Haltiamieli

The prelim pictures look quite good for the most part. A little skim on structures, but honestly that was to be expected. Gandalf Arrives: Seems like a nice small set. I was hoping for a bit of greenery alongside the cart, but oh well. Ninjago snake seems quite tailor-made for the role of Gandalf's biggest firework. Frodo could have the book he was reading at this scene, would be nice addition. Shelob Attacks: Well, Shelob doesn't look much better than earlier Aragogs, and there's not much else in the set except the figures. For me this is the most lacklustre set, not that it's surprising. Remains to be seen how Gollum will turn out. Galadriel's Phial seems to be simply a clear gem, not a bad idea. Uruk-hai Army: Not at all happy with the new horse mold, how is that supposed to be playable? Otherwise the set looks pretty good, better than expected. A nice amount of figs, and it can be joined to Helm's Deep. The new helm for Rohirrim looks awesome! Attack on Weathertop: Not a bad scaling down of the hill. I wonder whether the Black Riders will have both legs for riding and a slope skirt for wondering around on foot? Just legs would be looking a bit silly. A other dimension white ghost Nazgûl would have looked cool, but their playability would be restricted more or less to this scene, so I do understand why Lego choose to not include any of them. The Mines of Moria: No Gandalf, no Aragorn? That's a bit surprising. Including Legolas and Gimli in this and Helm's Deep was also something I wasn't really expecting, even if both do have something to do in the film scene. The Battle of Helm's Deep: Looks more epic than I expected, really. I was expecting something like a little upscaled Whitecap Bay... which on the other hand was a cheaper set, so maybe I had a little bit lower expectations than were realistic.

I'm happy that you don't find that the films have too many characters, as that's one of the most common complains I hear about them. I agree with the doubt of this theme getting as long run as the Star Wars though, there's very little chance of that. At least since the end of the prequel trilogy Star Wars has been first and foremost a merchandising franchise that exists to generate enough popularity that people keep buying toys and replicas and other stuff. LotR is still more a less "just" a successful film trilogy (based on a successful book trilogy) that faded into the background of public memory soon after the last film.

Maybe there could be a middle answer or two for "Do you think the LEGO Friends line is too "effeminite" in appearance?" I find it a bit hard to answer either one of the opposites, as I think the theme does go overboard in some things but overall achieves acceptably well.

Is it really so? Admittedly I've been in the AFOL scene only for a year and a half and I don't have that good picture of the preceding decade or so, but to me it doesn't seem very clear that the stereotypes would have been getting worse. Certainly they have made bad steps and wrong turns, but the general direction seems to be slowly for the better. City sets have had an increasing amount of female figs, police officers and firefighters included. The latest Dino line is far less oriented on guns, machines and mutated monsters than the earlier one seems to have been (though personally I wish they would have made at least one Dino set without an ugly useless vehicle eating all the parts ). The latest Castle line had the first civilian retail sets since the '80s (though even then included some raiders). Creator houses nowadays include minifigs for added playability, maybe some day they will have furniture too? Collectable minifigures have included an increasing amount of female figs, some of which have been slightly against most strict stereotypes like the surgeon, surfer, skater and space heroine, though many of them are quite pink.

Ouch, how stupid of me! Goes to show that I'm mainly a book fan.

I'm sure we will, there's apparently not a single set based on the Return of the King yet... and that's the part that won gazillion Academy Awards etc, so there should be more than enough mass appeal. The Hobbit would have to be an unforeseen success to drive the original trilogy into oblivion.

As happy as I would be to see Kingdoms continue, I don't think it will. The theme has been fighting for shelfspace even now against such more popular and/or more heavily marketed lines as PotC and Ninjago, and at least in Finland it has been losing mostly. Against the combined forces of LotR, PotC (if it really is continuing, as has been claimed), SW, Ninjago... there's no victory. Already when the Joust set was unveiled I interpreted the Black Falcon knight as a nice and rare treat for the AFOLs (not to say that kids wouldn't like it too), not as a herald of a new faction. It seems I was correct.

11, if you count the statue which has no printed parts. That's still a generous amount of minifigs, especially considering that many of them are exclusive to that set. I will be very happy if Helm's Deep has as many figs, but I'm not raising my hopes that high.

I think Bilbo is quite possible inclusion. He's the guy who bridges the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit, more so than even Gandalf, and this would be more or less the best chance Lego will have of ever releasing old Bilbo. Then again, children tend to think that old people are boring... Sam I think won't be included here, because he will surely be in the Shelob set. This one is certainly interesting. It could be Boromir and Merry & Pippin against a few Uruk-hai, but I'm not sure if Lego would make a set of a death scene... Still, would they really make a set without any protagonists either? 13 figures? In our dreams. They might even be truer to the source material than the movies and skip Haldir and his elves altogether. I wouldn't count on specific Berzerker either, his role is easily enough relegated to a normal Uruk-hai warrior. I would hope there's at least something like Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Théoden, a generic Rohirrim soldier and three Uruk-hai, but I wouldn't hope for much more. Impulse set sounds like a good guess. With luck it could include an orcish smith, small furnace and anvil and a few weapons. That would be a killer army-builder! The set might also contain Saruman inspecting his minion's work, as the lineup seems to be a bit thin on villains (not counting the cannon-fodder) otherwise. Then it would not be as good (or at least stranger) army-builder. One notice I did make from this set list is that there will apparently be no female characters at all in these sets (except Shelob ). I really hope we'll see Galadriel and Éowyn in the future, and Arwen too. Galadriel could be included also in the Hobbit sets, as the actions of the White Council will be shown on-screen in the films, contrary to the book. I will have to start planning a custom-made Prince Imrahil with his Swan Knights of Dol Amroth...

Well, PotC could very well be located in Historic forum if the Pirates didn't have it's own one. Besides, there has always been different interest groups in all the subforums. Historic includes such diverse themes as Ninja, Fantasy Era, Kingdoms and Western, for example. Fantasy Era has even less to do with history of the real world than the Lord of the Rings.

Only there happens to be no centaurs in Middle-earth... In fact it's pretty scarce on other classic fantasy creatures too (excluding pseudohuman "races" like elves, dwarves and orcs). Of course we are bound to get Smaug the Dragon in time (though probably only when the second part of the film is finally coming to the silver screen in 2013), maybe even giant eagles. And trolls and ents, tree-people. Possibly wargs, huge evil wolves, but I really hope that Lego stays away from those horrible "mutated hyena" atrocities that Jackson used in the LotR trilogy. I wonder if they've redesigned them for The Hobbit... fingers crossed!

Maybe there's a bit of commenting fatigue when there has suddenly (if not surprisingly) been so many tower mocs. I at least have found it a bit hard to keep account of which towers I've seen and which I yet haven't. I think your tower is one of the very good Mitgardian ones, it combines the wooden top and hay roof nicely with the main part made of stone, and there's good and detailed scenery around. If I had to note one weakness in your scene it would be the water, because it isn't very intuitive to discern snow from rushing water as they are both made with white bricks. But making water is always hard and best techniques (like the one Derfel uses in his medieval village guide) tend to require pieces that are hard to come by in necessary quantities. Does the tower have any interior?

You got to be joking with those replacement suggestions? Though I admittedly share part of your concern on Lego's ability to portray Shelob. But positively thinking Harry Potter's Aragog wasn't the main feature in Hagrid's Hut set, and as such didn't propably receive that much attention in design phase, and... well, not much to say for this one's defense. Anyway, if they are trying to sell a set with Shelob and not much else, Shelob just has to look quite good or the set won't sell, as simple as that. Then again, it will probably also be the cheapest set with Frodo and Sam...

That's a great wagon design! I really like the colourfulness and the overall shape. And there's also a detailed interior, very believable. I think it would fit well together with a MOC of mine, a wagon of some vagabond entertainers. Or maybe not, my wagon would look quite bad in comparison. You can, by the way, deeplink pictures into your post with http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Frank-Lloyd-Knight/CCIX-Gypsies/gypsy_1.jpg' alt='gypsy_1.jpg'>

Whether or not it's an ideal situation, in this era in the western culture there happens to be a lot of girls (and some boys) who like things that we perceive as "girly" and Lego really wants to attract them - to get more customers and money, yes, but is it so bad that even they are given a chance to get indulged in the world of Lego, the world's best toy? Lego really can't magically counter-code all the girls' worldviews in a fortnight so that they would be suddenly interested in the usual more gender-neutral Lego sets. So Lego makes sets that (they hope) would appeal to those girls. This does not mean that girls couldn't still buy usual Lego sets, if they like them. Introducing Friends doesn't even really change much in terms of stereotyping, as there already was Belville theme before, which included arguably worse stereotyping with less saving factors. Also, I think Lego has made some progress (albeit slowly) in including more female minifigs in their other lines. Though there is still much to be done.

Nah, we had to learn to deal with the reality already a decade ago when Peter Jackson butchered our beloved story! (yes, I'm only half-joking – I kind of have a love/hate relationship with the movies)

So Cwetqo and others were right after all... but could the partial set list that Cwetqo posted in August have been legit too? Gandalf's Arrival (Hobbit or LotR; personally I'd wager for the former?), Weathertop, Balin's Tomb and Helm's Deep mostly sound quite propable scenes for Lego to use. But apart from maybe Helm's Deep none of the sound very building-oriented. I can't but feel sad for the passing of Kingdoms. It was truly a great theme and more or less the reason why I returned to Lego collecting. But still a Middle-earth theme is good news in my books, it's the first Lego licence that really interests me. It could even turn me partly to the dark side of the fleshy minifigs. I just hope they do it well...

I'm not sure if it would look better really, considering that the snowy landscape would still be studdy as hell (actually I would have liked to make the snow with tiles and horizontal building, there has been some great examples how awesome that can look, but I lacked parts for that). I don't want the tower to look more polished than the landscape. Admittedly I'm not much into tiling anyway (maybe it's because I'm still somewhat in the childhood-nostalgy stage of AFOLhood and often prefer traditional/simple building techniques and styles, or maybe I just don't tick that way), so that may influence my opinion.

Very interesting and reassuring message, and it's great they took the time to answer to our concerns. It doesn't exactly change my opinion of the feasibility of a Minecraft set or the probability of them actually releasing one, but that's beside the point.

First post has been updated with slightly better pictures, and certainly more of them. Thanks for your kind comments, everyone. Yeah, A Song of Ice and Fire may have given some inspiration for my building. I suppose wildlings or lesser vassals of the House Stark could have towers like mine. Remember, winter is coming. That's why you have to wear warm clothes... fire is a luxury not to be wantonly wasted!

I'm not sure whether the challenge is ending at the start or end of the 15th day, so I play safe and start a topic even with somewhat preliminary and scarce pictures. I hope to take better ones in the morning, and if I do I update this post. Also, the tower has still underwent some changes after I took this pictures, but they don't change the outlook that much. I just added another pair of flags hanging under the sole window and added two plates of height to the tower so that the upper half of the it can be lifted off for better access to the interior. [uPDATE! Good news: new pictures added. Bad news: the picture quality is not much better.] The north – true north, the north of the north – is a really harsh and merciless environment, but nonetheless it does sustain many small clans of primitive hunters, fishers and herdsmen. Some have probably been there for thousands of years, indigenous, while some have been pushed there only recently (in the big scheme of things) by the slow advancement of southern settlers to the more temperate parts of Mitgardia. The northeners have traditionally minded their own business only and even fought wars against any endeavours to bring the tundra people under the rule of any king or ruler, or guild for that matter. But during the last hundred years or so this has started to change, with one clan after another having acknowledged the rule of the Mitgardia Guild and yielded. The Clan of the Great Elk was one of the first to pledge their loyalty to the Guild, many long years back when the Clan was lead by young Meeko son of Kuonjar. He was the father of the current leader, now an exceptionally old man by the standards of his people. The oath of allegiance happened on the border of the Great Elk lands, by an old watchtower which has thereafter been known as the Oath Tower. While the clan lives inlands in the far north, they have not had much to fear from the faraway lands and peoples of the other guilds, but from time to time there arises some... disputes among the local clans (some of them still do not acknowledge the rule of the Guild), or some wild orcs might come raiding into the region, and at those times the towers are needed as defenses and also as safehouses, because many of them connect to underground caverns with more room and some emergency supplies. This is also true of the Oath Tower. Here it is! There is a small stream going by the tower that has been frozen and mostly covered in snow like everything else. Not much growing here. Halti son of Halti, my character and the younger son of the leader of the clan, is standing on the top of the tower and looking at the envoy that is approaching. Apparently a captain from the Mitgardia Guild is just arriving to inspect the defences. The guy sweeping snow down below is Halti's brother Peera. A narrow path leads to the tower between the cliffs. Here is a view from the top of the tower, with the hatch to the stairs below open... ...and closed. Pictures of the tower interior with parts of the tower lifted off. Not much to see here, except the stairs and a small platform by the window. And as you may remember, there was a cave under the tower. The thing in the upper part of the picture is my attempt to make a turnable bolt to seal/open the hatch. It works quite well, but the structure is somewhat huge-ish and not very minifig-operable or compatible. Don't pay attention to it. Brickshelf gallery (if you are interested, three pics from before the last few changes can still be found here) This has been by far the biggest single building project of my still quite short AFOL career, with some landscaping and such that I hadn't really tried before. The creation used more or less all of my white plates and brown palisade bricks (not counting the ones that are used in my other MOCs). I hope you like it.

Great, thanks a lot! So there is another face for sleepyhead, sleeping: Also, great face: I think the highlander would be my favourite if not for the rather lacklustre face. I've cautiously placed my vote for the roman, but that may yet change when I have these figures at hand. So many great ones! I seem to be in a minority thinking that the alien and the robot are the worst ones in this series, I don't like the alien's head and I don't think it fits well with the torso design. The only thing I like about the robot is the splendid clockwork turning thing on his back. The torso design is mediocre and the head is quite ugly compared to the awesome robot helm from Series 1. Of course, these are only my opinions and they're certainly not better than any other ones.

It was a cloudy day so there was never much light, and (surprisingly) I also woke up quite late... so I'm still hoping for a little bit better pictures, but here are something to give you the general idea: Apparently a captain from the Mitgardia Guild is just arriving to inspect the defences of the Clan of the Great Elk. We live inlands in the far north, so we don't have much danger from the other guilds, but from time to time there arises some... disputes among the clans. Some of them do not really acknowledge the rule of the Guild yet, either. We were some of the first clans of this region to do so, at the time of my grandfather Meeko son of Kuonjar, and as a matter of fact the pact happened in the vicinity of this very tower, which is why this tower has been known as the Oath Tower ever since. There is a small stream going by the tower that has been frozen and mostly covered in snow like everything else. I, Halti son of Halti, am looking towards the envoy from the top of the tower while my brother Peera is sweeping snow down below. A view from the top of the tower, with a hint of stairs that go down.

The clock is ticking close to 6 AM in Finland, but I've finally managed to get my watch tower finished! It's certainly not one of the best ones around, but I'm quite proud of it, as it's by far the biggest project of my still quite short AFOL career, with some landscaping and such (it used more or less all my white plates and all my brown palisade bricks not counting the ones that are used in my other MOCs). Of course, the Great Elks shouldn't even have the best tower, as they are quite simple and primitive people. Pictures? Not before the sun rises... I'd like to take pictures outside in the snow and better light conditions, but it sounds like it's raining so there may not be any snow left in the morning. :P

Problem with some fake runic fonts is that they can make people who do know real runic alphabet(s) slightly frustrated And I think Viceroy's map looks a bit too sophisticated for rather harsh/crude runic fonts anyway. Though I quite like the look of PR Viking, and maybe Odinson too. Vid's Norse seems to be based too closely on real runes, for example I doubt most people could easily associate M for E.