Gryphon Ink

I love my CMF Elves, but the Elf I'm most looking forward to is Tauriel, because she's the only female in the bunch. I really hope we get Arwen in the next waves of LOTR.

Maybe, but the Great Goblin does look an awful lot like some of the trolls in Hellboy II. Not a super distinctive design, but it does have a del Toro vibe to it.

I like the pink suitcase. Nice green baseplate, a tree, window parts, cat, printed umbrella, and a bike in a color I don't have. Along with other common but always useful parts, of course. That's a pretty decent parts pack.

I hereby dub this the Mirkwood Squirrel Polybag, first set in the new Friends of the Hobbit theme.

Well, what a surprise. Who would have thought of making Fire and Police sets in Lego? I like the building in the museum heist, but a little more museum and one less vehicle would have made it much better IMO.

Nicely done, Cap'n! Looks quite a bit like the original. I got a good chuckle from the sacrifice, and using the ladybug piece for a heart is a great idea.

(Puts on best James Earl Jones voice) Don't underestimate the buying power of a billion children and their parents, who need small birthday presents for classmates several times a year. I don't mean to keep droning on about this, but why do you think TLG make polybags and entry-level sets for every theme, but only a few themes get battle packs each year, and only Star Wars gets battle packs on a regular basis? Target and Wal-Mart stick polybags in their checkout aisles. Parents buy them to quell their whiny offspring. (I'm allowed to say this because I'm a parent and I've done it!) Stop 'n Shop sell the small sets in their toy aisle, conveniently located across from the party supply shelves. TRU sell the little Friends sets by the dozen. The bigger sets are almost always vastly superior, but it's really, really easy to sell the smaller sets that only cost $10 to a casual shopper who needs a small present for his kids so they won't be upset when he drags them into Target to buy bedding and office supplies. And those guys are not going to buy the battle packs with random generic creatures, they're going to buy a small set with an iconic character in it. They don't want Death Eater #3 and Nameless Hufflepuff Student - they want Harry Potter and Dobby - or Gollum and Bilbo. Anyway, I think I've derailed the thread enough, so let me just say that personally, I wish they HAD given us the battle packs you want - but market forces apparently keep voting for sets like Riddles for the Ring instead. Here's hoping LOTR is the most successful Lego theme ever, and in '13 or '14 we will get those battle packs. Make mine Rohirrim!

I think everyone is missing the point of the Riddles for the Ring set. It's not meant for the devoted AFOLs. We are going to buy the big sets already, and we're buying all of the LOTR/Hobbit sets so we already have Gollum. This is not our set. Just like Gandalf Arrives didn't give us anything we badly needed. These sets are meant for kids who have limited funds, and adult nerds who don't build a lot of Lego and just want a desk ornament, and people who usually buy other Lego themes, to give them one small piece of the Hobbit. In my opinion, both Riddles and Gandalf Arrives are excellent sets for that price point. I'm not talking about PPP ratios or unique pieces or spectacular minifigs, just the way they encapsulated their respective movies in a very small set. Each one of them features two critical characters in a recognizable scene, with a little bit of brick building around them. Gandalf Arrives is arguably the better set (unless you already have three dozen carts from Kingdoms and POTC and countless other themes, in which case it's nothing new except for a horse), but Riddles actually features a crucial scene, instead of the rather "unnecessary" scene of Gandalf's arrival. You cannot do an entire Hobbit theme without showing the riddle scene. It would be like running a Star Wars theme that never had an X-Wing fighter.

I agree, I like the poodle. The foal is cute, too, and much better than the Friends horse. I hope it's the right size to use with regular New Horses. It has a bit of the Friends cute-animal asthetic, but not too much, and I think it would work if the size is right.

I think it's a given that we are going to complain no matter what we get. You just can't satisfy everyone. I like that "super set" concept, personally. It works great in the Helm's Deep/UHA pairing. I've been wanting that for a long time in various themes. I was terribly disappointed that the Dragon Prison set didn't connect organically to the Dragon Fortress. The one other thing that annoys me in the warg set is that the two orcs are the same as the ones in Orc Forge, except for their legs. A little facial variation would have made this my number one Hobbit set, since while I'm not really an army builder I do want a decent collection of orcs for MOCing. But for all my complaints, I still like the warg tree, and it's one of the two sets I'm definitely buying. I might complain about details, but so far LOTR/Hobbit is one of my favorite Lego themes, and there isn't a single set yet that I think is no good.

Not too sure about this theme. I like the weirdness of the minifigs' heads and accessories, but the weirdness of the vehicles isn't doing anything for me. The two eagle vehicles are pretty cool, and the eagle flyer is probably the only one of these sets I will actually buy. I wanted to like the lion guys, but their heads look a bit sad to me and their vehicles are kind of Tinkertoyish. And that croc boat is really, really crazy in a great way, but way out of my price range.

I love these new sets. We are really starting to get some diversity in the minidolls' clothing, with different kinds of shorts, bikinis, karate outfit and the magician's tux. New characters are great additions, and it's AWESOME to see more of the girls getting into non-stereotypical hobbies, while still providing lots of cutesy animals and pastels for the more conventional Barbie and Polly Pocket crowd. Speaking as the father of one girl who is all about the field hockey and Tamora Pierce and one girl who is totally Barbie's BFF, TLG is really starting to make me happy with Friends. I hope this theme lasts a long time and keeps expanding. I have to agree that they need to introduce a couple more male characters, though. Only one male in three waves of Friends? That's almost as bad as Ninjago's ratio. At least Nya appears in multiple sets!

You are right about the untapped potential, but I think you have to remember that this is only the first wave of a brand-new theme. It was never meant to cover all of the material in LOTR. I hope for Galadriel and Eowyn minifigs, too - not to mention Saruman and every major bad-guy in Middle-Earth - but with luck we will see some of them in next summer's wave, and with even more luck the UCS sets and the rest of the epic settings will be in our hands soon after that, when TLG are secure in the knowledge that Lego LOTR is a massive success that they can afford to go all out with. It's still early days in this theme, and for now they have to play it conservative and just offer a selection of LOTR's "Greatest Hits", while leaving enough hits to make the next few waves satisfying. Again, I agree with you on all comparisons between LOTR and Star Wars. The problem is that, as far as I know, TLG don't have the license for all of Tolkien's work. They don't even have a license for material from the LOTR books, only the movies. So, for example, they can't make a Tom Bombadil set, because he wasn't in the movies. No Barrow-wights, no Ungoliant, no Melkor. To do any of those things they would have to go after a whole new license which belongs to the Tolkien Estate. It's a legal mess that means TLG can't easily capitalize on that fantastic wealth of material.

That's actually an interesting question, but I think in the end the primary motivation for placement of minifigs is purely commercial, i.e. spreading the characters out so that completists will buy as many sets as possible, while keeping each individual set interesting. To those ends, they need to make sure each set has the ideal mixture of crucial and non-crucial minifigs. So for example, Barrel Escape and Mirkwood, which are sets many people are going to buy for the elves alone, didn't need to have the "best", most popular dwarves in them. Bag End, which was their "teaser" set, had to have a selection of cool-looking characters to stir up excitement for the theme, so it got Bombur and Dwalin to make people start talking about the new "fat suit" and the facial tattoos. And so it trickles down until all the characters have found their places. Aside from certain hard restrictions of the plot, such as you can't put Boromir in a Helm's Deep set, I think the story receives very little consideration in this part of the design process.

For me at least, it's not really a question of being "complete". Helm's Deep, for instance, is nowhere near complete. But it feels perfect. It gives you the main structure that you need and the look of a whole castle, and if you like to mod things you can add your own elements to make it more authentic, like the mod that appeared here yesterday. Mines of Moria, on the other hand, doesn't have that "great set" feeling, because it has no structure. It looks like one wall, plus one door, plus one tomb, plus one well. They play together nicely, but they don't look like a set. Bag End: not nearly complete, but it looks great and gives you the one room that Bag End really needs to have, the dining room. If you remember the book, and I know you do because you demonstrate great familiarity with Middle-Earth, Bilbo's dining room is actually a long way from his front door. But the Lego set doesn't need to have a long hallway in it. It just needs a round door, round windows and a big room where a bunch of unruly dwarves, a wizard and a hobbit can sit down to eat and plot. Mirkwood Spiders is somewhere in the middle, not a massive fail but also not amazing, because one copy isn't enough to make a significant location and there's no way I'm buying multiple copies of a smallish set that has four unique minifigs in it. Maybe if it only had one spider and an extra tree, or maybe if it had one less minifig and been a $20 set, it would have worked better. As it is, it's a set that I might buy just because I've gotta have Legolas and Tauriel.

Well, maybe I should have said it doesn't feel like a $50 set. I am going to buy the set. But here's the thing: Weathertop also doesn't look like a good value, which is why I still haven't bought it even though it was the first LOTR set that I wanted. It's beautiful. It just doesn't look like $60 worth of beautiful. (Look at the Harry Potter Burrow set - THAT is $60 worth of beautiful.) With the Warg set, my problem is something I've seen a few other people mention, and something that seems to be happening in a lot of sets lately: I'd rather have one big structure than a middling-size structure and several other unattached elements, especially when those other elements are generic rock piles. I like to display my sets, and when you have those little disconnected pieces it doesn't make a very good display. Like you said, I'd happily give up that second rock formation and add a branch to the tree. Even joining the rocks to the base of the tree to make it one bigger structure would make it feel more like you're getting your money's worth. I know this set is a fair value if you count the pieces and factor in the new Warg mold and the license. It's just that psychologically, it doesn't quite seem to be worth the asking price.

I've been thinking about it some more, and here are my top choices: 1. Bag End - the most complete and representative set of the wave. Gets you Gandalf and Bilbo, several distinctive dwarves, and a very important location for both Hobbit and LOTR. This is a gotta-have set. 2. Wargs - although I still don't think this is a $50 set, it is a good build of a tree, and I love those. Plus, more orcs for my horde, and two wargs. I hated the wargs at first glance, but they're really growing on me. They look halfway between the Hobbit wargs and the ones from TTT, neatly sidestepping that whole continuity issue. 3. Barrel Escape - it's not perfect, but it is a nice build. Love the arch technique, it's such a "why didn't I think of that?" moment. Spiral stairs! Plenty of goblets and bottles, plus two more Elves. The Elves that I really, really want are Legolas and Tauriel, but I don't think the Mirkwood set is that great. It also annoys the hell out of me that PJ and his cohorts seem to have changed the plot around so the Elves are rescuing the Dwarves, instead of Bilbo doing the rescuing. This was a great moment for Bilbo in the book, and it's kind of sad to see it stolen from him. The Goblin Town set really isn't calling my name. It's a nice enough set, but at the $100 price point there are way too many other sets that I want more.

I agree with you 100%, and I think this is one of the big reasons why I feel so many recent sets don't look like they justify their cost. The Mines of Moria would have killed if it was tied together on plates. Without them, it looks like bits and pieces, like film props waiting on a green screen set, not nearly worth the asking price. Same goes for several of these Hobbit sets.

Never got into the ninja turtles personally, but that vehicle is pretty neat. I think the kids are going to love this. I take it Ninjago has run its course? Kids gotta get their ninja fix somewhere, right?

Only 80 orcs? Come on. That's like, a company. I'm not going to take you seriously until you have AT LEAST a regiment. Just joking. I covet your legions. I have a grand total of eight, count'em eight, orcs. Now show us your guys marching out to Minas Tirith with their weapons and siege engines!

I'd love that, but I doubt they'll do it. Surely some of the planned LOTR sets are nearly ready to move as far as bricks and accessories go, so they would just need to rush printing of boxes and instructions. Then again, I'm not sure it would be worth it for TLG to shift production schedules around just to give us a more satisfying wave of Middle Earth goodies, when they are undoubtedly busy already with the next wave of everything else. They will probably just say "Eh" and move those sets to the next wave of Hobbitses, which has probably also changed significantly after the switch from two to three movies. Now I'm hoping I was wrong about Thranduil's fortress being this season's flagship set, because if it's been dropped we will have NO flagship, and it's rather unlikely that there will be two "flagship" sets next year - so one major potential Hobbit set may be lost to us forever!

I'm amazed at the ways you've used this tiny number of pieces to make such different things. Great creative thinking. The log loader and off-roader are especially cool.

So sad to see the forces of gentrification pushing out the misunderstood "undesirables" from a neighborhood that was once a cheerful center of diversity and multiculturalism in Lego City. Just because the Vampyre family live on their victims' blood and have weird re-animated corpses for domestic servants doesn't mean they're "monsters", people. For shame! What's next, a Starbucks built on the ruins of the Zombie Graveyard? The Swamp Creature's home drained and replaced with an Apple Tree House?? No, really, awesome mod, steelwoolghandi!

Luke's Landspeeder, definitely. You get Luke, Old Obi-Wan, Threepio and Artoo, plus a Sandtrooper and an iconic vehicle. The build is easy enough, and the speeder is totally swooshable. This set is a wonderful introduction to LSW.

Right, because according to the book they ARE wolves. They are not great chunky mutated hyena-like beasts. They are big wolves, end of story. That hyena-type design was one of the worst things they came up with in TTT in my opinion, and I for one am really happy they have switched back to a wolf-like body. Movie purists can scream "CONTINUITY ERROR!!" all they like, I'd rather have something that conforms to the book. Also, regarding the Lego versions, a wolf body is going to be much more useful for MOCing than the hyena beast. With a TTT warg, the only thing you can use if for is TTT MOCs. But a wolf warg can be used wherever you need a really big wolf. Game of Thrones direwolf, anyone?