Preuss

I haven't seen any mention of 76085 - Battle of Atlantis. I noticed it was on sale at Walmart for CAD$ 15 (regular here is CAD$25), and thought it was a pretty good deal for 4 very repurposeable minifigs and a lot of sand green - including 14 masonry bricks. Managed to get 10 of them, the most multiples I've bough of any set since Uruk Hai Army. Planning on turning the aquamen and guards into elf soldiers. The colour schema seems to go very well with my Mirkwood and Rivendell armies - hey, one of the guards even has Legolas's head already! Not sure what to do with the parademons, but those wings look good. Incidentally, some of the 10 sets came with two sheets of wings, one without any wings. FInal count was 15 sheets out of 10 sets, so I'm happy.

I bought the book after seeing this post without even reading the Amazon.com description. As I started reading, I thought it was a nice touch to have an introduction showing the human side of the issue and even read some parts to my wife to show our arguments about LEGO are not that uncommon. It took a couple of chapters for me to realise it wasn't a step by step guide to sorting LEGO, but something much more personal - and I'm glad my wife's disdain isn't anywhere near Maki's level (yet?). Now I am wondering how much of it is fictional while eagerly reading chapter after chapter to see how it will end. And maybe how I should try sorting my bricks. I'm particularly enjoying the discussions around taxonomies - maybe my degree in what was formerly known as Library Sciences has something to do with it. Oh, and it almost made me go ahead and bricklink a 928 - something I've been considering for a while. If I do, I'll have to tell my wife it was your fault.

I'd like one if it is still available.

I've found horses at the Flat Iron District store in NYC in late 2014, after searching all stores in Toronto and two others in NY. Filled 3 large cups with them and round 1x1 tiles, ending up with almost 60 horses and three bottles of tiles. Definitely worth it :-)

I've finally managed to arrange and photograph my LOTR & Hobbit armies. Still missing the dwarves, army of the dead and custom haradrim, but I wasn't happy with those yet. The "good" guys: three factions of elves, men from Lake-Town, Gondor and Rohan elf-men-army The "bad" guys: spiders, trolls, goblins, nazgul and orcs from Isengard, Mordor and Gundabad sauron-army

I had a quick chat about this with a LEGO employee (Billund-based, not a random LEGO store clerk). He obviously couldn't disclose anything and was never involved with the theme to begin with, but his hypothesis was that LEGO had to hold some interesting designs back for the possibility that the theme would continue. In other words, if they had released all of the key scenes / creatures / factions in the first couple of waves, they would be essentially assuring a disappointing third wave if one was ever produced. I know we can argue a stronger second wave could have won support for a third, but apparently that's not how they plan their releases. I've also compared leaving Sauron out to doing Star Wars without Darth Vader. Not being a LoTR fan, though, he seemed to think the Mouth of Sauron minifig was Sauron himself, so it was kind of hard to make my point. Again: this wasn't someone who was involved with the theme at all, so please don't generalize that LEGO didn't do their homework.

I've really liked this idea and was finally able to feel 8 frightening knights to try it out - these guys aren't be that easy to army build with, as there are only three per box. Anyway, I have no intent of reviving the color theory discussion, but I thought they are too dark to blend in with the original rohirrim. I've tried them with many different helms and wasn't happy with any. My best results were with assorted hairpieces instead of helmets, but even then I don't think they fit in with the Rohan army. Now I'm thinking of using them as armored Mirkwood elves (which have a lot of dark green), either with elven hairpieces or hoods. Does anybody have other ideas?

Very cool! I've bought a couple extra COEs as well and already had a few ideas of how to integrate them, but had never thought of building up like you did here. The tower looks great - I'll definitely try that when I start playing with mine.

Wow, I love how you did the water with floating ice/snow. The land/grass also looks very good, but the water is fantastic!

I've added more pictures to the Flickr set. Here are my favorites: Riders of Rohan by preuss, on Flickr Lake Town Landing by preuss, on Flickr Smaug by preuss, on Flickr Gundabad Orcs by preuss, on Flickr

Here it is. Kind of... I had to rush it so that it could be part of a Hobbit+LOTR layout I put together for an event, but it gives you an idea of what I described before: The Battle of the Five Armies by preuss, on Flickr Dol Guldur by preuss, on Flickr Best, Julio

LUG Brasil was invited to display some Middle Earth LEGO at an Anime convention in Rio de Janeiro. Due to space constraints we had to combine Hobbit and LOTR in a single layout, which proved a bit challenging for the geography/chronology freak in me. Not sure whether to tag this as a MOD or a MOC, because the landscape is a MOC but most of the actual builds are MODs or even original sets. Anyway, here is how it turned out. The left side is intended to represent the Battle of Five Armies from The Hobbit, while the right side is the Battle of Helm's Deep, from The Lord of The Rings. Bag End and the major characters' minifigs were also included upfront, just because people love them so much. This was a last-minute decision, but really helped attract people to our table and was probably the most photographed part of the layout. Hobbit + LOTR @ Anime Wings by preuss, on Flickr For the Hobbit side, I've built a mountain to better display the Dol Guldur sets - there are 2x 79014, 5x 79011, 2x 79001 and 1x 79015 scattered over there. In front of that, there is a Mirkwood Elf outpost made of 5x 79012 and 1x 79004 next to a mixed Lake Town / Dale made of 2x 79017, one 79013, one modded 79016 and the guards from 32x 30216. Some of the polybags' builds were modded into the little catapult boats. There's also a 79002 somewhere to help with the scenery. On the LOTR side, there is a 9474 on steroids (I essentially increased the tower, raised the terrain and did some landscaping around it) 2x 9471 and the mandatory 10237, plus an extra Ent and half of a 9476. The Isengard area ended up looking pretty poor due to bad planning on my part - if only I hadn't left the rest of the 9474s at home, it would have looked much better. Please let me know what you think. This was my first public LEGO display and I'd love to know how it could be improved. I've already learned a lot of DON'Ts while unsuccessfully trying to transport parts of this one to an out-of-state expo, so any tips to help moving big landscapes would be greatly appreciated as well. Best, Julio

I was going to say I loved the geese, but after opening the picture I was even more impressed by the turkeys. What an amazing build! Everything is great, but the variety of brick built birds is awesome! Are the tree leaves just hanging from grass pieces? I usually have trouble getting the grass pieces to stay put by themselves, how did you manage that? Best, Julio

I've found an early picture of what I was planning to do with the 2 modded Black Gates, just to help visualize the proportions. The rest of the wall was all DUPLO at this point, but the plan was to cover it with regular System pieces for a finer look.

I'm with Dr. Cogg on this... the "castle" around Orthanc should be the Ring of Isengard. I've started planning something like that, but never finished. In my case, I was using two modded Black Gates as the gate and a lot of black pieces (including DUPLO) for the rest of the ring. The height of the wall didn't bother me because Orthanc is supposed to be a lot taller anyway. I was more concerned about the area within the walls being too small - I was going for a 96x96 stud setup (using 4 large baseplates), but it felt too crowded with just a few orc forges in there.