Artanis I

The throne-room design problems are due to the fact that the model needs to have all of its main features visible in one photo for the front of the box, and also not affect the structure design. She knows nothing! (I have all of the castles, bar the yellow and 2006 castles.) The new castle would surely be heaps cheaper? While it has down-sides, it gets more hate than it deserves. If you have the other sets, this one would suit your collection better, & the 4 skeletons would be a waste when you could otherwise beef up your existing armies. The entrance is the best TLG has produced for quite some time, the other one is a bit annoying. And you get a newer horse. Of course, the Crownies are nice and another dragon, who could say no to that? If you put it on a baseplate that solves the "pick it up and it all falls everywhere" issue. And the price for this one will surely only increase. I would consider the 2013 castle to be a decent compromise between the Fantasy and Kingdoms castles. If you can only have one, that makes things difficult, they are both nice castles. But since you asked, I would go for 70404 under your circumstances, especially since you intend to use 2 gatehouse sets to expand it, as I have done.

That's what I was hoping you didn't mean! But you were being more metaphoric than I realised. I got a picture of the Inquisitor as Rose (2) from Keeping Up Appearances obsessing over the "dishy vicar"

I think you may be right, and so is rollermonkey, well-presented reviews take so much time and effort, and they take away from the enjoyment of building a set. These days EB staff get early access to all the big cool sets that everyone wants to see reviews of, so the general members are already limited to the standard sets that you may not feel like putting an effort into showing off. I know that most sets come out elsewhere in the world before they are available here so my opportunity to review new sets is also limited by that. But for me the biggest reason I haven't done a review in a while is because the 2014 sets are still in their boxes & I have photos from opened sets that I haven't uploaded yet... A couple of years ago every set had a race, who could post a review first? Now it's on YouTube before it's in store thanks to these guys who get advanced access, and people can't be bothered typing and photographing a text review so long after the fact. Shame, really, it was fun for the community.

Vulture Droid, B-Wing and I think Snowspeeder on clearance at Kmart.

Thanks guys. Yes, the minifigs were the coolest! Nothing to do with the electrics, that would be fine. I've never seen it either. The bases only connect to each other that way. You would have to use some kind of brick-built connection to have multiple cars on one side. It's something I've considered but not tried yet. I don't know whether it would work, since the wheels are only at one end of the car base it might make it too much work for the centre-based motor to push a long lanky train (pull, no problems, but push?). But the monorail parts aren't common or cheap, so I never have enough free to try it. Maybe the next one. That will be SP1 I reckon.

Sadly for The Hobbit, there was never any accompanying cartoons or comics for the kids to get into, unlike the huge amount of stuff over decades out there for all the other franchises. While the Marvel movies aren't really suitable for young kids to watch, they know all about them through all of the stuff that IS. Middle Earth Lego has no such support. There is the movies and the novels. All of which are quite violent, and not great for kids, so what else is there to make them care about the characters and scenes? Every child knows who Batman is, despite the Nolan movies being unsuitable for them to watch. Star Wars has had 6 years of cartoons recently. (Ninjago & Chima (while also being non-licenced and therefore cheaper) have cartoons to support them.) So kids know and love that stuff without even having seen a movie. Unless their parents are into The Hobbit, you're down to AFOLs and teens. Teens would rather spend their money on other things.

um, is that a definition I'm unfamiliar with?

Why no one has deeplinked any pics I don't know, but here's something for the lazy. With this and Sabine's on the way, my Mandalorian helmet collection is slowly getting bigger

Plus when you have LDD etc, you can just make whatever piece in whatever colour in whatever quantity, all you need is someone to leak a file or come up with their own LDD file and TLG gets no money. But what about prints? and complex moving parts like minifigs etc? It would be a very long time before that kind of thing can be satisfactorily 3D printed. I think TLG or the world may see bigger changes before people can make their own decent Lego. But I don't know the future...

But as has already been stated, they are recreating recognisable scenes. And why don't TLG do nice interiors on standard retail castle sets? Because everything needs to be seen in one photo on the front of the box.

Predestination. Sci-fi crime type movie. The flashback story seemed a bit too long, I was wondering if the rest of the movie was just going to be about that but it all tied in eventually, and there was plenty of movie still left afterwards. Interesting, another one of those movies that you think over after it's finished.

Thanks guys for bringing that up , it would've been a surprise reveal. It certainly sounded like her. I noticed that there was nothing in the credits for Fulcrum. I'm sure if they'd put the name of the actress it would be a giveaway, hence why they've left it out? And yes, like Grievous, agent Kallus & the Inquisitor are all bark and no bite. In fact, not really much bark.

Kre-o

Regular dreams about finding MISB treasures on shelves for dirt cheap

It has been discussed. In the 2015 SW sets thread (the huge one at the top of the page) and also in the dedicated SW constraction thread.

Perhaps no one is buying Kre-o and they are reducing their loss risks, or at least not sad to see them go?

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! No way this could be true, you are crazy! That is AFOL wishful thinking gone way too far! I hope it IS true.

TLG don't use plastic windows anymore or handles on the boxes etc because it increases costs and is less "environmentally friendly". They have actually gone in the other direction from what you guys are suggesting for those 2 reasons.

Flesh colours are only used in Lego to represent characters under a specific licence, like a movie or cartoon, not for general folklore characters. If it was Playmobil that would be a different story. Even the Exo-Suit minifigs Peter & Yve were yellow, despite the characters representing real people.

In motion!

While I would love something different for a change, if there are good guys who aren't red or blue lions, in my Castle setup they won't have any obvious allies. As such, they will therefore be fodder for either of my 2 dragon alliances.

I agree with every single thing you said.

The average able-bodied heterosexual male would be my guess. But why are we talking about this? I agree with others who suggest that pushing moral causes (whether noble or not) shouldn't be done through TLG or Ideas. That is not to say that people shouldn't petition TLG to include certain things that they currently don't include, or that they under-represent. But public ambush or shame is not a nice thing to do.

So have sales dropped to the ocean floor then? I have 3, I'd consider a couple more when it hits the street. IF it hits the street.

Unlikely for the general public, or photos.