tvih

I agree that Helm's Deep just isn't a good match. Aside from the different style, just like the King's Castle it's just way too small compared to the MMV buildings to be placed near them!

Not to mention Finland being even more expensive than Germany, with even Uruk-hai army already being 10 euros higher in price...

Actually, the "wings" of the various TIE ships indeed ARE solar panels

Oh, don't go changing it on my account, since I think I'm probably the only one who thinks that way! My comment was more just a general observation based on my own personal preference, but to back it up a bit more on a closer look... It's true the SSD has/should have the trenches, which are not as clear on the 10221... but at the same time the LEGO model manages to create that sense of extra detail. Yours just seems so... smooth? And it's not just the tops of the "buildings", but the sides also feel so uniform. I mean, if you look at shots like this of the studio model, there's not a smooth or uniform section in sight. Obviously with LEGO there's plenty of limitations in trying to implement such tiny details. Your city are does look nice, but personally I prefer the busier look of the 10221 in that one regard, even if some of the underlining structure loses definition as a result. Oh, and there is one additional "caveat" - I often find it difficult to compare LDD/render pics to photos of physical LEGO model, they're just not quite the same! Yours might look better as the real thing, who knows?

Well, even the BSB only has half a deck. It's a nice compromise for a ship of that size, though.

Clearly it should've been Escape From the Lion Harbor Prison Rescue Attack where the Lion guard soldiers escape from the attacking Dragon rescue soldiers

Nice review. The minifigs indeed seem nice, although I must say that while the Sandtroopers look nice, regular stormtroopers would work better with the stuff I have planned. Biggest problem is the price though. $20 is indeed nice as you say, but 30 euros - the price in Finland - is just too much for what's included

On the value for money... that's one thing where I'm not so impressed with Joust. I mean mainly when you compare it to the MMV. Both have about the same amount of bricks, and both have mostly small bricks, so it's comparable in that regard. But the thing is, I can't get Joust cheaper than about 128 euros shipped, while MMV I can find for under 100 euros shipped (right now it'd be only 90 euros, but I'm broke!). And Joust really is a set that needs two copies to really shine, so it's even worse than that compared to MMV which does perfectly fine on its own. Bah. Maybe I should just take some people's advice on another forum and give up on the mega-diorama and do smaller ones for each individual set (with MOC expansions for MMV possibly) At least then there's no problems with "compatibility" and whatnot.

Ah bummer. The more I look at the comparison shots etc, the more I want to have the more accurate version I will say that I prefer the "city" area of the 10221, but yours definitely looks better for the rest of the ship. The 10221 being as pricey as it is (over 400 euros even in the cheapest place - 449 from S@H) it's getting harder and harder to "forgive" the flaws compared to these great MOCs as of late. Damn you!

Yup... the main problem is the gold-trimmed helmet which makes him stand out a bit, but I guess it's one of the compromises one has to make to make the figure useful.

Exactly. As I mentioned it would be possible to mod doors to it, but it probably wouldn't look all that good... might have to give it a try in LDD though. But I feel using it as anything but seems kinda strange too. Arch of Triumph perhaps, but why would such a thing be in a very small village. Then again the same can be said for an elaborate outer wall, I guess. So indeed the main weak point of this set is integrating it sensibly with other sets! Yup, one of the primary reasons - aside from space issues - why I figured I'd use it separately. I mean I like the look of the KC for the most part, but compared to MMV and Joust it's a bit plain, there's no denying that. I also toyed with the idea of mashing Joust and KC together to form a nicer castle, but I think with how many wall elements KC uses and how different the two are in general, the benefit would from using up the KC that way would be small Of course I also toyed with the idea of an entirely MOC castle (which I still probably will do at some point, but not for this diorama), but in the end I bought the Kingdoms sets because I liked them as such, so it kinda makes no sense to not use them as they are! It would've been nice to get all sets into the same diorama, but I guess I'll have to compromise.

While I agree that the price is quite nice, one has to remember that it also has less large parts than many sets. For example if you compare MMV and MVR, the MVR barn is as big as the MMV buildings, and while the windmill is smaller the MMV also has nearly a 1000 more pieces! But in any case MMV is still definitely good value. I'd love to get a second one, but might not be able to. I feel like I'm going a bit offtopic again posting about my MMV/MVR/Joust/etc diorama... so I'll put it in spoiler tags to make it optional

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the Imperial Flagship literally the only ship with an actual deck rather than only putting stuff on the "bottom" of the ship? As far as achieving that I suppose the problem lies in the ship having to be very large to accommodate such a design, at least if you want to have enough space below the deck for figs to stand.

Awwwww crud, why didn't I see this earlier? Those classic pirate figs went for such a ridiculously low price! I don't check the pirate forum all that often since there's no current products that'd interest me much... figures that'd come back to bite me in the end. EDIT: Well looks like the BSB went for a low price too, but can't see if he'd have shipped it abroad anyway.

While I like it, I'm having a slightly hard time figuring out how exactly I'm going to integrate it into my village diorama. For one, I'd possibly need two of them to make the towers closed. Secondly I don't think the wall buildings would really work that well. Unless I end up doing with the whole thing what I might have to do with the MMV buildings - put them at the edge of the diorama so that you still get access to the interior semi-"realistically". But that would indeed limit overall placement of the whole thing quite a bit, and in a way I'd prefer not to leave buildings open. Meh. If I were to use two of them and ditch the wall segments, I suppose it'd end up being an "Arch of Triumph" style of building.

I decided I want to create the scene of Boromir's death - one of my favorite scenes - where he has fallen and there's a boatload of dead Uruk-hai... but man, that'll get expensive. Just to get Boromir, I'd need to buy Mines of Moria unless I BL him. And of course a few Uruk-hai armies to get some corpses... well ok, I suppose for a small vignette even just on army set would suffice. Ugh. Fun thing with the Uruk-hai armies is that the Finnish price is nearly 20 cents per piece for it. Looks like it and any other LOTR sets will have to be ordered from Germany... Will see when I can actually afford any of 'em.

Only back from my Dark Age for a month and a half, so my collection is still quite modest: Death Star, TIE Fighter (newest version), TIE Defender, Ewok Attack and two Endor battle packs. So not a huge total "worth", using the prices I paid for them it's about 480 euros or so. All built except the battle packs (though I reckon I'm gonna build one of 'em just now - not that there's much to build). Not sure how far I'll expand the collection, since I can't afford to pay aftermarket prices for stuff, and of the current line there's not much that interests me - mainly the Super Star Destroyer and UCS R2-D2 and possibly Imperial Shuttle. Probably can't afford 'em before December, though.

My plan is to place MMV in the same Kingdoms diorama as Mill Village Raid (and either King's Castle or Joust), though it doesn't seem like a perfect match, as MMV just looks much better. Also planning on adding a small additional MOC house in the style of MMV, already designed it in LDD (not that there was much design needed for such a basic house). I've not yet made a thread here about the diorama, because I won't have the bricks to build the terrain for the next several months at least To give an idea of the size, it currently seems the largest construction base I have available is 128x96 studs, though I would've wanted even more space. Anyway, as far as fitting companion sets go, I'd definitely go with Joust, since as Hive said it fits not just by style, but also theme.

Very nice for this scale! Do you know how many bricks you used? Unless I missed, it wasn't mentioned in the thread. Just curious :)

I probably would buy a second set to keep sealed if I could afford doing that, but even buying one set is expensive enough for my financial situation

A very funny idea, and a win well deserved

Sure you can switch 'em around... if you have some to switch around with! Not everyone necessarily has. And while it is indeed a battlepack of sorts, it's expensive for that purpose especially for the good guys. As for the '80s, personally I never had sets with such a huge number of figs anyway. My biggest set by far was the Black Falcon Fortress - it was my only castle - with a "whopping" 6 figs and 2 horses. It had two "knights" and four "soldiers", which seemed like a reasonable ratio at the time. Mostly they spent their time fighting my older brother's Forestmen from the Camouflaged Outpost. I would've loved to get some of the bigger castles, but with our family's finances always being very tight, it never came to be. And yes, LotR has a lot of main characters. But that you only get ONE generic human soldier from the entire first wave? I don't expect 9 main characters and 27 generic characters, but only having one is a bit silly. Especially as it's unlikely that the Hobbit sets and other new LotR will help much in that regard either. Main concern, perhaps not. But honestly, that's what kids do when you give them a battle set. Burying your head in the sand about it doesn't change that. The Fellowship and Sauron's/Saruman's armies don't exactly go hugging each other, now do they. In any case, I guess in the end it's each to their own what they prefer. Even part-swapping doesn't really help that much in that you still wouldn't be easily be able to create a bunch of soldiers that have the same armor etc (i.e. uniformity). I'd prefer a means of getting some generic soldiers instead of only heroes, that's all. Your opinion/mileage may - and obviously does - vary.

I fully agree that the sets are sorely lacking in "generic" human/elven soldiers. It's just one "main character" after another. Sure one can try to imagine them to be something else, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be more normal soldiers. Even with my non-licensed childhood stuff it would've seemed a bit strange to - for example - have only mounted knights with breastplates and pointed-visor helmets and no "grunts" at all. While I buy stuff to display rather than play with now as an adult, the scenes just seem "wrong" with little to no generic soldiers. Like it or not, in any given large-scale battle it's the nameless and faceless soldiers of Rohan and other nations that did most of the killing, no fair to not even inclulde them in the sets The Rohan soldier in the Uruk-hai army set is literally the only non-named character on the good side as far as I can tell. That's just silly. There doesn't even appear to be an actual battle pack to solve that problem. One important thing with this is also to realize that with the above being the case the good side lacks any notable "cannon fodder". If a kid is playing with the set(s) and actually likes to keep his/her heroes alive as per the story, there aren't exactly a plethora of characters one the good side to kill off as not to have an entirely one-sided slaughter. The only heroes that die are Haldir and Boromir. Not much variety in that sense. And yes, obviously one can kill off others, nothing stopping them, but I have a feeling not every kid wants to do that - my favorite childhood minifigs were certainly known to go in a killing spree if they were starting to get outmatched! Thus, the solution: cannon fodder!

Nice and very detailed review! Somehow it seems everyone but me is in love with the castle itself. Granted, it's different from other LEGO castles, but I don't know, even with all the functionality like the exploding wall and even the new bricks I just can't help the feeling that it just seems a bit... dull visually? I guess I just miss the extra bit of color variation like what is found in the 7946 King's Castle (though obviously Helm's Deep always was basically all-grey in the movie), as well as being a little disappointed with the size. Still not a bad castle by any means, though. And as far as building it seems that there's not many big castle wall element sections used, which is nice.

True enough about the Uruks, I suppose... personally I'd need several brown crossbows and a large pile of quivers for my Kingdoms Lion army (already bought several PDG ones). I guess I'll have to BL them eventually. In general the Pick a Brick selection is disappointingly small Often it seems to lack even a lot of basic brick, or at least the color you'd want.