Deathleech

Ya, I would like some more information/credibility for these rumors before I get all excited about them. As is they are pure speculation in my eyes, just like the guy claiming his Lego store manager told him the LotR line was ending after one wave... and we all know how that turned out

Not really much to see, he listed names, piece count, and minifigs. That was it. It was something like Betrayal at Isengard for $100 and had 5 orcs, Saruman, and Gandalf and 1038 pieces, Treebeard set with 467 pieces and Merry Pippin and an orc, and a bridge set with brick built Balrog and Gandalf and 257 pieces. Something like that.

Same here. The Hobbit wave has absolutely no army builders or battle packs so I will probably just pick up 2 of every set, then for any extra wargs/orcs/goblins I want I will save myself a ton of money and just buy them off BL or eBay them individually. To contrast I ended up getting 5 Orc Forge sets and 21 Uruk-hai Army sets.. so if Lego wants my money they just need to include a half way decent army builder or battle pack in the next LotR wave (pleeeeease give us some battle packs with Easternlings, proper Gondor/Rohan Soldiers, Haradrim, and ORCS!). Source? I'm a little skeptical because those sets seem a bit unlikely. First off why would they release them in March when the Hobbit wave is due out just a few months earlier in December? Why not release them in May or June like last years LotR wave? Also 60 bucks for a set that only has Merry, Pippin, and an orc with a brick built Treebeard? To me that sounds like a Shelob Attacks sized set. Treebeard being the same size as Shelob about, and having 3 minifigs. The bridge set also seems a little high priced and has even fewer minifigures!

That's what I did with all my Uruk-hai Army sets. I took the very first Eomer and put the right helm, head, and cloak on him. For all the rest I left the cape off and mixed and matched pieces from Eomer and the Rohan Soldier. Not including weapons, and counting both face prints for each head, that gave me a total of 32 unique combinations. Add in the weapons and it's well over 90. Still, they start to look a bit redundant after a few dozen...

I doubt we will either at this point, but you never know. They added Bifur a few days after Thorin despite coming in the same set, and they just added the orc from the Goblin King Battle set shown off almost two weeks ago. He is suppose to be the short goblin in the Goblin King Battle set. Other than that we have no info on him. I assume he is some kind of record keeper, though who knows what that means since he is an orc! Here are the new torsos:

Nice! So it appears the orcs in Goblin Town are slightly different than those that ride the Wargs? The bio for Yazneg doesn't say much at all, and it appears the one for Scribe is still missing or not going to be done? Thanks! It appears that in addition to the Warg we also get a look at the watcher in the water, Sauron, and some Mordor Orcs with slightly different torso printing (sorry if these were featured in a previous LotR video game video, I haven't really been keeping up with them)? Thanks for the pics! Any chance you can take some of Fili and Kili?

I must be missing it, but I don't see the video. Link por favor?

If anyone else has any pics of custom Rohan soldiers they have made, I would love to see them. Also if you are listing parts, a link to the Bricklink piece would help immensely. Especially with all the different variants out there.

I wouldn't say they got to "revel in their prohpecies". It was more like the three or four people claiming the line was cancelled got chastised and called out for such ridiculous claims when everthing pointed to the line continuing for at least a few more years. Btw the Elrond figure looks amazing. If the hair the same mold as Legolas hair, except in brown? I assume so but just want to make sure...

That was the logic most people used, but for awhile there were some people claiming the LotR line wasn't doing well and that we would only see one LotR wave. Of course most of us figured that was beyond silly, especially when there was no evidence supplied to back up these claims, and in fact just the opposite with a video of the CEO saying the LotR line was doing very well when asked about other license themes. I mean using logic why would Lego pay a boatload of money for a license only to create one wave for it? And furthermore they left out several very big, iconic sets, and it made no sense to end the line before the biggest driving force was even out (The Hobbit movie). I must say even though I doubted these claims that the LotR line was ending after one wave, it still feels great to get SOME confirmation the line will continue. A big sigh of relief if you will. This makes me very excited for next years wave(s). I assume Lego will have the Hobbit be the winter/year end wave and the LotR wave be the summer one each year, until the final Hobbit movie when they will probably do two Hobbit waves in a row and push the usual summer LotR wave back to winter. I really hope next summer we get: March of the Ents - $12.99 - a single brick built Ent that can be made to look like Treebeard, or has several other builds to look like one of the other Ents The Witch King Duel - $19.99 - Eowyn, Merry, the Witch King with Fel Beast Mordor Orc Army - $29.99 - 2 Gondor Soldiers, 4 Mordor Orcs, piece of wall that can be added to Minas Tirtih set to bulk it up more Balrog Attacks - $39.99 - Gandalf the Gray, Frodo, 3 Moria Orcs, a brick built bridge and Balrog and maybe a pillar or case of stairs that can go with the Mines of Moria set Either Saruman or Sauron's Tower - $79.99 - Saruman's tower would probably make a little more sense, but man I would love a Sauron minifigure. If Saruman's tower they could have Saruman, Wormtongue, 1-2 Mordor Orcs and maybe an Ent with Pippin and Merry Minas Tirith Defense - $199.99 - D2C(?) - huge Minas Tirith set with Denethor, Faramir, Gothmog, Gandalf the White, Pippin in Gondor attire, 1-3 Gondor Soldiers, 2-4 -Mordor Orcs, a mountain troll. This of course would be the huge flagship set of the wave and coulb ebe combined with the Mordor Orc Army set to further expand it. It could also include a battering ram for the orcs. If we got these sets I would consider every main set pretty much covered and could die happy with only 2 waves. Of course I would absolutely love to see more sets down the line like Rivendell or something more with the elves, the cavern of the undead, and some battle packs for all the main faction (Gondor, Rohan, Easterlings, Haradrim, each orc type), just to name a few

After getting several Uruk-hai Army sets I have started to notice my Rohan soldiers really starting to look way to similar and redundant. I tried using Eomer without his cape as a basic grunt and switching his helm/head/torso/legs with the Rohan archer, but this only allows for so many combinations and still they all have either the orange or light brown facial hair. Unlike with the Uruk-hai there just aren't that many possible combinations for Rohan soldiers atm unless you look outside the LotR line. Luckily they are a somewhat rag tag band so you can easily switch some pieces out and get a really distinct looking army that still feels very Rohan-esque. With that said, I am now turning to Bricklink to further customize my Rohan army. My question is what helms/heads/torsos/legs have people found to work really well as basic Rohan grunts? I would obviously prefer flesh color heads as those are what the rest of the LotR line is done in. I would also prefer the newer, really highly detailed pieces to better mesh with my exisiting LotR minifigures (no Harry Potter heads from 8 years ago please!). So, what can you guys come up with? I would prefer not to have to do any modding such as painting or cutting/modling. Even so, here are some great custom figures from General Magma to give you a general idea of what I am going for!

I liked the gold in the windows much more than the current black you have, it made them pop a lot more. I also think the roof still looks kind of odd with the red only being in the corner and in a few other spots throughout the roof. I'm not sure all black would help much either because it seems so stark, maybe a different color completely? Or if you do use black, maybe make a trim around the roof top, sides, and bottom to make it stand out more? As for the other additions, I am totally digging the well/water fountain, the swampy area in the back with all the vegetation, and the new court with the statue. When you add the vines back in going up the tower I think this part of the MOC will look even more AMAZING!

Lol! You got Frodo so scared with his eyes are going white, Sam and Pippin both terrified and screaming.. and Merry sitting there with a little smrik on his face. Classic (I realize you did this because his face doesn't have a really scared look)! Also, I noticed the minifigures look a little different and then I noticed it's because they have normal legs on them and appear taller, even sitting down! Of course you had to do this since the short hobbit legs don't bend

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who can't stand the Brickshow. I mean the guy posted a video over 7 minutes long and his review of the figure stopped a little over half way through, at which point he proceeded to drone on and on about focus groups or something he was pretending to be knowledgeable about. And really that's my biggest gripe with the Brickshow, and especially the younger brother, they get too off topic and start talking about random things (and worst yet usually they don't even give correct facts/information about them). Of course I have tons of other problems with the show too, like how they will do horrible music fades and the music will crank up while one of them is still talking at the end, or how he seems to just pause for no apparent reason multiple times in a video, but that's a whole nother story. As for the Chima line I would LOVE to see a panda and rhino faction added on.

Supposedly it's extremely hit and miss with Wal-Mart clearances from what I have read in other threads. A totally random Wal-Mart may clearance a set to 80% off for three days and then put it back at full MSRP, while no other Wal-Mart in a 100 mile vicinity has any clearance at all. If I ever found Helm's Deep for 57 you can betch your sweet bum I would buy every set they had out, but unfortunately I do not count on ever finding them seeing how fickle Wal-Mart is with their clearances.

It's interesting to see this debate still going some three months after it was initially started and how much things have changed in that time. Two Hobbit movies is now three, Friends sets are selling like hot cakes, etc.. I totally disagree with this. I took no more than a couple hours one day and came up with roughly 23 LotR sets. Mind you those were totally different, extremely iconic sets and battle packs, not some of the more obscure sets they could do like the Prancing Pony or Bilbo's Birthday. And like I said, this was from the LotR films alone. Add in the Hobbit and you are easily looking at 15 more sets minimum, and that's not even including all the extra stuff PJ is suppose to add like the Battle of Dol Guldur or any of the Radagas footage. That's almost 40 totally unique sets which could be spread across 6 or 7 waves. Then take those, and figure Lego could go back and re-do a lot of sets like the did with SW (either update them or make smaller sets into bigger ones or vis versa for example make Mines of Moria a $30 set) and you are EASILY looking at 4-8 years worth of set. Like others have pointed out, it's really not fair to be bashing the LotR theme for this so early in the line's life cycle. Of course we aren't going to get Galadriel or Arwen just yet, neither has an on screen presence of more than 15-20 minutes in the movies. Then on top of that factor in we needed to get the full Fellowship + some bad guys in the FIRST wave to start with. If we havn't gotten them by the 4th or 5th line you would have a reason to complain, but to bring it up so early in the line's release is just silly. I think LotR is at a serious disadvantage as of right now. As I said in another thread, the LotR franchise has basically seen no advertising or media attention given to it in nearly 10 years. Sure we are getting a video game in a few weeks, and the Hobbit movie in a month, but as of right now there is almost nothing selling the LotR line. No cartoon, no game, nothing. Add to that the fact the LotR movies are all rated PG-13 and a little more adult oriented, while the Star Wars are more kid friendly at PG (most Lego sets are aimed at kids in the 6-14 range so LotR is barely hitting that age demographic), and you just have a much tougher sell. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the first LotR wave had mediocre sales because of this. I just hope Lego gives the line some time and sees how well it does after the first Hobbit film is released, when the Lego line should get a huge jolt of energy. As for the original question asked, it does seem like the Friends sets are doing a little better as of right now. It';s really hard to say without actual sales figures though. I mean maybe LotR was expected to be a huge hit so their production runs were substantially larger than the Friends ones, which weren't expected to do well like their predecessors before them so they had much smaller production runs. It's easy to say a line is doing really well, and sets are flying off the shelves if you only have a box or two of sets shipped to a store because you don't anticipate a huge demand.

I really like this MOC, especially the trees and how you captured the layout pretty much perfectly. My only criticism would be the dark green 1x2 plates you have scattered throughout. They don't look so much like patches of grass/moss as just randomly placed Lego bricks. Maybe if you placed a few more in each area, and had some different color green or something it would blend better? Or maybe if you did the ground green with some brown spots instead (inverse the two colors)? As is right now they just seem to stick out a lot.

It's hard to tell in the picture, but do the steps in the basement lead to a door/the second level? And are their stairs or ladders or anything going to the top? Regardless if there is or not, I think it looks superb! A back view would be really nice of this thing! I really like the top and middle levels the most I think. The top gives the hint something might be there, but who would guess a bunch of dwarves living below!

Supposedly they are available at Legoland Discovery Centers, but other than that I have not heard of them being anywhere else here in the U.S. And even then, the Discovery Centers seems hit and miss. There is VERY little info available about the polybags like I mentioned before in this thread.

I really love the design of this minifigure and if Lego made it into a battle pack of 4 for $15 I would probably buy 20 in a heart beat. It's spot on and looks amazing: And here is a bunch of them with their shields:

Ya, generally speaking BL is much better. You can get a Uruk-hai minifig in full armor for like $2.75 there vs the 4 bucks on eBay. That's not even the worst of it. However for the Uruk-hai polybag BL was actually much worse when I was checking with the lowest being 12 bucks and eBay having some deals for around 7-8. As for Riddles for the Ring, it's most likely going to be $9.99 here in the U.S. which is exactly where it should be. It was quoted at $9.99 in a few previews that came out around the time of NYCC and was listed at that for a contest where it was one of the prizes.

In the book Bilbo finds the ring laying on the ground near where he passes out. It looks like the rock formation is suppose to represent the island Gollum lives on in the cave, so it appears this is something different in the movie from the book. That, or Lego just totally went off and did their own thing so this set has a play feature.

I think they were available earlier this month, but it seems some people literally bought or took hundreds of them to sell at jacked up prices on eBay. I can only assume this is the case because most the eBayers selling them are located in the same city as a Legoland Discovery Center and I don't know of any other way to currently get them in the U.S.

Thanks for the review. I don't mind the rock piece as I think it looks alright and has a decent function. Bilbo in his red coat also looks fantastic, and the same Gollum mold with a different face is ok. What really bugs me about this set is the boat though. I think it looks horrible and the bones just look off. I guess they did that to keep the set price down so they didn't have to include one of those molded boats from the Pirates line, but it just looks awful imo. At least this time the smallest set is only $9.99 vs the $12.99 that Gandalf Arrives was (though I feel Gandalf Arrives was superior, even if it was the worst set in the first LotR wave).