, has anyone been able to make anything useful out of this set? Thinking of just turning it into a singular tower of some sort but there seem to be too many panels for anything decent.
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by Dubbadgrim »

Jaffleman wrote:Considering buying the 70404 castle for parts, has anyone been able to make anything useful out of this set? Thinking of just turning it into a singular tower of some sort but there seem to be too many panels for anything decent.
I'd say its worth it, unless you arent building castles big enough to make use of the prefab pieces. Although 2013 castle sets have a pretty 'kiddy' feel about them, the actual piece collection isn't really that bad. In particular I think the figs from Castle 2013 are pretty great. Im just getting sick of catapults :mad:
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by rodiziorobs »

As far as factions go, I wouldn't be surprised if TLG had meant to pursue a renaissance of Black Falcons (by including the knight in the joust set), but decided to either cancel or delay it due to the Hobbit suddenly picking up a third wave when it picked up a third movie. If they had gone straight into reviving a cherished faction of us AFOLs, it would likely have poached sales from LOTR and the Hobbit.

So I see it as rather than give us the good Castle stuff, they held off to give us the good Tolkien stuff (Hobbit 2nd wave excepted) first. In the meantime, they released the 2013 line as a 'placeholder' for better Castle stuff in the future while keeping the more AFOL-friendly joust set available. My hope is that once their Tolkien licenses expire, TLG pulls out all the stops and gives us the awesome Castle sets and factions we've all been waiting for, where a few juniorized army builder sets can exist alongside some meat-and-potatoes style building in the same theme.
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by Mr. President »

Not to put too fine a point on it . . . but how does any of us really know that Lord of the Rings is going to end? I mean, how long has Star Wars been going now? Fifteen years? Longer?

Look at all the lists of iconic scenes and character that haven't been done yet that Lord of the Rings fans have made on Eurobricks and other sites. Can we be sure that the reason they haven't been done yet is that TLG is planning to do them later over the next one, three, ten years?

I mean, I hope that I'm wrong. I pray that I'm wrong - although I bought some of the LOTR sets to get goblin and elf minifigures, it does compete for shelf space and attention with Castle, which is my actual favorite line and includes my favorite sets of all time. But how do we really know that I am wrong? Did classic Space fans once expect to get more of their sets "after Star Wars is done"?
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by Athos »

OK, after starting this post, I've broken down and bought the dragon mountain and the gatehouse raid. Actually my sister found them on clearance and bought them for me. So once she gets them to me, I'll be able to confirm or refute my impressions.

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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by Starconyx4 »

The thing that drives me crazy is A) We need knights for Loreos right now, B) The minifigs are hardly worth the money when all you get are some basically useless parts, C) they have to push the Good vs evil thing. I know they don't want to promote random valance, but Why can't we just go back to 2 competing factions, like in the original Castle. I might get the cheapest set in the lot for the Dragon knights, but other than that I hope they do a better job next Castle
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

Post by Alcarin »

AK_Brickster wrote:Yeah, set designs really don't interest me that much anymore. I look at new sets and think, "Hmm... what can I make out of those parts?" and, "What can I do with those minifigs?"

With that criteria in mind, I'm perfectly happy with the new castle line. Sure, the old "Lions vs. Dragons" bit is pretty well played out, but the torso prints are good, and the helmets, heads, etc are all perfectly usable. Other than the big castle, most of the sets generally have nice generic castle parts that will be useful in a multitude of future applications.

I think very few people at the AFOL level buy the sets just to build them and display them on a shelf. I personally build the sets once just for the experience, but after that they get thrown in with the rest of my parts, so for me, crying about poor set design is a useless endeavor. Like Blue said, this is a toy which is first and foremost designed for little kids. You have to take that into consideration in your evaluation process.

As long as there is a good piece count for the price, and not too many panels, I'm pretty happy just to have castle stuff available.
Well I guess I am one of minority then....

I am AFOL and I preferably buy for display.... However I usually add figs/accessories/animals and foilage to sets to make them look good....

Have MVR and MMV helm's Deep and so on all on display with hundreds of $ worth of additions to make the scene looks good!
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Re: Castle 2013... meh?

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