It depends on what I'm playing - if I'm setting up armies for BrikWars, for instance, I'll combine classic castle, KKII guys, and spacemen into a single army and not even think twice about it.Formendacil wrote:So, I'm curious as to whether you, a KK2 style designer and a LEGO fan, would use your more Classic Castle and KK2 themes together in play, or whether you would consider them too distinct to mix.
If I'm making a serious medieval layout, I think a chessboard's worth of Shadow Knights fit in just fine. A single Danju by himself looks out of place, but if you get thirty or forty Danjus together (since I bought giant piles of the Vladek Encounter sets) then all the purple just starts to look like believable uniform livery. And of course Rub N' Buff can make a world of difference.
A sufficient number of Santises or brown-cloaked Rascuses are believable as heavy troops for Crusaders and Forestmen. Jaykos are a little trickier, I sometimes use his helmet for elves if the setting is fantasy enough. The Talonjay chessmen I have no idea what to do with, but the chess set is still totally worth it just for the shadow knights.
As for architecture, the 2004 Knights sets are kept in a locked closet in a separate room from my real Lego, because I'm still refusing to accept the new grays. 2005's buildings like Vladek's Dark Fortress and the Scorpion Prison, on the other hand, fit right into a landscape with my old 6080s with only minor modifications.
I think the VDF is the closest spiritual successor to the castles of the eighties that we've seen in a decade or so (excepting the BFF re-release of course). There's still a long way to go before we achieve my personal dream of a whole Castle line composed entirely of different-sized 6080s, but I can be patient.