The Middleman

No, and yes.

Ok, since everyone wants it... What? What's that? PERSONAL PREFERENCE!? I have no idea what you're talking about...

Step One: Conveniently forget to spend your lunch money on lunch. Step Two: Conveniently 'find' said lunch money in old pair of jeans. Step Three: Have loving parents order sets using said money as soon as they are available. Step Four: Conveniently neglect to tell said parents that your Civics and Economics project is not done, and conveniently neglect to correct their assumptions that it is. Step Five: Forego all idea of sleep. Period. Ever. It's as simple as that! :-D

Straight to it, then. Rescue From The Merpeople The Figures Dive Harry, dive! Another cool uniform, and his double-sided head... Gillyweed is taking effect, it seems! Krum with shark's head. And without. No, it does not fit over his hair. The hair is included, though! The merperson. Very cool. Simple, yet elegant, and I'm loving the hair. The back. A new face for Hermione. ... or two. Ron's looking groggy... And groggier. The Set A nifty boat. Oars! Yes... that is trans-green seaweed. And a red scorpion! Push that to... I dunno... push the scorpion out? It sucks, anyway. Octopus! And more. A step pulls out, and a couple daggers are buried... The back of the right side. The main section. Press that seaweed to shoot Ron and Hermione out of the structure. My favorite part. Yes, that is a chef's hat. The Final Verdict: 8.1/10 Figures: 10/10 Playability: 6/10 Build: 8/10 Pieces: 9/10 That completes my Harry Potter review series for now. Questions are welcome. Requests as well (although, I'm busy, so they might not be filled immediately). Hope you enjoyed this series, and I hope you'll consider buying these sets - they rock my socks, and LEGO deserves your money for producing them. Until next time, Bloody Jay

A lot cooler than I expected. Harry vs. the Hungarian Horntail The Figures All three figures are great. I especially like Mad-Eye Moody. His torso is fantastic for a scavenger, tinkerer, gadget guy, terrorist, punk rocker, whatever. Another nifty torso back for Harry. Dumbledore's torso was covered by his beard... but i'ts brand new and fantastic. Castlers, rejoice. The Dragon It's not as bad as people say it is. This is an evolved version of the original SYSTEM dragon. Medieval, incompatible with much else, and jagged. Banana claws! The tail. The Mountains The left side. Two BURPs, a bunch of dark orange bricks, some hinges. Nice pieces. Construction? Make me gag. Broom launcher? Gag. The back. The right side. Two LURPs, a bunch of dark orange bricks, some hinges. Nice pieces. Construction? Make me... hey, I'm getting this odd sense of deja vu. The back of side two. The Stands Again - bad construction. Tip the top and the stands fall over. This is in no way correlated to the dragon pulling at its chain. Too bad. FANTASTIC crest tiles. That Hogwarts one is going to be at the head of some incredible MOCs, I can tell... The back of the stands. Final Verdict: 6.9/10 Figures: 9/10 Playability: 9/10 Build: 2/10 Pieces: 9/10 The build is so poor, I couldn't rate it higher. Great for pieces and figs, though! Finally, coming up... Rescue From The Merpeople.

4766... coincidence? I think so. Graveyard Duel Beautiful. The Figures I LOVE those two. Except the capes. Once I'm finished with my current project, I'll make some mods to them and build my own graveyard... hard to top this, though! Risque. ;) The death eater's head is double-sided... Potter! Costume design for this movie looks like it's going to be cool. I love the uniforms. A new face for Wormtail... and a new hand. Spooky. All your skellies. It doesn't tell you to use all the pieces, but they're included - isn't that nice of them? The Graveyard The gate. Lovin' it. The fence... a little flimsy, but hey, who cares? The parrot gravestone. Pretty cool. Opened. The skull gravestone. Not as good as the parrot one. Opened. Yes, the two skelly tiles do fit together nicely. A shot of the back because I don't like it. The rebirthing cauldron. Cool beans. A wicked cart, yo. And the coffin removed from it... That back piece folds down too, just didn't show it. Black skelly limbs! The frog grave. One of my favorites. Note - another black lance. A lot of the pieces recur throughout all the line, so by the end you have a few of a bunch of them, which is really cool. I think it saved LEGO money, too. BOO! Can't see it here... the pieces used to attach the skelly to the lance are white battle droid arms. Nifty. Oh, and I also like the inclusion of normal red flowers again. The tree. My least favorite piece of the set. It's flimsy. You may also note that the 1x3 33 degree inverse slopes are old brown. The crypt. Wooooo. Cool stuff for the roof. Yay! Trash can. I love that piece. A view from the front. Another. And opened. It's a bit silly one for an opening mechanism, but I love how the flooring's put in. There are two partial skeletons in there. Can't really see em. And my favorite grave. Tom Riddle's. The back. Still lovin' those chains. Flipped up to reveal snakes. And once again... The Final Verdict: 9.6/10 Figures: 10/10 Playability: 10/10 Build: 10/10 Pieces: 10/10 I just can't justify giving this a 10 for some reason. Maybe it's the gray cloaks. Maybe it's the flesh tones. Maybe it's the partial skeletons. Maybe it's the big skull piece for that grave. But NONE of those are worth taking a point off any of those categories. Buy. This. Now. Next: the Hungarian Horntail!

Yes, I am going to torture you (or at least those of you that are awake). The reviews that HAVE NOT been done will be last. So cruel! Let's get started, then. Durmstrang Ship Ahhh... the majestic vessel! Figures They both come with the same torso, obviously. I wish the heads weren't flesh tone - I like the faces. The hats, not so much - sherpas, and that's it. Neither Viktor nor Karkaroff comes with spare hair. The Ship The bow. Nothing special. The anchor. You'll notice they like to use black chains in this line. I'm all for it! Crow's nest numero uno. I LOVE those banners. It's great to have cloth flags back again! Not so much the baby blue color of the crow's nests... But some things you just have to roll with. The masts aren't as bad in black as tan - they're actually growing on me. Admit it or not, you can do more with this mast than an old pirate mast. The shields and side. Nice! Chrome gold 1x1 round plates. Sparkly... The shields are fantastic, not much else to say. Two of each. The deck doorways. The pearl gold window panes are darker than I expected, but still neat. Not much to say about this pic. The diving board. It's funny... I never sprang off the back of a diving board before. The back! This is an odd little section - I don't know what to make of it. I'm feeling like trying out those horn-ish things on the horntail, though... Crow's nest numero dos. Another nice shot of those banners. Point of interest - three black lances. The second deck with the cabin removed. The jumper plates help the cabin rest so that the hinges it uses don't bump against the railing. It's pretty nifty. Note the inclusion of a sparkling new old-style map. Side one of the cabin. Blue goblet! Red book! Side two. I adore that new scroll piece. Letter, as well, and a blay frying pan. Back/side of the cabin. Somehow I neglected to take a photo of only the front... let it be on record that it has two small black doors that I'm all over. Note - once you close the cabin, a figure won't fit in. You are warned! It's tiny. Interior of the deck cabin. It's pretty cool. I like the top one better, though. The back, in particular, is not good. Gotta love those secret desks. The hold. Woo? The cabin, illustrating the ways all the removable pieces interact. Hopefully you get it. I was wrong - I did get a shot of the doors! Neat. Ok, and now... The Final Verdict: 8.5/10 Figures: 5/10 (too few!) Playability: 8/10 Build: 9/10 (minus one point for the hull) Pieces: 10/10 (you may say 'what about the hull!?' That's two pieces out of what, 550?) Two words: buy it. Next: Graveyard Duel! I'll expose some aspects that you may not have seen...

And to think, after all that, you still can't put spaces after your commas. Locked.

Unfortunately, we can't ADD options to polls, only edit the existing options.

Changing it to: Harry Potter Star Wars Vikings Pirates

Reviews. Tomorrow (or today for you Euro people). By this time. Be there. :)

Tone it down, guys... they have the pics, they get to decide what to do with them... we may not agree with that, but that's no reason to insult them.

Looks like every other TIE Fighter. I'll pass on that one.

Let's think about this here... 1x Tri-Fighter ($15) 1x ARC-170 ($40) 1x mini ($5) So it's the three sets, in one box, at retail. What's so special?

What weirdos... 'Viking Week'... who would imagine such a think?

Unless you have something to add to the topic, don't double-post in it, especially if it's still near the top of the page. Do it again, and I'll delete the topic. People will post when and if they want to.

Hey yoda, could you post a shot of the Harry figure from both sets?

Good point, Darkie! There are four switches - flip the first and last down, and the middle two up.

It's not going to be... Yoda didn't like it, so he's not going to review it. I'll be doing my review of all four around Wednesday.

I'm not really sure you're aware of this, and I'm guessing you're not, but when you put a comma down, a space comes after it. For instance, it would be: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 not 1,2,3,4,5,6 It makes your writing very cluttered as it is, and more people will take the time to read it if you do it right.

Ras, what happened there was that the items hadn't actually arrived yet... so I didn't add it. I'll count that as a recommendation now, though. :) All updated! Let me know if I missed someone.

Or it could be a dog sled with Santa on it to make it more Christmas-y.

Make a preview, then worry about how to post it...

I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Your best bet would probably be a wave two of Goblet of Fire with a Madame Maxime figure, but the cape might be oversized...

Athos posts most of his vignettes in here. I think vignettes really don't fit into themes as other models do, since they don't really combine or interact.