Haltiamieli

No problem. I just had too many important things to do, so I spent an hour with mapping the results into Excel instead. I understand that not everybody has the luxury of being completely unable to sort their priorities. There were 61 sets on the whole that got votes and 38 of them got two or more.

No offence, but you are in for a lot of disappointments in this hobby. If that's your reaction to The Battle of Helm's Deep, I suspect very few Lego sets can bring you much satisfaction. (though I agree that it is a bit misleading that the throne room wall appears as higher than the outer wall in the front of the box, I've noticed that too)

Yeah, looks like he's dark blue (though with these Instagram effects I wouldn't be sure of anything). However, I'm quite sure that the thing on his left hand is his police badge (printed on 1x2 black tile) - the one that you show to people to prove that you're a cop in all the movies and TV shows.

The pictures for Series 10 & 11 aren't working anymore for me at least, apparently Lego noticed the leak? Only the Tin Soldier's parts are still showing, kind of confirming that it does not belong among the others but is probably the book special. The brand new pics from Series 9 confirm that the Judge has a different hair piece than the wig among these pieces, so the latter is certainly for the Revolution Soldier.

So, the new pieces (molds) in this series appears to be: None on Alien Trooper. Chicken head and wings on Chicken Suit Guy. New police hat on Downtown Cop (and printed badge tile) Head piece, apparently something to wear over normal head(?), on Cyclops None on Space Mech (supposing that head piece is from Galaxy Squad) Hair piece on Fortune Teller (this isn't the same one Jack Sparrow had, is it?) (also, printed Tarot cards) Gavel and wig on Judge None on Good Knight None on Mermaid None on "Dr. Splitz" Plunger on Plumber Rollerskates on Rollerskater Hair piece on Caesar Hair piece on Hollywood Starlet Hair piece on Maid Marian Makes 13 I think, or did I miss/misinterpret something?

Why not, she is Robin Hood's companion after all (I wonder if it stays Maid Marion or is corrected to Maid Marian). Looks very promising, it's a new hair piece isn't it? At least he has that helmet and not the same one as Evil Knight like it was rumour a moment ago. A cape would have been nice, but not absolutely necessary. It's exciting to see what is depicted in his shield! I'm betting on a griffin, which has been very underused heraldic animal when it comes to Lego. Cyclops' overgrown head looks horrible – that's my only real disappointment in these pictures. Let's hope it looks a bit better from the front.

Out of 30 voters, these Top 13 sets got more than 4 votes (according to my Excel sheet): Haunted House 20 Battle of Helm's Deep 18 Kingdoms Joust 12 Jabba's Palace 11 Town Hall 10 R2-D2 9 Winter Village Cottage 8 Sopwith Camel 7 Vampyre Castle 7 Quinjet Aerial Battle 7 The Dynamic Duo Funhouse Escape 7 Uruk-Hai Army 6 Wolverine's Chopper Showdown 6 Ghost polybag and Desert Skiff both got 4 votes, which is very good for sets of their size. An Unexpected Gathering got 4 votes too - I suspect it would have got a few votes more if everybody would have remembered to count it as a 2012 set. I didn't.

I have yet to acquire the set, but I think one could modify Hornburg into a nice seaside fortress by turning the ramp that goes to the gates to curve the other way and build the seashore to go along its outer curve to the root of the walls. Then add some cannons on the battlements and a signal fire on the top of the tower (removing the down-facing horns altogether). And change the flags, of course. On a second thought, one cannot change the curve of the ramp with the parts provided. In that case I might scrap the whole ramp and add some wooden docks instead.

No no no, in fact he had particular weakness for silver and white gems! But nevertheless it's nice that there's some treasure included.

I certainly agree, I just pondered on the other less ideal possibilities. As we know TLC doesn't seem to like releasing army builders nearly as much as we like to collect them. Though in the end the whole question of polybags is rather trivial to me personally, because I don't think I've ever seen any polybags here in Finland except some City police helicopters.

Dark green hood is also worn by Dr Doom in Super Heroes set Daily Bugle Showdown, so it was probably just cheaper to produce hoods for both sets in a single production run. Then again we also got one named character (Frodo) and one nameless army builder (Uruk-hai soldier), so the Elf Guard could count as the army builder and the other set would then be Bilbo or Thorin, probably. Also while not baddies, the Mirkwood Elves do count as somewhat antagonistic faction in the story until later. Is it known that we are getting two polybags this time too?

Wow, that's an awesome polybag! A mushroom, a leaf piece, a barrel, a rare colour of hood piece and a very good and versatile torso. I hope against all odds that it would be available also in Finland.

I doubt the inclusion of Wild Boar faction at least, Evil Knight's sigil being such a clear nod towards Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

This long topic and skimming through I didn't see a single suggestion of The Sandman characters? It would be nice to see Dream, Death or any other Endless in minifig form, even if "just" an illustration. :)

Yeah, probably so (though I doubt their pants would usually sag below the knees like the Brick Fortress ones, as that would make moving and working considerably harder). Luckily my village is anyway a (low) fantasy one, so probably one of the manifestations of fantasy is that even the kids can have non-sagging pants (though they have to hop on rigid legs and cannot sit).

Considering that they are trying to sell a product, Brick Fortress provides pretty bad pictures for the customer to make their decision whether to make a purchase or not. But based on those small pics I do think I prefer Lego's static short legs. At least they do not make every kid/dwarf/hobbit/Yoda look like they are wearing sagging pants. Hip hop hasn't yet been invented in my medieval village.

These are a few of my favourite things: 3065 Olivia’s Tree House 9465 The Zombies 9468 Vampyre Castle 9469 Gandalf Arrives 9471 Uruk-Hai Army 9474 The Battle Of Helm's Deep 10223 Kingdom's Joust 10224 Town Hall 10228 Haunted House 10229 Winter Village Cottage

Daring bet, considering Castle is explicitly stated in the Brickshop.nl listing from where this whole rumour started. Though if we were to disregard the other rumours, I too would think Pirates more probable for "a new take on one of the LEGO classics". Of course. They also list number 79008 for it,* which is right by the side of first wave of The Hobbit sets. While the corsairs barely have a cameo appearance in the movie (and indeed, most of them were film crew cameos), they do have one big advantage when it comes to set design: they have a pirate ship. Pirate ships are good sellers, that we know. I have a recollection that a while ago quite a few people on this board listed Corsairs in their wishes for upcoming LotR sets. I was a bit surprised by it back then, but then I understood that from the movies it's one of the things that could be most satisfactorily and easily transferred into a Lego set. Also while the set name could be preliminary, I'm sure Lego wouldn't call their own unlicenced pirate ship "Pirate Ship", but Lord of the Rings is another matter, especially if there's a slight translation thing and it should be Corsair Ship in English. * Granted, they managed to misfile this rumoured Castle theme in their Legends category, but I think misapplying a set number randomly would be even stranger failure. But that guy on the Brickset forum must have seriously misunderstood or be blatantly telling tall tales, because there's no chance in Dante's inferno that this Castle line, if true it is, turns out to be called Legends. Not with Legends of Chima as Lego's biggest marketing push of 2013.

Well spotted, that's a new piece. Not the most exciting one to me, but different sizes of plates are definitely nice to have.

I voted average. This set has some nice qualities (new mushrooms, dark red leaves, Fíli and Kíli's hair pieces) but, contrary to many others, my problem is the minifig selection, which manages to collect (in my opinion) possibly the worst figs of the line together (excluding Yazneg). On the whole The Hobbit line is very good in that nearly all the torsos lack flesh-triangle in the neck area, but in this set half the figs suffer from this. I'm not sure if it was really necessary in either of the cases. Also I'm not too fond of Legolas' colour scheme, and Tauriel's torso print looks a bit too busy. And Kíli... well, Jackson of course carries most of the blame, but even so the face with the strangely shaped angular stubble looks bad. Fíli is the best fig out of the four, but even he is not among my top favourite dwarf figs. And not to just rant, I do applaud the review itself, it was good and thorough, thanks.

I think Fright Knights are mentioned too seldom in in conversations like this. It would be very nice to have a well-designed "dark" gothic Castle theme. That's more or less what the Fright Knights tried to be, but in hindsight the theme wasn't much of a success. In a way it would be nicer to see reimaginations of "failed" or "forgotten" Castle themes rather than the most beloved classics, because even the failed ones usually had good ideas which they just didn't succeed in realising to their fullest potential. If Monster Fighters does well, maybe Lego would like to put something similar but still a bit different to the shelves come next Halloween? I'd love to have an update of that batwing-helmet. While this would be certainly nice for us, I think for a small wave between Tolkien-themed line it is actually easier to use just two or more warring armies, which is kind of self-explanatory, instead of named heroes and such, which might need more explaining i.e. more weight on marketing. But who knows, apparently Galaxy Squad is doing the "group of heroes" thing (even though they are not picked from different previous Space themes) and it's probably a one-wave theme.

Oh, the red one looks great! (though it looks like it can't turn its head) I wonder what insect it represents, an ant? I'm not that sure about the green one, there's something that bugs me in that design. (also, apparently no antennae, or is the eBay seller just missing them? It looks there could just maybe be holes in the top of the head, or maybe not)

Well, I see very little reason to believe this theme to be re-releases of old sets. As has been said the web shop category is not for the old Lego Legends line but for more or less all D2C sets and such, like Modular Buildings and Winter Village. Castle sets are probably there by error, based on their set numbers we'd expect them to be normal retail sets. "A new take" sounds the opposite of re-released sets, too. Conversely, I see very little reason (based on these new rumours/leaks) to hope for a Rome or Mythology theme either, I don't think it would be called just a Castle theme or "a new take of a classic Lego theme" - those would be too distinct themes for that. Myself I'm not that interested in Rome, but Mythology would be veeery nice. Before this leak I even thought it quite likely, as a one-shot theme before Lego LotR is over.

Indeed. I can somewhat understand that with Ori whose hair piece is an old one, but the goblins have an all new head piece that is used nowhere else, so there's really no excuse for that.

Nice, Dori's hair looks better than I thought it would - it looked a bit awkward from the straight front. I think it could be used for an elderly woman, which is nice. There hasn't been too many choices for grey hair.