TeufelHund

I picked up a Rancor Pit for c.$70 today at Target in their 20% off Star Wars sale. Still no sign of any of this wave's exclusives though, either there or at a nearby Toys R Us (which also had the new, non-exclusive sets on shelf).

Well that episode did seriously kick some megablocks (for once). I hope there will be some consequences for Obi Wan for going against the Council - although I doubt it. Also good to see a couple of recurring characters bite the dust - let's hope they stay dead unlike Maul who's resurrection remains an annoyance to me - much along the lines of a lot of "dead" comic characters that get mysteriously bought back to life once their creators run out of new ideas.

The skiff was a great set but it's hard to overlook Jabba's Palace in that it contained a lot of great figures that were either new or remakes that people have been screaming for, plus IMO the part selection is a bit more useful than the Skiff particulalry if you are looking to do a Mos Eisley or desert-themed MOC. Also I loved the Sandtroopers from Droid Escape although the rest of the set was pretty average (why no Dewback...Why!!!!).

Hmmm...after looking at the larger pics/video I will probably pick up the Gatehouse (I actually don't mind the dark knight's armour and barding and on closer inspection it seems this set comes with both) and the Dragon Mountain (Dragon, Wizard, useful non-military princess figure) sets. I'm struggling to like the castle and already have 2 Blue Crownie Kings so there's not much that appeals to me in the larger set. I may get one of the smaller sets depending on the torso mixes on the figures. The Lion motif on the good guy's shields, flags and barding though remain an abmomination. Thanks god it seems the actual torsos are free of this blight.

A good idea as I have a gift voucher I got for Xmas that will work at Target...but has anyone actually seen the new Star Wars sets there yet?

Did anyone else have a sticker left over when they finished this set? I just finished building it with my son and after looking through all three booklets twice I can't find where I'm supposed to place one particular large "D" sticker. I have mixed feelings about the finished HQ itself but my son loves it. The two larger dinosaurs are great though with plenty of articulation and the T-Rex is awesome for it's size alone (looking forward to see how it compares to a Rancor...).

Well, I was looking forward to some more Castle but these sets ae pretty underwhelming at first glance. The castle in particular lacks appeal with lots of big, chunky parts (although better shots of the other sets are needed before judgement can be passed on them) and the Lion Shields look like rehashes of earlier generations of products which is very disappointing considering the great, authentic medieval heraldic look they achieved with the Lion motif in Kingdoms. The castle also look seriously undermanned - a couple of bowmen, a knight and the King only in defense? At this rate in a few more generations of Lego Castle Kings will be reduced to opening and defending the gates of their castles alone. At least they gave the attackers a siege weapon this time unlike in the Kingdoms castle. On the bright side some of the torsos and armour look nice, but in general it looks like a bit of a letdown after Kingdoms. I'll probably get the Dragon set as I only have the black dragon from King's Castle Siege and that seems to contain the most interesting minifig variety too but otherwise I'll leave it up to my son to get some of these if he's interested.

Who has the Star Wars exclusives this wave? I'm assuming Toys R US will have one, but it would be nice to know who will have the other.

The fight scene was ok but the whole scene where the Duchess and Vizsla were talking in front of this huge crowd in strangely amplified voices was a bit ridculous and the idea of putting a captured Maul and Savage together in one cell without excessive security seems to be asking for trouble to me. I guess the arc is ok (especially compared to the baby Jedi arc) but I agree it seems a bit rushed for all they're trying to achieve here.

It's disappointing that we're getting yet another Lion and Dragon faction, particularly with Kingdoms still a recent memory. Still - it's castle so no doubt I will pick up a set or two.

I'm firmly in the camp that the images are far too low-res to make up one's mind about at this point in time. One thought that occurred to me though is that both the 2007 Castle line and the more recent Kingdoms line both got excellent UCS sets at some point in their run, so that's something to look forward to even if the base sets turn out to be a bit too kiddie-friendly for AFOLs. Personally, I'd like to see a siege set with some proper siege weapons but I'm not sure if that would fly but there's certainly potential for expanding a Medieval village in any case.

I like most of the sets but are a bit disappointed that you are going to be stuck with a bunch of Lone Rangers and Tontos if you buy a decent number of them. I get that kiddies may be disappointed if they don't get the heroes to play with but LOTOR surely was a move in the right direction with heroes only appearing in a couple of sets maximum (of course, there were more than a couple of heroes to choose from in LOTOR, but still...).

They had all the new Hobbit sets save Barrell Escape in my local (Canberra Civic) today, so might be worth checking out if you're determined to get these locally.

IMO the rock formations look pretty worthless and the tree only marginally better, although most of the minifigs and the wargs look great (not so sure about the orc leader though). In the end though, the pieces are useful for general castle MOCing so even if you only build it once and then pull it apart you'll still get some useful bits and some good minis and animals.

Well that was a waste of 22 minutes of my life. The only semi-decent part with a bit of tension was when they came out of hyperdrive and had to dodge comets/repair the ship. Whoever thought that dumping a bunch of comedy characters on a barren planet and having them go around in circles was a good idea shouldn't be allowed to touch the franchise again (Oh it was George? Guess he's taken himself out of the equation for us - at last.)

I thought we had this argument out recently and everyone agreed that good deals available from overseas retailers could and should be brought up here as this was the easiest place for Aussie shoppers to find savings in one place? If not fine but personally I'd like to find out where the best prices are for us Aussies regardless of whether the retailer is local or international.

No problems here in Australia with my LOTOR preorder with EB Games - Elrond arrived safe and sound - now I have to decide whether to keep him, give him to my wife for Xmas or Ebay him.

That was my first thought when I saw the Warg Set for the Hobbit - that would be great for Game of Thrones MOCs! I'm planning to do one using Kingdoms Lion Knights for Lannisters and the CMF series 7 Knight for Gregor when I find the time.

My Lego Hobbit order just arrived from Amazon.co.uk - I paid $220 for the 3 biggest sets delivered - which means I basically got the largest set for free (I think they have jacked their prices up though now after offering them initally at a substantial discount). The delivery arrived in about 4 days, so you might want to consider that if you're desperate to get the new sets and can't hold out for a local release.

I have to say on first glance this is one of the best series produced yet - I will definitely be getting a knight, caesar, cyclops, alien avenger and also possibly Dr Jekyl/Mr Hyde, Judge, Fortune Teller, Forest Chick & Battle Mech (depending on if I can manage to spare the time to grope a few packets). I'm not sure how I feel about the new distribution model - yes it's great for those army builders out there however kids spending their pocket money may be disappointed to keep getting the same figures over and over again and by creating "rare" or "chase" figures they are fuelling the after sales market. Some thoughts: * The Roman figure is probably meant to be Julius Caesar based on the tile quote so refering to him as "An emperor" is technically not correct (Julius was never Emperor - "merely" Dictator for Life!). As other's have pointed out his lake of back leg printing makes him look ridiculous from the rear. * The Dr Jekyl/Mr Hyde figure is an interesting take on the legend although I would have thought a reversible head rather than a "Two-face" style approach might have been more in keeping with the actual story. * I like the Forest Maiden but why do they insist on giving figures like her and the Series 3 elf a gigantic shield to go with their long bows? It's simply not practical - one can't fire a bow with a shield in the other hand and if an enemy gets close enough that you need the shield you're stuffed anyway without a melee weapon. Overall though this series looks very promising although I would like to see more back printing and a greater attention given to the rear of the figures as some of my favourite CMFs look awesome from the front but awful from the rear (Legionary I'm looking at you...).

I like this better than the awful Echo Base that came out recently, although already owning quite a few Hoth sets I have the snowspeedeer, tauntaun, speerbike and E-web blaster covered. Saying that I like the trenchworks and probe droid and more rebel troopers and snow troopers are always welcome when building a big Hoth diarama. I really wish though they would release a decent set containing the Ion Cannon and/or power generator.

Ahhhrrrrrr...Cap'n Pete is no LEGO captain. Any scurvy Dog worth his sea salt knows that a LEGO captain needs a peg leg, hook *and* eye patch. "Cap'n" Pete is third rate at best.

Firstly, you have to remember that you tend to get a bit less bang for your buck out of Lego licensed sets than those designed around in-house themes where Lego doesn't have to pay a licensing fee. Also, Lego does have a number of larger sets with very impressive piece counts and adult build techniques targetted at an older audience (there just isn't anything available yet for LOTOR in this category). They're usually limited to Lego brand stores or Shop at Home though. Finally, the beauty of Lego is that if you want a bigger Helm's Deep there's no reason you can't buy two sets and combine them, or even take elements of other sets and add them together.

All I can say is that my 4 year old spent more time playing with my Death Star than most of his other sets combined.

That episode was easily the best of the baby-jedi arc. A lot of action including a good lightsaber fight with Grevious (what happened to his hidden blaster?) and a nice spaceship chase/crash. Sadly though I haven't seen anything in this season yet to rival Series 4 which really stood out for me after the disappointment of Series 3.