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It's not a location well known for its exterior design, is it? I'm guessing the idea is 1) to have a tavern for a medieval village that's more widely available than the upcoming BDP tavern, 2) to get LotR fans to buy it even if they're not otherwise interested in a tavern, and 3) to have a movie license because EvErYtHiNg HaS tO hAvE a MoViE lIcEnSe NoW.

This latest wishlist-type leak reminds me of the survey leak from a few years ago. That all sounded incredible, and very dubiously sourced, but I think every single set in that survey has been released by now? So this might be the same.

In my opinion the plain old simple Lego minifigs are the best. I mainly use minifigs to fill vehicle seats and stand on ship decks, and the Lego minifig is ideal for that. Larger size, more joints, and differences in stud/antistud/clip locations for the head, hands, and legs always make it harder to just put the figure in the seat and take it out, etc. Other people who use minifigs for more expressive figbashing or minifigure photography may prefer more dynamic minifigs. Sembo's minifigures have a virtually identical form factor to Lego minifigures, but with ball-jointed heads and arms. I don't remember if Sembo minifigures have ball-jointed legs, it's been a long time since I've handled the Sembo set I bought. Sembo minifigures also have highly detailed printing all over, including on surfaces that Lego doesn't print on. A lot of minifig customizers like highly detailed prints on every single surface, but I find them too visually busy for my taste. TLDR, @danth, Sembo has the minifigs you want.

Yeah, whoever says even the brick separator is cloned clearly doesn't know what they're talking about, except with piratemocs and dupes. Every legit brand has its own brick separator, like every brand has its own mini fig.

Hi, thanks for this write-up. I'd just like to comment that Sluban has long since moved past copying Oxford Block or anyone else. Their military vehicles and military aircraft are of their own design, using many of their own parts designs, and sometimes carry license endorsements from military museums. Their civilian passenger aircraft use big pieces that resemble City passenger jet parts, but are actually quite different. Another two brands to add to your list are Reobrix and 12GO. In my own write-up in another thread, I forgot to mention the Reobrix SR-71 kit I bought. Reobrix mostly produces cheap-and-chunky 1:35 play models of military aircraft, and some castles. I think they're mostly produced with the permission of the model designers, but I'm not sure. I know at the least their SR-71 jet and CH-53 helicopter are. The Reobrix SR-71 had such bad parts quality I thought I was going to choke from the dust. I think Reobrix is mostly legit, but they still seem fairly skeevy to me. 12GO produces tanks and other military vehicles, mainly to compete with Cobi. As far as I know there's nothing shady about them, and they seem to get pretty decent reviews for their parts quality. But then again, Reobrix also gets decent reviews for its parts quality and I thought the parts quality of Reobrix was terrible.

I am also a recovering Lego purist: that is, I'm sober after overdosing on alt-bricks and I'm back to Lego. TLDR, I tried a bunch of other brick brands and I decided Lego is best after all. Childhood experiences When I was a little kid first becoming aware of things, my brother and I had a few small Lego sets from Town, Castle, and Technic, plus a big Technic robot, a big Mega Bloks spaceship made of enormous specialized parts, a Mega Bloks moonbase made of mostly basic bricks on a shaped baseplate, and a couple big buckets of basic Mega Bloks bricks. We broke apart everything but the big Technic robot and built stuff out of the "junkyard", but later when we were a bit older and started to get somewhat larger Lego sets based on things we liked (X-wing, Naboo fighter, Island Hopper, Harry Potter) we kept the Lego sets together because we didn't want to mix them with the inferior Mega Bloks parts. That really limited our moccing potential from the junkyard, until we got an infusion of genuine Lego from our grad-student older sister, who bought Star Wars and Harry Potter for a few years until she decided to stop, keep the minifigs, and give us the mixed bricks. Another childhood experience related to Lego was visiting the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum with my family; I asked my dad for a crappy knockoff-bricks fighter jet from the gift shop and he got me a Revell snaptite kit instead. Later he gave me a Mega Bloks fighter jet that was vaguely inspired by the Harrier, and a couple of years after that a couple of larger kits that were explicitly an A-10 Warthog and a Blue Angels Hornet. Those kits partially satisfied my desire for fighter jets made out of Lego, but not completely. They were very basic builds from bricks and plates, except where the Warthog cheated by using big out-of-system molds for the nose cone, windscreen, and engine fans and exhausts, and the Hornet cheated by using big clumsy specialized wing and empennage plates. Also, the Warthog and the Hornet were huge, while the Harrier was a smaller swooshable size that played well with minifigs. And the part quality was still notably worse than Lego. So, as a kid, I was happy to have these, and I was also jealous of Mega for making the other military kits I saw advertised in the back of the instruction manual, but I also knew that I didn't really want those kits because the builds were crap and the parts were crap. Mega, Cobi, and Bluebrixx From those childhood experiences and from online awareness of the dodgy ethics and crappy quality of dupe sets by Lepin, I began my post-college AFOL era pretty firmly in the Lego-purist camp. I was still curious about alt-brick brands that made military vehicles, but I chose to stay away from them. That began to change in 2015, when my brother gave me P-51D Mustang and AV-8B Harrier kits from Mega Construx, sold with a license from the Call of Duty video game. I was impressed by Mega's transformation from Mega Bloks to Mega Construx. The parts still didn't fit together quite as well as Lego, but the use of all prints instead of stickers impressed me, the kits were well-designed with features I wanted (retractable landing gear and moving control surfaces) and minimal, understandable use of unique molds (just the propeller spinner and windscreen for the Mustang, though the Harrier had some regrettably large, clumsy wing plates and mounts for them), and I could see that Mega had invested some real time and thought into developing its own family of SNOTs and wedges that overlapped with Lego capabilities without actually cloning any Lego parts. That, plus the acquisition of a video game license to somehow "legitimize" the selling of real-world military kits, helped me stop thinking of Mega as a crappy clone brand and think of it more as a legitimate peer competitor that was sadly hampered by its failure to bring its part quality up to spec, and its inability to use a decent minifig design. But I still wasn't interested in the rest of Mega's product line, so I didn't think much more of it. After building the Mega Construx P-51, I started to look at other brands that made military kits (mainly Cobi and Oxford), but I didn't buy any of them because they still looked dodgy in terms of quality, and there weren't convenient ways to buy them in the United States yet. It wasn't until early 2022 that I decided to actually give them a try, because I saw Cobi's Top Gun: Maverick kits on Amazon and I'd always wanted an F-14 made out of Lego. By that time I'd watched enough Cobi builds on YouTube to respect Cobi as a peer competitor with its own distinct parts library, and again the movie license helped legitimize the kit in my view, somehow. So I bought the F-14 and F-18 kits on Amazon, and I was quite impressed by the quality of the parts and prints. This was the moment that really legitimized competing brands for me. The clutch power of Cobi parts was different than Lego, but the quality and fine detail of the molding was equal if not superior, especially when considering the declining quality of Lego molds and prints. Also in early 2022, Bluebrixx released their Star Trek line. Again, I'd been wanting Star Trek ships made out of Lego since I was a kid, and I regretted missing out on the big TOS Enterprise by Mega when it was on EOL clearance for $80. The parts quality of Bluebrixx looked dodgy, but the line was officially licensed, had all prints, and had a couple of minifig-scale shuttlecraft. There was a licensed minifig-scale TOS shuttlecraft on the market, why wouldn't I get it? Well, shipping from Germany was super expensive. I took the risk and bought the TOS and TNG shuttles from Bluebrixx. I found the quality of the parts, prints, and building experience all distinctly subpar compared to Lego, but it was still licensed Star Trek building blocks so I wanted more. After that, I continued to buy Cobi airplanes and Bluebrixx Star Trek sets, but I still stayed away from other alt-brick brands because I still thought of them as mostly ethically dodgy crap with bad parts quality - CaDa excepted, given the enthusiastic conversation about CaDa kits on the Eurobricks Technic forum. I continued to always find Cobi kits to be of the highest quality, and I was pleased to see the parts quality and design quality of Bluebrixx kits improving with every Star Trek release wave. Trying all the alt-bricks! I didn't really get into alt-bricks in general until late 2022, when I saw Sluban kits (marketed as Dahonpa) for the F4U Corsair and A6M Zero on Amazon. I ordered the Corsair and was pleasantly surprised by the parts quality and instructions quality. The stickers weren't very good and the parts still weren't quite up to Lego or Cobi standards, but they were a lot better than Bluebrixx parts, and Sluban, like Cobi, had a fair amount of its own parts that made it distinct from a mere Lego clone. I bought several more Sluban airplane kits and enjoyed them. Today, I continue to think of Sluban as a quality manufacturer, and I continue to enjoy their minifig-scale (1:35-1:44) airplanes and helicopters. After I tried Sluban, I decided to try at least one kit from all the other major alt-brick brands. I got two 1:35 fighter jets from Letbricks, reasoning that they were licensed from the MOC designer even though they weren't licensed from the aircraft manufacturers. Those were terrible, in the kit design and especially in the parts quality. I got two highly bespoke CNSA rover kits from Keeppley, a Shenzhou space capsule from Sembo, a Western stagecoach from Funwhole/Lumibricks, a few airplanes from Jie Star, some Pokemon kits from Mega, some WWII fighters from Quanguan, some more airplanes from Toptoy and Xingbao, and even a couple of dupe sets (dupes of the 75021 Republic Gunship and the 10210 Imperial Flagship) and some pirated MOCs from AliExpress. I had varied experiences with these. I haven't had time to build the Keeppley kits yet. The Sembo kit had a high-quality build, minifigs, and prints, and the parts were finely molded, but the tight clutch power made it a real chore to put together and later take apart. The Funwhole stagecoach had parts that went together very smoothly, but the prints were distinctly worse than even Lego prints, and I didn't like the Funwhole minifig at all. The Jie Star airplanes had bad parts quality, and left a bad taste in my mouth as most of them could be seen to be pirated MOCs. The mini Pokemon builds in Pokeballs were cute and fun, and the ~200-part Charizard had splendid parts quality and a good build with parts that are mostly of Mega's own design, while the motion-build Geodude's motion feature was disappointingly janky and unreliable. The Quanguan fighters had excellent designs and pretty good parts and instructions, but the parts quality was still less than that of Cobi, who they intended to compete with, and the sets were let down by reliance on large STAMPS for markings instead of prints. The dupes and the pirated MOCs were amazing instant gratification for builds I'd wanted for years but had never been able to put together, but they were unreliable. Sometimes they had parts of excellent quality that went together smoothly and came apart easily, and sometimes they had awful parts that either had way too much clutch or way too little; mostly they were the bad parts, not the good parts. Eventually the tariff scare mostly put a stop to my buying of alt-bricks. I got in one last big order of sailing ships from Bluebrixx before the first, biggest tariffs went into place, the de minimis exemption was revoked, and countries around the world mostly stopped shipping to the United States. I was eager to build the Queen Anne's Revenge from Bluebrixx, because this was a genuine minifig-scale model of a historic sailing frigate, with a full interior over two decks, and with a complete complement of shooting cannons. It was, let's say, a frustrating model. Some of the parts were very good, and some were very bad. Some of the build was well-designed, but much of it was unstable and difficult to access. Despite the pull-out sections of the hull, the model still didn't really have much playability to speak of because it was just so big. (I haven't had time to build the other, smaller Bluebrixx sailing ships yet.) Back to Lego The tariff scare has subsided and it's about as possible to buy alt-bricks off Ali and other online storefronts as it was before, but after my two-three-year dalliance with alt bricks I'm back to the position of being mostly a Lego purist. I respect most alt-brick brands and I consider them legitimate competitors, producing their own designs of genuine interest, using a lot of parts of their own design. (Indeed, Bluebrixx is currently redesigning many of its sets to use its own protected parts after a trademark dispute.) But I'm also aware of their limitations, and I still consider Lego to be generally the better product. The fit and finish of Lego parts is still, in my opinion, enough better than the best competitors (GoBricks) that I'd rather build something with Lego parts than Gobricks parts. The protected Lego minifig, in its simplicity, is still a better toy and a better resident of the brick-built ecosystem than any of the legally-distinct alt-minifigs from other brands. I also appreciate the fact that when Lego makes a unique new part, they generally try to make it fit within the system of bricks, plates, wedges, slopes, and bows rather than tailoring it specifically to the intended model. That means most specialized new Lego parts (apart from minifig parts and accessories, and molded animals/creatures/etc) are still versatile enough for use in MOCs outside their original applications, while specialized parts from other manufacturers can often only be used in a mix-and-match kind of way because they're optimized for the application, not for the system. For example, you can build airplane MOCs with Cobi but you'll end up with mix-and-match wingtips and empennage. Just because you can build a frankenfighter with the wingtips of a Messerschmitt and the nose of a Spitfire doesn't mean you have any particular reason to want to, unless of course you're replicating the specific captured Messerschmitt that was fitted with a Merlin engine for testing. I like the all-prints approach of other brands, but prints from other brands are often coarser and less detailed, though more opaque, than Lego prints, and at least half the time I leave the stickers off of Lego sets because I prefer the less-decorated look. Also, I keep looking at pictures and builds of Lumibricks castles and Modular buildings and I keep wanting to want them, but I just don't really like the style, you know? Lego sets generally have an easier, more colorful, build flow than sets from other brands, and Lego instructions are much easier to read than those of any competing brand. In direct 1:1 comparisons of the same object at nearly the same scale, I've always preferred the Lego build. The Icons version of the little yellow Fiat 500 looks clunkier than the 1:12 scale Cobi version, but it's a much more enjoyable build and it's better for moccing because it doesn't use a bespoke individualized windscreen. The Lego version of the display-size Enterprise-D is a much more entertaining, complex build than the boring brick-stacking of the Bluebrixx version, and it's much more structurally stable and swooshable while also including the saucer separation feature. The GWP shuttlecraft, while not exactly the same type of shuttle as the minifig-scale shuttles from Bluebrixx, is also a more interesting build, and more swooshable. Given the choice between the same subject represented in Cobi, Sluban, and Lego, the Lego version will be more structurally stable and more entertaining than the Cobi and Sluban versions, even if slightly less accurate sculpturally. I have the 1:48 Cobi C-47 and the 1:44 Sluban C-47, while I don't have the 1:38 Lego DC-3 yet. I haven't built the Cobi or Sluban versions yet, but whenever I get the Lego version it's the one I'm going to build first - before Cobi or Sluban. Then, from the geopolitical angle, as an American I'm already embarassed by how much China outproduces America and Europe in green energy, shipbuilding, aircraft, cars, etc., and I don't want to contribute to China swamping the rest of the world in the low-stakes segment of toy building blocks as much as it's already swamped the rest of the world in every other industry. I mean no disrespect to China, and I have enormous respect for the talented scientists, engineers, technicians, and factory workers who power Chinese industry, but I'm willing to pay higher prices for what I think is, all things considered, a better product if it also has the benefit of protecting, to some small extent, supply chains outside of China. What I buy now Mostly Lego. My Lego wanted list is hundreds of sets long. Also Cobi. My Cobi wanted list is dozens of sets long. Some Sluban. I still buy new kits of Sluban minifig-scale military aircraft when they become available for a good price in the United States; I built their AH-64 Apache a few days ago and I have their V-22 Osprey sealed by my desk. I still keep an eye on Afobrick for the occasional extraordinarily good kit by another manufacturer, like the CaDa Space Shuttle Discovery or the Lumibricks Red Brick Row House. (I bought the former, and have had my eye on the latter for a while but haven't bought it yet.) But I'm not actively searching the world of alt-bricks anymore to find the latest wonders, nor do I feel the need to point out the superiority of alt-bricks in price/prints/etc at every opportunity, like some people on the forums do. I don't buy Bluebrixx anymore because I largely lost interest after they lost the Star Trek license, and they no longer ship to the United States, and the building experience of the Queen Anne's Revenge was so bad. Alt-bricks are pretty good. They're mostly legitimate near-peer competitors to Lego. Some of them are genuinely better in their own niches, like Cobi and Sluban. But, like Lego, they have their own strengths and weaknesses. Lego is mostly better, so I mostly want to keep Eurobricks about Lego. That's my opinion. Thanks for reading! Edited to add It's still a crying shame that Lego won't get its act together and make some simple stud inverters like every other brick brand has. It can be fun to see what gonzo solutions Lego set designers have to use to invert studs, and Lego stud inversions have gotten easier over the years, but there's still some real not-invented-here syndrome going on with Lego's refusal to make a simple stud inverter plate like literally every single other brick brand has had for ages now. Edited again to add I don't have any experience with aftermarket accessories like BuWizz/SBrick, custom Technic parts, custom parts for trains, Bionicles, etc., or custom minifigs and minifig accessories. I respect the creativity there and I respect them as add-ons that don't try to compete with Lego on a set-for-set basis. In my mind, those kinds of aftermarket customs aren't competitors in the same way alt-brick brands are, and I have no problem with talking about them on a place like Eurobricks. In general, I've always thought it's silly of Lego to push fan sites to use the term "bricks" instead of "Lego", and to get Austrian Lego Fan to change his channel name to Austrian Brick Fan. Doing that doesn't let Lego claim complete ownership of the generic term "bricks", but it does legitimize fan sites talking more about other brands and reviewing other brands, because after all they're not a Lego site are they? Just a site for fans of building bricks in general. So, I voted for option 2 in the other thread: let's have a separate forum for talking about other brands, with pinned topics for each major manufacturer. Let's go ahead and talk freely about other bricks, but let's also keep this mostly a Lego site. If it organically develops into more discussion of alt-bricks elsewhere around the site, then that's ok. But let's start with option 2.

I primarily think of GoBricks as a part supplier. In the segment of 1:35 military airplane builds, some people I follow online use GoBricks parts to keep the cost down. I think they also supply Pantasy, Lumibricks, and Bluebrixx besides Mould King. So, a blanket ban on GoBricks would be excessive in my opinion.

You do realize your Option 5 is already represented as Option 4, don't you? It's literally the same thing. No brand separation.

What an excellent ship. I love the shaping of the hull, the swooping of the sails, the clean yet detailed finish of the stern, and the realistic stepping of the masts and the bowsprit. How many tons burthen does this beauty displace?

Sorry to hear this news. I can understand it, but it's still a shame.

I voted for option 2. Have a separate forum for other brands, with pinned threads for each major brand: i.e., separate pinned threads for Cobi, Mattel Brick Shop, Sluban, Cada, Lumibricks, Pantasy, etc. That allows people to talk about them, but prevents the bulk of the site from becoming an unorganized jumble.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that rumor is false. No way we get three D2C Icons LotR sets next year. I could believe any two of them, but not all three.

Yeah, the big sets are very impressive and I have way too many of them on my Wanted List. But it's the little sets that are the most fun to actually put together and have on my desk during work hours. I bought the Ent-D on day 1 and got the shuttle GWP to go with it; the big ship was an entertaining build, but 99% of the time it sits on my desk at home, taking up space, and hidden underneath a dust cover because my home desk is right underneath the mini-split and gets absolutely coated with dust. My wife gave me the Tintin rocket for my birthday, and again it's a fine model and an entertaining build, but the Galaxy Explorer is a heck of a lot more fun.

If you can build a new Lego CAD application that can kinematically simulate Technic mechanisms (neglecting physics), every Technic builder in the world will beat a path to your door. For everything else, there's Studio.

Buy instructions from Rebrickable and parts from Bricklink and Pick-a-Brick. Don't buy stolen mocs from Mould King. I bought some mocs from AliExpress a couple years ago because the low prices were tempting, but I stopped doing that after a few months because it felt scummy and the parts quality was lousy anyway. In my opinion, the greater cost of genuine Lego parts is worth it, and the price of actually supporting creatives in the community by buying their instructions is a price I'm willing to pay.