Haltiamieli

I don't think anything there really looks like the Corsair ships from the film: It's not a revival of Legends, said shop just lists all special items (Modular Buildings, Winter Village etc.) under Legends title. Sets 70400-70404, true or not, are probably there just by accident. Their set numbers would indicate normal retail series. But yes, I think it's probable that the designer is referring to those sets.

Awesome news, if true! Personally I think it's promising for Lego LotR too if TLC thinks it's worthwhile to launch a Castle theme concurrently instead of waiting for the LotR boom to die out first and only then to return to the reign of non-licenced Castle. Yeah, just2good linked to it here on the Pirates board: "A new take on one of the LEGO classics launching 2HY 2013." A new take? Doesn't sound like Kingdoms continuing, at least.

Well, we'll hopefully some day get Dernhelm's (and Merry's) fight against Witch-king (that's the number one on my personal wish list, I think), which would make another set with a Nazgûl and a winged beast rather redundant.

Admittedly the snake-like lower body isn't classical part of the Medusa story - apparently it may have entered the popular culture as late as 1981, when Ray Harryhausen designed such Medusa for the film Clash of the Titans ( ). But I think it has been pretty dominant visualisation at least since then, and more striking than just a woman with snakes for hair. But of course as long as we get the snaky head piece we can mod our own tailed or legged medusas, so that's the most important thing. Hopefully it will come true some day.

I think the set would be based on the earlier encounter still in The Shire when the hobbits hid away under the tree roots. So no Arwen unless they mash up the scenes a little. But two characters and a horse sound more probable, compared to the smallest sets of earlier waves.

Looking again at pictures of the part I have to agree with you: it does indeed look rather too tight a fit for the CMF bags. If that's the case it is quite unfortunate and even slightly strange - I would have thought that Lego would've designed the piece spesifically with future CMFs in mind (would it really look that much worse in slightly smaller size?). Maybe I just have to play it safe and buy a snake fig or two (expensive as they are) from Bricklink, in anticipation of a possible medusa with normal legs.

Yeah, that's what I wish for too. I don't own any of those snakey bottom parts, but I imagine it's not that much bigger than the mermaid tail which did fit into a CMF bag (Ocean King).

Considering there's already one presumably evil Space character included in this series, I hope the Cyclops will be classical mythology character either with standard minifig parts or a unique head/torso piece like the Minotaur. If I'm right about the Cyclops, I think Medusa is rather unlikely alternative to the Mermaid, it would be too similarily themed to appear in the same series. Mermaid on the other hand can attract the attention of a lot of girls, so it sounds quite probable. Of course I too think that generally Medusa is bound to appear as a CMF sooner rather than later.

Indeed. I suspect JeagerEX was trying to express a simple speculation but again happened to use a statement as if there was something to back up his claim. Things like that can happen on multilanguage boards.

Seems that the rumours are coming true, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde being Dr. Splitz as some of you speculated. Very cool. Can I see the Heroic Knight already? I'm betting on a white visor helmet and white breastplate myself. That would be nicely different than any other Lego knight before.

Not taller? It looks certainly taller to me:

Minas Tirith is a problematic setting I think, in that as a flagship it would look, in my opinion, awkwardly puny even in a $200 set. It's a sort of lose-lose situation - you can't do Lego LotR without Minas Tirith, but on the other hand it can not be nicely Lego-scaled into a set. Maybe they are using a couple of slightly smaller sets to make parts of the scene. It's not that hard to imagine a $80 Gates of Minas Tirith set, for example. I admit that Gandalf, Saruman and 5 orcs sounds like a bit stale selection of minifigures, but I disagree with absolutely no possibilities for play features - maybe the orcs can cut down a tree or two, maybe the palantír could have some feature, maybe there could be some throwing feature in the throne room to simulate the wizard battle etc. And the orcs did interact with Saruman a few times in the tower too, not that it matters much. Also as Seaber said, Orthanc is one of the few features that are shown in all the films (though Saruman's demise is only in the extended cut). There's a lot of playing opportunities there, related and unrelated to the films. That, imo, is the makings of a real classic. Apparently I am. Still sounds like a humongous battlepack with pretty little interesting building elements to me. At least compared to Orthanc.

Yeah, didn't mean to say that the list couldn't be real (or based in reality), just that it's unlikely that it has the official names. Personally I think that in a sense "Dr. Splitz" and "Maid Marion" make the list more believable, if anything. This is the same I said of the Series 8 Czech list: reality has anomalies, only forgeries tend to be without imperfections. If someone would try to do a deliberate fake list, it probably wouldn't include the likes of Dr. Splitz. Then again, all this does fit with the list on the first page of this thread, which was very much untrue. So I can certainly be fooled too. Maybe more easily than many others.

I find it very unlikely. Both Dr. Splitz and Maid Marian would go against the naming scheme of all the previous series, even if they thought it wouldn't be a problem that a Dr. Splitz already exists elsewhere (Maid Marian wouldn't be a problem in that sense because being folk tales Robin Hood stories are not copyrighted).

Err... has there been any other source for the release date and amount of sets than BenX's rumour? If not, that's not exactly a confirmation. Afaik the only thing we know for sure is that there will be new Lego LotR sets released in 2013, as is revealed in the catalogue ad that LOTR343 linked?

While it is obviously very possible that these rumours don't hold water, it's also possible that they do. And the guy who claimed his Lego store manager told him the LotR line was ending after one wave was probably speaking truth - it's just that the manager in question wasn't in the know. We shouldn't jump to conclusions based on rumours like these, but as long as we have nothing better to talk about, we can discuss these and their credibility. In the following I don't bother to add "in case this list is true" in every other sentence, but you can imagine them there. While Gandalf vs. Balrog fight is certainly an iconic moment, I don't think it has makings of a huge set, especially after Mines of Moria has already been done. Besides the balrog itself, there's not much to build except the bridge. Grey walls make for great parts packs but they're rather dull set elements. By no doubt they could include some orcs or some repetitions of Fellowship characters, but they are superfluous to the scene in question. I'd much rather see that they put all the oomph to the balrog, minifigs be damned. A $40 balrog should be epic enough. I think you are giving Treebeard a little too little credit. He's not the most memorable character, but not the most fleeting or forgettable either. I admit it's a surprisingly big set, but apparently it will include a lot of scenery, which isn't necessarily a bad idea - what is a tree guardian without anything to guard? I seriously doubt most movie-goers even remember what Osgiliath is, and the scenes in there include only rubble and ruins as scenery. Not very good material for a flagship set. Orthanc on the other hand is a unique memorable building featured in a lot of scenes, and can be miniaturised into Lego-scale better than most things in LotR (I'm looking at you, Minas Tirith). What's more, Saruman is arguably the de facto main villain of the first two films, while Sauron stays on the background. I agree with Narbilu though, it would be nice to see Gríma in this set in case there isn't a Meduseld set in the works too.

I think there was Alien Conquest in the same mix too. Similar to this time, it was an ad for an upcoming theme: the villains from Atlantis, PQ and AC were contemplating, after they had all been bested by the heroes, that that they would have to resort to the last plan: dinosaur rampage.

The guy who took that picture hasn't seen much birds in his life, considering how he applied the wings... It's a bit unfortunate that Lego decided to print claws in the feet of all the bird-like characters, lessens the possibilities for alternate uses for those parts. And in my opinion it looks a bit awkward to begin with. Were there other pics, like with the helmets applied or without the neck appliance so that the whole torsos could be seen?

One pretty suspect thing about this list is that there's only one sportsperson, Roller Derby Girl. The guy in the October newsletter could maybe be the plumber? Dunno. Apparently I would be getting three points again in the guessing game.

Yeah, I noticed the likeness too. Very striking.

Mostly the list is more or less believable as descriptions from someone who has seen a picture, but this Dr. Splitz... Space Orangutan just sounds like a really strange idea for a CMF, and what else could it be if the source describes it as Dr. Splitz? If, however, this list is true, the series could become my most favourite ever.

Looking at the past patterns (taken from Brickset news archive, so the dates could lag slightly), it's probably around a month and a half or a bit more before Series 9 hits the shelves somewhere around the world (Series 6 was first spotted on 15 Dec in the UK). The official release date is presumably sometime in January. Series 8 was first found on the shelves around 16 Aug (official release date September), and we got the first pictures on 13 Jul, just about a month beforehand. The infamous Czech list of descriptions had been found a month before that, on 17 Jun. So compared to the last series, we are slightly "behind schedule" when it comes to the list, but not yet with the pictures.

I tend to be pretty irritated by Brick Show's style and this was not an exception, but admittedly he did manage to give more or less all the necessary points of view of the figure unlike the original eBay seller (like how the back looks with wings attached and detached). Do we actually know the official pronounciation? Not that his way sounds very likely.

Fresh from the Cuusoo blog, news of no news: "The LEGO Review board is still working on some of the final details of the Summer Review, which must be complete before we are able to announce any of the results. Projects in each quarterly review happen in batches, so we announce the results for each project at the same time. We're sorry that we cannot yet commit to a date where we will share the news."

As there's not that much blue in the final dress design of the princess, I wonder whether the preliminary one was different to this?