Deathleech

It could be done, but that would be really lame. Most people want the entire Minas Tirith city, not a single wall piece. It also would leave out tons of play features like exploding walls, catapults (that actually belong!), a battering ram for the front gates, etc. The Rivendell set captured all the main scenes that took place at that location. It was the forming of the Fellowship, and Gimli trying to smash the ring. Sure there are other parts, but none of them are really action packed or worthy of sets. Minas Tirith is the exact opposite. The sheer design makes it interesting and something people want to build, then add in all the possible play features, characters, scenes, etc. and it needs more than a $10-50 set. The only issue is Minas Tirith is too big. I mean we are talking about a $250-400 set to do it justice, or an entire wave of Minas Tirith sets. Neither seems likely from Lego at this point... or any point unless the theme got as popular as Star Wars.

That's assuming a $130 Minas Tirith is even possible. Nuju's Minas Tirith is about a $250 set and it is condensed a TON. He could shrink the trebuchets and get rid of the brick built Fel Beast but even then you are looking at a $200 set. That's about as compact as Lego could feasibly go without making the set look ridiculous and losing sales for that reason. How many kids do you know who are going to dish out $200 for a Minas Tirith and then another $30+ for a single (or few) wall add-ons?

This feels like a real set Lego might make. The only thing is the price seems very high. It's almost 15 cents per piece and this has no large molded creatures, large brick pieces, or special molds? A $19.99 price tag, or even 24.99 seems much more reasonable?

Dozens of people have had this idea, myself included. After the first LotR wave hit shelves I thought Minas Tirith would work GREAT as a modular build, similar to Helm's Deep and UHA. Of course it would need at least one more big set besides just a main build and a seperate wall section. I think a wall section that can be stacked OR put side by side as a $30 set with lots of generic soldier minifigures, and then 2-3 big sets which had some combination of the Citadel, White Tree Court Yard, Grond, front Gates, and Fel Beast would be perfect.

With license themes Lego already holds, I am pretty sure it doesn't matter. The people on Lego Idea's who submitted their Minas Tirith designs copied them from the movie. They don't own that license though, Lego does. If Lego wanted to release a brick built Minas Tirith and sell it they are currently the ONLY ones allowed to as they are the only ones (to my knowledge) who have paid WB for the license to do so.

Ok, and what if you want to use the Fel Beast and the eagles together to recreate some LotR scenes? The eagles would be like a fourth or fifth the Fel Beast size if they used Smaug parts. It would look ridiculous. I think people are forgetting just how big Smaug is in the movies. If you look at the picture below, you see Bilbo is barely bigger than his teeth. Now compare that to this picture of Frodo standing in front of a Fel Beast, or Gandalf facing one. The Fel Beast head is like half the size, or a third the size of a human. The scale isn't remotely close.

Maybe that's because it only uses half as many bricks, lol. But seriously, I think Nuju said his would be around the $250 price range. Take away the Fel Beast and reduce the trebuchets and it would easily fit the $200 mark. The one you like is 3944 pieces. At an average 10 cents per piece, that puts it at almost $400. I have found it's super easy to make a great looking Minas Tirath... if you totally disregard piece count and play features. When you add these in and try to make a real play set Lego might actually create, things become significantly more difficult.

Yes, I realize the scale isn't perfect with Lego. The Eagles are probably the worst offender, being MUCH smaller scale compared to the minifigures than they are in the movies. I know Smaug isn't perfect size either and is much smaller than he should be. My point is he is still a rather large Lego creature. MUCH larger than Lego would do a Fel Beast (if the video game is any indication). Lego tends to shrink the size of molded creatures to save money, not make them bigger in scale then they actually are. It would look really weird if Lego had Smaug who is relatively big, but still shrunk in Lego form, and then used a bunch of his pieces in black to make a Fel Beast who would be nearly the same size and actually bigger scale than he is in the movies.

I would take a CMF line over the nothing it seems like we will be getting instead. The CMF series have improved greatly in quality since they were first released and the difference in plastic is barely, if at all, noticeable now. A lot of the sets were are missing can be built with existing Lego bricks. Some molded creatures would be the only exception. Unfortunately a CMF series is near possible since Lego would need the action figure license for LotR and they only have the building toy license.

Why do people keep bringing up using parts from Smaug for a Fel Beast? The scale would be WAY off. Smaug is at least 3x as big as a Fel Beast. Even uising some parts from Smaug for a Fel Beast would look weird.

This is a local Target's display of the new Hobbit sets... and people are wondering if they are selling well?

Really the set choice is the problem then. I understand the Black Gates are cool looking and the setting of the final battle, but really they are just another wall. Many others have proposed MUCH better sets that would easily fill the four wave two slots.

I think the issue people have with the Mouth of Sauron is the same issue they have with the Pirate Ship Ambush set. It's a nice set and all, but it obviously took the place of something else that might have been MUCH more important. It's like Arwen; she is a cool minifigure to have, but did we really need her before Eowyn? I don't think anyone can really argue Arwen is more important than Eowyn, yet we never got an Eowyn minifigure. It just seems like a wasted opportunity. I would love a Pirate Ship Ambush set and the Mouth of Sauron... if they came out in a third or fourth wave. It would be like getting Grand Moff Tarkin and never getting Darth Vader, or getting the B Wing but never the X Wing. They are definetly cool to have, but not when they take the place of something vastly more important to the story.

Very cool! If this were a real set, I would buy the crap out of it even though it's nearly $100. I would definitely get 5, and might even go up to 10 and BL tons more Gondor Soldiers. The only two things I would maybe change would be to add the Witch King on a Fel Beast, and make the orcs have actual armor (or armor print). Of course the WK on Fel Beast would dramatically raise an already expensive set so I suppose that could be a separate set. Regardless, I love the structures in this set as well. I could easily see several being combined to make a really nice looking ruined Osgiliath.

Even if that were the case, why make a minifigure out of such a minor character when there are much more important characters that could have been made? And why make a character who is kind of scary to younger kids and gets decapitated?

I'm kind of in the opposite boat. I have doubles of every LotR and Hobbit set still sealed in their packaging. I may open them some day and use the pieces. If not I can always sell them though. I have no plans of selling them right now, but if I do I am sure I will make a nice profit (most were bought at least 25% off).

That looks pretty cool and eerie. One question though, why not a green or teal background to give it a closer look seen in the films?

Of course! It has two Fellowship members, Boromir and Pippin which you can't get in any other set. It also has the Moria Orcs and Cave Troll which are also exclusive to the set. The minifigures alone make the set well worth it imo. The actual brick components aren't really that bad either, and if you aren't a fan of the segmented walls you can always buy a large gray baseplate for $15 to help tie it all together.

But the eagle mold was used in more than just a D2C set so the cost for it could have been justified later on? I thought that was the reason D2C sets did't have new molds, they don't move enough sets to justify the cost as a normal retail set would? Does it really matter if it was used in the Orthanc set first?

I agree. I guess the Corsair is ok looking too, but he's not really that needed or exciting, especially with only one of him (even if it is the PJ Corsair). Unfortunately these are the only cool figures in the set. That leaves the other half of the set with duds. I understanding putting Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli in the set, but that doesn't make it any easier to swallow (especially since all three appear in so many other sets now through the LotR/Hobbit waves). The two Mordor Orc re-hashes who don't even look anything like the orcs at the docks is the real shame imo. Maybe Lego shouldn't have done a Black Gate set then? The eagle was used in the BoFA set so it got use in another set besides Orthanc. We already have tons of walls, albiet most are gray and not black, so a set that is nothing but a gate wasn't really that exciting. Lego could of had a Witch King, Gandalf the White, Eowyn, Gondor Soldiers, and Orcs all in one set if they had picked another scene.

Two of those hair pieces are never included with the Mordor Orcs. The Lurtz one is only with Uruk-hai, and the other looks like the Fili/Kili/Thoren one? Don't get me wrong, they work for simply adding variety, but you can add any number of different hair pieces to orcs just for the sake of variety. Also the bald cap doesn't fit right on the Mordor Orc with piercing and I assume it doesn't fit right on the one with white paint on his forehead so that limits it's options. The bald orcs don't work with the Goblin face since it is double sided (but it doesn't appear you included this one anyways?). So the total combination of unique orcs you can get is realistically more like 100 or so. It's not bad at all, and like I said you can get even more by switching in random hair pieces and Castle helmets. I just think the torsos are really lacking. We only got one Mordor Orc torso and then the three goblin ones. If Lego had given us an armored one and maybe a different colored orc face then I think we could have REALLY had a lot of options. Re-using the exact same Mordor Orc print four times just seemed like a huge waste of resources imo.

Well the Moria Orcs are a different color so their parts can't be used on any of the other orcs, nor can any part of the orange Gundabad Orcs with two different face prints. The goblins' skull cap from Goblin King Battle doesn't fit right on the Mordor Orc face as it cuts off right in the middle of the fore head piercings and looks weird. That's several options off the table right there severely limiting the options. Lego really should have given us another Mordor Orc and Gundabad Orc print. An olive green Mordor Orc in armor (with no green on the torso or arms), or a Gundabad Orc in armor (also with no flesh showing) would have been perfect. Then we could have a lot more variety. Heck, even if Lego would have given use double sided faces and not left any orcs "bald" it would have significantly increased the variety. As is, Lego seems to have really wasted prints on silly things like giving the Goblin Town goblins two different body prints, and the same for the Undead Soldiers. Why make two seperate prints for figures only in one set when Mordor Orcs have all shared the exact same print and been in four different sets now?

With Disney now owning Star Wars I wouldn't be so sure. My guess is maybe one of the upcoming three movies will have a Pg-13 rating, but the rest will be PG as all other SW films have been save Revenge of the Sith. The fact they use lasers and lightsabers as the primary weapons means no blood which really helps get them the PG rating. They would have to have some REALLY dark scenes, or a lot of maimings. Even Phantom Menace was only PG and it had Darth Maul sliced in half.

Ya, I have no idea what Lego is thinking sometimes. They included the Mouth of Sauron in the Black Gates set and all he has is a few lines of dialogue and then gets beheaded. For a toy company so adamant about steering away from violence you would think they would stay clear of these scenes, but nope...

Ehh, I guess it depends on what you want. I value getting totally new characters like Boromir, Pippin, and a Cave troll over the same characters in different costumes like Thorin, Bard, and Azog. Legolas and Azog are almost straight re-hashes much like Gimli and Legolas in Mines of Moria. Gwaihir is barely any different than the eagles in Orthanc/Black Gates, but the Cave Troll is totally unique and not available in any other set. Then you have the exclusive Moria Orcs who both came with hair in MoM. Those were MUCH superior to the Gundabad Orcs in the BoFA set imho. Sure the Gundabad Orcs have new face print, which I guess is nice, but the lack of helms or ears/hair is a huge let down. As for the build, I think the ballista is WAY to big for the BoFA set. It makes the structure look puny and probably took away a lot of pieces that could have been used to bulk it up. Sure Mines of Moria is just a gray fragmented wall, but it hits pretty much every action scene from the film. You have the well with the skeleton, the tomb, the pillars that explode, and the gate the goblins and troll burst through.