Belchher

That is an absolutely outstanding build. It has a wonderfully subdued sci-fi feel to it, and some great parts usage like the giant plane wing as a roof. Hats off to you for both your imagination and building skills.

Tolkien tends to spell out the important stuff in the books, and Faramir isn't an exception. The reason he doesn't take the ring is twofold, one he gave Frodo his word and was very much a man of his word, and secondly ( and most importantly imo ), it showed that his Dunedain heritage ran strongly and that not all men had fallen from the old ways. This change, the elves in Helms Deep, Aragorn telling Frodo to leave at the end of the first movie, these are all just some of the stupid changes PJ made for reasons beyond my understanding. All that being said, as others have pointed out repeatedly, the line is based on the movies despite how we may feel about PJ's interpretation of the books, but ultimately that doesn't matter. The joy of it being Lego is we can take those elves out of Helms Deep and use them in a Lorien MOC or whatever purpose comes to mind. As for the orcs, given the limitation of mini figs, I'd guess some variations in faces and overall colouring is about as much as can be done, and for that ( not being a fan of the movies at all ), I for one would be thankful.

I'm glad you finally got your 2012 sets LT. Sad to say for those around Helensvale on the GC, while k-mart has put out their new ninja-go and city stuff, target just has all the boxes sitting there as they're still being too lazy to clean up and rearrange their shelves Lucky for me I don't care for any of this, I'm still waiting for that new Technic mini crane to show up, its the only one of the technic sets not listed on Mr-Toys and when I asked about it all I got was blank looks. Ah well, more money for brick link I guess!

It's a great idea for a MOC, very different, and expertly done as we've come to expect from you. Also thanks for posting that link to Medieval James, I spent about 2 hours this morning reading it. Was surprised it was a castle being built in the U.S. of all places

I haven't checked our local k-mart and target yet ( no cash till next week ) but if any of you are really that desperate to get the new city sets ASAP and can't find them locally, BTTW has them in at RRP already.

Yeah thanks for that Splat, I was worried from their initial wording that it would be added on all orders, but if its only where the total is around the $1k import limit mark that's fine by me. The new shipping policy just means I, like everyone else, will just have to wait until there's a whole bunch of sets I want instead of impulse buying

Ah well, I'm not in a great rush anyway. For those in QLD, I looked in K-Mart and Target at Helensvale today, nothing in target ( the shelves still looked like a bomb went off from the xmas/boxing day carnage ), K-Mart had the racers and a couple of the smaller creator sets ( the motorbike 7291 and I think it was the jet 6912 ). As I'm sure my fellow Queenslanders know, however, we seem to get most stock a week or 2 later than the southern states.

I don't suppose you've spotted the new Mini Crawler Crane technic set anywhere yet? The only shops close to me are K-Mart and Target which I'll check today, I don't really feel like a 20min drive just to be disappointed, and I'm too lazy to phone

MMV was Target ( i think, might have been kmart ), but they only got it in when it was initially released if I remember rightly. I was under the impression Joust was a TLG exclusive which means resellers and S&H are the only places to get it from, store exclusives show up as "Hard to find" on S&H unless I'm sadly mistaken.

No, its not a huge deal, it is annoying though. And unless the gov here has been super sneaky, our personal import limit should be AU$1000 ( including postage ) unless I'm mistaken. I'll still use them, I just think 60days is a bit of a scam, but then again its better than paying some of the local RRP's.

Hmm...so they're taking some unspecified amount of our money, and holding on to it "just in case" aus customs slap import duties on it, then giving us a refund of that unspecified amount 60 days later if customs don't charge import duties....thats really super annoying.

Its 2 comments AT the lego group, and 1 reply from them at the other person.

Hopefully you're right, LT, but its certainly not the first time Mr T has done this with upcoming Lego products. For those who haven't seen the Mr Toys site before, those release dates, while usually fairly accurate, don't allow for TLGs annoying habbit of staggered releases, so a fair amount of those products will most likely show up a few months before those dates in Target, K-Mart or Big W. @Brickton - Yeah, I've thought about BLTG, but between being on the GC and having almost zero free time due to family stuff at the moment I'd almost never be able to get to any meets. Hopefully some time this year that will change. Anyway, I need to go sneak off from the wife to k-mart and see if there's any MVR's left, I'm trying to psyche myself into buying a few to part out/resell on bricklink to help cover this expensive habit, although I'm still not sure I can get over the ( probably silly ) slightly "dirty" feeling if I do that

I guess what we all need to keep in mind is that it's still a fair while before the sets actually hit the shelves. Those prices could simply have been place holders the store wasn't meant to use, or if you're a cynic it might simply be a deliberate leak by TLG to see how bad our reactions are too them Also bear in mind that with the Joust set, when it first appeared on S&H with a price attached it was AU$200 for us, then vanished for a few days and reappeared with a ( slightly ) more acceptable $180 tag. I think it also worth keeping in mind that LoTR is most likely NOT aimed at the usual 6-14 or so age range most products are, the books and movies most certainly aren't ( or at best only cover the very top of that age range ), so perhaps the sets are more complicated than the small peek those leaked preliminary images gave us. The fortress section of Helms Deep, if nothing else, could certainly involve some slightly more advanced building techniques than is the norm and thus include an amount of hinge/snot/whatever pieces that would up both the piece counts and prices. All things said I guess its just too early to judge either the prices or the quality of the sets until we have official images and prices, although with world financial problems being what they are price hikes certainly wouldn't surprise me, first and foremost TLG is a company that needs profit to survive.

I know they don't look like they make sense, but the sad reality is, even though the AUS and US dollars have been pretty much 1:1 for quite a while now, sets have still remained about 70% more expensive here over US prices. So for US prices, just take the ones on that site I listed and x 0.6, should give you a rough guide. eg: Helms Deep at AU$240 implies it will be around US$144, which still seems steep even for licensed. My feeling is that we're simply going to be getting more than the usual +70% pricing on licensed themes this year.