Haltiamieli

Yes, the saddle piece hasn't changed. One size fits all.

Here you go. Chibi Minas Tirith among other screen caps.

King's Castle from Kingdoms had 16 of those pieces, Fantasy Era castle 10 of its predecessor, 4444 (in addition to three BURPs and even this piece). After the Yellow Castle every single castle from Castle line has had walls built with prefabricated pieces like these. Even the Battle of Helm's Deep, widely revered for mostly brick-built walls, has 14 prefab wall pieces (straights and corners added together). In the frontside of the new King's Castle, there seems to be 5 straight wall pieces (four showing and probably one behind the royal knight). The upper levels of the portcullis seem to avoid wall pieces, though there could be two on the sides of the second level. The round corner towers use corner wall pieces in similar style as 7946, but are one level higher and as such of course use more of them. On the side that we can see there's 4 straight wall pieces, or maybe 3 if the liftable play feature part (for sneaky robbery) is done in different style. In the worst case scenario there'd be around 24 straight wall pieces (5 for front, 2 for upper portcullis, 4 for both sides, ~7 for backside, 2 for the rectangular tower) at most. It's considerably more than in 7946, but frankly I doubt the whole backside of the castle is made of monotonous wall of prefab wall pieces. The unseen corner is probably similar to its opposite, the one closest to the viewer (they try not to hide interesting builds/features in the cover pics, obviously). It's hard to say anything of the rectangular tower in the back, it isn't clear enough.

Surely he meant that they are lighter now because he bought some bags from them.

The lack of battlepacks in Lego LotR seemed somewhat more understandable before the release of Lone Ranger set pictures. That's an untested licence theme likely going for just one wave, and instantly it gets a better battlepack than LotR has ever got (still including the main character, of course, but a very low amount of bricks and three anonymous soldiers)? Even PotC had smallest set with two semi-anonymous zombies (though the actual "battlepack", as we call it, was very lame). I've defended the role of Riddles for the Ring and Gandalf Arrives, still like the latter one a lot, but even I start to get a little anxious for a battlepack or two. It would just necessitate slightly larger waves.

Wasn't Elrond just a preorder bonus?

Close but no cigar. I don't see how this relates to Lego LotR 2013 however.

General Magma was around five hours and close to a hundred messages before you Concerning Wizard Duel, I don't think it rules out Orthanc as a D2C set. If they would be making Orthanc as an exclusive instead of a normal retail set, it would make sense to offer Saruman in some other set too – he's a bit too important to be left out of the main line, and Orthanc D2C could have some other exclusive characters (Gríma, Orcs, possibly Ents if they so choose, even Dunlendings). I think Orthanc would scale down nicely into the normal non-D2C set style, but it has always been one of the better possibilities for a D2C set too (other possibilities that I would like are Rivendell (which too has a small set with main resident characters now) and Meduseld).

It seems they are aiming the new theme for somewhat younger audience than last Castle themes. LotR is obviously taking the attention of the oldest fan base. For example the King's Castle is marked for ages 6-12, when Kingdoms Castle (7946) was for 7-14 and Fantasy Era King's Castle for 7-12. Not a big difference, but it's there. And judging by the preliminary pics, it shows in the design choices.

I don't think there's Aragorn in Council of Elrond, just Elrond (obviously), Arwen (blue dress), Frodo and Gimli.

Is this it? Is this all you can conjure, Lego? Seems like they are still shying away from all the molds that Gondorians etc. would require? Hopefully they will be the centre of the next LotR wave when it comes. If it comes. It's Gimli, in the cover picture he's flying away from the Ring pedestal with his axe. Play feature, I suppose. In the front cover Legolas and others are attacking from the ship against orcs. So there doesn't seem to be any actual corsairs included: Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, King of the Dead, two other Dead guys, one lead orc (looks a bit strange, could possibly be a lonely corsair) and two companions for him.

Looks awfully like it, but hopefully it's something different. That's possibly the worst logo of any Castle faction ever. Otherwise the sets look quite standard. Still nice to have, though that shield would be a serious let down.

Looks like 6914 T-Rex with the snake added as a fourth building option. Other three models are exactly the same as in the aforementioned set.

Though if they want to be really accurate, they should do Shadowfax (Gandalf's horse) without the bridle print. Unfortunately one can't really ride a Lego horse without a saddle.

While I too believe that the Portal project has very slim chances to be accepted (better and more widely known than Eve Online, but still quite niche especially when it comes to Lego's consumerbase), I think the new molds won't matter that much: Portal's new molds aren't the centerpiece nor are they counted in dozens. I imagine very few supporters are supporting it because of the new molds, which I suspect was a common reason for Zelda supporters. With enough ingenuity, Portal could probably be realised without any new molds and would still more or less meet the expectations of most of its supporters. That's probably not the case with Zelda.

The most disappointing thing for me is that it will be very hard to rally AFOLs to support any project after this. Too much disappointment, skepticism and cynicism. I always felt a little uneasy with MWT's size and vague definition of what exactly would be the thing produced, and I did add my own vote only quite late in the game. But nevertheless it was the one project AFOLs rallied together to push through (after the more unlikely and as unlucky Winchester). It is an important part of growing up to be disappointed at times, but the cycles of Cuusoo are so long and slow that people may give up hope. And most of my favourite projects do need some push if they are to achieve 10k before I die of old age. I think they could have made the proposed set with one new mold, for Link's hair/hat/ears. But maybe big part of the supporters commented that they just loved all the new swords and accessory designs and it would be awesome to get them, at the same time giving all too low presumed price point?

Dunno. Personally I think she looks a lot more like a human forest woman from Robin Hood's Forestman's company than a female companion of the Elf. Her clothes are simple and homespun compared to the elaborate design of the Elf's armour, and arguably the same applies to the shield design too (no ornate borders etc.). The hair style could easily pass for both an elf and a human, except for the lack of pointy ears – not a necessity, maybe, but nevertheless it is the most obvious way to discern existing Lego elves from other Lego people. In the end the names don't matter much anyway, as most customers won't even see them when they buy these packages from retail. If people at Lego thought that Fairy and Female Elf are conceptually too close, wouldn't they change the appearance, not the name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, wouldn't it? And even in case you are right, what would stop them from making a female elf for Series 12 (or a later one)? At the time of it's release (unless CMF ends with Series 11 etc.) both the Fairy and the Forest Maiden will be ancient history that does not matter.

Are you counting the indian in the Bandit Hideout or am I missing something obvious? While it's impossible to say with certainty without better pics, I presume the indian is male. Btw. only now I notice it's not using the CMF Tribal Hunter hair but a new, similar but more detailed mold.

Many have found Gandalf's staff disappointing and opinioned that they should have used a unique mold. Personally I think it's quite fine as it is, a more exact reproduction would have made the piece look too detailed for Lego aesthetics (which, of course, are entirely subjective standards and defy definition). So that's just my opinion. Tauriel's daggers are Daggers of Time from Prince of Persia theme.

Unless you count the sword, which was previously only included in some but not all Kingdoms Chess sets. Admittedly it doesn't give much clues about the upcoming theme, but nevertheless it will probably be used instead of the old short sword or the longsword from LotR/Hobbit and some other CMFs.

I haven't played the game, but at least in the promo pic Saruman has different hair than Ginny. I think Ginny's hair with it's hair clip would look slightly awkward.

Very true. Lego designed these sets when Jackson was still working along the two movies plan. Back then the first movie was to end in the barrel riding sequence. Then as Jackson moved from two films to a trilogy and changed the ending of the first film, it was too late for Lego to change their line up, so they just added the "Special Hobbit Trilogy Preview Set" tag in the packaging.

I understand it can be bothersome when one's opinion is targeted by many, but these boards are meant for conversation and we all have opinions, often differing. If you don't want anyone to comment on your opinions, don't post them. When it comes to the troll scene, I too think it's rather ill-fitting for a Lego set. Three Moria cave trolls with different face prints would be rather dull, and newly molded individual trolls would drive up the price but not the brick count. There's not much to build in that scene, and that's already one of the more valid criticisms against Lego LotR/Hobbit line as a whole, that the minifigs are the main draw and builds themselves sometimes more like afterthoughts (though that certainly doesn't apply to all the sets).

Goes a bit off topic, but Bard is played by Luke Evans and a picture has even been released of him in costume chatting with Legolas. That's from the third film.

I heartily agree. Not only would avoiding flesh and yellow in torsos (unless it's clearly needed) make them more flexible, both flesh and yellow tend to look badly miscoloured (not enough layers of paint, it has been said) compared to the molded flesh/yellow heads above them. So avoidance of flesh and yellow in torsos would often result in simply better looking figs even in their original configuration.