KristinnK

Regarding windows: on the various unlicensed, non-Lego Minas Tirith brick models out there, individual buildings are represented by single 1x1 bricks. Those models are usually around the 2000 piece count point. So especially since some part of the piece count will go towards minifig scale builds, the buildings on the main microscale model will probably still be represented by at most 2x2 brick 'builds'. At that scale sub-building sized details such as windows mostly won't be visually represented.

As much as I hate seeing the bad side of things, I fear this is the truth. By doing both they both they satisfy neither the people that want a microscale display piece and don't need minifigures or minifig scale builds on the rear side that no-one will ever see, nor those that just want a minifig scale set and hate the idea of microscale. They should have chosen either one or the other. It would have alienated fewer buyers, and it would have left them the option to release a second set later on. Doing both simply makes the set too expensive, limiting the number of potential buyers.

I'm sure your keen historical knowledge is what allowed you to accurately date the Orc Warrior to the Early Medieval Period.

This poll is missing one of my top three (in addition to the Series 3 Elf and Series 15 Frightening Knight), the Series 20 Viking! Look at the guy, how can he not be in the this poll?! His torso and legs are basically the perfect generic medieval figure. His helmet is great (if slightly oversized-looking if not combined with a beard piece). The shield is again perfect for any medieval setting. And the spear is the always-hard-to-find dual-mold "Spear, Elaborate" that is arguably the best-looking medieval weapon Lego has ever made. And spears were THE medieval weapon. Absolute MVP. Only CMF figure I ever bought multiple copies of.

I'm just going to leave this quote from a comment by RichardGoring in this thread to illustrate what scale 10,000 and 100,000 pieces gives to Minas Tirith. The 10,000 piece model looks like an absolute playset, it just isn't anywhere near enough. You need at least 25-30,000 pieces. There are only two realistic options for Minas Tirith. One is a 76419 style microscale set. There are some MOCs out there, like this one with 2000 pieces and this one with 10,000 pieces. Something in between these two would be fantastic. The other option that some have already mentioned is doing sub-locations. Something like the Citadel, with the courtyard, the White Tree, the Throne Room and the Tower of Ecthelion, or the Gates of Minas Tiris with Gandalf, the Lord of the Nazgul, Grond the battering ram and some soldiers and orcs.

I feel like a lot of people here are forgetting this comment by RichardGoring from a few weeks ago. Even 1000 dollars/10,000 pieces doesn't even come close to doing Minas Tirith justice at minifig scale. It's a complete non-starter. There might not be a need for a full 100,000 pieces like in the other build, but at least 20-30,000, and that's obviously not going to happen. Personally I'm very fond of microscale for these huge locations. It creates a very displayable but compact build that is very elegant. Something like the Hogwarts and Grounds set (2700 pieces/170 USD), or perhaps a bit larger, but not more than lets say 3000-4000 pieces/200-250 USD, would be perfect. There are some microscale Minas Tirith MOCs out there that can act as starting points for speculation, like this one with 2000 pieces. Take that one, maybe ever so slightly expand the fields around the city, and swap out the white roofs in the city for colored ones like in this crazy 10,000 piece monster, and you'd get something I'd buy in a heartbeat. The only way Minas Tirith will ever be a adult-oriented set at minifigure scale (barring possible 20-30,000 multi-thousand dollar far-future sets) is with sub-locations or a diorama. It could be a "Citadel of Minas Tirith" set, with the courtyard, the White Tree, the Throne Room and the Tower of Ecthelion. Or it could be a diorama set showing Gandalf confronting the Witch King as he breaches to Gates of Morder. The quote on plaque would be "In rode the Lord of the Nazgul, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face." I'd buy that.

I too have always been very lukewarm on the Medieval Town Square despite being very invested in civilian medieval builds and figs. Especially when I compare it to the Medieval Market Village, which has literally only half the number of pieces, but still looks better. The buildings in the MMV are logically proportioned, while the buildings in the MTS are these weird cobbled-together minibuilds that are neither seem satisfying to build nor lend themselves to creating a realistic town/village setting. When the MTS was still a rumor with only that low-res photo from the big leak a couple of years ago I never imagined such a set wouldn't be an instant buy for me, but the designers just made too poor a job of it, and I hope TLG doesn't jump to any conclusions of people not wanting to buy civilian medieval sets.

Personally I neither believe nor wish that we will get a minifigure scale Minas Tirith or anything even close to that. As that 100,000 Rebrickable build above demonstrates, anything like that would just be absurdly large and expensive. It's a complete non-starter. If we get anything Minas Tirith related at a minifig scale it will be some sub-part of the city. The most likely candidate is a "Citadel of Minas Tirith" set, with the courtyard, the White Tree, the Throne Room and the Tower of Ecthelion. Another possibility would be a "Great Gate of Minas Tirith" set, which would be an opportunity to include a Witch King minifig. My dream Minas Tirith set however would be a microscale version. The microscale Hogwarts Castle and Grounds is literally one of my all-time favorite Lego sets, and I really believe modern Lego with its varied small pieces really lends itself to these microscale builds. Something similar to the Hogwarts set (2700 pieces/170 USD) or perhaps a bit larger, but no more than 200-230 USD would be absolute perfection for me.

The Siege Encampment set is certainly a strange beast. It's not a single big structure, but in fact many different smaller ones, that would have made much more sense to sell as separate sets. It's almost like a whole Castle wave combined into one huge set, except it doesn't have any actual castle walls. I question the wisdom of having selected this set and selling it in this form.

I agree with the other poster that the Medieval Blacksmith has more the air of a adult target audience, while the Lion Knight's Castle has more the air of a large kids' play set. It's not about specifics, but rather about the picture as a whole. The first clue is that while the piece count is comparable (within a factor of two) the Lion Knight's Castle is much more 'expansive' for lack of a better term. The design of the Medieval Blacksmith is that of a much more realistic structure, i.e. an imitation of a building that could actually exist, with integral and coherent structure, at more or less the scale of a minifigure. It has four walls and a roof, doors and stairs to the attic level. This uses up a lot of bricks, and wouldn't be worth it for a kids' audience, but is appreciated by many adult Lego fans. The Lion Knight's Castle on the other hand is a facade, both in the metaphorical and literal sense. As displayed on the box it's only the gatehouse and a small stretch of wall, with the buildings attached to the wall being completely open on one side. Closed up it looks better, but introduces other problems such as that the main castle building wouldn't in that case be fronted by a large gatehouse. There aren't doors and staircases that connect different spaces and levels (the occasional ladder doesn't count). And the scale is off, towers and parapet niches are the minifig equivalent of a meter in width. There is a dining hall with two seats. There's a horse shoved in a small corner. None of this is naturalistic. It's an abstraction of the idea of a castle rather than the depiction of a specific plausible castle structure. None of that is to say that there is something wrong with the Lion Knight's Castle as a set. If you'd have to do even just a small castle (like lets say the Guédelon Castle) in a style and scale similar to the Medieval Blacksmith, you'd be looking at north of 20.000 pieces. This just isn't viable as a Lego set. The Lion Knight's Castle is a fantastic compromise that keeps a lot of the scale that a more naturalistic castle would have, without absolutely breaking the bank. But it's definitely more of a kids' oriented playset when compared to the Medieval Blacksmith.

I have to say I feel this set fails to live up to the promise of the original submission. In large part this is of course due to simply size constraints, they probably had to decrease the part count of the set by 30-40%. Unfortunately this leaves the house cluster especially looking quite sad, and the dragon is obviously also a big step down. I am however still reasonably optimistic about the minifigs. I love historically plausible (rather than necessarily realistic) minifigs with full torso+legs printings, and am too often thwarted by Lego's insistence on heraldry printings like medieval warriors wore freaking team jerseys. This set however, like Lord of the Rings sets, will have none of that, so I can't wait to see how those minifigs will look.

I would echo the sentiment that the buildings are a disappointment. I simply don't like the geometry/design of the buildings. What I always liked about the original MMV is the elegance of the buildings. Each of the two buildings have an integral and focused, almost simple design theme. These buildings are more of a jumbled combination of different design themes, and their structure is too irregular. I'm not a fan. Counterintuitively the buildings also seem to me less detailed/ornate compared to the 15 year old MMV which has half the number of pieces. I do like the minifigs though. I especially can't wait to get better pictures of the woman wearing the coif standing in the doorway on the right. And the tax collector looks really suspiciously like Boromir, which is one of my favorite medieval warrior/lord minifig. And that rogue figure of course is also interesting. I am less immediately interested in the other figs though. Regarding the animals, they seem to have taken the position that the large castle already has the cow, this set gets the goat, and horses are a dime a dozen. I don't think fans will necessarily agree with this reasoning, but they do seem to believe that this is an avenue for restraint in the design of the set. Also, perhaps this means they are planning a type of medieval farm set in the future.

What I could see happening is one or more diorama sets. There are so many iconic Lord of the Rings scenes that they can choose from, perhaps the most obvious being Merry and Eowyn defeating the Witch King (with the quote being either the "not by the hand of man will he fall" prophecy or Eowyn's "I am no man"). But there are many other choices, from Isildur cutting the ring off Sauron's hand, to Gandalf stopping the Balrog, to Sam defeating Shelob, to Gandalf upon Shadowfax "who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror" of the Witch King as he rides through the shattered Gates of Gondor (quote: "In rode the Lord of the Nazgul, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face."). That last one I'd buy in a heartbeat.

I really like the minifig prints, and I love the shields. I'm not a huge fan of the build, so I almost certainly won't buy the sets, but I will definitely get the minifigs and the shields on Bricklink at some point.

These leaks are absolutely insane. My opinion: The Rivendell set is basically everything it could possibly have been. Not just some minifigs, but literally every fig there possible could have been. The whole Fellowship, Bilbo, Elrond, Glóinn, Arwen, Glorfindel. We couldn't have asked for more. The set itself is also really pretty, with probably the best landscaping of any Lego set ever. The rumored price tag of 500 USD however is a bit hard to swallow, and I can't help thinking that they probably should have scaled back the set a bit, and try to keep the price tag around 350 USD. I don't like the 'huge, black tower' type of sets, so I don't really have much of an opinion about the Barad-Dur set. But it's certainly huge. The Medieval Village set does have a lot going for it. I generally always celebrate civilian castle/medieval sets. The Medieval Market Village and the Medieval Blacksmith are literally my two favorite sets. However, this particular set does look a bit lacking to me. It has a lot going for it, civilian figs, really nice trees, the bottom left house. But I simply dislike the design of most of the buildings. The scale is off, they look like facades rather than complete buildings, and they look more like East-Asian buildings (like in 70751) than medieval ones.