Faefrost

Forget the battlepack what we really must have is a set featuring a mangy smelly wizard... molesting a hedgehog... while on a sled... pulled by a dozen bunny rabbits... being chased by wargs. Now THAT would be epic.

Thank you for the review. Like Hodge I have been debating it for awhile. Then when my local Lego store had it 20% off, i had to bring it home. I just finished building it and I am truly impressed. So many great little builds throughout it. And it all works. I hope anything new we get is of this quality and complexity of build. What really impressed me was how it was broken up. Im an AFOL and its my busy season. So I only have minimal time when I get home. This sets 9 bags worked perfectly. 1 bag per night to build. Each producing a delightful little module for the castle or the event. None of them felt boring. Each of those bags was a proud standalone and a worthy build for that nights (knights) bag, Well done TLG. By far one of the best sets I've built recently outside of a Modular.

I don't think that's completely fair. Ole JRR was a man of his time and country. Judging him as someone without a high opinion of women by today's standards is probably not an appropriate way to look at it. He was mainly writing what he perceived as stories for boys. Rousing adventure stories of the type he wanted to read growing up. I think the apparent exception of Eowyn is probably the more telling. He created a true brave hero in her at a time when it just wasn't done. It was obvious she was the most fleshed out female character in his mind. And her portrayal probably reflects more on his views of the fairer sex than all of the others, save possibly Galadriel. Also don't forget in many ways these books were Tolkien (and his counterpart C S Lewis) working through their experiences in the Great War. A place and time of their lives that were rather brutally male dominated. In those experiences women were for the most part as he portrayed them. Nurses, briefly met foreigners, or those passively and anxiously waiting at home. The fact that he was one of the first to break one of the female characters out of those roles is all the more remarkable. (OK I'll concede Deja Thoris predating Eowyn by a large amount, but you know what I mean). I really do hope we see some Middle Earth females in minifig form SOON! (Well ok, besides Tauriel, who I can't decide yet if I like or have any use for. I mean one of the real players.)

But both Nuju Metru's MOC and the Helm's Deep set achieve their primary goal very well. They manage to convey the look and feel of the scene and the setting in a reasonably achievable play environment. Neither is seeking to be a true scale model of the thing. But when you look at them, you know exactly what is being portrayed and can have fun with it. They are both great examples of how to compress something well and reasonably. (Something we tend to forget about around here sometimes.) and somebody please stop me if I am wrong here, but one of the things that differentiates the truly great MOC'ers, such as many that we see around here, from the actual Lego designers is that focus on the ability to constructively scale things down. To be able to tell the needed story with the minimal of words or brush strokes or bricks, and do it well.

That is a fantastic set design. Heck they could probably trim a few elements, from it to bring the price down under $200, which would make it more viable for mass retail. Then offer those trimmed pieces as other sets. ( Witch King set. Trim 2 Gondorians and 2 orcs and offer them in a wall expander set like the Uruk Hai army etc).

I think it is the blue cape from the Shredder fig in the TMNT theme. Either that or a blue cape from the Chima lions. Those would be the only long blue capes that TLG would have in stock as current replacement parts. (Actually the Shredder cape seems to work well on my Elrond.)

They have gotten a lot better about this since 2003. That was a large part of Bionacle's downfall. Yes the sets sold well and were popular, but Lego or rather the management at the time kind of lost track of what was really going on. They were spending more to make the line in new molds and designs and such, than they were bringing back in. And they ended up with a ton of weird hard to use elsewhere molds as a result. These days they are much better at predicting uses and amortizing costs over time. Yes some new parts may not have been spread as widely as we might hope yet. Such as the 2x2 studded tiles seen in the Ninjago Samuai mech. But those are long term structural parts, the molds for which are expected to last for years or decades. So they will amortize the costs over a long period of time and we will slowly see the parts spread.

Forrestmen? Or a couple of tree filled sets in the Kingdoms line. http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?S=7188-1 Forrest Ambush actually seems to reinforce the idea that it might be a direct continuation of the Kingdoms line. That seems to fit in with the theme and tactics of the Green Dragon Knights.

I think the solution would be to simply review each project individually and announce them individually as results are known, and regardless of the status of any other reviews.

These days they all have that policy. It's to discourage Jimmy Saville / Tickle Me Elmo type activities amongst the adult population. Those childless AFOL's wishing to see things can come during the adult oriented sessions, and they don't have to worry (as much) about creepy dudes looking for kids.

I don't know if it counts as a sale? But I cried with joy today when I saw my beloved damaged box discount table had returned to my local Lego store. I managed to score a Pet Shop and a Goblin King set for under $200 total. WooHoo!

Don't assume we will ever actually see the Orthanc model seen in that design room picture as an actual set. Remember many of the things in that picture are sketch models to guage the viability of a project. There are plenty there that will probably never see production. (I mean really how many are just dying for a life size bust of Watto?)

The occasional collapsing wall to be knocked down with the above is always a plus. Maybe a secret passage or two?

I think Kree O. They have a line of Mario Kart building sets.

Sadly Roughnecks is already used.

My thought was that Nintendo is kinda known to be such a pain to work with, plus they already had a pre existing relationship with a competitor, that Lego might not have gone too deep in search of that particular license. Whereas Universal is normally viewed as somewhat reasonable to work with for a smaller run of one of theirs. It just may not be as fast as we would like.

I don't think there is a way to do Mina's Tirith as a whole justice as a retail Lego set. It can't be compared really to Helms Deep. Helms Deep was created as a 1 to 1 actual stage set to film. It was actually rather limited in scope and scale. In converting it to a minifig scale retail set Lego did not have to reduce it by insane amounts. Whereas the only complete filming version of Helms Deep was 1/72 scale. The calculated live size and the amount of reduction would be nuts. I really think the best single set we can hope for will be something like Helms Deep, in terms of the set, but a much smaller piece of real estate overall. Probably the main gate and part of the outer wall, with an Orc battering ram and siege tower. Essentially something about the same size as a typical waves flagship castle. We may see other MT located scenes, but don't expect any modularity unless they do something like the Uruk Army set. Things like "Pippin lighting the beacon" would most likely be separate stand alone sets. As for what makes me say this? Just looking at Legos history. Yes they have Helms Deep and Uruk Hai that link, but the others don't. Interconnecting Lego sets of that type are rare, and often seem like experiments (Jabba's Palace and Rancor?) and we know hey don't often seem to go together. ( how many Battle of Hoth sets have we gotten? How many interconnect?)

Damit! Now you have me craving a Lego Sauron minifig so I can stage a Ninjago spinner battle with Darth Vader.

There is probably a cheaper way to put all of this together, but here is a good example of the tools used to buff scratches out of opaque plastic. http://www.amazon.com/SC-Johnson-11182-Pledge-FutureShine/dp/B000ARPH4C I've used these on model kits and they work quite well. Personally I don't like using the Dremel buffing pads on plastic as I find I tend to do as much damage with them as I do repairs, but depending on your skills you mileage may vary. (Ill also concede that I probably do not have the patience to hand buff every visable piece on a UCS Falcon, and would most likley resort to the Dremel, after a few tests.)

High temperature, high pressure, injection molds, the kinds used for precision things like ABS Lego bricks, or Styrene plastic model kits do in fact typically cost between a quarter and a half million dollars USD. Figure for Lego this will apply to any new structural or building elements. These are extremely expensive molds, but are typically expected to last a long time. They will often outlast the company that made them. So long as a production accident does not occur hey have a long life. ( I don't know what he average lifespan of Legos tooling is, but some well known plastic model molds have been in use and re use since the 60's or older. ) Molds and tooling for lower pressure, lower temperature plastics will cost less. This will be things that require less precision, are planned for a much shorter mold life, or things that can get away with lower quality softer plastics. This will include any of the softer plastic items, from the large molded figures such as Jabba or the Dino's, to special CMF accessories, to, at the lowest end, the more rubbery pieces sometimes seen for heads. While substantially cheaper, figure even then the tooling runs between Forty Thousand Dollars to about Two Hundred Thousand. ( my friends brother is an industrial designer who designs plastic toys. He's talked to my modeling club about the process and costs a few times.) But while the costs seem high, remember these molds are the principle assets of an injected molded plastics company. They are the business. They are the principle investment.

I still strongly suspect that when we do see a Pelinor Fields set it will be something along the lines of the Ninjago 2521 Lightning Dragon set. The Fel Beast will be he primary build. 4 figs. A horse, and probably some sort of small terrain object like a catapult. It's the sort of set we know they have done before. Yeah they could do a huge set to squeeze in a new fully molded Fel Beast and then surround it with something to be built, but I just don't see them going down that path. For LotR and the Hobbit they have been making scenes not places. They have everything they need to make the Aowyn vs the Witch King in their bag of tricks now, and keep it to. Mid sized/priced set. That's what they will go for. Besides rhe designers like creating organic shapes out of Lego. That's why we have a brick built Shelob. The same idea will hold true with any depictions of Mina's Tirith. Unless they do a huge Deathstar type $400 play set. Otherwise we will get a bunch of individual scenes. Stuff like the main gate with the battering ram, the white tree, lighting the beacon, an orcish siege tower, Faramirs Charge, the tomb of he stewards, etc. little small sets of bits and pieces like Mines of Moria or the Goblin King. They will not be interconnected modules. They won't be stacking layers. They will have great figs. At best we may see an army builder set with a modular piece of wall that connects to the main gate. And let's be honest with ourselves, if they did attempt to do a single huge Mina's Tirith set what we would get would be something of roughly he same size, shape, play value, and disturbingly high cost as an average traditional wedding cake. Just less delicious.

It's probably just one license that is holding the whole thing up. For whatever reason they decided to hold all announcements until they had all results finalized. My gut says the BTTF DeLorean is probably the culprit. It's probably the most doable of the licensed projects, for a smaller license, but still has the complicated studio licensing to work through.

Here are a few good examples of how it could look from CuuSoo (note these are private peoples MOC's, but give a good general feel) http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/6621 http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/10585 As far as sitting next to or near the Town Hall. This was quite common in 1930's to 1950's American small town Main Streets. Probably the best example you would know of would be the Back to the Future movies. There is a movie theater near the Town Hall / Clocktower in 3 of the 4 time periods seen on screen. (Oh and you are partially correct. There is a Spiderman Daily Bugle Building set coming out over in the Marvel Superheroes line )

There are plenty of honest dealers, but the telltales are much harder to pick up these days. They don't always use obviously too good to be true pricing anymore. Since the end point of the scam is you receiving stolen goods with you being the only detectable point in the chain, it remains a huge danger. The only true way to avoid it is to limit yourself to direct retail vendors while the sets are current. Trying to get around harsh local pricing such as in Australia makes you hugely susceptible for this type of scam.

I suspect that the Fel beast when we finally see it will have a new molded head and maybe wings. Everything else will be brick built to allow for play features like the head being chopped off.