Deathleech

I don't think there will be any polybags this time around. In the last Hobbit wave the minifigures from the polybags were all pictured at the end in the instruction booklet with the rest of the minifigures. Carlos posted the back pages a few weeks ago and there were no extra minifigures on them this time.

I'm looking at the second link you posted. It's an auction for two torsos for $14.59. That's the one I was talking about that doesn't come with minifigure helms, heads, or weapons. Obviously that is the better deal. The cape, head, weapons, and helm on the single $14.59 figure can all be gotten for under a few dollars. The only thing of real value in those auctions is the torso and legs. Why spend $14.59 for a single minifigure when you can get 2x the torso and legs for the same price and then spend another $5 or so getting them weapons, helms, and heads? That's around $20 for two fully equipped Gondor Soldiers vs nearly $30 he is asking for pre-made ones.

TRU is surely breaking the street date release, like they always do. Honestly, how does TRU get away with it?

I understand and I totally will be buying custom pieces to fill any gaps in my LotR and Hobbit collection. I was just pointing out why people are so eager to get official Lego sets instead. It's usually a lot cheaper and the pieces are better quality. Sure you can build your own Balrog or Minas Tirith but it can be a total pain getting all the pieces on BL, it's usually more expensive and time consuming. You no longer can do the LDD thing where you build a model and send it in and get all the pieces sent back to you from Lego. Lego stopped doing this awhile back. So, while I definitely think buying from customizers is a good last resort, I still think wanting and trying to get Lego to make a few more sets holds some merit.

They are $7.50 a piece and that doesn't come with a head, helm, or weapon. That's like double or triple what an official figure would cost. Also the printing isn't bad, but it's definitely not up to Lego standards.

The rest sounds great but I would advise against this particular part. It seems everyone has their own ideas on what they want, even for sets we all agree we need. For example everyone wants a Balrog, but the specific minifigures, structures included, and price point vary widely. I noticed a lot of LotR Cuusoo/Idea projects don't get votes from die hard Lego LotR fans for one reason or another. For instance some of the Minas Tirith ones won't get votes because they aren't how members imagine the set being. I think just giving general set ideas (ie Balrog, Witch King Duel, etc.) and letting people's imaginations run with it gives the best chance.

Yup, it's here. It's pretty bad. His other helms seem to be much better. I am anxious to see how his LotR helms turn out.

I doubt it. Carlos had pictures and said all four sets were available at the factory in Mexico. I would assume they are all being released at the same time if they are all being manufactured together. If Lego doesn't show us pictures before Oct 15 it is most likely due to WB not wanting anything posted until then so nothing about the movie is given away.

Below are some more pictures of my Minas Tirith set, now with added play features! Gate with barrier that breaks when door is "rammed" open with Grond: Barrels to dump hot tar and catapults to throw rocks at enemy: Exploding wall!: Below is everything together. Grond, 4x Gondor Army set, and the Minas Tirith Gates. This set up would run you about $270-340 depending what the final prices for everything came out to be. Perhaps it could all be a D2C bundled together..? It would have well over 3,000 pieces, 35 minifigures, 4 large molded trolls, and a molded Fel Beast. Of course you could choose how many Gondor Army sets to buy and if you wanted the Minas Tirith Gates or Grond. It would all be modular.

And even if it did, Lego wouldn't make figures for it

I was unaware he had a store just from that one thread, it kind of sounded like he was just making a large number for his own personal use. After seeing he has a store and stating he will be offering LotR products though, I am definitely intrigued. Everything offered on his store is all made from ABS plastic so I could only assume the LotR/Gondor helms will be as well. The Gondor helm could use a little more work to be perfect, but it looks like a great start.

Lego could also make a generic Gondor helm and it could serve as Faramir's helm, a basic Gondor soldier helm, and a White Tree guard helm if they were smart about it and put some holes on the sides for feathers to go into. Sure it wouldn't be perfect for all three, but it would more than suffice.

The Gondor soldiers are usually seen in full armor like in this picture. The tree indentation isn't terribly noticeable on it. At least not so much so that it's more important than the helms imo. I would be ecstatic to get an official Gondor helm as I could then use it along with some standard silver chest plates on solid black torso/legs with random heads and have a nice looking Gondor Army..

How do you know the final version he is making will be ABS? And available outside his personal use?

I contemplated having someone else instead of Gandalf the White in this set, especially since he will be in the Balrog set as Gandalf the Grey. Maybe Gamling since he appears in the Battle of Pelennor Fields? Maybe just nix the good characters all together? No one really interacts with Grond, though I am sure Lego would want a good character in this set for kids to use against Murgash and Gothmog. I figured Lego would be keen on including Gandalf, especially the White version which has only been in one other fairly expensive set. I was considering including Shadowfax in this set as well, but then the price would just keep going up. There are just so many ways things could go...

Yup, I agree. I think Lego intentionally made him look similar to Treebeard without specifically stating it was Treebeard. A number of people seem to think he ISN'T Treebeard though. Personally, I think he does look pretty close with the beard and eyes which are pretty distinct, plus there are no other Ents shown in the film with the same features. The Orthanc Ent looks more like Treebeard than any other Ents. If not meant to be Treebeard, who is the Ent? I asked this before in a thread and no one really gave any answers despite vehemently denying it was TB.

Thanks! I noticed that as well and considered changing the ratio of minifigures in the set. I am not really sure why Lego does it as it makes for some really lopsided army builders though. If it's loaded with bad guys I suppose that works since the movies have many, many more bad than good. However, with MEA it didn't feel right. Maybe this is a marketing technique of Lego's to get people who otherwise wouldn't to buy more sets? I don't know. At any rate I would really like to see an army builder that is more "even". Since they would be new printed and armored orcs I still wanted at least three of them, but at the same time I wanted a few Gondor Soldiers so it wasn't UHA again where you only got one Rohan Soldier in a $30 set. I suppose Faramir could be in Gondor soldier attire instead of ranger, and serve as a second soldier so the set could have four orcs? That seems like a lot of orcs with a Mountain Troll though, and then you don't get an Ithilian Ranger representation. That's really why I decided on the numbers I did. Below is my Grond set. I know I said I was going to get the updated Minas Tirith up next, but I really got going on this set. Included are Gothmog, Murgash, and Gandalf the White with Grond the ram that swings and moves on wheels. Here is the bigger, more detailed version that has about 100 more pieces. I wanted to make Grond a $20 set but the piece count turned out much higher than I thought. That seems to be a re-occuring issue I have. I was hoping this set would be around 200 pieces, but instead it ended up being about 350 even after reducing it by over 100 pieces. Of course most of the piece count is small studs and flat plates, but all the same. Maybe all my sets can be looked at as more detailed versions before Lego would have to cut down the piece count? Either that or Grond is a $30 set, the Gondor Army is $40, Balrog $50, and Minas Tirith $150? I dunno...

A lot of the characters he listed were secondary, or fairly minor. I think the only big named characters we are missing from LotR are Eowyn, the Witch King, Faramir, and maybe Sauron. From the Hobbit though? Bolg is the only one that really sticks out. In terms of creatures LotR is also lacking pretty heavily with the Balrog, Fel Beast, Mumakil, and Treebeard all missing while the Hobbit is just missing bear form Beorn and maybe rams depending how big of role they play in the Bo5A.

Honestly, after working on my own LotR dream wave I can kind of emphasis with Lego. Minas Tirith alone has been a HUGE pain. Everyone knows it would have to be condensed, but there is so much more consideration that goes into it. Everyone has different ideas about how much to condense it, what parts of the city to include, which minifigures to include, etc. This doesn't even address needing to hit certain price points, piece counts, play features, mold budgets, being kid friendly, or what the licensee may require. Sure Lego could just nix Minas Tirith and do something else like Osgiliath, but then you run into the issue of certain minifigures not fitting into a set like that (Eowyn), or a number of other issues such as it's just a bunch or ruined buildings as the build, it's not as iconic, etc. With Eowyn and the Witch King you can't really include them together in any other set besides MT because there is nothing to satisfy the brick built component of the set. What is the Pelennor Fields build supposed to be when it's all flat plains? I really feel for Lego and better understand some of their decisions now. With that said Lego does have entire teams who's sole job is to build sets so I definitely think they could come up with a little more than they did. A few more LotR sets could satisfy everyone.

Exactly. What justification is there to make a Hobbit D2C set? Just because one hasn't been made yet? The Hobbit has been covered very well and it should be considering it has three waves, one more than LotR. LotR only has two waves and is severely missing some key scenes. The Hobbit is not. I mean look at it this way, the LotR theme has only gotten 12 sets where as the Hobbit has gotten 14. I seriously can't think of a single Hobbit scene that is deserving of a D2C set. Everything has already been covered with smaller sets or just doesn't have the screen time to justify being made into a D2C set. On the other hand LotR is severely missing a Gondor set and a Balrog, at the very least.

To each his own I guess. Personally, I think that one looks even more bland and lacking color than mine. Mine is just the gates so there was less to work with, it wasn't the whole city like he did. I also think his Minas Tirith looks a little to condensed. The walls look like they are around 6-7 bricks high which is the same height as the Helm's Deep walls. It reminds me of Lego's Weathertop where they went overboard shrinking it cause they had to so much to make it into a set. I wonder how many pieces he used... I would beat easily over 2,000. At any rate here is my Gondor Army set. It can attach to the Minas Tirith Gates, as well as other Gondor Army sets. I included ranger garb Faramir with spare hood which can be used to make him into a generic Ithilian Ranger (he has since been removed from Minas Tirith and also would have an olive green cloak but LDD has issues attaching them?). The set has 2 more Gondor Soldiers and 3 armored Mordor Orcs, as well as an armored Mountain Troll as the large molded creature which Lego seems to always include one of in their army builders. I am not sure how much a bigfig eats up a set's budget, but the Spider-Helicopter rescue has one and is $45. That set has almost 60 more pieces too. At an average of 10 cents per piece that means the higher piece count would make that set almost $6 more than my Gondor Army set (though probably even more since the helicopter has tons of huge pieces like the propellers). That puts Gondor Army in the $35 range. Personally I would like to keep it around $30 to mimic the other two Middle-Earth army builders we have gotten so if need be Lego could remove one of the orcs or Gondor Soldiers and only include 5 minifigures this time to compensate, OR nix the Mountain Troll and just give us an armored black or white horse, or a light tan warg. This build was pretty straight forward and doesn't have a ton going for it if you were to just buy just one. It's really about the figures and attaching it to other Gondor Army sets or my Minas Tirith Gates. It is meant to be an add-on and an army builder. It has roughly 240 pieces. Below is a pictuire of three Gondor Army sets together to give you an idea of what your army would look like after three purchases. You would have 1 Faramir, 2 Ithilian Rangers, 6 Gondor Soldiers, 9 armored Mordor Orcs, and 3 Mountain Trolls, as well as a nice chunk of wall to add to your Minas Tirith Gates! I have flushed out the rest of the details on this final dream wave and now have all the set ideas finalized in my mind. My Minas Tirith has been condensed and has about 1600 pieces now. It lost 3 brick levels in height and 2 in length. A few other things have also been minimized. It also has several play features including a barricade to the gates that can break when rammed, a wall chunk that can blow up, barrels that can drop hot tar, and catapults. I still would like to get it down another 200 pieces. The minifigures included have been hashed out and it now includes Rohan Merry, Gondor Pippin, Eowyn with hair and 2x helm (one for Merry), Denethor, one Gondor Soldier, one armored Mordor Orc, Guritz, and the Witch King. I am also working on a $20 Grond set that will include Gothmog, Murgash, and possibly Gandalf the White. There will be a $40 Balrog set as well with battle gamaged Gandalf, two Moria Orcs, and possibly Boromir or Frodo. I am playing with the idea of a fifth and final set that will be around the $60-80 price range and either a Mumakil or top level of Minas Tirith if I can keep the piece count down. I will be posting pictures of these in the comming days. Next up will probably be my updated Minas Tiras with all the play features, then Grond, then all three sets together (Minas Tirith Gates, Gondor Army, and Grond), and finally the Balrog Duel.

You can always rebuild it later if you want so I say go for it. Use the pieces for other MOCs.

This is bit contradictory, no? You say I should shrink the size and add more color than Minas Tirith actually has, but then critique it for not looking exactly like it does in the movie? I did make the gates much brighter than they are in the movie to make it pop a little more. It has no walls on the sides because that is going to be the main build in the army builder set.. walls that connect together and to the big gate set much like the UHA sets connect to one another and Helm's Deep. If you look at this picture taken directly from the movie, my Minas Tirith gates are almost exactly the same. Obviously there are some small difference like the tall skinny towers at the ends of the walls that come out from the gate are much smaller, but that was because the set was already massive and some things needed to be downsized big time. The overall shape and color are almost dead on. This doesn't seem that realistic really. When has Lego ever giving us three different good guy soldier types in a single LotR set (that isn't an army builder)? Lego LOVEs to give us main characters. Even Helm's Deep didn't have a single Rohan or Lothlorian Elf soldier in it. I don't see them packing a set like Minas Tirith with three orcs AND three Gondor Soldiers and only having a few minor main characters. By their logic this would have no selling points with kids when it comes to the big names. At any rate, I am already working on smaller version of my Minas Tirith gates set as this seems to be a popular issue people have with it and I agree. It's too large. I have managed to get it down to around 1500 pieces from the 1770 and am still working on cutting more. I also am adding the extra play features I talked about in my original post. I will post the updated version soon. If you are going to have a dead Oliphant.. why not just make it a normal live Oliphant + Witch King duel set? If it's 70-80 bucks it would have around 7 minifigures so Lego could easily make a live Oliphant (not sure they would want the emphasis of the set being a dead animal anyways...) with a few Haradrim plus the other minifigures you suggested. Kill two birds with one stone, no?

I agree. The only scenes really worthy of being made into big D2C sets from the Hobbit are Dol Guldur, Erebor (possibly w/Smaug), Lake-town (possibly w/ Smaug), a brick built Smaug, or Bo5A. All of those have already being covered in wave three or two.

I understand this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I am not really sure what you expect from an official Minas Tirith set? The entire city is nothing but white with some very light gray here and there so why would I have a lot of color variation? I copied the front gate almost exactly using this model as a reference. As such I couldn't really use any interesting building techniques unless I made up my own version of Minas Tirith. While it might not be exactly thrilling, I thought the gates made for a much more interesting set than the 2013 Castle which was just a square with some towers. It didn't even have much detail or anything, just bright splashes of blue and lots of large molded wall pieces. I also thought it more interesting than several of Lego's "official" LotR/Hobbit sets like Dol Guldur Battle or Mirkwood Elf Army. Is your issue actually with the source material itself or something? Do you not like the way PJ made Minas Tirith? I am just not sure why you would make comments about the build and color when both were ripped right from the movie. I will say the piece count is rather high and play features are a bit lacking, but I already addressed both. I am probably going to come back and make the exploding wall feature, the gates bust open, and throw in some catapults (the catapults would literally take 5 seconds to add if they were to mimic Lego's style). I might also try to further reduce the size. The problem I was having with that is the set starts to look kind of lame when it's not very tall. I will probably try to cut back how much the walls jut out by 2-4 bricks and knock out another 4-6 bricks worth of height which should bring the piece count closer to 1400. Well the problem with having Eowyn,the Witch King, and the Fel beast in a separate set is it would be pretty expensive in it's own right. It would have to cost at least $50 to cover the large molded Fel Beast. There is also nothing that could be brick built in a set like that. Is Lego going to have us build some dusty plains? They COLD make the Fel Beast brick built, but then you run into the issue of it not looking as good and being out of place when used alongside everything else considering Smaug and several other creatures are all molded. As per the rest of your comments, I agree that Grond should probably be with the Minas Tirith set, but it's easily another 200+ pieces to get one that doesn't look ridiculous. This is why I was playing around with the idea of making it a separate $20 set. As is, the only realistic set I can think of for a $20 price point set is Treebeard and he really isn't needed that much considering the Ent with Orthanc looks fine. Of course I would love to just do a small battle pack, but that's totally unrealistic. That's why I think Grond might be pretty interesting, even though it's making the wave extremely Gondor/RotK heavy. I already have the Gondor Army builder set done so I will be posting that later on. I am still considering a Mumakil set.