Classic-Castle.com

Dear Lego,
I am very excited about the new castle line so far, but it occured to me that the name is implying more than one Kingdom. I think that since you have this oportunity you should expand on it, make 4 or 5 kingdoms. They could be fighting a three sided war, with aliances, diplomats and peace treaties between certain kingdoms. This would be something that we haven't seen in a castle line so far and I think it would be fresh and original to have more than two armies fighting in the same war.


I myself have thought of a kingdom that I would want, the Sea Rovers. These warriors from an island in the ocean come to the mainland for supplies like timber. They wear leather armour and have wooden bucklers( this would be a way to use this idea viewtopic.php?f=12&t=19345). The Sea Rovers are clean-shaven and have thick hair.



Thanks for reading,
Balamorgineas



http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=446227

LEGO Castle usually has two factions released together and has done so for a while now since the early eighties (with some possible exceptions). If you haven't been collecting long, I can see how you may want more than two factions released at a time. Since I have been collecting a while (30+ years), LEGO releasing two at a time is cool. I have quite a few different factions.

My worry is that if LEGO were to release say four factions instead of two, the number of different new minifigures per faction could go down. Example - Say if two factions had ten new figs per faction as opposed to four factions with only five new figures per faction. Since the two faction option has ten individually different minifigures per faction, that gives me more options on background stories for each faction.
Just a thought...
-Tower

You could repurpose the Crownies as a third faction. They're part of the same...design aesthetic, I guess? What I mean is that you get the same types of minifig faces and level of detail in the "costuming," so to speak. There wouldn't be any sense of dissonance if you included them in a scene with Red Lions and Green Dragons.

Good idea, I'd love to have a sea based/related castle fraction.
I think more than one kingdom would be grea, for example like the Fantasy Line.
There they had four fraction (Skellies, Crown, Orcs, Dwarves).
They had more than just 1 or 2 fractions in a set, in the battleshipset they had orcs, a knight and a dwarf.
I'm not collectin very long (about 10 years), so I can't talk about the old sets...

Re-purposing is your best bet, but I would suggest Vikings torsos. They have a more generic soldier look, therefore a wider range of uses.

Karalora wrote:You could repurpose the Crownies as a third faction. They're part of the same...design aesthetic, I guess? What I mean is that you get the same types of minifig faces and level of detail in the "costuming," so to speak. There wouldn't be any sense of dissonance if you included them in a scene with Red Lions and Green Dragons.

That's what I did with the KKII Knights. Since KKII was significantly different from KKI and prior factions, it wasn't until having the Crown Knights released did I set up a new geographical area and anchor it with the Crown Knights. The KKII Knights looked more like Crown Knights than KKI, so then I made five or so new factions out of the KKII Knights.
-Tower

gedren_y wrote:Re-purposing is your best bet, but I would suggest Vikings torsos. They have a more generic soldier look, therefore a wider range of uses.

The skeleton faction from the '07 line makes a great human faction...the vladek era torsos (black with dark red arms) are good (except for the scorpion print)...dark red torsos are probably best, but good luck trying to collect those if you're in the US. The dark red vladek barding is also perfect for them, but I hate the printing....working on my own based off one of the crown knight bardings (my first attempt at a custom decal too). Still need to adjust a couple things and add color (this image itself is worthless as a decal since it was just a test I did...my computer wasn't hooked up to a printer). I kinda just eyeballed everything, so it's definitely not "perfect", but looks close enough...noticed I didn't put the skull crack in the "right" place, but I kinda prefer mine.

Tower of Iron Will wrote:LEGO Castle usually has two factions released together and has done so for a while now since the early eighties (with some possible exceptions).

I sort of divide them into 3 distinct phases:

1) For the early history of Legoland (~1984-1992), the idea seemed to be that factions were evergreen. New sets would be added to each faction each year, and some factions were phased out in the interim. In Space, factions didn't so much exist, but the color schemes from year to year differentiated "styles" of the single all-encompassing "classic" space.

2) For most of the 1990's (~1993-1997), a single new faction was introduced each year, and few (if any) subsequent sets in that faction were released. Things like Dragon Masters, Royal Knights, M:Tron, Islanders, etc, were all released in a single swoop, in 1 year.

3) In the very late 1990's through today, factions were/are released in groups, to be their own microcosm rather than a subset of a larger theme. So you get things like "Kingdoms" which is actually made up of two factions: Green Dragons and Red Lions. Or you get "Life on Mars", which was made up of Humans and Martians. The concept of an over-arching theme is lost, and themes instead are focus on their own particular visions.

I think for us adult fans, we typically like the #1 or #2 approaches-- we want an over-arching theme that will last for years... Because we plan on being fans for many years! But for kids, I think #3 makes more sense, as trends come and go quickly, and kids generally have the same appreciation for the long haul as adult fans. As such, I expect we'll keep seeing this type of release structure-- themes released in pairs to facilitate conflict, at the same time making them constantly "New!" rather than simply "the newest set in a long tradition".

DaveE

I think it's pretty safe to assume that Lego will release a 3rd and maybe a 4th faction in the Kingdoms line and i would expect the 3rd faction to be introduced in early 2011. I am hoping that the 3rd faction will be inspired by the Forestmen or Wolfpack factions of the past or maybe even a combination of both(Dark Forest). The Kingdoms line seems to be heavily inspired by castles sets of the distant past so I am expecting the same inspiration will carry through with additional factions.

I wouldn't expect anything on the Kingdoms front until Summer 2011. I have seen magazine pages with confidential Lego images with Dutch text. This text included launch projections in months, December through April. There was no Kingdoms shown. I saw the next wave of several existing themes. That's all the spoilers I'm willing to give.

gedren_y wrote:I wouldn't expect anything on the Kingdoms front until Summer 2011. I have seen magazine pages with confidential Lego images with Dutch text. This text included launch projections in months, December through April. There was no Kingdoms shown. I saw the next wave of several existing themes. That's all the spoilers I'm willing to give.

Ya your probably right about the next Kingdom sets not appearing until summer 2011. It makes sense since the first Kingdoms sets were released in June I think so the next wave of sets should come roughly 1 year later.

I'd like a unicorn faction. Or a boar.

Steve