Gryphon Ink

This really depends on the child. If your kid is a Star Wars fanatic who will spend hours and days reenacting OT Star Wars, then you betcha that Death Star is a great choice. If the interest in Star Wars pales after a little while, it's going to be a very expensive Lego doorstop. Personally, if I was buying Lego for the kids, I wouldn't go with Death Star. I'd go the multiple set option because you have a better range of possible activities. If I was spending that much on Lego for my 11YO daughter, I would actually mix and match a few different themes. I'd go with the Friends Riding Camp, Olivia's House, and Park City Cafe. Then the Ninjago ultimate dragon battle. Round it out with an X-Wing or a Monster Fighters set. Do I still have money left? More small Friends and Great Vehicles sets, then. Overall, cohesive play isn't as much of a factor as building a variety of things - I know she wants to build that big dragon, but she'd probably like an iconic Star Wars ship too, and the Friends sets give options for a pretty good variety of building and play.

I think there is one valid point in there, that the LOTR theme does have less emphasis on playability than some others. Almost all the LOTR sets are great-looking models, but they don't have the swoosh of Star Wars, the cartoony vibrancy of Superheroes, or anywhere near the same number of play features as Monster Fighters. Part of this is to do with the source material, which is full of grand buildings and epic battles but isn't nearly as colorful and "explodey" as things like Avengers or Star Wars. And partly because of that, LOTR is designed to appeal to older children and adults much more than most Lego themes. So it's a matter of taste in the end. Do you like action features and bright colors? There are many other Lego themes that will suit you better than LOTR. Your other complaints about the set, though, are all related to the size and cost of the set, and I think it's a bit unfair to expect UCS accuracy from a set this size. A movie-accurate Helm's Deep would cost several hundred dollars. Even a more accurately scaled Weathertop would cost double what the actual Weathertop set goes for. Making sets that expensive would have been a disaster for TLG if the theme hadn't sold well.

Excellent. I have a WV project I've been noodling around with - this will give me the incentive to really work on it and finish (and post a MOC online for the first time ever!)

I think 70705 is a really well-designed ship that needs some mods to make it into a classic sci-fi deep space exploration unit. Tear down the bajillion laser cannons and missiles, convert them to scientific instruments, use the wheeled vehicle as a sample collection vehicle. Leave Team Orange with only a few guns. But I really like the set. There's nothing wrong with splitting vehicles if they look good in both configurations, and this one does. The alien vehicle in the set leaves something to be desired, as do most of them. I'm not a big fan of those designs. And how outgunned are these insectoids? Whatever happened to the idea that the good guys should be the underdogs? In all three of the latest Space themes, the good humans have the biggest, most heavily armed ships, and the evil aliens are fighting in these spindly little things that look like they'll fall apart if you blow on them hard. The Bug Obliterator looks like it could crush the entire insect swarm all by itself, and then you've got that other tank/mech unit that's ready to survive Armageddon. These guys are the heroes? How does that work? Someone's going to say "but the insects are a SWARM, you're supposed to army-build them!" Right, but even the insect army-builders come with more plucky human soldiers (and robots, which are clearly going to be cannon fodder), so you still have a massively unbalanced conflict. But anyway, I do like the human ship designs and the robots, and the bug minifigs are cute as, well, bugs. Lots to like in this theme. Here's hoping it lasts more than one wave, and the bugs get some firepower next time around.

I don't mean that people are buying the sets just for the hair. That would be pretty silly IMO. AFOLs that only want hairpieces are sure to hit Bricklink for their Elf armies, not buy $40 sets for two hairpieces. But the hair does add a bit of exclusivity to each set. It's one of the special pieces that, taken as a group, add up to "I want this set, maybe two of them." For every one of those special pieces that you include in a $5 polybag, you take away one of the things that make the $40 set attractive.

I'd love it if they ran another one. I love the Winter Village asthetic. I've been working on a WV yarn shop that I'd like to enter.

AAAAND there goes my squad of Elf archers... I had a feeling it was just too good to be true. Alas.

DAMN that is one excellent polybag! For those who are saying it's too bad they didn't include an Elf hairpiece with it, just think about how that would have cut into their sales on sets like Mirkwood Spiders and Barrel Escape. Elf hairpieces are a big selling point in those sets. If they'd packed a hairpiece into this polybag, they would make the bigger (more profitable) sets much less desirable. So, we don't get Elven hair, but we do get an Elf who can carry a quiver, which is one of the quintessential Elf characteristics. Plus, the hood can work for Rangers and other fantasy characters. The torso is a wonderful design for generic Elves, but also works for other character types. And we get a longbow, a beautiful goblet, and a couple of tree parts. This is a great gift to MOCers of LOTR and all fantasy works.

Too right. It's just a toy. It's not like people obsessively collect it, spend half their lives building giant models of landmarks with it, build Websites and communities talking about it, host competitions around it and get excited about posting high-res sneak peeks at it. That would be silly.

I keep coming back to these pictures, trying to decide if I want to spend the $100 now or wait a little longer, and I just noticed that the minifig on the bench is a little strange. She has short "child" legs, but a curvy female torso. So, what's up with this? Is it just a fairly random combination of existing minifig parts for a one-off set? Is TLG confused about what prepubescent girls look like? OR, is this the first official Lego minifig of a Little Person? (Fantasy dwarves don't count). If so, go TLG! Of course, it's much more likely that this is just a fairly random combination of existing minifig parts for a one-off set, and I am seriously over-analyzing. Still, it's a happy thought for me, and might just tip the balance towards spending the $100 now.

Garbage Truck and Olivia's Treehouse are nice $20 sets.

Love these designs, especially the green fleet.

9474 Helm's Deep 9470 Shelob Attacks 10228 Haunted House 3315 Olivia's House 7346 Seaside House 9493 X-Wing 9398 4x4 Crawler 9448 Samurai Mech 10229 Winter Village Cottage 79003 An Unexpected Gathering Set of the year IMO is the Haunted House.

Thanks for the interpretation, Dannylonglegs. That actually helps a lot. I still can't see it, but at least I understand what everyone else is seeing in that picture. Mind you, if you told me that was a picture of a heffalump climbing a tree, It'd be just as valid to me.

Nice review, Big Cam. I especially like your razor-sharp pictures - it really helps to judge if I want a set or not. In this case, yes. (Minor note, I'm pretty sure the side of the box says "Kili the Dwarf", not "KILL the Dwarf". I'm sure TLG would not have approved such blatant encouragement of hate crimes against little people on their boxes.) I like this set more and more. Great parts, decent minifigs. Not my favorite Dwarves - I like their faces, but that hairpiece is not great. The Elves, however, are great. I especially like Tauriel. I notice that it is very much a set of twos: 2 Dwarves with the same hairpiece in 2 colors. 2 Elves with the same hairpiece in 2 colors. 2 spiders. 2 trees. 2 spiny vegetation pieces. 2 foliage pieces. 2 mushrooms. 2 skulls (I just noticed there are 3...) 2 short bows. 2 quivers. 2 Daggers of Time (plus one extra!).

My feelings exactly. All I see there is a blur of colors, like abstract painting with psychedelics. Unless I'm seeing a different pic from everybody else, I don't get how anyone could interpret it to show individual minifigs, much less the color of their wings.

I'm really doubtful about the chances of a Forestmen reboot, for the simple reason that LOTR/Hobbit is rampant with that type of character and setting. You've got your Lothlorien Elves living in trees, two of the upcoming Hobbit sets are based on trees, there may be more Mirkwood action in the next Hobbit wave, and Treebeard is rumoured as a 2013 LOTR set. Just like the upcoming Galaxy Squad sets probably won't feature good guys wearing brown robes and using light-swords, the Castle theme won't feature archers who live in trees. In fact, I bet this isn't a Castle theme at all. My money (all ten cents of it) would be on a Pirates theme. Some reasons why: Less direct competition from LOTR/Hobbit. LOTR is very much a kind of Castle subtheme. Yes, licensed, yes, different flavor, but look, you've got guys in armor beating up other guys in armor in and out of big castles in a pseudo-medieval world, aided by wizards in robes and pointy hats, while fairy-tale creatures skulk around trying to steal magic weapons. Sorry, but that IS Castle. Brickshop.nl mentions "Pirate Ship" as a 2013 set. Everybody in the LOTR thread is thinking of corsairs from ROTK, but I find that possibility extremely unlikely. TLG have to have had more pirate sets designed from POTC that could be easily adapted to yellow pirates. POTC ended quickly due to poor sales, but I'd bet TLG had been planning on at least one more wave before its demise. Without the cost of licensing, yellow pirates might sell far better than POTC. (If you accept that LOTR is a variety of Castle), then every other theme that most of us would call "legendary" is already coming out next year in some shape. Castle, Space, City, and Trains are all well represented next year. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Lone Ranger is also on the schedule, covering the Western theme. Only Pirates has no direct equivalent scheduled as far as we know. So, if the surprise people are talking about is truly a surprise, it's got to be Pirates.

Can anybody post a screenshot of Treebeard from the game here? I've seen the Balrog, but not Treebeard, and I'd love to see how they did his face. Was trying to build an ent the other day, and didn't come up with anything very appealing, so I wonder what the "semi-official" version looks like.

Lego Trainspotters, help me! I'm thinking of buying a train, probably not going to get into trains in a big way because it's one of the more expensive flavors of Lego, but I'd like to dabble. So, maybe buying one set to start with, and seeing where it goes from there. My question is, is it a better idea to get one of the "AFOL trains", like Maersk or the Horizon Express, because those guys are awesome display sets and will likely become collector's items in the future - or to buy one of the three "starter sets" currently available and thus have track, and PF, and some accessories, but have a train that is indisputably inferior to the Maersk and the HE and isn't much to display? I have to say, I'm loving the looks of the Horizon Express. Gorgeous model. But I can't help thinking that if I buy it, I'm totally going to want to motorize it and run it on some tracks pretty soon. Another factor that might make a big difference: I'm not going to be able to set up a permanent train layout. No room in our house at the moment. So if I do go with the tracks, it's strictly "set up, play, pack up" until we move to a bigger house.

My wife, may she live forever, bought me Attack on Weathertop for my birthday. Wonderful, right? Not so fast... The box appeared intact. But when I opened it, eager to get my mitts on my Nazgul and charming black horses, I found it was missing Bag 1 and Bag 4, and Bag 2 had been opened and taped shut, and there were two Bag 3s. Further poking around revealed that one of the Bag 3s was not part of this set at all (no, I didn't bother trying to identify the set it came from). Most of you probably already guessed where this is going - some evil scum had taken every minifig from the set, along with half the pieces, and slung some random Bag 3 into the box in order to return it to the store. I'm guessing they did this with more than one set, probably looking to get all the minifigs that are worth money. Either that, or they REALLY wanted all nine Ringwraiths. Despite the fact that we no longer had the receipt, the wife immediately went back to Walmart and took action (general note - do NOT mess with my wife, she will destroy you) and eventually came back with a new Weathertop, which she and the store manager had opened together and inspected. Got it built, and I love it. Really, awesome set. The wife says Aragorn looks nothing like himself, but I'm still happy. But some Lego fan out there is being an enormous schmuck. And getting away with it. I hate that.

Cute and definitely nice for a freebie, but not a must-have. Too bad they re-used that blue sweater torso from the Post Office, since my main reason for wanting this was to beef up my Winter Village. Also, that woman on the sleigh needs an immediate wardrobe change before she freezes to death.

I have to say, I like these minifigs more and more every time I get a good look at them. The wolf heads don't look great from straight on, but in profile they are great. Detailing on the body is also good. You could use those torsos in a lot of different fantasy settings.

They are all available except for the Toy Shop. The Bakery shows up with a "Back Again!" Tag. But as far as I know, they've never stopped selling it. It certainly showed up every time I've looked at S@H.

I'd just like to know who has the disposable income to go around paying $70 for two minifigs that are going to cost $3 apiece in less than six months.

Ack! Those goblins look terrible. Oozy, bumpy flesh and bad headpieces. Looks like these orcs have been inbreeding for way too long - it's a whole tribe of Gothmogs. I have to say, the set itself looks nicer than I thought from the first blurry pictures. The textures are amazing, and the play features have been very nicely integrated with the design. The dwarf minifigs are also great. But the goblins are just ick.