In my review of King's Castle Siege (7094), I said that it would be hard for this, the 2010 King's Castle, which was about to be released, to beat. But 7094 was beaten! This is the greatest castle Lego has built... so far. It won't be too hard, though, for The Battle of Helm's Deep (9474) to beat this set... Helm's Deep looks even better!

Box/Instructions

As with most Lego boxes nowadays, the box for King's Castle is way too big. But it does look good though. 6/10.

Parts

Ok parts, but not really any rare ones. The castle building tends to use a lot of grey and red pieces and not any creative building techniques. 6/10.

Minifigures

This set has 8 excellent figures:

King of the Lion Kingdom- One of my favourite Lego figures of all time! Definitely the best King Lego has ever made. Excellently armed, the only problem is that he could easily trample the entire Dragon Knight army. 10/10!!

Lion Pikeman 1- I tend to love Pikemen, and this is my favourite! He is the one standing on the drawbridge in the picture. He could also single-handedly fend off the Dragon Knight army. 9.5/10.

Lion Pikeman 2- This pikeman is standing on the Castle wall in the picture. He isn't as good as the other Pikeman, but is still cool. 7.5/10.

Lion Crossbowman 1- Not the best Crossbowman. A bit boring, but serves it's purpose (As with the others, taking out the Dragon Knights easily). 5/10.

Lion Crossbowman 2- The Same as the other one, apart from the face. 5/10.

Dragon Knight- A definite leader for the Dragon Knights, very well armed, this guy stands a slight chance. He was the leader of all of my Dragon Knights until I got the horseman from Escape From the Dragon's Prison (7187).

Dragon Spearman- An average soldier in the Dragon Knight's army. Not that interesting. 5.5/10.

Dragon Crossbowman- Someone who could actually do something against the Lion Knights with his weapon. Not a very good figure though. 6.5/10.

Overall- Some very good figures, as well as some boring ones.

The build

Rather long and repetitive. It took me between 1-3 hours on Christmas Day. It would take longer though if it wasn't Christmas. 6/10.

The completed model

An excellent castle and brilliant base for the Lion Knights. But the Dragon Knights... all they can do is get their crossbowman to fire at the Lion Knights, and hope that they come out of their stronghold one at a time to fight. The Dragon Knights need some siege equipment, or at least some more archers. Very good castle though. 7/10.

Summary

An excellent set, that needs fairer armies. I suggest combining all your Lego Kingdoms sets into a massive Kingdom, and having a big battle. All the Dragon Knights together would definitely stand a chance. This castle also looks brilliant in the middle of a Medieval city that you can build with the rest of Lego Kingdoms. 9/10.

If you have a choice between this and King's Castle Siege (7094), buy this. But if you would rather wait for The Battle of Helm's Deep (9474)... buy Helm's Deep!

Overall 5 stars: this is simply a good Castle, just like 6080 was a good one. Allthough it is not really an original if you put it next to its older brother, but good is good ! Lego did a good job improving it.

Building experience 3 stars: you have to built it in components that click together and it is a bit repeating work because several components are the same. The final result is a solid castle with a good drawbridge and fence. Nice details are the red roofs, the inside stairs, the dungeon, the King's room with trone and the treasurechamber.

Parts get 3 stars: generaly all seems present but I miss some things. One real big flag instead of banners for the main tower would have been nice. The castle is well defended with the King and 4 Knights so what are the odd's for the Dragon Knights ? At least one horse-man and a catapult would have been welcome considering the setprice.

Playability 4 stars: although the Dragon Knights are the losers before starting it is very playable. The big and small catapults work fine, you can lock up the prisoners etc. Lego invites you to buy other sets for a real battle (which I did).

Value for money 3 stars: I hesitated for 4 but the lack of enough Dragon Knights was the reason to put it on 3. If you pay €100,00 for a set like this you may expect sufficient minifigures and extra's for an honest battle.

I am a city freak and not a castle maniac, but I always wanted to have this set since it first release. Too bad the price is a bit too high for me. Here in Indonesia, the price is around USD 150, and I can not make my wife to approve the buying:)

So, when someone offered a used set priced at around USD 80, I quickly decided to buy it. And that is one of decisions that I will never regret. Just finished the building last night, and this set is really look amazing. The details they have, the torches (which done by creatively combining trans red plumes and telescopes), the flags. Oh what a really grand castle it is. The building process took around 3 hours (I did it while watching The Walking Dead series), but the process itself was not boring at all. A couple of repetition occurred, but in general, it's a fun building time.

This set come with 8 minifigs : 5 Lion Knights as the inhabitants of the castle and 3 Dragon Knights serves as attackers. And they have different jobs. Some are archers, some work with pike, and some with swords. Really colorful army we have here.

Thought that it will be better to have 8 Lion Knights but the Dragon Knight also cool, especially the one using armor. But we need more than 8 minifigs for this scenario. How come a three people attackers hoping to capture a castle? It just felt like wasting time. And they even do not have any heavy artillery. Only some swords and some arrows. Probably this Dragon Knights only work as scouts, trying to find the castle weaknesses? And they probably will find that the back wall of the castle can be opened, so their full scale army can attack through that hole?

One detail that I also love from this set is the two halberds in the front side of the castle. Really look cool there. Nicely done!

The only weakness from this set for me is the height. Sure it will look great when it standing by itself. But try to put it next to Medieval Market Village, the castle will look tiny. Probably Lego should considering creating a Castle with the same spirit like this set, only make it larger so it can be comparable with Medieval Market Village.

Anyway, this set is really should owned by avid Castle fans. But even if you are not fans, you still will be happy to own this set.

I felt it necessary to register and review this set because it deserves a higher rating. I have both 7094 King's Castle Siege and 7946 King's Castle and am familiar with past castles. I felt that the castle before this (7094) tried hard, but felt stretched too thin by trying for too many features within the piece count. 7946 has corrected this. 7946 is a solid castle with all the essential features.

7946 King's Castle is comparable to 6080 King's Castle from 1984 and continues the legacy of well designed, visually appealing Lego castles with high playability. The castle is modular and can be reconfigured. I am pleased that Lego has done away with the molded baseplates of the 90s. With this castle, I feel like I get a taste of what people refer to as the legendary castles from Lego's past. I have no real complaints and hope that Lego keeps it on track as this castle is! I expect this to go down in history as one of the best.

Pros

• Excellent parts; almost every piece would be usable in most castle MOCs.
• Solid feel and high playability.
• Visually pleasing.
• Staged bags make building quick.

Cons

• I only have one copy.

In conclusion, 7946 King's Castle returns the Lego castle theme to it best. This is the castle I've been waiting since the 80s.

The King's Castle is the mainstay of the Kingdoms line, a magnificent fort that must, against all odds, stand against the might of the opposing Dragon Knights faction. Does it do the job?

Aesthetically, King's Castle is extremely attractive: there's enough symmetry to make it look orderly, but enough variety to keep it from being boring. The only two sections that are exact mirror-image copies of each other are the two short turrets on either side of the main gate, but LEGO did such a good job of having "round" turrets as opposed to perpendicular ones that it doesn't matter to me. Even the side walls have minor variations that keep them from being exactly the same. Finally, the back two towers are completely different from each other; in a vein similar to that of the Royal Knights' Castle (which draws inevitable comparisons from me since I own both), one side is a mess hall/general barracks area for the soldiers and the other side is where the king resides.

Like many of the more recent castles, King's Castle eschews use of a baseplate and instead opts for modularity, which greatly increases the flexibility in terms of display. If you keep the castle in its recommended arrangement, you'll find that there's plenty of open space in the middle for you to reach in and place your Minifigs, so there's no worry about knocking things over in the process. Of particular note is the gate mechanism, a clever design that allows you to raise and lower the portcullis without needing to mess around with string. Strangely, this design was not kept for Prison Tower Rescue.

I have only two minor gripes with this set, both of them stemming from (perhaps unfair) comparisons to the Royal Knights' Castle. The first - an easily fixable one - is that the king's throne seems to face backwards in the final build, which seems a bit aloof to me. The second is that I think that this set could have done with a Minifig or two more; Royal Knights' Castle came with 11, while King's Castle comes with 8, of which 3 are from the Dragon Knights faction. True, Royal Knights' Castle is larger, but it does seem a little strange that the entire castle holds only one horseman - the king himself! The champion from Prison Tower Rescue will invariably be pressed into service here.

Finally, although the set is impressive on its own due to its completeness, it is somewhat lacking in height. At first I thought that this was yet another unfair comparison to its big brother 6090, but even Prison Tower Rescue is taller than the main gate. Fortunately, now you have a use for those skinnier cardboard boxes from Amazon that you've been saving this whole time.