I review the largest set in the Dark Forest line! One of my absolute favorite sets! Music: Marked by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com) Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License creativecommon...
As a young kid, I wrote a letter to Lego asking them to bring back the Forestmen line because I missed out on those sets. I consider the Dark Forest sets to be Lego’s answer to my letter. This is still one of my favorite sets to this day.
That’s awesome. I wrote a letter about adding a King/Queen and then the King’s Mountain Fortress came out with the princess. I always considered that my doing lol. I still have their response letter.
@@mechanictiger8626 took me some time to find the letter, but essentially thanked us for reaching out and said that adding a royal family would “add a new dimension of imaginative play possibilities in the LEGOLAND kingdom.” They also said that they consider consumer requests very seriously when adding new sets.
Dude, these reviews are severly underrated. These are some really well done reviews. I'm also happy to see you're doing mostly older lego themes, which most popular lego channels occasionally do. I'm really enjoying your reviews Brian, you earned a subscriber!
Seeing this in Aug 2022, having somehow missed this set as a kid, and missing it again in 2 years of Lego Castle videos, I see it now for the first time. In love with the minifigs, which cost $40-$60 each used now. Baseplate is $60, damaged. Full set with a dinged baseplate $400. I can't justify the $60 minifigs, or the $400 full set. But I've been building a Forest Guardian collection, and want to add these! I don't want to spend $ on a baseplate when convention builds are all going MILS plating anyway. But I think a cool baseplate would unlock my creativity for a MOC, especially seeing yours. IDK. Just going to have to buy tree parts, think about dropping $130 on 2 minifigs, and try to MOC a forest fortress.
Antagonist faction cart: clearly what happened here is that somebody sent a spy with a Dragon Knights uniform to go steal back a captured Black Knights shield and Royal Knights helmet. Along the way he also stole a cart with some equipment ... unclear whether he knows about the secret compartment.
Brian, thank you for a very good review. I got this set, I bought it in Germany for roughly 180 € as a MISB. What is more important - before discovering Brickset I had no idea about this set. I can agree with you, it is fantastic set with unique structure and vibe, a lot details and amazing minifigs. And it is beautiful. Sometimes, some things simply make click. Like me and this set. As I grew up my personal love were (and still are) Dragon Masters, but this one is unique and charming.
I’m older than you, and discover this ser just today. The plate is great but it looks like more a moc than an official set. I appreciate you moc castle from childhood.
6:45 well actually, the color and design of the shields not being the same across entire nations or regiments of infantry is actually historically accurate. This theme is of course based of off medieval Europe, especially the late medieval period. Even in this time, soldiers had to supply themselves with their armor and tools. It was not given to them by their nations, but rather passed down or bought. So they could have their shields painted differently depending on what they could afford, same with the armor type. So the change of color for the helmet is historical as well, as metal would have different colors because they would buy it from black smiths, who could vary in skill for metal working. It could also just be that the soldier couldn't afford to have the helmet painted.
I'm glad I have that base plate from the more common Pirates Tribal Island. As I never had this set, being british, I'm annoyed we didn't get it, would have been a nice addition to many Forestmen collections. It does feel like it was Lego attempting to get rid of surplus components with the random mix of torso's, weapons and other elements.
The kite shield did come with the blue dragon on it too. Just yellow instead of red background. For this set I guess they wanted it to be sort of universal in that you got an enemy that could 'pass' for multiple factions
Brian I love your castle mock, very unblocky or cheesy, with an eye for detail. 🤞 I am ordering most pieces including the base plate and making my own forestmens fortress from scavenged pieces, mining the internet and lical stores as the price per used set is outrageously expensive now a days. I found my old black knight's castle and had luck finding a mostly complete majistos workshop at a brick store near me which I finished off. Great video!
Fun fact: I filmed this 2 months ago when the used price was $267.77. However, as of today Bricklink average actually has it at an even more absurd $318.81! Yikes!
That baseplate was also used in the enchanted island set 6278-1 amazing set, I bought a large tub of lego an got the enchanted island set in it currently building it up
They were obsessed with catapults for the same reason the Pirates theme had those fire-able cannons (in some countries anyway) - because in the 90s they advertised stuff to kids by emphasising "action features!". We can only wonder how many LEGO pieces were fired out of all of those cannons and catapults to be lost forever...
Yeah. The Dark Forest sets almost felt like they were grab-bagging stuff and mashing it together. It's also possible that they didn't have the funky roman helmets from the Dragon Masters/Fright Knights to use by the point of this set's release.
The old leaf pieces WILL break. I didn't have it happen to me with this set, since I never had this set. It happened with my Fire Breathing Fortress with simple age. I thankfully had some spare to replace them, but it was a sad moment for me.
One day I wanna pick this set up. I dont really care for the other two sets of this line, but this one really looks awesome. However I live in europe, so I'm gonna have to pay a lot of money for it...
That's an amazing set! I never heard of the dark forrest subtheme before - maybe because I'm in europe. Thanks for the nice review and introducing me to this new wave of Lego sets to get obsessed with! 😅
Not sure what the sales were like cause the forestmen theme came back in 96 but only lasted for a year before moving on to crappy awkward Fright knights. I still have this from when I bought it and the pieces are holding up well. The two forestmen below will cost ya $60 or more and the set its self runs up $300 unsealed.
@@BuildLego Yep... I've eyed this set for over decade, and I only ever seen it go up in a price, about a decade ago it was around $250 used/complete, now it's around $500. Finally bought the set around $450 used complete with instructions not to long-ago. Saved a while to do that, yet cheaper now then later. Also over the years seen less and less of them for sale, there aren't many listed on Bricklink anymore.
1996? I never seen this on the shelf! I'm in Canada. I was a big fan of the Forest Line of lego but I was a bit to young to get many of the sets. If I had seen this in the stores in 1996 I would have bought it.
I must have some serious dumb luck with this one. I've owned a total of 2 of these in the last three years. Amazing set. one of the few that doesn't lean on the raised plate, but also uses and abuses it to get it's feel. Makes me wonder what else could have been done had the raised plate not been discontinued.
Interesting, it could be that some stores outside of NA imported it themselves at great cost. As far as I can see from all info online, Lego themselves did not distribute this outside of NA. What store did you get it from?
The blue roof tiles and blue on the cart stick out like a sore thumb for me. Plus, the whole point of Forestmen's sets were they were outlaws so they had to be camouflaged. Something more neutral would have been better imo.
Hello Brian's Bricks, it's been a while! I'm making a video about rare Lego bricks these days. Can I use part of this video? Of course, I'll cite the source.
If the cart still has Royal Knight’s flag colors, then the Dragon Knights clearly stole it and the one knight took the original owner/driver’s helmet too.
You know, now that i look at it, could it be the reason all the dragon master armor is messed up is because they actually are apart of the bandits? Just using scavenged armor to blend in only to betray anyone who falls for it? Especially because in these kinda sets it was always fun to mix and match parts it makes sense to me in active play.
Unless, those “knights” are actually imposters who have robbed a lot of unsuspecting people in the Forrest, posing as knights, and the forest men finally put a stop to their crime spree! 😂
Lego sets today are so incredibly boring and minimalistic. There is no sense of adventure or fantasy anymore. Just boring sets with very little alternative build options. I really miss the old castle sets and the pre star wars space sets
