Seaber

A kink is a mistake. The word you are confusing it with is a racist term for someone from China. I am sure no offence was went, an honest mistake/misunderstanding. As far as I can tell from photos alone, the minifigures, their weapons and the bricks that surround them do not seem to be lacking in quality, guess we'll find out come June. But so far everything looks fantastic and the world is good

IS Gollum's head moulded onto the body, or a removable head?

I love the library feel it has to it, very studious, very apt :) Also, I recognise your minifigures from a Brickshelf account, I always really liked them! Your ghosts particularly, it's nice to see the Grey Lady exhibited

If you have the OotP or HBP video games, they are amazing for exploring Hogwarts. The vieo on Youtube only shows it from the outside though, so if you have it/know someone with it, it's well worth a look! I like what you have so far though!

We know that at one point they were casting for Drogo (Frodo's father), so at one point they were probably going to show the death of Frodo's parents and his adoption of Bilbo, But the actor who was going to be playing his got recast as a bigger part, so that might have been ruled out. We don't know where the cut off for the two Hobbit films are yet, but popular opinions are between the capture by the Elven King and Bilbo's first sight of Smaug. So it looks like we should be getting set up until AT LEAST Mirkwood. Hope this is helpful!

For Rivendell, the main parts are the Last Homely House and that curved walkway that goes over the waterfall. Or they're the most prevalent in the movies. The Last Homely House could have the bedroom, shards of Narsil balcony, Elrond's office/library and the patio are where the fate of the One Ring is decided. Throw in the curved walkway section and a few smaller bits (e.g. two from: Aragorn and Arwen's bridge, Statue of Gilraen, Gazebo, Gate, etc) and the piece count would be about 1000. Minifigs: Elrond, Arwen, Gandalf, Frodo, Bilbo, Sam, two Rivendell elves (Based on Elves at the council meeting) If it was to come out in The Hobbit wave, replace the smaller parts with locations seen in the film, with Elrond, Bilbo, Gandalf, two of the dwarves, Lindir and two Rivendell elves. Assuming no new characters are met in Rivendell in the films

Surely one game for LOTR and one game for The Hobbit is the most logical way to do things? Not saying it would happen, but if you think of the first two Star Wars games, they had on trilogy per game.

I like it! How did you make the Cold Assault helmets, or are they from Arealight?

Exactly. With characters like the Mouth of Sauron, there is some hope to see a minifigure of him, even though he didn't appear in the theatrical cut. Where some characters (for example Halbarad, Beregond, Erkenbrand) are mostly a standard uniform with a unique head, these would not be hard to make your own. But someone like Mr. Bombadil would be nigh on impossible with standard pieces. I know some trading cards exist with official Weta designs, but as they don't show up on the screen, chances are obscenely low. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Trading_Card_Game

As far as the books go, very few characters were missed out entirely. Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, Imrahil, Halbarad, Elladan and Elrohir were written out entirely, and Erkenbrand, Glorfindel and Beregond had their parts given to others. The Barrow-Wights, Druedain, Dunedain and various Gondorian armies, such as Dol Amroth are the only major forces that don't make it to film. This is from memory, so I might have made some glaring errors here! The poster has the New Line Cinema logo, so I guess it is just for the films. It's a shame to think we're missing out on those characters, and certain locations like the Barrow-Downs or the Old Forest.

LOTR managed to get twelve good guys (the fellowship, Haldir, Theoden and Eomer) and a generic Rohan soldier into the first wave, so I don't think it's out of the question that we will see Bilbo, Gandalf and the thirteen dwarves in the first wave, although they might hold a few of the less interesting ones (Dori, Ori, Nori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur and Bofur do the least in the books) back for the second. In addition to this, we know that some characters will not appear until the second film (Dain, possibly Smaug, Master of Lake Town and Bard to name but a few) leaving the amount of characters available for the first wave to be fairly low. There are also fewer 'armies', Goblins and Elves are the main humanoid forces, whilst there are Wolves, Eagles and Spider creatures. There are also far fewer characters in The Hobbit than LOTR, albeit with the inclusion of characters not originally in the book such as Legolas and Radagast actually appearing rather than just a mention. So anyway, I am sure The Hobbit sets will give us a good range of minigures

I'd hazard a guess at it being based on a certain PoP set I really like it. It fits in well with Black Falcon/Crusader lines perfectly.

Surely Sauron could be done like Woody?

New hairpiece too? Plus, the Uruk-Hai has a different helmet there...

On the Orc Forge Packaging, does Lurtz have a different hairstyle?

The inside of Weathertop makes me think of the Barrowdowns. Seeing as they don't appear in the movies I doubt it, but hey-ho. As they put the Rohan Warrior and Eomer round the wrong way, we don't get a good look at Eomer's torso, but his helmet looks like it is silver with gold highlights, cool.

That is in essence how I imagined the set would look, so I'm pretty happy with that. It's combined most of the tasks the orcs carry out in Isengard well, and it looks neat. I think an improvement would be a tree which has a collapsing function to simulate the cutting down of the trees. About the size of the trees in the new City sets.

That is really good! Do you have any other Fellowship MOCs in the pipeline? I would hope if Lego released this they might include a little bit more of the hill, but what you have got so far is great, design and colourwise :)

I meant that this variant appears in FOTR, but are more lightly armed than their TTT counterparts, and I'm petty sure I read they were called scouts :) Yeah, they have very impressive and regal cheek patterns. I think the best word to describe them if 'fair' :)

As far as I am aware, these are the variations on Uruk-Hai helmets and armour. We know we are getting the first three, the captain, the standard Uruk and the beserker, and I doubt we will see the others, with possible exception of the FOTR variant, as Amon Hen has fairly good set potential. Captain (such as Lurtz and Ugluk): Standard: Beserker: Archers: Sappers: FOTR (Think they might be called scouts): Then finally there are these, seen briefly in TTT. To me they look like they'd be the annoyingly hard ones to kill in video game versions: I think the sizes are okay, if not I can come back and edit them later. If I've made mistakes, missed stuff out, let me know :)

The Shire and Rivendell appear in both the Hobbit and LOTR, so I wouldn't be surprised to see sets from these places spread over the two sub-themes. In terms of what we'll get next wave, I'd bet a fair amount on more sets from ROTK, as we only got one this wave. I've been following the Hobbit news pretty closely, but I don't remember anything about Khamul making an appearance, and that wasn't given until Unfinished Tales (if I remember correctly). Not saying you're wrong though1 As we know, Radagast, Frodo, Galadriel and Legolas all make appearances and weren't in the books. Pretty wise move by Lego not to give us too many Nazgul so early on I reckon.

I have a small Western set-up planned, that has a story intertwining two themes :) In 1911, it features the Western characters, and in 1936, Indy, Sallah and the Adventurers have made it their base on one of their adventures. The only change in this time is a hanger and air strip have been added. I liked the idea of nothing really needing to progress, so it doesn't. So, yeah, I do rather like the idea of worlds rather than one of MOCs :)

My theory for the opening-up function for Weathertop is the same as why Sirius Blacks escape opened up. An extra hiding place and probably a gem or two. Are the sets at the toy fairs still preliminary, as Helm's Deep still has the dark tan brick sections?

I know it's only CGI rendering, but it looks like Boromir at least will have a double sided head.

Wow! Boromir look so much better with those arms :) Aragorn doesn't have Anduil though, maybe it'll come in a later set? It's a shame Galdalf doesn't have a better staff, but never mind :) Gollum looks incredible in that poster :D The baddies look terrific too!