Haltiamieli

Something like this?

Found these finally in Finland, but didn't have printed cheat sheet with me, so I just had to try feeling. Boy was that hard! I felt through at least two dozen packages, it took more than fifteen minutes, and I could identify with any certainty only one gorilla guy (banana), one tennis player (racket), one samurai (armour), one indian chief (headpiece) and three baseball players (bats). Bought the first four and left the baseball players for others. Now that I'm home, only the tennis player (and the baseball players I didn't buy) seem to match easily with the markings on the cheat sheet linked in Brickset. I recall however seeing a more detailed cheat sheet somewhere, can anyone link to that? Hopefully the elf's dots are as clear as the players' ones. The quest for the elves is just beginning...

I suppose it's unlikely however that we'd get another Kingdoms calendar second year in a row? It seems that last years there has been a City calendar and another one for some other theme - City and Kingdoms 2010, City and Pirates 2009, City and Castle 2008, City and Belville 2007. I don't know where the info comes from, but according to Brickset.com this year's calendars will be City (7553) and Star Wars (7958). Not very good options for fans of history themes.

As great as this kind of minifigure collection would be, I suspect it would also be too expensive to sell well. Even 9349 is not exactly cheap - and it uses zero new parts or prints (that being more or less the point of it). This sort of collection would, however, need new prints for every fig and probably a heap of newly molded accessories too. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I believe it's unfortunately quite improbable.

Today I bought the King's Castle, which was on sale for 65,40 EUR. Quite a good bargain, imo, when its Finnish MSRP is €119,95 and I haven't seen it in any other shop under €99,90. And Prison Tower Rescue next to it was still priced for full €57,90 My first big Lego castle ever!

Thanks for all the greetings. Luckily, I didn't sell my old Lego bricks either. They were just stacked away when there was no-one to play or build with them. You see, I never lost my appreciation for Lego even if I spent a decade not playing or building with them. Our bricks have been in my brother's keeping for a long time, but as he has used them seldom I'm now moving them to my home. But there's quite a lot of them (even if not A LOT in afol-standards) and we live in different cities and neither drives a car, so I've yet managed to carry with me on a train-trip just something like one third of our total brick amount. I suppose I drew a little more looks than usual on that train, with a big transparent box full of Lego on my lap.

Hello, I don't usually post introductions when I arrive to new forums, I just jump to the conversations head-first. I was planning to follow my usual strategy here too, but maybe I got a little bit jealous that everyone seems to be getting a nice amount of welcoming replies here. ;) ...or maybe I just wanted an excuse to write a horribly long story about my history and interests. So... I'm Haltiamieli, a 25 years old guy from Finland. I don't have much hobbies per se, but I'm a keen Tolkienist and during the last few years I've also spent many an hour editing the Finnish Wikipedia. A geek, then? Undeniably. When it comes to Lego, I've gradually awoken from my dark ages during the last six months or so. I'm maybe a little bit heretic here, because back in childhood I'd say my favourite toy was Playmobil, even if Lego wasn't far behind. Maybe it's partly because there had always been legos in our house, due to my 5 years older brother, but Playmobil was my own thing. For example, I have no idea whatsoever what my first Lego set was, but I remember my first playmobils very well. And admittedly I have never been a very good builder, so some finer possibilities of Lego bricks weren't that important for me then. I suppose I entered my dark ages around the same time that most people, when "playing with toys" turned to be regarded very uncool. I have much respect for those who dare to continue playing and building through their teenage and afterwards, but I wasn't one of them. My first nudge towards a new period of Lego hobby was already in 2006, but well... I'm mostly interested in the Castle theme and that was the last year of Knights' Kingdom II. Needless to say more? Out of interest I bought one of those big action figure knights, and was appalled. So appalled that I hid it in my closet and never told anyone that I had bought such an abomination. I also bought one of those anime-inspired mechas, but while I didn't hide it in the closet, it wasn't enough to really inspire my awakening either. Mechas are cool, but not very high on my interest list. Last year, however, things were different. I have peer support and conversation sounding board in a friend of mine who has undergone the transformation to "afolhood" at the same time as I did. The collectable minifigures (narrowly missed series 1 though) worked in a sort of gateway theory way for me, as buying a 2 euro fig didn't feel that big a deal, and then soon I was already making orders from Bricklink and buying the Medieval Market Village (luckily I stirred before it went out of production). I'm building a small medieval village, which consists of five buildings at the moment: the two from MMV, Siskind's Blacksmith Shop (a replica I've built with the help of BL, not the real thing!), the newest Hagrid's Hut as the village witch's cottage and a MOC based on the "summer home" alternate version of Apple Tree House. Due to the over-abundance of blacksmiths the Blacksmith Shop is still without clear function. I plan to use it as a farmhouse to go with the mill and barn when the Mill Village Raid comes out in the summer.

Having slept over the night, it still does look awfully lot like a backside of a rooster to me. Or, more specifically, like a blue plume piece attached to something dark. This would be very close to how the rooster of the MMV looked like. But would there really be a brick-built animal in this set? It would clash quite badly with the detailed design of the hens, and be huge in comparison. Could it be a preliminary stand-in? Maybe. Could it be that the rooster mold has a clip for the tail-plume to be attached? Maybe, but that doesn't sound very likely? Also, why is it hidden behind the logo - just an accident which will be corrected for the final set design? Or maybe the rooster will just disappear from the finalized set altogether, and hiding it from the prelim was intentional? So many questions... There's a classic pitchfork in one of the upcoming Alien Conquest sets (also preliminary pictures), so it's possible that the brown trident here is just a stand-in. Of course, it could be the other way round too.

You may very justifiably call me a day dreamer, but boy doesn't it seem that there's a big blue-tailed cock standing on the top of the barn chimney, hiding mostly behind the Kingdoms logo?!? If it's only smoke, it sure looks solid and clearly pronounced and blue-plumed. Though even if it did turn out to be a bird, it might still be brickbuilt á la MMV?

The Black Pearl won't probably be exclusive set, it's just coming later than the other sets. The catalogue from which our information on these sets comes from didn't (according to someone's comment here in Eurobricks) include Diagon Alley, this year's exclusive of the Harry Potter line. So presumably it wouldn't include PotC exclusives either.

The golden "crystal" could be attached in the front of his headpiece - that would leave one hand for the khopesh and the other for the staff-shield combo.

Yeah, the mystery man must be an chimney sweep. Googling "chimney sweep" does result in a surprisingly many pictures of top-hat wearing ones. Also, I found this piece of information from Wikipedia, which seems to explain the woman beside her: "In parts of Great Britain it is still considered lucky for a bride to see a chimney sweep on her wedding day. Many modern British sweeps hire themselves out to attend weddings in pursuance of this tradition." As you said, some printed manual explaining things like this would surely be useful for the buyers.

If you mean the upper picture in the first post, the sets in the top left corner are Kingdoms: Mill Village Raid and King's Carriage Ambush. And of course there's the Creator log cabin too.

Yes.

Your observation is correct, there is no printing in the barding. However, these are preliminary pictures. There will surely be some sort of printing when the final versions are published. There are bound to be some other differences too, for better and/or worse. :)

It's nicely convenient that the blacksmith of Blacksmith Attack doesn't seem to be wearing markedly "blacksmithian" clothes, so one can buy multiples of the hopefully very cheap set and build up the civilian population. I already have two nearly identical blacksmiths, I don't think I need more of them. But I sure need more civilians. :)

Coming down to something like ten favourites was somewhat easy, but pruning the number to five was VERY hard. But it was nice to look at all the entries! :) cecilie - 1 point Etzel - 1 point Jameson42 - 1 point kost u grlu - 1 point twigman - 1 point

Nice vignette, but I agree that neither of the pics can really capture the whole very well - in the first one you barely notice there's another Spartan behind the leader and in the second one, enlightning (when it comes to building technique) as it is, the "off-cut" leg stands out a little too much. But I suppose those wouldn't be much of problem if one could look at this vignette in real life, from many angles. :) I'd say the piece in question is this one.

Me being a poor university student, I think I'll have to settle for one, as fan as I am. ;) Now that I've looked at the MVR pictures long and hard, I'm still wondering what is that grey object the woman in the second floor is throwing at the raiders? Also, is the running villager male or female? It seems that one has red lips and arguably feminine colour scheme. I'm positively perplexed that the barn seems to be four-walled with hinges in the middle, á la MMV. How about the windmill, though - does it have an open back or something else?

I'm pretty sure he's a classic chimney sweeper, with the characteristic brush and ladders. The woman on the other hand might still be a bride: according to Wikipedia, "in parts of Great Britain it is still considered lucky for a bride to see a chimney sweep on her wedding day. Many modern British sweeps hire themselves out to attend weddings in pursuance of this tradition."

Other than the age range, there's also the box size shown by a stand-in grey box in the leaked catalogue page - it's similar in size to this year's Freeing Dobby on the same page. So if the stand-in box is any indication, The Forbidden Forest will be a very small set. Two or three figs and a small tree? If based on the first book/film, at most I think it could include Harry, a centaur and the cloaked figure - the unicorn is dead at this point anyway, so it's easiest to omit. If based on the last book/film, it might include Harry, Voldemort and Narcissa Malfoy? But imho to accurately portay the scene, it would need more figs and, thus, bigger set.

Interesting, even if it seems there's no new torsos and probably no new faceprints either. Merman doesn't seem to have ribs á la CMF surfer? Is this the first time Lego has used normal 45 degree 2x2 slope for a kid's dress piece?

I'm not sure if it's very probable, but I'm certainly hoping so! As there's also the Knight Bus, which IIRC doesn't appear in the last book (and thus, movies), the Forbidden Forest set could also be based on any of the books. And I think it's somewhat unlikely, actually, that they would base the set on the Deathly Hallows - the Forbidden Forest scene of the Deathly Hallows is after all a bit dark scene and would only include Harry, Voldemort, death eaters and trees. Some scene from the earlier books seems likelier. And centaurs would certainly be cool.

Awesome! I seem to have waken up from my dark ages just at the right moment - first Medieval Market Village and now these! There's so much stuff in the Mill Village Raid, and it's not even an exclusive set. Dragon Knights seem to be seriously competing for the title of the most evil baddies in the Lego history. Attacking peaceful civilians, without even a single valiant hero to defend the repressed? Haven't seen much of that before in official sets.

There just wouldn't be any justice in the universe if Lego wouldn't be number 1. It's so clearly on the class of it's own. Still I'm bit bummed that another childhood favourite of mine, Playmobil, apparently didn't get higher than #50.