Review: 21186 The Ice Castle

I like this set
I have on my wanted list

As a very casual Minecraft player, I think the prices of the medium and large sets are really steep, although the US$10 sets are consistently really good value. Then again, this does seem better PPP than any of the Crafting Boxes, particularly 3.0 which also features a castle.

The dark purple 16x16 plate is not new; it was in a Trolls set and a previous-generation Friends set.

As with the other Minecraft sets that our family owns, this will be a great parts pack once it's on sale.

For those who don't know, the Royal Warrior and the Yeti aren't actual characters in Minecraft. They just represent custom "skins" you can put on the player character/avatar, and they don't affect the game in any other way. (I don't know if the specific skins in this set are officially available to use, or if players would have to recreate them.) To my knowledge they aren't even the skins used by famous Minecraft YouTubers, or very popular skins lots of players like to use.
All that to say, these minifigures don't portray any character that Minecraft fans would know or want, so for those people they might not even add that much appeal to the set.
Still, I like that Lego is doing this rather than having Steve and/or Alex (the default skins included with the game) in every single set.

@ohrmazd said:
"For some reason I thought that was an illegal technique. I know kids historically have done the plate between studs for decades but I don’t know that I have ever seen it in an official set. "

IIRC, tiles are okay to use like that, but plates are not. Plates are very slightly larger and the vertical and horizontal studs interfere with each other.

The last time I remember seeing it used was 21309 for the flag tile on the lunar surface.

The star of this set are figures and BEAUTIFUL GLAZED TERRACOTA

As a Minecraft player, the "player-built structure" sets and custom skin minifigures don't really interest me, but this one isn't bad. Seems expensive for what it is, though.

Also, the square water container is a cauldron, the contraption to its right is a brewing stand, and the patterned tiles are glazed terracotta.

One of the most interesting and important points that needs to be called out is that the chest has a new lid, which makes the overall look much closer to what an in-game chest looks like!
I will be trying to get a ton of these through B&P, to replace all my current lids!

Minecraft sets are better parts packs than classic sets. You get lots of bricks in a limited color palette rather than 20 handfuls of bricks in different colors.

@ohrmazd said:
"For some reason I thought that was an illegal technique. I know kids historically have done the plate between studs for decades but I don’t know that I have ever seen it in an official set. "

That technique is ancient. The first set I owned that used it was 368

Funnily enough, just the other day I stared getting curious about my Minecraft collection. According to what I've catalogued here, I own 51 sets and am missing 40, and 17 of those 40 are from just this year! I gotta get collecting!

"what appears to be some kind of potion mixing contraption. Four 2x2 dark purple tiles printed with some kind of rug pattern lead the way in." "I am not a Minecraft player"
The first is quite obviously a Brewing Stand, while the later is less obviously Purple Glazed Terracotta. Y'all usually get Captain Rex to do the Star Wars reviews since he knows so much about them, and it makes them such fantastic reads! Would it kill you to get a Minecraft player to give some insight into the product? Its the best selling videogame of all time, one of your team has to have played it right?

I'm going to somewhat echo what @goldenguy880 said above. I'm kind of sick of completely custom skins in this thing. LEGO has only done 6 out of the 20 or so skins from Minecraft Dungeons. They've only done the basic Steve an Alex from the Legacy Console Default Skin Pack. They've done absolutely zero characters from Mojang official Skin Packs like Biome Settlers or Campfire Tales. Even popular Youtubers (as hard as that licensing would be) haven't been given a shot. There are so many interesting characters and monsters that are a part of the game's canon and/or history that LEGO keeps ignoring in favor of "generic concept but blocky 103."

Like, imagine if LEGO made 10 more variants of Jedi Bob named things like Jedi Sarah and Jedi Mike before they ever made a Kit Fisto minifig. How insulting would that be?

@ambr said:
"I always wonder what motivates Lego to keep producing a dozen of these sets every year, as hardly ever advertised anywhere, not great value, rarely seen in toyshops and given the fanbase is mainly kids don't they just buy the usual marketed Lego."

Bro. Lego minecraft is very popular. Kids love it and Its even has own magazine.

@ambr said:
"I always wonder what motivates Lego to keep producing a dozen of these sets every year, as hardly ever advertised anywhere, not great value, rarely seen in toyshops and given the fanbase is mainly kids don't they just buy the usual marketed Lego."
They're rarely seen in toyshops because despite their high price tag, they're selling like hot cakes, and they can do this without relying on marketing because the video game is the marketing. Where I live, Minecraft sets might as well have a 6-month shelf life after which half of each wave permanently disappears from stores and never returns, effectively reaching premature EOL. As a result, there's a nasty scalper market here, with in-production sets being listed at or above MSRP, and retired sets being listed at such ridiculous markup it makes international shipping look good.

For example, I took great pains to source 21165 and 21166 recently because none of the major retailers or LEGO stores have had them in stock for months, and I'm currently on the lookout for a new 21140 which came out in 2018 — it'd cost about 1.5-2x its MSRP if I ship it from most places, versus paying the only seller 3x MSRP locally. Also its local MSRP is almost double its US MSRP after conversion...