Random set of the day: Kingdoms Joust
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 10223 Kingdoms Joust, released during 2012. It was the only Castle set released that year. It contains 1575 pieces and 9 minifigs, and its retail price was US$119.99/£99.99.
It's owned by 4,703 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
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56 comments on this article
"We Will Rock You" begins to play...
Oh, I love this set! It was so much more substantial than I expected when I first got it. I think I'll have to go rebuild it now....
My dream still is to get two of these and combine them
Biggest castle set ever, and most expensive. Worth it though, even if I had to buy one from Bricklink for 150$ years afterward. It's great, enough said.
Swan Song of the Castle theme, great set!
I didn’t know they got the Medieval Times license.
I've always preferred the more village-y (including blacksmiths) sets over the proper castle ones, so this hybrid was always super cool!
It was also fun seeing the Black Falcons show up again for some friendly competition instead of flat out war. If the leaks about this year's Lion Castle turn out true I hope they treat the Falcons and Forestmen in that set the same way.
@Alpunt0:
I remember feeling a bit cheated when I realized that the set image that caught my eye actually showed two of these sets combined back to back.
I actually did end up getting two of these sets as I knew I would not be satisfied with just one. Unfortunately, the jousting fence cannot easily be doubled in length using just of the pieces from two of them.
This one is a beast, hope they go back to making classic castle at some point and do another tournament build
The Medieval Market Village and then this set were what brought me out of a long dark age! Brilliant!
The set that got me into MOCing. I bought two of them and tried getting everything bigger. Such good memories.
Reminds me of my 383 which is better than this in only one aspect: cypress.
Great set. Kingdoms was objectively the best of the castle series, if one puts aside nostalgia for the early sets that we all grew up with.
@MeisterDad:
Truck with Excavator? Is it heading out to murder all the cypress trees?
Oh my god, they killed Cypress! You bastards!
Absolute masterpiece. There’s nothing more charming and fun than the best Castle sets.
This set surprised me by how big it was an how much more to it there actually was. It's a great set, one that I still enjoying displaying from time to time.
Beautiful set, one of the best in the Castle line. It's great to get a hybrid of village and castle builds.
Own it and love it but sadly still in the box. Hope to break the seals and build this. Believe I got it at the time envisioning I would incorporate it in my City as a historical side of town, kind of like Old Quebec City with walled parts of town but safer in the box for now.
Is there any particular reason the lady in the dress is holding a frog? Is she going to kiss it, maybe?
I loved this so much that I got 2 of it.
Wow, I want this set. I’m guessing it is probably outrageously expensive now, but I wonder how much it would cost to piece together, I don’t see any parts that are too unique from this picture.
A gorgeous set, so glad I bought it when it came out. I still have the (Correct word is escaping me) place-where-the-royals-are-standing-and-watching built. Plus the barrier. Useful and just so nice.
Terrible parts pack for Blacktron. But that black Falcon Knight is very much medieval Blacktron.
That updated Black Falcon shield is rad, I use it as my avatar in a few places
This is one of those sets that makes you regret you weren't into Castle at the time.
I REEEEEEAAAALLLLY wanted this set but never got it. ;(
I don't have it, and seem to be alone in not really liking the look of it too much. Perhaps I'd change my mind if I saw it in the flesh?
Great set. I always liked the Kingdoms theme a bit less then (Fantasy) Castle 2007-2009 because of the latter's fantasy elements. After that, getting back to a cut and dry 'good king vs evil knights' thing was a bit less interesting to me. It didn't help that when I got the four smallest sets from 2010 (7953 Court Jester, 7955 Wizard, 7950 Knights Showdown and 7949 Prison Carriage Rescue) they had a lot of minifigs but lackluster atrophied builds. And I normally like builds!
But with this set and the next wave things took a turn towards greatness.
Fron the 2nd year I only got the 7187 Escape From The Dragon's Prison set. It was good value... back then! I sold it and now you'd have to pay insane prices like 100-150 euro for it. It's one of the few sets I've all but given up on ever being able to get it back again. And that one isn't even that good, as it's cramped and has a bad mixture of POOPs (I hate these acronyms) and tiny parts and is cramped as a result.
The 6918 Blacksmith and 7189 Mill Village Raid sets seem to be absolute modern gems though. I regret not at least getting the blacksmith. Their current prices are also super inflated too. Right now the deep pocketed castle superfan seems to be the only type of person who would be likely to bother buying them at those prices, sadly.
By the way, what's up with these wonky set numbers? To me it seems like a telltale sign they had to move to the five digit format soon!
@Binnekamp said:
"By the way, what's up with these wonky set numbers? To me it seems like a telltale sign they had to move to the five digit format soon!"
Yeah... starting in 2009 until they switched to five digits in 2013, it was pretty common for a single series of sets to have numbers in multiple ranges.
5 digits was used for exclusive sets and sets with a lot of digits were promotional products. In 2012 TLG had used all the 4 digit combinations. In 2013 was the start of the 5 digits.
Those blue bricks do NOT look like sand blue on the picture, but they are. At least according to the inventory.
I remember seeing this in stores but never got it because it was a 'big, expensive set'. I did get the majority of the other Kingdoms sets though including King's Castle. At the time I didn't like the roofs on this as I thought they were too 'fantasy' turns out some castles really do have roofs like that.
Such an awesome set, lots of detail and great minifigs. I especially like the fact there is a noblemen and lady included, I don't think we ever got another noblemen minifig in a Lego set. We need more regular civilians for medieval stuff like more peasants and nobles.
As others have said it was great how this set combined the castle element with the town/civilian element, plus the cool joust. It also gave the suggestion of a town or city with walls around it which is cool and realistic, as opposed the traditional 'just a castle' approach which wasn't entirely realistic (castles almost always had a town of sorts inside or at least more than just a courtyard).
Kingdoms is my favourite Lego Castle line ever because it is one of the only realistic ones of Knights vs Knights without dragons and skeletons and all that nonsense. There was an evil wizard but he was just the head of the Dragon knights.
Side note: Does anyone know where the whole wizard myth came from, especially its connection to castles and medieval stuff? Dragons were apparently an amalgamation of all things scary to humans which is why they are present in many cultures, and sadly many women were killed as 'witches' but the whole good or evil wizard thing, where'd that come from?
Here's hoping the Lion King's Castle set is just as good, if not better! Pity about the price though. RIP paying $500+ AU just to get an historical themed set from Lego :(
*swoons*
If only I had the money I do now back when this was sold, I still don't have the money to pay aftermarket prices (or the desire to enable scalping).
This sure does go well with 31120 except for the color of the roof but come on! You get a king and queen, horses and so much more.
Also, how cool was that kingdoms series? So many classic castle sets.
@Norikins:
10193 beats it by 26pcs with 1601.
@Brickchap:
Ancient times. Merlin may be the earliest direct parallel, but I know the Bible forbids divination, and Pharaoh had a gaggle of court wizards, so the true origins date back thousands of years.
It would be great to see a 4 tower version of this where someone has found 2 spare towers and added depth and floors to the castle, while keeping everything the same style.
I loved Kingdoms which to me was a real throwback to the Castle stuff I had as a kid. I had quite a few of the sets but unfortunately not the more expensive/bigger ones - at that time I wasn't dropping £100 on a single set. Which is a shame as this set always looked superb.
I loved this set when it came out… still holds up to this day!
Another great set from Nicholas Groves!
https://www.coroflot.com/nicholas_groves/lego-sets
Just built this one two weeks back when I needed a mental break. Got it used, including the box, for 170 on eBay back in January 2021.
It goes very nicely with the Medieval Village set as well as the Village Mill Raid set (have all three on display).
Cannot wait for the new castle this summer, despite the sure sticker shock.
I actually managed to get 2 of these and stuck them together. The only issue was no stairs in the towers. I need to dig it out and see what I can moc up, maybe it will make a good entrance to the grounds of the rumored kings castle coming later this year.
I wish I had gotten this. Guess I should get a move on purchasing 31120 and 21325.
Absolutely epic set. Somehow managed a few parts from this from a haul, but someday I'd like a full one. It's just got so much good stuff. Can't wait for the 90th castle though!
So happy I own one :)
I'm still kicking myself for not buying this when it came out.
When this first came out, I remember thinking "well, I don't really need/want another tournament set" and I wasn't super into the Kingdoms line after the stellar "fantasy era" sets. But I'd already got Medieval Market Village and the neo-Black Falcon looked super-tempting, so when my now-wife was looking for a LEGO set to give me for my birthday, this was the choice.
In hindsight, Medieval Market Village is probably still the better set, but Kingdoms Joust is a very close second, and it's actually the one that I've had displayed more and played with more frequently. Although "more royalty" is almost never something I look for when buying Castle sets (that grew old around 2000--never mind 2012), this set does have a stellar complement of minifigs, and because I was anemic on the Kingdoms line, it's actually my only King and Queen from the theme. I've already mentioned the Black Falcon, of course. But my actual favourite fig here is the Lady in the Green Dress, who I've considered the sole representative in this set of the Kingdoms dragon-sigilled faction.
In my head canon, the main structure is a diplomatic building of some kind. VIPs, adventurers, tournament contestants, and guest dignitaries of foreign lands, including enemy "Kingdoms" can relax in safety, in the balcony tower. The stained-glass windowed tower is reserved for the Lions. No weapons are allowed above the ground floor.
The bridge is considered a neutral zone for all sides. Meetings, soirees, celebrations, treaty signings, negotiations, and even war declarations, all may take place here.
What a gem! I remember passing this by because it was so expensive and back then sets of that scale were big deals....many years gone by and Lego have almost completely desensitizised me to the cost of these big sets...released today id buy it without question....just a lot of saving.
Makes me so grateful I picked up a couple medieval markets and a mill raid set back then. Been moc'ing a medieval display that incorporates them for a while now and it's got to be one of the most satisfying projects I've done to date.
Medieval minifigs are hard to come by and those knights are fantastic I so desperately want them and their horses!
Looking at the model closely it doesn't look like the parts would make it prohibitive to recreate with a decent parts collection or a parts order, nothing overly specialised or rare that I'm noticing...if I had the space in my moc I'd be tempted to recreate this.
Such a fabulous set!!! I wonder why I didn't buy it..Then I remember..Oh yeah it was pretty expensive...
@PurpleDave said:
" @Norikins:
10193 beats it by 26pcs with 1601."
This joust is the largest Castle set to be a castle.
I have this too, and couldn't be happier about it. Was so lucky to get it on Bricklink back in 2016 new and sealed for less than the original RRP. Unimaginable nowadays.
I got one, then another one without figs for half price, just for the pieces. Awesome set, not too combat-oriented, but still very Castle-ish, and brick-built, no wall panels.
I'm so sad that I missed out on this. It came out in the early years of my marriage before my wife was fully converted to AFOLism.
We've since purchased a number of sets more expensive than this, but back then it would have been a very tough sell.
Looks like such an awesome set from before I returned to LEGO in 2016.
The main thing I missed out on, was how even many small sets had horses and figures when Castle sets were pretty much a yearly thing.
I bought this for myself in grad school and saved it for when I felt I had time to build it, which turned out to be eight years and five moves later. Several of the dark reddish brown tiles and round plates broke, which I had never had Legos do before. It's a wonderful set, but it was definitely tainted by that unpleasant surprise.