MAB

Other people would have a problem paying that much though. A better solution is a smaller official set that sells well to many people, and people that want a huge display build a moc.

Aside from the early days when for a few months of coming in and quickly going out of stock, I think BF minifig parts haven't been out of stock for a few years now.

No. So you would cancel some of the best selling themes and let other manufacturers pick them up, while LEGO tries to produce similar style sets that won't compete. And dumping an important Disney property is likely to make Disney to shift all their properties to another brick building company. Losing big sellers would make buyers shift brands, market share would drop and you'll get less variety of unlicensed sets available. So you are happy with licenses in Speed Champions?

Not really, as the book nook is not a large ICONS set. We have also had Brickheadz retail sets but those are not counted in the three.

I did last week. Copied above.

But ... look at my hoard. Look at my hoard! Just as bad are the 'deals' ones where 10% or 20% off counts as a massive deal and is "great value" and you should follow these affiliate links to buy these great deals. Yet people watch these "I bought LEGO" videos and the creators get paid commission by youtube, which they then spend on LEGO and the cycle continues. Someone must enjoy the content.

I thought LEGO were not operating in Russia due to payment sanctions over the war.

I've still got some of the Atlantis squid warriors. I wonder if they will become sought after for statues soon.

They don't need to appeal to everyone, they need to appeal to enough people that are going to buy enough of them. They are perfect army builders and that type of figure appeals to people that would buy lots of them. Not only that but every figure would be of interest to the same person, so there is no worry about what they get. So fans of the figures would buy complete boxes in the knowledge that every single figure is useful.

I just realized for The Shire, 9 minifigures are included but none of them have traditional minifigure posable legs. I doubt we'd get 5 horses in a big set let alone a relatively small set. The much larger LKC only got two horses and a cow.

Licensed ideas are fine for IDEAS. Many of them are licensed.

If they did the Grey Havens, I'd expect it to be a very nice boat and a bit of dockside. LEGO still loves boats.

LEGO aren't currently doing small/medium sized playsets for LOTR and I doubt that will change when the big adult sets are a success. If we get Minas Tirith, I expect to to be a big all-in-one set rather than spread out across multiple sets. They have shown with "The Shire" that they are willing to do one location in detail (Bag End) with other parts of the wider location done as separate builds. Thus it wouldn't surprise me if they did Minas Tirith as the facade of the hall and courtyard / tree as the main build, with a separate little rocky build with the beacon, and a bit of wall and the gate as a further separate build. One main build, two smaller side builds but all in the same adult focused box. When it comes to the White Tree of Gondor, I hope they use a different designer than for The Shire for obvious reasons.

I find Eowyn and Denethor are generic enough that you can make decent minifigures from existing parts. Faramir is not too bad but really needs a Gondor torso to be done well. Obviously the Witch King is the hard one here as the helmet is so iconic, it essentially is him. Fortunately you can buy third party helmets (well, complete figures, but it is the helmet that is important) on aliexpress. I don't have any issue with my original Gandalf the White, Saruman, etc. All are as good as the day they were new. For me, the point of LOTR was the storyline of the (mainly) named characters, not just big battles and army building. I typically use about 5 Gandalfs and 2 Theodens at once, as I prefer small vignettes of different scenes. I have probably another 30 Gandalfs as they were dirt cheap about 12 years ago and the body parts make good generic rangers. That is not to say some Gondor and Haradrim soldiers would not be welcome but even then so long as they did a torso with enough detail on that woudl be fine for building a small army. Personally, I find huge armies lined up on a baseplate rather boring.

I imagine they will be available while any sets that contain them are still on shelves, plus a few months. That is when they usually retire them from PAB but still have stocks for replacement parts. Although it could be longer if they have large stocks available. Of course, you cannot buy complete figs on PAB, but actually the parts for the figures. This means that some parts might go out of stock before others. So even if the shield or the legs went out of stock, you could still buy other parts, for example. However, I doubt the bricklink price will go above about 1.50 Euro for the BF torso or 1.00 Euro for the legs for next five years. There are huge amounts already on bricklink and in reseller storage ready for bricklink. That will keep the price down for a long time if you miss the PAB stock. I know people like their new modern look, but I prefer the modern BF torso to be paired with black arms and plain black legs, with a black conical / neck protector helmet. They look a bit more traditional and can also be posed without the printed legs looking strange.

That is where using what is available is necessary. I collected a number of the Basil / Batlord figure. I keep one as the leader, then use black arms and legs and a plain black conical helmet to make foot soldiers using the other torsos. I never really got into Black Knights, I found them too multicoloured. But I have a faction based on the Hun torso plus black helmets. It is a case of when you find a good torso, get them as they usually work well with plain legs, matching arms and helmet. And if they have a shield, that is even better.

Classic Space and Pirates fans have it worse. Castle fans have had it rather good recently with all the parts for Black Falcon and Lion Knights on PAB so easy to build large armies, along with barding for horses and shields if needed. When first released before the price increases, you could get torsos for about 80p, legs about 50p, a head for 20p and a basic helmet for 20p. So that is equivalent to about 2 Euro for a complete figure. Plus castle fans have access to Wolfpack figures now and Batlord figures for parts to build a dark army if willing to put in the effort to search for them. And for peasants, the goatherder can be picked up for about 2 Euro (without goat). There have also been various civilian torsos and those from the vikings available on PAB, all good for castle settings.

You might get lucky and have only a 4 sided box, with no top! I've not been interested at all in this set since the original leak for the same reason. I expect it to be a 16x16 plate with walls on three sides and a little vignette in the middle. With a Gandalf minifigure (which I already have lots of) and a fairly flat and small brick built Balrog.

That looks great. Just make sure not to put any LEGO logos on it or near it when trying to sell it. The economics of something like this can be difficult. You have to work out what you could realistically sell it for and then price up getting the parts. If the numbers are close, then it is not worth doing. The amount you sell it for has to be significantly above what the parts cost. Getting parts for MOCs can be time consuming but doing it for yourself is a labour of love. If you are doing it to sell them, it has to be worth the time it takes to both source them, and to sort, pick and package them which of course is not quick when you are using over 1000 pieces. People might also look at it and think I can buy a real LEGO set with better value. Ad of course LEGO has a great advantage in that they can make the parts much cheaper than consumers can source them.

That is very nice. Even though blocky up close the rust works well from a distance. But to make it more realistic needs even more graffiti plus a couple of homeless people sitting next to a fire in a bin. Or maybe a mainly black carriage where someone has burnt it out.

An issue with it is that they might not have the moulds used for some of the accessories and headgear any more where they were exclusive to the CMF. The early series had numerous parts that were made in a (non-LEGO) factory in China and I don't think they use that factory any more since they have had their own ones built since then. Parts that were produced there might either need to be redeveloped or they skip those characters. For example the Roman soldier helmet, the gladiator helmet, the graduate's mortarboard, the Spartan helmet, etc have not been seen for over a decade.

Yes, I meant the actual design makes it looks like it has been placed too far back. They selected a different colour for that bit so I don't understand why they didn't go for the continuous flow. I wonder if they had a more detailed design using more parts and were told to cut it down and so to make lots of changes and missed something like that when updating it. Same with the tree. I cannot believe any designer would be satisfied with producing that. I treat LAN reviews as LEGO adverts with more close up photos than available on the website and press release. Nobody is going to say anything bad and risk getting cut off, especially the youtube ones where they get both the free stuff from LEGO and get paid by youtube for views. Yeah, I prefer the stacked plates as you can have a bit more variation rather than the same radius smooth curves everywhere. And given that the pieces they would be replacing are large (and expensive to them going by PAB prices), using plates would increase the part count without increasing the cost. As you say, adding a few flowers or foliage can help break the continuous smooth edges. Even just a 1x1 cheese slope by the left hand chimney would help disguise the hard edge left where the curved slope butts up against the chimney. Tiny details make it look unfinished.

It also shows just how dominant those big round pieces are in the landscaping. The tan path looks a bit like it has been placed one stud too far back on the left.

The butterbeer cups from HP also make useful alcoholic drinks.

Yes, that shows that if you add about another 200 parts to that set, making it about double the size of the original part count, then it looks better. But presumably then it becomes too big for the GWP budget the designer was working to. I know when I've done my own trees, adding small leaf parts to the big leaves can completely elevate the look of an otherwise fairly plain tree but it really adds to the cost. There is probably about £15 worth of leaves that have been added.