Lord of the Rings Ongoing Discussion

[TheDoctor]

4 hours ago, Lordhelmet said:

Just built Neuschwanstein and it made me excited for minis tirith, I am hoping and expect it to look awesome.  Hoping for a bunch of printed parts like Rivendell had to capture windows or details.

I was actually thinking they'll use the square hole on the back of headlight bricks for the various windows dotted around, given the likely scale of the build.

[Lordhelmet]

6 hours ago, TheDoctor said:

I was actually thinking they'll use the square hole on the back of headlight bricks for the various windows dotted around, given the likely scale of the build.

Very likely, they did use this in Neuschwanstein for windows in addition to the prints.  This was also used in the ideas challenge exploring middle earth (by the winning design which is a micro scale minis tirith). Worth checking out.  My assumptions is the actual set will have a bigger city and less rock work and field work than the winning set but this at least gives a good idea of what mini scale can look like

[KristinnK]

Regarding windows: on the various unlicensed, non-Lego Minas Tirith brick models out there, individual buildings are represented by single 1x1 bricks. Those models are usually around the 2000 piece count point. So especially since some part of the piece count will go towards minifig scale builds, the buildings on the main microscale model will probably still be represented by at most 2x2 brick 'builds'. At that scale sub-building sized details such as windows mostly won't be visually represented.

[BrickBob Studpants]

Pictures of Sauron‘s helmet are out there!  Looks awesome!

[CloneCommando99]

9 minutes ago, BrickBob Studpants said:

Pictures of Sauron‘s helmet are out there!  Looks awesome!

Scalpers are in shambles right now.

Nothing makes me happier.

[Shroffy123]

9 minutes ago, CloneCommando99 said:

Scalpers are in shambles right now.

Nothing makes me happier.

Haha. Same!

[Lordhelmet]

Bust looks good, happy it is under $100 and it has a minifigure

[sahidko]

Yay, another overpriced gimmicky set. I guess it's time to give up on expectations of regular sized / priced playscale sets.

[Artanis I]

Looks too much like a shaggy beard. Not bad though, and including that minifig is sooooo funny 

[Cyprinus]

1 hour ago, sahidko said:

Yay, another overpriced gimmicky set. I guess it's time to give up on expectations of regular sized / priced playscale sets.

That time came quite a while ago :P

[sahidko]

Yeah I guess you are right. :) 

[Moexy]

Looks like the Sauron minifigure has different printing.

[Blazej_Holen]

Yes please. Helmet looks good enough for me (from what I can see) and Sauron fig is a great addition. I bet its the same one as it is in Barad Dur set. Finally some great news ;) 

 

Many of us will bath in Lego scalpers tiers 😂

[RichardGoring]

I've been tempted by one or two of the more iconic helmets, but still haven't got any of them. This looks interesting enough to be worth getting.

I don't have a problem with resellers, and saying that people selling the Sauron minifigure are scalpers feels a bit unfair, as Barad-Dûr is freely available to buy. The 'blame' if there is any, should go to those who are willing to buy a single figure at such an inflated price. But mostly it should go to LEGO for locking a highly desirable thing behind an enormous price point. LEGO, for all the collectability that it has, should still be a toy at it's core and encourage the children (and former children) to be creative and dexterous. You don't do that by taking something people care about and price locking it. Exclusive variants of a figure are fine (to me), as you can still get at least a version of a character, and then the collectors are still happy. So I'm delighted that Sauron is going to be more readily available, and I hope they do the same with many/all of the LOTR figures. A CMF would be best.

The true scalpers are the ones buying up limited release items and selling for a huge price. The Sméagol & Déagol GWP, previously the Fell Beast GWP, and then in other themes like the Star Trek shuttle and Stranger Things radio station. The Stranger Things set as available for about half a day, not the week that LEGO suggested, and is now being sold for $100+ on Bricklink and $150+ on eBay. It's awful and I'm so incredibly disappointed with LEGO for doing this kind of thing. It's tiresome and puts me off the company, as they are taking away too much of the joy and adding unnecessary stress.

[Mandalorianknight]

3 hours ago, RichardGoring said:

I don't have a problem with resellers, and saying that people selling the Sauron minifigure are scalpers feels a bit unfair, as Barad-Dûr is freely available to buy. The 'blame' if there is any, should go to those who are willing to buy a single figure at such an inflated price. But mostly it should go to LEGO for locking a highly desirable thing behind an enormous price point.

Exactly. People overuse the word scalping. Usually the only things that get scalped are GWPs or other very limited- release sets. (Though when the Rex microfighter came out, the people who wanted to keep Rex's price up definitely scalped that one- it was going for $50 online for like a month). The people selling Sauron aren't buying up all the copies of Barad-Dur, they're not preventing anyone from obtaining anything.

With Lord of the Rings, I don't even blame lego for putting sauron in such an expensive set, because they only seem to be doing these large icons sets. And even then they've now dropped him in a $75 set.

[Kaijumeister]

Great looking helmet, it’s a skip for me (not overly keen to have Sauron staring at me on my bookshelf) but I’m glad to see more LotR sets that don’t break the bank or require significant real estate to display. No doubt this will sell out on release. 

[Lordhelmet]

18 hours ago, Cyprinus said:

That time came quite a while ago :P

Thirteen years ago I believe.  

9 hours ago, RichardGoring said:

I've been tempted by one or two of the more iconic helmets, but still haven't got any of them. This looks interesting enough to be worth getting.

I don't have a problem with resellers, and saying that people selling the Sauron minifigure are scalpers feels a bit unfair, as Barad-Dûr is freely available to buy. The 'blame' if there is any, should go to those who are willing to buy a single figure at such an inflated price. But mostly it should go to LEGO for locking a highly desirable thing behind an enormous price point. LEGO, for all the collectability that it has, should still be a toy at it's core and encourage the children (and former children) to be creative and dexterous. You don't do that by taking something people care about and price locking it. Exclusive variants of a figure are fine (to me), as you can still get at least a version of a character, and then the collectors are still happy. So I'm delighted that Sauron is going to be more readily available, and I hope they do the same with many/all of the LOTR figures. A CMF would be best.

The true scalpers are the ones buying up limited release items and selling for a huge price. The Sméagol & Déagol GWP, previously the Fell Beast GWP, and then in other themes like the Star Trek shuttle and Stranger Things radio station. The Stranger Things set as available for about half a day, not the week that LEGO suggested, and is now being sold for $100+ on Bricklink and $150+ on eBay. It's awful and I'm so incredibly disappointed with LEGO for doing this kind of thing. It's tiresome and puts me off the company, as they are taking away too much of the joy and adding unnecessary stress.

I agree with this, I don't mind the resellers for thinks like Sauron, the scalpers are a different story.  Thankfully for LOTR the Wraith had the prints in PAB, and the only unique part of Sméagol and Deagol was the face prints to my knowledge.  The resellers are just going off market price for something that is available (yet out of reach for most).  I am also good with the set including the minifigure so people can get it cheaper.  The biggest problem for LOTR pricing is the lack of affordable sets so every chance we get below $100 to get a minifigure is a good one.

[kuzyabricks]

On 1/3/2026 at 1:43 AM, sahidko said:

Yay, another overpriced gimmicky set. I guess it's time to give up on expectations of regular sized / priced playscale sets.

That time went 13 years ago. I don’t see Lego giving LOTR a chance of playsets ever again. Those sets were on clearance for what felt like most of their lifetime! It’s a shame but nothing we can really do about it. Either we get these D2C and gimmick sets or nothing at all. I prefer the former. 

On 12/27/2025 at 9:04 PM, Lordhelmet said:

Just built Neuschwanstein and it made me excited for minis tirith, I am hoping and expect it to look awesome.  Hoping for a bunch of printed parts like Rivendell had to capture windows or details.

Did you enjoy the build? I’m guessing by your excitement that you did))

[Altair1]

I never bought any of the previous helmets from other themes, but I must get this one! And it will be nice to have a spare Sauron minifig besides the one I got with Barad'Dur.

Edited Sunday at 09:43 AM by Altair1

[Blazej_Holen]

14 hours ago, Mandalorianknight said:

Exactly. People overuse the word scalping. Usually the only things that get scalped are GWPs or other very limited- release sets. (Though when the Rex microfighter came out, the people who wanted to keep Rex's price up definitely scalped that one- it was going for $50 online for like a month). The people selling Sauron aren't buying up all the copies of Barad-Dur, they're not preventing anyone from obtaining anything.

With Lord of the Rings, I don't even blame lego for putting sauron in such an expensive set, because they only seem to be doing these large icons sets. And even then they've now dropped him in a $75 set.

Resellers; scalpers, it doesnt matter in the end. Why do I need to have a reseller, when I can buy the product from the official retail store? 🤦🏻‍♂️😉 Resellers are maxbe usefull when you want something thats not on the market any more. Like retired sers etc. But then you pay the price of course. 

[HarryPotter27]

I don't see any problem with Bricklink reseller, sometimes you need just specific parts of the set, and it is quite convenient to have someone part it out for you. For example, I wanted multiple orcs from the Barad-Dûr set, so having that option was quite convenient, and the price was 14€ per minifigure, so nothing crazy. I just get annoyed by those who manage to grab a 100 gwps somehow, or the people who were scalping the Wolf Knights for reselling. I feel like the best situation would be if the new Sauron has a new print, so there's something exclusive remaining in the Barad-Dûr one.

[RichardGoring]

4 hours ago, kuzyabricks said:

That time went 13 years ago. I don’t see Lego giving LOTR a chance of playsets ever again. Those sets were on clearance for what felt like most of their lifetime! It’s a shame but nothing we can really do about it. Either we get these D2C and gimmick sets or nothing at all. I prefer the former. 

The same had been true of Dreamzzz, but they've still done three full years of it. Although I don't know whether they've stopped it earlier than planned as a result. Somewhat sad for Dreamzzz as they are generally excellent sets. 

You're probably right that there are other priorities, so Icons LOTR sets is what we'll get. The continuing mix of large and small would be good.

[Lion King]

I really don’t’ care about LOTR 18+ sets, I only care about fantasy creatures and some cool accessories and minifigure parts. I would love to see Lego to give us some playsets that are easy to get rather than those expensive adult-focused sets. 

[Lordhelmet]

4 hours ago, kuzyabricks said:

That time went 13 years ago. I don’t see Lego giving LOTR a chance of playsets ever again. Those sets were on clearance for what felt like most of their lifetime! It’s a shame but nothing we can really do about it. Either we get these D2C and gimmick sets or nothing at all. I prefer the former. 

Did you enjoy the build? I’m guessing by your excitement that you did))

It was a fun build, a few repetitive parts but it was nice how pieces came together, lots of good Easter eggs and satisfying angles coming together.  Building it after minis tirith was announced as a micro scale got me excited for the possibilities of a micro scale minis tirith, as the end model is nice to look at.  Long answer but yes the build was good.

[hikouki]

On 1/2/2026 at 11:43 PM, sahidko said:

Yay, another overpriced gimmicky set. I guess it's time to give up on expectations of regular sized / priced playscale sets.

I almost feel like Lego is really poking around, trying to apply the LOTR theme to its various set types in order to see which ones 'click' with the fan base.

They had a runaway success with Rivendell and tried to exploit that with Barad-dur. Now I feel they are trying to figure out what else they could sell with the least minifig/s with the most price.