MAB

If it doesn't do what I want it to do, I'd skip it. I don't care what badge is on the box. If it was just a lot of white bricks to build the city in architecture style, I'd definitely skip it. I have enough white bricks that I don't need more for MOCs. If it doesn't give me the minifigures I want, I'd skip it. If it only gave a couple of characters I want, I'd skip it and buy the ones I want on BL. For me, what we are really missing are the characters rather than the microscale location. I don't mind too much about Aragorn as king, but getting one would be nice. A decent Gondor torso (in multiples ideally) would be great, and official armour even better. A Faramir would be nice. An official Witch King (really just his helmet) excellent. If the set came with decent minifigures and parts that I don't have (especially LOTR themed decorated parts) I'd get it. But if it was just a parts pack with not much in that I don't already have, I'd skip it. I don't really care about LOTR sets, because I don't consider them as individual sets. I see them mainly as a way to get the minifigures and sometimes other useful parts. I keep very little as the set and typically modify or add to them or just as often redesign them completely. I think Minas Tirith might be the one location that is more divisive than any other. When people think of Weathertop, or Rivendell, or Helms Deep, Orthanc, Barad-Dur, or even The Shire, I think what most people think a set should look like is pretty similar. Whereas for Minas Tirith there are people on the whole city side and others on the scenes side, and personally I don't think the two can go into one. It worked OK for Rivendell as the building represents the whole location quite well even though the geography of the set is not correct. It worked for Barad-Dur as there are no close up scenes involving people interacting with the tower. But Minas Tirith is both big and has a lot of close up scenes.

It is one feature but not the only feature. But focussing only on that aspect would be fine if they decide to go for an Architecture style set and not bother with minifigures. There are also important scenes based on characters that happen at Minas Tirith, such as the lighting of the beacon, breach of the main gate, the crowning of Aragorn, or even just the architecture, courtyard and the white tree of the top level. None of those can be represented very well in microscale at the same time as being combined with minifigures. I would prefer to see either a minifigure scale top level or a microscale whole city done well, than a hybrid trying to do both done badly. And that IDEAS submission is done badly. If we end up with a minifigure based set of the whole city where each level is about the height of a minifigure, I'll skip it. Minas Tirith suggests different things to different people. To some it is the city itself, to some it is what happens there, to others it is the whole region including the Pelennor Fields. Just like when I think of The Shire, I think of rolling green hills with hobbit holes and not just a single building and a tree. Yet they still called the set "The Shire", instead of "Bag End" or "Bilbo's Birthday Celebrations".

Although we'll probably get a remake of the pirate ship ambush! :-)

Minifigure scale is perfectly possible for under $2000. They have done Rivendell and The Shire as minifigure scale sets. They just need to be selective about what is represented. It doesn't have to be the whole city to be Minas Tirith, just like Rivendell and The Shire are a small part of the named location.

I'm skipping it if they do something like that. It's bad at minifigure scale, and not very good at microscale.

I don't know if this will work as imgur is now blocked in the UK, but this is mine from about 10 years ago. The cape is custom but works just as well with plain black.

Sauron is probably the key figure in that set and not including him would probably have affected sales. None of the inside of the tower was in the movies so the whole minifigure scale side is made up. Whereas Gondor features in a number of scenes so I would expect them to focus on one aspect, rather than having characters in outfits from different stages of the movies. Having Denethor at the same time as Aragorn as king would look odd, whereas Aragorn in his regular outfit it would make more sense. I think Minas Tirith is more like Rivendell and The Shire when it comes to translating scenes into a set. And I think I'd prefer to see Aragorn as king, as Denethor is very easy to put together yourself whereas prints and a hairpiece for Aragorn in his king outfit is harder.

I imagine it would be the Creel house or a remake of the original upside down house or something from Season 5. It will have been 7 years since the original set, so a remake is not out of line especially given the rise of LEGO fandom since then. It would be interesting how they do the children. It is a bit like Harry Potter where they have gone from little kids to young adults. Fortunately they tend to have generic clothes so a leg switch can easily change their ages. I think I'd skip it if based on Season 3, by far the worst of them. But also I don't really see how they can do the mall and what is underneath it in a practical way.

If I am buying used figures, I want clear photos of the figures and not pictures of them posed in a scene, especially if the scene is not included.

Is that a guess or the leak? It seems a strange selection putting both King Aragorn and Denethor in the same set given that Denethor was dead prior to Aragorn becoming king.

Technic is not any different to other themes. If you want to learn to MOC with technic then build lots of official sets, then start making small models yourself before trying to design a large model.

It is also 20% off at £160 in the UK, but even at that price I'm leaving it. I got goats from the CMF series, superior Wolfpack figures from the CMF series, I picked up a few torsos online and I have plenty of bricks already. It almost went in the cart, but £160 feels like the price it should have been. Even with an apparently good ppp ratio for parts in colours I.often use.

Yes, infrequent updates to get new sounds or to change the use from City to Ninjago for example would be fine. Although of course even that dies when LEGO stops selling the sets and support and downloads of the app. Look at how fast they dumped the companion apps for Hidden Side and Vidiyo. Having to download apk files from what could be dodgy websites is never good.

I imagine NFC as that is quite cheap to implement (not that Bluetooth is that much more). Funny enough, I have a load of the blank Dimensions 'data' tags that I use for NFC arduino and raspi projects as they were cheaper to buy than importing the cheapest tags from aliexpress. When all the Dimensions sets were sold off cheap, BL sellers were getting rid of them at about 5p per token. If these are for kids I really hope they don't go down the bluetooth via app on tablet or phone again like with vidiyo, especially if they only support the latest expensive kit again.

Maybe LEGO are being clever here. They probably know that the Castle sets are for adults and that kids are perfectly happy with the licensed sets and Ninjago. Let BDP do the work, as this almost guarantees them sales of probably 50000 copies of a £250 set twice a year. Here, they have had to put 20% discount (combined with Insiders points and a GWP) on MTS to clear it.

It doesn't sound that interesting for AFOLs, it sounds like a trigger and response type toy. Put the trigger part close to the sensor and it makes a noise. Fun for 60 seconds but not much use after that. And no doubt it will massively increase the price of the sets it is in.

Three years later, they have done the new Brickheadz of the boys. I am also a bit surprised they aren't cashing in on the final season which is coming soon. I doubt they'd do a series of sets but with minor characters that have become main, they have maybe 12-14 characters so could surely do a $300 16+ or 18+ set.

If the larger one is the top, then I cannot really see how they could be combined. Unless of course you need to buy 10 of a smaller lower section to create a base for the big top section to be added. But then most of those would be covered up.

You could also get a baseplate or build a base out of plates and use that to store minifigures, or torsos and legs.

Proof? There were also discussions at the time that the split from 2 to 3 movies for The Hobbit messed-up the time line for the LOTR sets and they only signed a short term deal. Again, speculation. It would be Minas Tirith in the sense that it is a bit of Minas Tirith, just like Rivendell wasn't the whole of Rivendell but bits of it merged into one. Some people want the whole city with presumably no figures due to scale and hence that would be a very static architecture set. Others want the action of specific scenes which happen in certain parts of Minas Tirith with minifigures. Which of course leads to ... Yes, some will be pleased they get minifigures and minifigure scale buildings and the white tree while others are unhappy that they miss out on the microscale whole city, or vice versa. If they are only to do one Minas Tirith set, some won't be happy how it is done. Doing none is no better, and doing a bad hybrid is also likely to be worse than either option.

Yes but Barad-Dur is a tower, so it makes sense to have rooms inside.They are completely the wrong scale but they feel right because towers have rooms and so it works. There is not really anything that suggests scale on the outside so it just feels like the tower and minifigures work together even though the reality is that the tower should be much much larger. Whereas if they did the same with Minas Tirith, it would look pretty stupid since it would be a (presumably) single room inside the city. Any rooms should be inside a building, not inside a whole city. And given that most of the action takes place outside rather than inside, the minifigures should really be on the city side, not the inside. But any minifigures would seem out of place if placed on the microscale side, which is presumably why they used the smaller trophy figures in the Hogwarts sculpture set.

They did that first time around for whatever reason. I think it would be better to do something and please some rather than nothing and please none. To me, doing an architecture style microscale set when there are no other architecture style microscale sets would be a bit off as it wouldn't fit with everything else and still leaves a big gap. Whereas if they did a minifigure scale set it does. Once done and 'complete', they could always revisit and do a microscale set without minifigures if they think the demand is there.

It has been 15 years! I don't know if they still sell green but take a look at their website for the product range http://www.brickarms.com and look at the distributors and find one you can buy from.

If they were happy paying $400 for it, then yes they got a good deal.

Barad-Dûr sort of worked because it is a single building (albeit huge). So having rooms inside the tower works even though the scales are different. Whereas if they do Minas Tirith city like that and have rooms inside it, it wouldn't look right. Plus as you say, most of the important scenes happen outside so would need to be done on the microscale side. This is why I'd prefer minifigures with some buildings rather than microscale with no minifigures. I cannot see microscale with minifigures working. So yeah, I agree, it is going to disappoint one camp or the other.