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I happened to have a few dollars to spare the other day and found myself wandering through the Lego aisle of one of the department stores that are on my way home from work. I've been wanting to sample the new Castle range for a while now, and a couple of the smaller sets caught my eye.

The first set (I don't have a camera to speak of, so the official stock photos will have to do) is a fairly sizable catapult. I was a bit leery of this one because when I was a kid Lego had a habit of making catapults that were, well...really, really bad. This one is definitely a cut above what I had when I was little, though. For one thing, it's big. Most of the catapults you saw years ago were tiny little things slapped onto an existing set to drive up the piece count without the designers having to put too much thought into it. Here it's the focus of the entire set, and it's obvious they actually put some thought into it. It actually looks like a siege engine that could do some damage to a castle, although if you try to fire it you'll find out pretty quick that it's a bit gutless. Still, all in all it's one of the best siege weapon set Lego has ever put out. In fact, it's probably going to have the rare honour of joining only a handful of other sets on my "never disassemble no matter how much I need the parts" list.

The little fortification that comes with it is kinda pathetic, though. It's nice that they thought to include something for the catapult to shoot at, but frankly they would probably be more inclined to just roll right over top of it and keep going.

The second set is a bit smaller, and after the catapult it's a bit disappointing. The stock photos and the set's name ("Crossbow Attack") let me to believe it was going to be some sort of ballista, but it's really just a push-cart that fires a funny-looking projectile using a rubber band. It can put quite a lot of velocity behind the...thing that it shoots, but that's really all there is to say about it. I expect that I'll either scrap it for parts or try to modify it into an actual ballista if I can figure a way. I was hoping this one would be better than it was, and I'm a tad disappointed with it.

The soldier minifigures that came with both sets were quite cool. Their dark blue and grey colour scheme is gorgeous, probably my favourite of any of the military-themed castle factions (the Forestmen are still my faves, though) and their shiny silver helms really make them stand out alongside an army of older figs. Their torso prints are really nice too, silver scale armour, belts and chest plates that really make them look like soldiers (as opposed to the 'giant faction logo printed on the chest' thing that about half of the older factions had going on). There was a great selection of weapons too -- between the two sets I got three crossbows, three spears, a poleaxe, a broadsword, a cleaver-type sword, a flail (!) and five shields. I'm not a big fan of the minifig faces, which are a bit too expressive to fit in with my older figures, but only one out of the four was so absurdly hideous that I felt the need to replace it with an older one, so I'm not going to complain too much.

I'm not a big fan of the skeletons that were included with the sets, although I can't argue with it from a marketing perspective -- the handful of skeletons I had as a kid were one of the most treasured parts of my Lego collection and were constantly being used as cannon fodder by whoever the bad guys were that week. I like that they've improved on the shoulder design that the 80s/90s skeletons had, but the new arms are absurdly long and look more like mechanical parts that bones. The undead horse is a tad weird, too. The whole lot of them are only likely to get used as corpses strewn on a battlefield, though, so it hardly matters.

These were the first Castle sets I bought in over a decade (since the Fright Knights pretty much killed the line) and in fact this was one of the first times I'd even seen Castle stuff on the shelves since then. I had high hopes for them, and I'm satisfied with what I got. Some of the other new Castle sets have caught my eye (especially since the skeletons have been replaced in the new sets by much easier to reuse trolls and dwarves) and I'm really starting to like the look of these Crown soldiers, so who knows?

Man, I'm loving these orcs, dwarves, and troll Castle sets. I'm sure some of the anal-retentive types at that lego castle forum are getting bent outta shape over them, but man, I wish they had these when I was a kid. My layout hasn't really changed much since I posted those pictures a while ago, but I have gotten a few more minor sets (and the awesome Viking longboat) and a lamp to brighten things up under that table.

The trolls themselves don't do much for me, but I love their zany contraptions. This set is the first time I can recall seeing an official siege tower built on such a large scale, and the LOTRish feel that the crew of orcs gives it really makes it seem like one to get. The guard tower that it comes with would make a badass addition to any modular castle, too.

The battle wheel is the pinnacle of troll zaniness, though. I can't for the life of me figure what I would do with it, but it's the sort of set that I would have loved as a kid.

Sir Auros wrote:Viking longboat

Damn you and your Viking-owning ways!

I never really saw much of the Viking line around here, and I was always a bit put off by the big Technic-esque mythological beasties that came with so many of their sets. The Vikings themselves and their ships/buildings struck me as really cool, though.

I should check my local clearance toystore's Lego section one of these days to see if I could find any of their sets there...they usually have a pretty good markdown on older stuff.