Wardancer

I think a general freaking out is in order. The red Elf in Helms Deep is officially the best minfig ever. (If given a yellow head, hands am ears.) Now that I have seen the Rohans helmet from the side, I like it a LOT. It kind of elvenstyle, too, so it will fit my army.

Woohhoo, things ARE getting serious. Finally a good view of the new horse, it has a rounded head and is a true beauty. That means the ringwraiths horses have a different armour from the one we know. Also, finally a good view on the rohan riders helmet which I think is ok. A bit too thick as many helmets. Legolas' hair is LONG! I love the runes above the door in Mines of Moria. So much printing on walls!!!

I hope I can use the werewolf's head to make a... wolf. There is no wolf in LEGO, but a lot of werewolves.

Does the werewolf sit in leaves in a new type of green? Or is it just the lighting of the picture? PS: The new ghosts look EVIL!

I love the horse banner in helms deep!!

Yeah, I think third party accessory providers such as brickforge did not capture that look with their "elven" stuff. Their elven blade looks like an anatomically formed errr... something. If I look at the possibilities Games Workshop has, I wonder how some elves like this would look as Lego:

I hope this happens:

I hope Gandalf gets a giant eagle.

This is great and deserves to win a price. I won't list what I like because I like everything about it!

I am also very happy with these. Boromirs shield is beautiful. The swords, well, Brickarms etc. do better ones, but it's ok. Since the LOTR swords are unique 'characters' they should give them more attention. Ears! Legolas' ears look bigger than the CMF elf. The orcs still win the competition though. Legolas' and Boromir's torsos look very good as far as I can see. I don't really care for the hobbits. Is it new to have capes in that green colour? Too bad they are short and therefore not useable on normal figs. The Urukhai gets three new molds in one fig, I hope they keep that up for some goodies too. I am okay with the ugly gollum because that's what he is. The arms will be good mor MOCing and customizing.

When I looked again at the sets this morning, it struck me how may baddies there are. 4 Uruk-Hai here, 4 orks there, 2 ringwraits, another 4 orcs. Of course this mirrors the situation where exceptional heroes battle or flee hordes in the movie, but... 1 Rider of Rohan? Good luck in defending that. "The Orcs are coming! Send out... the rider!" "He's dead, they got him." "Ok, now send out... Gandalfs carriage." "Naa, they burned it down and took the posable horse." "Ok, so let's throw hobbits at their troll then." If we don't get a goodies battle pack, the orcs will win this war. They have a forge, a battle pack, war machinery and a troll.

Keep on posting joyful news and interesting details about the pictures!

There might be a chance. If you look closely at the zoomed pictures, you can see that both gandalfs brown horse and the brown one in helms deep have a white mark on their forehead. This might mean that it is the same, i.e. posable horse. That would make more sense than putting the same print on an old brown horse IMHO. I would appreciate that a lot, I need at least 5 posable brown horses.

Helms deep looks like it could be (re)built with regular pieces from castle and kingdoms quite easily. Lots of gray walls. It it weren't for the figs and the horse, people would not buy it maybe. Also, I do not think that Gandalfs carriage will get a posable horse. It would make a highly demanded piece available in a cheap set and undermine a reason to buy the expensive ones. Also, as far as I can see, there is ONE elf so far and he lives in a 70 Euro set. For an elf army maker this means he cannot hope so significantly increase his ranks. For me, this means this year will be about horses and a few figs. Edit: OK, two elves, the other one lives in a 99 or 120 Euro set...

I think a regular barding might look a bit odd on a prancing horse. A real horse barding, made from fabric, would fall into wrinkles and different angles on a prancing horse. The regular Lego horse barding would defy gravity if used for that and sort of destroy the dynamics.

I should clarify: These = horse legs that show an open hollow side I am absolutely looking forward to the prancing horses.

I hope the new horse moulds don't have these empty hollow legs the normal horses have, but i guess that's not gonna happen. Why are these necessary anyway?

At the moment, there seems to be just one sheet for series 6 dot codes, which is erratic. http://blog.betterthantomorrow.com/2011/12/23/minifigures-series-6-dot-codes-and-feel-instructions/ You can see that it is not precise when you compare Lady Liberty, Surgeon and Skater Girl, all of which appear to have THE SAME dot codes. These errors seem to live on, there are still dot sheets about the elf that miss a dot online So this threat is for clarification. And here is the first one: The Minotaur (of which I just got 5) has the dots indicated on the list PLUS 3 small dots that form a triangle in the very upper right corner of the bottom bar. These dots make it easy to differentiate from the Intergalactic Girl which has 1) also a big helmet that can feel like the big minotaurs head and 2) a laser beam that feels like the minotaurs axe (TLG did that on purpose IMHO). I had a hard time finding Lady Liberties today, becaus the box was already picked. Could someone verify her dot code? I am writing for Germany, so I cannot guarantee anything for other countries.

Great fig! I love the helmet and the silver armor decals on the fig. A suggestion of mine would be to use a cape which is less wooly/furry.

I am not excited about the torso. There are other sand green torsos like that already. And in comparison with the CMF Elf it is underwhelming. The hair is great. The ears will need to be painted yellow, but that is ok. Long hair is often not compatible with capes though. The bow on the back is interesting. I cannot imagine a way to fit the CMF elfs longbow on the back of a fig, so maybe it is a bow without a string as a new mold. Something else would be great: A longbow that can be used by a fid on a horse without interfering with the saddle.

Ok, this is useful information fo me when series 7 comes out. If dot decoding suddenly doesn't work anymore, it's good to know that it might be due to that.

Interesting! How big is a lot? I bought 45 elves in three cities and they all had the same dots. But it was all in the same area, so I guess it was the same lot?

Another Clarification: Dot users will be interested to know that Lady Liberty has the dots as indicated in the link I posted PLUS an additional one hidden in the letters and numbers in the right half of the bar.

2 of my 3 lady liberties have prints on their skirt that do not horizontally match the print on the torso

I use more than one layer of paint and this usuallys works well in covering what's underneath. With other paints it might be an issue. I am going to post a few more paints once I have the time. Maybe this doesn't work out but it's worth a shot.