Haltiamieli

Oh my... I will never again complain about Legolas' dark eyebrows, they are practically like translucent compared to Thranduil's I think Thranduil is more likely to appear as a fig in some Battle of Five Armies set than in sets related to the Mirkwood episode.

Is he? I know he was known as "Bavarian Boy" early on, but his official name is Lederhosen Guy and his biography on Lego.com doesn't mention a nationality. After all it turned out he is not exactly a boy either, judging by his facial hair.

Funny, I've visited the nice and cosy cafeteria that's situated next to this building in Bemböle a few times in the past, but never knew about its history related to Lego.

I kind of can understand the revisionism that both Pippin and Merry are placed in the Lego-version of the scene, but I would swap their places at least. :P

Hmm, no reason really. I could have, now that you mention it. I just didn't come to think about that, with this having nothing to do with my previous few Mitgardia builds that centered on the Great Elk Clan. But I suppose the house and its inhabitants could fit well enough in Valholl or some other Mitgardian town. Well, it's a bit late now.

It's long since I've published any of my mocs here, partly because I haven't built much anything in a long time. But yesterday I got a little bit of inspiration and slightly updated a building I had done already a long time ago, redesigning some details and adding more interior. As may be noticeable, the building is inspired by the Blacksmith house from the Medieval Market Village and uses mostly parts from my second MMV. I also wanted to find a use for some of the windows from The Burrow set. I'm not completely sure if their style suits here, but I tend to like the little colour they bring to the whole. The most significant difference for the MMV style is that this is my first test of modular building, that is the floors can be lifted though not rearranged. In the end I think I like (and am more comfortable building with) hinged style more, but it was worth it to test other style too. So, this is a butcher shop and house of a guy named Mathan: In the side of the building there's a small pen for the animals to wait for their fate. Judging by her cheery expression Mathan's wife Grethe doesn't have any remorse about that. If the facade isn't overly decorated, the backside of the house is even more ascetic. Some new "brick bricks" might be used to break up the dull walls a bit, but I don't have any yet. And anyway I tend to like more simplistic designs than many other AFOLs, so it doesn't bother me that much. Upstairs is the family's living quarters, and apparently one kid has found his way into the picture too. There is a small attic, used to store some barrels etc, in the roof part, but I forgot to take a picture of it when the batteries of my camera started to imply that they were going to die soon. Downstairs is the slaughterhouse. It is probably not wise to locate a fireplace in a room were meat is handled, but maybe poor Mathan just doesn't know much about things like that? Truth be told, I built both fireplaces when I originally designed the house, before I decided that it would belong to a butcher, and now I didn't have the heart to dismantle the fireplace. Another view from the downstairs. Mathan's friend Columbus just arrived from a long journey and brought him some huge turkeys for souvenirs.

They are doing this, to some extent, on the Facebook page for Lego Cuusoo with "staff picks of the day". But there isn't that much followers in the group so the effect it has on supports is probably rather minimal.

Here: "We can then potentially pick one project per quarter to put into immediate production as the next LEGO CUUSOO set. [...] The remaining projects that pass Review will be placed in a queue where they will await an open production slot and may be chosen for production at a later date." Btw. they also stated recently that an announcement about the results from the summer review "will occur in a matter of weeks, not months, and we’ll update you on the exact timeframe when we know ourselves."

The elf part does throw one off a bit, but I might be able to imagine some sort of cossack/mongol type of warrior with a sword, a royal guard hat and a pet hawk? I got to admit that the person who originated this list, if it doesn't hold any truth, has a pretty wild imagination.

TUPAKKAA, to be exact

Well, if this rumour would happen to be a true, obviously this time the rumour would be based on someone seeing a low resolution picture of the figs, not a list of their names, and describing them as he/she saw fit. There will certainly never be actual Mr. Freeze in CMF series, but there could be some figure (space alien again?) that resembles him close enough.* And if the picture would be of low enough quality (we've seen such leaks before), the "Chinese Girl with snake" could be an ancient Chinese engineer with a firework, or what ever. But no, I'm not trusting this rumour yet. * Or the rumour starter could have seen unassorted pictures of not-yet-released figs and just wrongly assumed that upcoming Mr. Freeze is part of the CMF.

Personally I don't think any attempt to design a unique mold for Gandalf's staff would have had satisfactory outcome, really. It just wouldn't work in the scale and simplified aesthetics (but of course that's my opinion and others are free to disagree – it's obviously an opinion question how detailed minifig accessories should/can be). I'm just happy that they have restrained the new molds to the things that really count instead of using new molds for everything that's vaguely different than existing pieces (I even remember seeing complaints that they should have done a new mold for Gandalf's hat, because it's so different than the usual Lego wizard hat) and thus raising the prices or reducing design quality/other elements of the sets.

Yeah, the film rights for The Silmarillion are quite very unacquirable at least until the leaders change in Tolkien Estate. Probably a blessing. Though I do have this dream of The Fall of Gondolin as an animated film... Your calculations are somewhat faulty, unless you have inside information that the trilogy will be in four parts. Even the last part of the trilogy will be in theaters less than two years from today, in Summer 2014 (afaik no precice date has been given yet).

Maybe the old ones could have it added manually (like posted here/emailed or something and then added by you to the page)? There's only around 50 figs now, so maybe it wouldn't yet be too much bother. I too had thought about suggesting small bios.

Congrats on crossing over 10.000 "duels"! The amount of figs in the system has also been rising nicely. I'm not completely convinced that the elo ranking actually works that well used like this, but it sure is interesting to skim through the variety of everyone's designs. And maybe that's the most important thing, rankings just add some entertainment value (them changing and turning upside down all the time doesn't bother if you look it that way). The UI of the page is awesomely simple and uploading is easy with low threshold. As an improvement suggestion, shouldn't users be able to jump to any page of the ranking list, like "PREV 1-15 16-30 31-45 46-60 NEXT"? Also, on the upload page the box for the figure's name should specify how long the name can be and not allow typing longer names, to avoid truncated names like "His Sole and Most Highest Majesty Hyakinthos II. D".

BaraSH has changed the design slightly – changed the wheels to smaller ones and located them further back than in the official design, and the sideboards of the wagon are now tiles instead of plates. Personally I'm not sure I like all those changes - admittedly using smaller wheels make it possible to attach the wagon lower on the horse's back, which in my opinion is the main weakness in the official design, but at the same time the wagon does lose a bit of it's unique recognisability. The changed location of the wheels make the wagon look rather unbalanced, too. Then again I quite like the official wagon design, which has some nice building techniques and compares favourably to similar (though slightly smaller, so comparing isn't completely fair) civilian wagons in Medieval Market Village and Mill Village Raid. EDIT: I suspect my preceding post sounds rather harsh, which is not my intention! I do like the moc as a whole; it has a peacefully Hobbitish atmosphere, and there's quite a lot of nice details included. For example I like the hobbit windows with jumper tiles as window shutters.

Nothing probably, but then again zombies don't do much with anything except braaaaaaaiins. Apparently the guy had a walkie talkie before he was turned into a zombie. Like a 80's style yuppie businessman. Arguably a walkie talkie and a suitcase make a lot more sense than a shovel and a chicken leg.

I wouldn't count on that. Possibly if these are Lego Games or something like that instead of self-standing playset themes. The January 2013 doesn't have much room for new themes, as Ninjago should still be continuing at least that far and there's already the rumour of some sort of Polar Expedition theme for 2013. Whatever Legends of Chima and Speedorz are, they are likely to appear Summer 2013 at the earliest. Could be 2014 as well, as far as we know. Ceterum censeo I still think bringing Aztecs into this is quite far-fetched.

As CMS4 mentioned a while ago, Bricklink has listed Gandalf, Gimli and Mordor Orc key chains. An Uruk-hai one would be news though (as would be Moria Orc, but Mordor and Moria orcs are easily mixed up).

The name of this topic is slightly misleading, as the registered name is actually Legends of Chima. Also it is unlikely that there'd be a typo in an official trademark file. Nevertheless Chimaera is something I too thought when I heard the name. I just don't think it is much more probable than China or Chima indians connection.

That was all one piece. Cannot forget the half hour I spent trying to figure how to put it on.

Anything is possible, but I think many have taken the mention of the "Indian connection" and run pretty wild with it. Looking at the webpage Huw linked to in the Brickset article, it tells that according to a local Trinidadian legend Chima tribe won some battle and to celebrate it they ate hummingbirds forgetting the very birds were inhabiting the souls of their ancestors, and in retaliation gods created a large pitch lake to swallow the whole tribe. That's it, the story of the Chima tribe. Doesn't sound like the most suitable material for a Lego theme to me, for several reasons. And the story doesn't involve Conquistadors nor Aztecs - who happened to live some thousand kilometres away, for what's it worth. I think someone was even happily waiting for a Wild West revival... that's like expecting Vikings if the name actually was Legends of China instead of Chima.

Link to the news item, if others too have problems seeing that picture of Gondorian soldiers. And there's some other pics too, though not that revealing ones.

Sister Cira belongs to the Sisterhood of the Silent Wings, a very ancient and secretive order of highly skilled female fighters. They are based in southern Mitgardia, though the exact location of their headquarters is unknown. They are commonly thought to be assassins, and it is true that they often kill (or that is at least when they make themselves noticed by the outside world), but they take no assignments nor money. Maybe they kill to make the world a better place (the people they kill are usually evil and wicked and missed by few, but that is not always the case), or according to their deity's will. Maybe there's a reason no other mortal can understand. Maybe they have a plan. But everyone can agree that Sister Cira is as beautiful as she is deadly with her two scimitars.

Interesting idea, but the upload doesn't seem to work?