Gryphon Ink

You have a good point, but that's not quite all of it, especially with the added plot that the films have. There is Beorn's house, Dol Guldur, and Radagast's home, at the very least. We may also revisit locations from LOTR, like Isengard and Lothlorien, since both Saruman and Galadriel are involved. I think there will be more than enough material in the next two chapters to produce a good range of "building" sets. The first film, however, is a bit sparse on those. All we've seen in the trailers is Rivendell, a lot of underground action, and numerous beautiful scenic shots of New Zealand. Tough to recreate New Zealand's gorgeous landscapes in Lego! I do believe, though, that the next two waves will be better than this one, with more army builders and more impressive structures. And let's not forget Smaug, who will hopefully be a really epic creature like a Ninjago dragon on steroids.

"Frodo and the Ringwraith" isn't necessarily the Weathertop scene. It could be in the Shire, or it could even be the confrontation with the flying Nazgul in Osgiliath, towards the end of TTT. Doubtful, but it's possible. "Pirate ship" is somewhat suspect in my opinion. The corsairs aren't in the film for more than one solid minute, and literally the only thing they do is get killed by the Dead. Sure, the ships look cool, but what are the chances TLG will make a set based on such a minor scene in only the second wave of the theme? "Eagle's Nest" will only happen if it's the introduction of a new Eagle mold. Lego is swamped with brick-built eagles and eagle-like craft next year, with a Creator eagle (which is actually the perfect size for a Middle-Earth eagle) and an eagle faction in Chima. I also doubt that they are going to combine LOTR and Hobbit into one wave, for all the reasons we've talked about before. I don't trust this list.

I wholeheartedly agree that this would be great, but don't think it's very realistic. People don't want a lot of reality in their fantasy. Kids especially don't want to play checkout operator. They don't even want to play the ordinary grunt who works as part of his squad and just does some solid soldiering - they want to be the Lone Wolf, out on his own or as part of a small elite unit, taking down humanity's enemies all by themselves. It's not realistic. It's wish fulfillment. In all of fantasy/sci-fi/thriller/superhero history, how many quartermasters and back-room people are actually famous characters in their own right? There's Q, and there's Lucius Fox, and there's Scotty and Geordi. Other than them, I honestly can't think of anyone off the top of my head. In some media, including some Lego themes, you'll have a guy named Doc or Brains who is the inventor of all the team's gadgets, but that guy is always part of the field team, one of the heroes. It's just part of how kids play, and to a large extent how our adult fantasies work.

Very nice map. I think the micro-buildings are great. Not 100% sure about the marshland, I think the cabin is a definite improvement. Your "shoggoth" isn't really available in that color, is it? Cthulhu himself is a GREAT microfig-scaled monster. It looks like he would have a hard time moving past those buildings, though. You may need to offset the buildings from the path to let him pass, unless the angle in that pic is deceiving me. Overall, I think this is an awesome project. I know it's a bummer to work on this kind of thing and post it and get no responses, but don't let that stop you. Combining MOCing with game design is pretty cool. I respect the creativity. Long live the Mythos!

Regarding the Hobbit sets, one of the reasons PJ justified splitting it into three movies was "to do justice to the assault on Sauron", so I would put money on there being a LOT of battle scenes involving White Council vs. Sauron's forces during the dwarves' down time.

Seeing the new trailer for the Hobbit with Wreck-It Ralph (which by the way is an excellent movie) has made me more amped than ever for the movie and the new sets. You can start to tell how "Goblin Town" is going to work, and it looks great. Still no explanation of how the dwarves' quest ties in with the larger story of Sauron's return, but there are definite hints that they are connected. And when Gandalf tells you he's afraid, you know you better fasten your seatbelt!

Thoughts after seeing the Babelfished product descriptions and seeing the postage-stamp-sized picture of a set: 1. Solomon Blaze is the best name EVER for a Lego hero. 2. Chuck Stonebreaker is the absolute worst. 3. This is going to be a very cool theme. 4. ADU helmets rock. 5. Yup, lone female protag appears only in the most expensive sets. Of course. 6. Reading Lego set descriptions auto-translated from German is a hilarious way to spend an hour or so of your Sunday morning.

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I'm in complete agreement with you here. I think they will probably end up doing only the gates, but if they want to release more army builders they could do Minas Tirith street/wall sections. It's a tough setting to pull off in minifig scale. To be honest, I think Orthanc has the same problem. I bet Orthanc will end up being a Weathertop-style set that shrinks the tower down to chibi size, contains Gandalf, Saruman, Grima and a couple of orcs, and costs $60-70.

I don't mean to say that Osgiliath would be a great choice for a flagship. For my money, the obvious choice would be Minas Tirith or Pellenor Fields. But any of these things would be a more likely flagship set than Orthanc. I'm trying to think as the Lego team would when they're planning a wave. In every wave, the flagship set needs to be something that has a large cast of characters (including a few fan favorites or "special" characters/creatures). It has to have an impressive central structure. And it has to have possibilities for conflict and play features. No kid wants to get a massive Lego set that looks beautiful but you can't play with it. AFOLs may buy Tower Bridge and modulars all the time, but LOTR is not in that category. It's a mainstream theme competing for space on Wal-Mart shelves. Orthanc does hit a few of those requirements. It's a gorgeous building, as long as you like black. And it does have two really hot characters in it. The problem with it is that there is no conflict there and not enough characters to bother with, unless you combine it with an Ent battle scene and maybe Pippin and Merry. The supposed "set list" being talked about here says Treebeard is already a $60 set including Pip and Merry, so there is no way those three are going to appear in another expensive set. This tells me that TLG is not planning to combine the Betrayal (Gandalf vs. Saruman) with the Ent attack. What you're left with is a beautiful solid black building... no play features... and only two characters. I'm not counting the supposed orcs because orcs never go anywhere near the top of Orthanc and play no part in the Betrayal. (You'll remember that Saruman was keeping his orcs a very deep secret at that time, since he was still pretending to be one of the good guys). I also think you're underestimating Osgiliath's appeal. Think of all the characters you could put in that set: Frodo, Sam, Gollum, Faramir, Gothmog and a Nazgul on Fell Beast. Throw in an invasion boat, a couple of orcs and Faramir's soldiers, an exploding wall or two, and you've got the makings of a dynamite set. Again, I'm not trying to argue that this is what the flagship will be. But it could be one, and a better one than Orthanc.

I seriously doubt that the Balrog, one of the most recognizable beasties in all of Middle Earth, is going to appear in a $40 set with only one minifig. Dude is huge, and impressive, and a hot seller. Gandalf's fight with the Balrog, while brief, is the one scene everybody who saw the movies remembers vividly. Find a random co-worker, tell him "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!" and he will probably say "get out of my way, Gandalf." Treebeard, on the other hand, is the character that only real LOTR fans care about, accompanied by the two hobbits that only dedicated LOTR fans care about, stomping on the orc that only hardcore LOTR nerds even know the name of. That's the $60 set? Gandalf vs. Saruman in the flagship set? Really? A one-on-one wizards' duel, with no witnesses, in a completely black chamber is the flagship? Not, say, the battle of Osgiliath, or the Black Gate, or the battle of Pellenor Fields, each of them an epic scene in a dramatic setting, with casts of thousands and great ferocious beasts? Seriously? In standard Lego terminology, this would be like making the T-Rex chase a $20 set while the $100 flagship set features an ankylosaurus, a dimetrodon and a pile of triceratops dung. It just doesn't make business sense. It's the complete opposite of how TLG do things. Enough with the silly rumors and the "inside knowledge", guys. If we're gonna speculate, let's try to make some sensible predictions, and call them what they are: pure fan speculation.

This is utter and complete nonsense. European copyright laws protect films for seventy years after the director's death.

That's what I think they're doing, because the license covers both trilogies but releasing the sets together would make for confusing branding. It also works out perfectly as far as the timing goes. The sets from the iconic LOTR movies started the buzz and will keep it going during the "off season" for Hobbit sets, and the Hobbit sets come out right when the movies are in theaters and getting maximum exposure. This means we are pretty much guaranteed at least three LOTR waves and three Hobbit waves, so they should be able to cover a good deal of material and satisfy all of us junkies fans.

What a gorgeous model, oryx. Fantastic detailing. Motorcycles are not my thing at all, but that's some amazing work.

I'm being slightly sarcastic here. There was a rumor a few weeks ago that the theme was cancelled. The usual story, with one person claiming insider knowledge that there would be no more LOTR, and lots of people started to believe it even though there was no evidence and no logic behind it.

Yeah, so much for the LOTR theme being over.

This sounds very cool. Certainly more interesting than most of the Lego games I've seen, and more accessible than the average Mythos game.

My favorite at the moment is Eomer. Least favorite, clone troopers. Those faces are horrible.

Four minifigs, new horse and two trees? Sounds like a nice set for a freebie. I'm definitely going to try and get this one. It will add so much to the Winter Village. GRogall, is the horse the same print as the LOTR horse (brown with a white blaze)? I'm assuming it is, but it would be fantastic if it's a new variation.

Dwalin is my favorite, and I don't think they needed to use any kind of cap for him. I really don't care for minifigs with "bald caps" - the goblins in the Goblin Town set look terribly macrocephalic IMO, and Darth Maul and his brother have seams that are way too noticeable for me to really like them. I suppose this is all part of the "minifigs creeping into excessive detail" debate - I like minifigs with some detailing, but not super-detailed like action figures - especially when those details ruin what I think of as classic Lego proportions. So I'm just fine with a bald minifig having a stud on the top of his head. It's Lego. Studs are part of the look.

I didn't mean that it was an original D&D concept. There's very little fantasy lore that was actually invented for D&D. Just about everything in the original rules and campaign setttings was adapted from well-known tropes in fantasy literature. However, Elves and Dwarves are hardly Tolkien's invention (although the idiosyncratic spelling might be), so I see no need to play by Tolkien's rules unless I'm actually building Middle-Earth scenes. I honestly think the Holy Flesh vs. Yellow War is pretty overblown, but of course I don't have a tenth the number of yellow minifigs some veteran fans have.

This is what I was thinking. And then, the CMF Elf can be, wait for it D&D players... a half-elf!

I love this lineup. Love that the eagle is exactly the right size to carry one hobbit and one dwarf, even though it might need to be modded for Bilbo to ride on his back. I love that the robot is clearly a Transformer (and for the record, the Kre-O "Transformers" don't transform, either) and that one of its alternate builds is a sweet military helicopter. That white sportscar is pretty slick, too. The house is not going to win any Set of the Year awards, but it's a cute little house in colors we don't see every day, so that's good. Oddly enough, there's also an "Eagle Flyer" sort of fighter plane coming out in the Legends of Chima sets next year. AND one of the Technic sets is an F1 car. I wonder if this isn't a sort of by-product of the TLG design process. Like, work is beginning on the Legends of Chima theme, so people are at work designing eagle-inspired ships, and someone says, "you know, that design is sick, we should totally do an eagle in Creator this year. See if you can work up a couple of B-models from those pieces, will you?"

I think this set is close to perfect for a Winter Village set. It's a beautiful building. I would take a few points off for the roof problems other people have mentioned, but overall the design is wonderful. The igloo and the woodshed might not seem to add much compared to bigger structures like the skating rink or the gazebo, but a village needs some small pieces of scenery too. The snowplow is a great period vehicle. Two things annoy me about the set, though. The first is the price. It's fair for what you get, I'm not disputing that, but TLG really need to remember that not everyone can afford to get bigger and pricier sets every year. At $100 we're creeping up towards modular territory, and if it goes any higher I'm going to be shut out of buying Winter Village sets. It's bad enough that the modulars also got more expensive this year, but modulars at least were always meant to be the expensive, top of the line sets. Winter Village was not like that originally. Show some love for people on a budget, TLG! The second thing is the amount of snow on the roof. I wish they'd standardize the depth of the snow in these sets. A little variation would be fine, but when you put this set next to the Post Office it looks silly. Overall, a really gorgeous set.

Hi, I'm a crocodile! Crocodiles' eyes always reflect red at night, and that's probably what inspired the designers. Also, possibly, the fact that this theme is completely fantastic. Eagles don't actually have blue feathers, either, and lions don't drive tanks. It's lionesses that drive the tanks.