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Itaria No Shintaku - whether or not the things discussed are true or not (I've never been there, so can't say from experience) it boils down to this: what does it matter what some random guy on the Internet says about your city/country? Answer: it doesn't. There's no point in getting upset, because it achieves nothing. I see weird/untrue/stereotyped stuff foreigners post about Finland all the time, and if anything I get a good laugh out of them even though they are easily interpreted as highly insulting. Meanwhile the planet keeps spinning like it always does. And more on the topic, it's a fantastic MOC. Anyone saying bad things about it is indeed most likely simply jealous.

At least it'd be easy enough to get the actual crossbows yourself from Pick a Brick, but it annoys me that there are no arrow pouch thingies there, and ordering from BL is a pain due to both item cost as well as shipping costs.

That was my main concern when seeing this, as well. Though personally if I do buy LOTR sets (which isn't a given at least at RRP), chances are I won't be buying multiples. Also the price in Finland will probably be a over the top, but I guess I'll find out eventually.

From what little I've looked at Kre-o, that seems to be true for all their sets that I've seen. LEGO Star Trek would've been awesome (LEGO Intrepid - want!), but couldn't really care less for Kre-o.

Personally I don't see the TIE Bomber being any worse than the other TIEs from the "blue" period. But I'd love a black-and-gray remake.

You know, for some strange reason I still haven't read The Hobbit. I've obviously read LotR, and additionally Silmarillion (I'm not sure if I actually read it even before reading LotR)... but not Hobbit. Need to rectify that before the movies come!

Heh, yes. Even if I make a planetary diorama with Imperial and Rebel troops, not sure what I'm gonna with 3 speeder bikes (or even more later, since I reckon I'll need even more troops to make a proper scene).

Well, I'm not sure if they could've done it any better, but I still don't like 'em. But of course ugly faces just makes the more... killable

The good thing about your plan is that the breastplates are so easy to get for Uruk-hai, as compared to say, the Kingdoms factions. You're pretty much left with BrickLinking them if you want to get a lot of those. Also, interesting idea with the pike! A more general note on the Uruk-hai soldiers... I really don't like their faces. The helmets are very nice, however.

As for the number of combinations... like myself, the designer doesn't seem to give shields to soldiers/uruk-hai with the halberd. I mean really, how would the dude swing that with just one hand? Obviously LEGO or even LotR is not about the realism, but I still never use shields with two-hand halberds. I do currently use the smaller "two-hand" axes on my Green Dragon soldiers together with a shield, but the halberd is at least twice the size of that one

Death Star. Should arrive next week!

I'd like to see a new TIE Interceptor in the same scale as the new TIE Fighter. A similarly scaled TIE Bomber would be cool, as well. On the Rebel side, a new A-Wing. Seems there's always many X-Wings and Y-Wings, but not so many A-Wings! I always liked A-Wings the best on the Rebel side. On the UCS side, a new regular Star Destroyer would be cool. A new standalone AT-ST would be nice too, but seems unlikely. I guess I might try BrickLinking the 2006 one instead at some point. Same thing with the Snowspeeder, I'd like a larger one than the one in Hoth Wampa Cave.

I'm not sure if I can pick between Blue Coats and Pirates... as a kid I think each side won just about as often

I'd say get it. You won't get better ones at anything near as low a price. The "cheap" ones you'll find at BL for example are most likely all from parted Chess sets. Here are a few comparison pics that I took between Chess figs and non-Chess figs. 1. Slit-helmet knight. One on the left is from Chess, one on the right is from Knights Showdown. The difference might not actually as big as the image might suggest, had to use natural light for the pic and didn't get the light to reflect off the armor evenly. Honestly the two are pretty much the same unless examined very closely side by side. But the chess one is a touch lighter shade of gray for the scales. 2. Broad brim soldier. On the left Chess, on the right Outpost Attack. This might the most noticeable difference you'll find - the shirt of the "common soldier". The difference between the basic shirt is about the same for the lions, less shiny/bright, slightly different color shade. Though light reflecting differently probably overemphasizes the difference for the dragon head. 3. On the left Chess, on the right from Mill Village Raid. Again the scales are a different shade, and a bit of difference in the chain part. I actually think the lighter scales look a bit better... 4. On the left chess, on the right Outpost Attack. Slight red hue to the white in the shirt for the chess soldier, and less shiny lion. So as can be seen, differences exist. But from an arm's length they're just not meaningful. Heck, you could just consider the less shiny ones more battle-worn and be done with it So unless you're extremely obsessive, there shouldn't be a problem. I have a definite obsessive streak myself, but I'm fine with them for the price. --- On the topic of Kingdoms continuing even further - I'd love if that were the case. It had such a short run, there's potential for much, much more. It would indeed even be possible to just add a third Kingdom, such as the Black Falcons. But I do find a large-scale continuation unlikely, since they'll most likely want to maximize LOTR sales as far as knight-ey stuff goes, so having Kingdoms alongside it probably would seem counter-productive to that end.

I'm not sure what the worst one would be for Star Wars, since in the end I'm not really familiar with that many - currently I have TIE Defender (which I like, despite the OP's misgivings ) and Ewok Attack, though I also have Death Star and TIE Fighter on the way... but I will say that a lot of the early sets seemed quite lackluster. I guess it's part of the reason why I drifted into my dark ages - just about everything in the catalogue from any theme in '99-'00 when SW came out seemed lackluster compared to what came before. So I kinda lost interest with so many other things taking up my time

Nice! Looks great, with plenty of figs... I wish I had that many stormtroopers I'm planning on some sort of Endor-ish MOC diorama eventually as well, but that'll take quite some time to get around to.

Stormtrooper!

Looks great! I never realized the "tail" of the LEGO SSD was that much shorter than in the movies. I've really wanted the set ever since first seeing it five weeks ago. Though I think it looks nice despite the inaccuracies... so I guess I might get it regardless. If I can afford it before it goes EOL, that is.

Only Queen Anne's Revenge for me, got and built it just yesterday. Certainly planning on getting more at some point since I never got any as a kid (compensation time!), though the old ships have such a nasty premium in their price that the timeframe for new additions is unknown.... or well, I suppose Brickbeard's Bounty wouldn't be that bad even as new & sealed, though it's quite small as well... almost as expensive per piece as a new Imperial Flagship.

My beaten, worn and bruised pirate captain from the '89 mini figure pack beats the living crap out of my new Jack Sparrow (or Blackbeard for that matter) any day, any time, any place! Too bad he's missing his hook hand these days, though. But hmm, ol' cap'n beating the crap out of Jack Sparrow... I'd say that's almost pic-worthy, will have to consider that.

I didn't see a problem with the quality of my Chess set. I did just now compare chess and non-chess soldier/knight figs side by side. Sure there's a difference, but honestly I'm not very bothered about it. The main difference appears to be that the non-chess ones are shinier, mostly in the golden parts. And the pearl dark grey helmets and such have more of a shine as well. So overall the chess set is more subdued, but I only really noticed the difference once I specifically started looking for it. So for the price, I can't really complain. For example I'd like to buy the Prison Tower Rescue set, but that costs as much as one and a half chess sets while having only 5 figures and only 365 pieces in general. So the PTR feels like a ripoff, considering I'd mostly want it for the mounted Lion knight.

Didn't the license already expire? Which means they couldn't re-do it even if they wanted to. I just hope it means they'll bring back non-licensed pirates. Hopefully new cool ships in the vein of Imperial Flagship, which I missed during my dark ages and is pricey now

Possibly a new Kingdoms set? That would be great. It sucks that they discontinued the line after having only such a short time. It seems to be the best Castle theme so far - I've looked at the sets from '95 until now which I didn't follow during my "dark ages", but none of them seem as good as Kingdoms. Luckily I've managed to snatch up a lot of the sets at a fair price in the last 5-6 weeks, though still missing some - King's wagon, Prison Tower, the small Prison, and Joust. Of those I'd mostly want the knights from the prison sets, and Joust. I could've gotten the wagon, but skipped as it didn't fit into my planned diorama idea and seemed expensive for what it was. Of course since then I've gotten into my head that I want one of each Kingdoms set regardless... pfff. Anyway, hard to speculate what the new set would be. I suppose a Black Falcon set would be cool, since they were my main army back in the day, but I don't think it's that likely, since in the end the Kingdoms theme is about the Lions and Green Dragons. A Dragon castle would make sense, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Queen Anne's Revenge It wasn't marked down or anything really, but didn't want to risk it going unavailable entirely!

This, pretty much. I liked it as a kid that Classic Pirates didn't really have any personalities per se, you could make 'em up easily enough without thinking "yeah this is Jack Sparrow (not that there was such a thing as Jack Sparrow 20+ years ago!), but I'm just gonna call him Bob..." But with that said, I literally just now received Queen Anne's Revenge, and based on pictures it looks like the best-looking Pirate-themed ship to date. I always wanted a Pirate/Imperial ship as a kid, but my parents couldn't afford 'em (especially given there were 4 kids, and if you get one something, you gotta get everyone something). But as fondly as I remember longing for those ships, I must admit that QAR has them beat as a ship looks-wise. I suppose the best thing would be to replace the crew with Classic Pirates... but nah, I guess I'll just leave it as it is once I build it (starting that within the hour). Other PotC sets don't really do much for me though. Even the Black Pearl is far inferior to QAR. So most likely any potential further Pirate purchases will be Classic, not PotC.