Hewman

I remember the Azkaban 4757 castle was $250 when it came out and this year's castle seems very similar in size, features and figs, so not a bad deal to be had. I do remember a lot of HP sets a few years ago being half price, maybe the initial pricing was why they didn't sell so well. I guarantee this years lot will sell a lot better. Unfortunately SW is out of my price range now, particularly when so many better value sets that are great from other themes are available. Then again, a lot of AFOLs like me have almost every ship or scene from SW that they could want.

Well the toyworld link provided earlier gives it a date of September 15, so more than 150 sleeps, save a dollar a day and it's yours!

I'll be waiting for 20% off RRP somewhere for The Burrow, as for the Wampa Cave, 40% off might convince me, but for now I'm more than happy to pretend my Yeti is a Wampa, and I already have 3 snowspeeders.

Thanks Chibi_joker for alerting me to there being prices of other sets there. They appear to sell at RRP so here's a list at what are a good chance to be the RRP for a bunch of sets later in the year Star Wars Turbo tank $240 Slave 1 $150 Palpatine's shuttle (I accidentally typed an 'i' instead of 'u' in shuttle at first! maybe subliminal) $110 Grievous starfighter $100 Plo Koon's starfighter $50 Wampa cave $80 Harry Potter Hogwarts $200 as stated Hogwarts Express $130 The Burrow $100 Quidditch $30 Dobby $18 Hagrid's Hut $70 Prince of Persia Battle of Alamut $140 Quest against time $80 Fight for dagger $59 Ostrich race $30 Desert attack $18 (the only genuine value set amongs all those I've listed) Lego Kingdoms Castle $170 Prison tower $90 Outpost attack $35 Prison carriage $18 Knight's showdown $13 City Lego truck $50 There are many more listed there, such as world racers theme, hero factory, but I tried to cover the bulk of what AFOLS will be interested in. And now for the inevitable discussion on prices, particular with the Aus $ so strong. I'll start, Harry Potter prices are about as expected I'd suggest, the PoP desert attack was a pleasant surprise, some of the SW sets were not so pleasant surprises.

Some adjectives: Beautiful, clever, elegant, classy, creative, authentic, superb, JEALOUS (of your ability, assortment of lego pieces and this masterpiece). There are some brilliant touches here, the flesh-handed monkey with cymbals, the headlight brick mosaic works perfectly. I'm sure there are plenty of people willing to pay big $s for such a MOC.

The bird of prey is brilliant sor something made from so few pieces. I love them all but this one was so simple yet clever!

Welcome, Mr McGow You sound like another Aussie AFOL from the same era as me. I was a classic space addict as a kid, and my obsession has become even worse where I embarked on projects of building many classic space sets in Blacktron 1 colours to give my classic space sets an enemy. Like you I've been collecting SW (95% from the original trilogy), batman and Harry Potter which I really look forward to getting the new sets of later in the year. Regarding pricing, with some sets the disparity between Aus and US pricing makes it cheaper to order some sets from the US. But if you want to keep your eye on sales, this is the topic for you, Aussie sales, plenty of great Aussie AFOLS there, and hopefully you'll be able to grab a bargain. If you like the current airport, it's a great price at Myer right now. Great to have you here and enjoy!

I thought it was selling well, I saw a couple empty promo boxes that once contained the dvds on the shelves of Target stores. It's a pretty enjoyable watch, makes a great gift for friends' kids too I have discovered.

No I don't mind at all . I still haven't gotten around to resizing. I shrunk them once but that obviously wasn't enough. It's now been put away, so maybe in another year or two I'll have the full scale version with an X-wing, MF, and a whole battle scene.

I have been slowly working on this for a very long time, but now that it's Easter break I have a bit more spare time to share my Rebel Base Diorama/MOD. There are elements of a number of Hoth related sets here, but also the major construction of the basics of the base on 2 48x48 plates. A general shot of the base Image removed, will resize later And an overhead shot Image removed, will resize later And a side view, showing some of the lovely transparent light blue windows used. Also the rear exit which all the ships bigger than the snowspeeder have to use. the plan is to eventually expand this and include an x-wing and the 7190 Falcon. Image removed, will resize later Now we see Han returning his Taun-taun back to its pen after rescuing Luke Image removed, will resize later Of course no Taun-taun enclosure would be complete without a personal salty ice lick for each taun-taun Image removed, will resize later Luke is trying to impress Leia with the story of how he cut the wampa's arm off but gets a little too enthusiastic Image removed, will resize later Meanwhile Chewie just surfs the 'net with Han's stunt double who can be recognised by his different colour pants Image removed, will resize later R2-D2 and C-3PO are having their own Bert and Ernie moment where C-3PO complains about how messy R2 is Image removed, will resize later One rebel pilot is more than a little upset at the engineers who failed to secure his grappling hook properly Image removed, will resize later Finally, a classic spaceman has just joined the rebel alliance and as part of his initiation he had to run out in the Hoth snow and ice wearing nothing but his unwipeable smile and his classic space lego tattoo on his chest. It looks like most of his yellow skin didn't cope too well with the cold. Image removed, will resize later

OK, this is purely conjecture on my part. But at Myer in Adelaide today I noticed they had put out a lot of the large airport sets separate from all the Lego, this is what they tend to do when they're having their sales on big sets. So maybe soon there'll be a 25%+ discount on this set like they did with Brickbeard's Bounty. I just thought I'd mention this in case anyone was going to rush out and buy the set as it may be worth waiting a little longer.

Exclusive MMV like everyone else, got it for $120 AU and the amount of time it took to build was extraordinary, so many details and small bricks, plus the cows, brown carrots, brilliant figs, brick built animals, water wheel... Non-exclusive Brickbeard's Bounty - as I was a little old for Pirates when they first came out I don't have a nostalgia factor to lower my opinion of the pirate sets of 2009 (or much to compare to), which I thought in almost every case were fantastic, but this was the pick of the crop.

My vote goes to MetroiD-5. Town Square I particularly love the roof the castaway's 'shop' in the square.

This may be correct, for months at least for Australian shop at home, this set has been on a backorder date of months away, currently May some time, so it's possible they're just waiting for production of the new figs. Pugsx3, what number does it give for the AT-AT, is it a 4 digit one, implying it will be for general retail rather than a 10XXX? Edit, don't worry, found it was a 4 digit number.

Thanks for that info. Although I'm currently on a very restricted Lego budget I couldn't resist the shark and diver Atlantis set for $10. The figs are fantastic with a lot of details, I'm not as excited about the little ship, but can't complain for $10. There were plenty of SW battlepacks at Firle (SA) last night, they seemed to be mixed together rather than being separated into the snowies and rebels.

Does this include the impulse Atlantis sets?

No, it only included pieces plus some skeletons and horses, I bought the other wizards ages ago (I think they cost a lot now).

Thanks for your comments. The scorpion prison cave and skeleton tower is definitely my favourite too. What is the front of the scorpion cave is actually the back of this model, so I have a back wind up gate and the front wind up skeleton jaw. I agree on the wheels, I was thinking about seeing if I could incorporate some small old airplane wheels underneath actual horses but as it's not my favourite set I decided it wasn't worth the expense. The hardest thing with the knights sets was working out how to replace the giant decorative pieces of the original model as there aren't any fantasy era equivalents (thankfully in the case of the giant shields on the King Mathias siege set). Thanks mate, that was actually the easiest set to build by far as the shields at the side could fit nicely into headlight bricks and just centering them to line up with the lions heads with dark blue jumper bricks and the rest was pretty much colour swapping. The shields in the grand tournament were much more of a challenge to a MODer of limited talent like me, but I was pretty happy once I worked I could put those two prong fork bits that you often get as a spare in a set inserted into headlight bricks and that allowed me to use the ovoid shields. I do have a bunch of dark blue bits in preparation of modding the new Kingdoms castle later in the year, so we'll see how that goes.

With the loss of the Fantasy line, the evil skeleton army decided there was only one way to recruit more soldiers for their battles against the crownies. The evil wizard re-animated some of Lord Vladek's shadow knights But now they need a bigger castle, so I modified the scorpion prison cave to suit the skeletons This was done with about $30 worth of parts if you already have the scorpion prison cave, a lot less than the cost of a brand new skeleton tower. Not to be outdone, the crownies decided to upgrade some old KK2 sets themselves, the siege tower and the much maligned grand tournament. More pics when folder made public.

For those interested in animated lego shows, the Clutch Powers dvd is now available at Target for $20. I assume the Atlantis show won't be a dvd release, given it's just over 20 minutes long.

I'm not a big contributor to this thread but over the past couple weeks in the car I've been listening to Doves: Live with London Bulgarian Choir Temper Trap: Conditions Elbow: a compilation I put together of their first 3 albums plus hundreds of other songs on shuffle on my ipod.

I think the more important question is which set has the highest sticker to part ratio. Of the ones I own it would have to be one of the speed racer sets, but almost 50 stickers fora 200 piece set for one of those Ferrari ones is insane!

Although I'm not a fan of mimes at all in real life the fig is superb and could only be outdone by the Hoplite in Series 2. For series 1 I went for the zombie but I love that wrestler too (strange as I have no interest in wrestling, just a great fig).

I bought this for $160AU from toys r us, and at that price it was still a majorly disappointing set. I know they had it for $140 for a while before Christmas but even at that price I wouldn't recommend it unless you desperately wanted the figs which are very nice. As for the A-Wing it's nice but not sufficiently different from the last release to warrant buying the set. Thanks for the comprehensive and thoughtful review.

Have a great one, Svelte, hopefully full of great Lego surprises!