The Stad

Beautiful and evocative. I am sorry for your loss; I hope this helped you find some peace.

I always enjoy your advent calendar, and this is the best one yet! Excellent fig combinations, terrific mini-builds, and wonderful compositions with each of the scenes.

Love all the details and how you planned all the interior access options. It feels very Nocturnian while also seeming palatable to foreign visitors. Always great to see a post from the Old Guard pop up here!

I just received this set for a birthday, and now I'm that much more excited to put it together. I might have to pick up a second copy so I can moc with all of those excellent Mitgardian detail bricks... Congratulations on another awesome official set. You're living the dream!

Gideon 1 Luis of Nutwood 1 Exetrius 1

LittleJohn 1 Zilmrud 1 Adde51 1

Lots of great techniques in this moc, particularly the trees, the bridge, and the boards of the cabin walls. I love your use of the Korg torso! Another wonderful installment in your story!

I think you have a great build with some interesting part uses, but the yellow castle doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the color palette. I’d love to see a summer version though!

I have to disagree with this line of thought. I think that the landscape is a major defining feature of Rivendell, especially as depicted in the Peter Jackson adaptations (for which Lego has the rights), and I think the numerous establishing shots of Weta's celebrated "bigatures" have lent the location a highly recognizable form. I think the rumored part count and price puts the potential scale of the set in the same range as Hogwarts Castle #71043, whereas a Master builder style set would have to be broken down into a series of vignettes that couldn't be displayed together in a satisfying way for non-AFOLs, and which would be entirely dissimilar to any other $400+ set that is currently in production. I mean, this moc has more than 3x the rumored pieces, is way too big for the average display space, and still doesn't present as a very recognizable rendition to the average consumer. At this price point, I think we need to come to grips with the idea that Lego thinks that potential buyers with fat wallets (that don't love Star Wars, 80's nostalgia, or modular town layouts) are interested in Eiffel Towers and Colosseums. Fortunately, @soccerkid6 showed five years ago that Rivendell works great on a micro scale, taking a similar design approach as the architecture line, and since he and many other extremely talented LoTR fans are designers at Lego, I think we're still in for something special: Also, and I can't stress this enough, I would love to be wrong here. I fall firmly into the "LoTR ended too soon, we need Gondorians, we need more army builders, we need SA Numenorians and Noldor, we need more large-scale location sets" camp, and I kick myself frequently for not collecting all of the sets when they came out (and for not buying way more discounted Uruk-Hai Armies), so I would be overjoyed for 20+ minifigs and lots of new parts and prints though I'm not holding out much hope. But you know what the say, the pessimist is either always right or pleasantly surprised.

I'd love for the "background elves" to include at least one of the smiths who reforge Narsil into Anduril, in a little vignette tucked off in a corner somewhere. There should also be new molds for both the shards and the re-forged sword, and one of the rooms needs to include the statue that holds the shards in front of the awesome painting/fresco image of Isildur with Sauron (obviously Legofied but still done with the ethereal elvish Art-Nouveau styling). Is that too much to ask?

These are amazing. Very true to the Brickheadz concept with some great custom prints and really nice shaping (especially on the beards). I think the only thing I would change up is your set combos. While I appreciate the effort to diversify the offerings of each set, I would probably put Sam, Frodo, And Bill (excellent pony by the way) together, then Merry, Pippin, and Boromir, and then either pairs of Aragorn with Gandalf and Gimli with Legolas, or just those four all together. That way you don't have all of the hobbits together, and you've kept to the groupings that are developed within the story, which I think is pretty typical to the Brickheadz strategy.

@MKJoshA @Louis of Nutwood What did you guys have in mind?

Glad we got to see this build, and I like the story you've written to accompany it. I love all the funky angles on the wall, and the buildings inside the city are very well executed. I'm glad you've got your priorities sorted properly!

Ominous, and very, very cool. Love the use of the octopus tentacles for roots and the dragon limbs as branches.

Another amazing project from you, and a very entertaining story! I love your trees, the house, all of the interior scenes, and of course the bridge is very impressive. I hope that model castle is a hint of what's to come...

This is a monumental and very impressive undertaking. I'm glad to see such a rich story of intrigue and treachery as befits your shady, nefarious, back-stabby guild, and I love finding all the tiny details you stuffed into these compact scenes. Looking forward to the next installments!

This is awesome. Great story, amazing details in and out, and a jaw-dropping size of project and diversity of building styles. Welcome back, and keep it up!

@mrcp6d I tried them from all different angles, and that didn’t seems to make any difference. Like @Ayrlego and @MKJoshA said, the dark red plastic seemed to be the deciding factor. The weirdest part was that the right arms were a visibly different plastic than the others, and it seemed uniform (not like they had been stored with one side in sunlight or something). I think the only blessing is that I don’t have a huge need for dark red arms. I doubt I’ll ever try to convert them back from Mitgardians in the future.

I just had a strange -if not entirely unpredictable- experience with minifig customization. I just purchased ten of this torso to fill out the ranks of my Mitgardian regulars, and was going about swapping out the dark red arms for green, when I realized that the right arms of the assembly were a slightly different plastic than the left arms. I didn’t have to look too closely to visibly see the difference, but the real kicker was when I actually pulled the arms out, and nine of the ten right arms snapped at the socket. The left arms all came out without any issues. The torsos themselves were all fine as well. Of course, the age of the assemblies most likely had something to do with exacerbating the differences, but I still thought it seemed noteworthy. I just thought it strange that arms would be so dramatically different in quality, in the same color (nominally), and within the same torso assembly.

Very nice work. I love the attention paid to both interior and exterior details. That roof looks very time consuming, but the result is well worth the effort.

This is an incredible series of builds! Great details on the columns, in the floor, the stained glass windows, and all the furniture. All your figure combos are really nice as well, particularly your royal guards. I'm sorry to see the story of Parzival come to such an abrupt end (if that really was his body in the tunnels...), but I hope we'll still get to see more of the story that precedes this chapter, and I can't wait to see the direction of Zamorah under its new leadership!

That is such a cool shape! I love how the tail elements create a gnarled form, and great use of the giant tooth elements to make the roots. The only thing I’d change would be to make the top spread out a bit more, but I think that’s just personal preference. I’m eagerly awaiting the next chapter of your story. Good luck!

You've built another great moc with another excellent installment to your story. I appreciate all the little details you've squeezed into the rooms, but my favorite inclusion has to be the downspout on the outside of the armory. I'd love to see these fitted into a larger moc showing the entirety of Embarvale Castle, though I'm sure that would be staggeringly large based on the scale of the rooms you've built so far! Kudos on the documentation of your photography process, it's both informative and inspirational, and a fun peek behind the curtain!

One each for: 13.Ayrlego 15.socialbricks 18.Aurore

One each for: 5.KaiNRG 6.Servertijd 15.W Navarre