MAB

The City Arctic theme (as well as Agents as noted above) provides a good setting for them.

An alternative is that stores do not want them, given the past discounting needed to get rid of many of the sets in earlier waves. They may have already had agreements in place to take them, which would explain some stores having them earlier. But then not re-ordered once the small quantities they had were gone.

LEGO S@H has them, also available in Germany.

Hasn't that been the problem with LOTR and the Hobbit sets - kids don't buy them. I cannot see kids wanting to buy into a LOTR / Hobbit CMF line when the characters supplied are just add-ons to sets that haven't been in stores for three years. Yes kids, you can have Denethor, but not regular versions of the Fellowship. I think that is exactly the type of problem Lego addresses with availability. They have to cater for multiple audiences and have done reasonably well in the last few CMF series to make the army builder ones come in higher numbers. No doubt they do this not primarily for the good of the fans, but because lego wants them to remain fans and keep buying future series. If you think of the questions that need to be asked about a CMF line: Characters - you need the Fellowship in there if it is going to sell to anyone that hasn't already bought into LOTR lego, bearing in mind the amount of time between wave 1 of LOTR and now. Otherwise, they are restricting this series to a small subset of possible buyers already. It's interesting to see what they did with the Simpsons. The complete family is in the House set. The complete family is in the Series 1 CMF. The complete family is rumoured to be in the Series 2 CMF, in different outfits. If they did LOTR, it wouldn't surprise me if they did something similar, so no matter when you start collecting, you can always get the Fellowship as a minimum. Which really cuts down places for the extras. Distribution - go for a lot of popular characters so general fans can get what they want, or go for larger army builders so existing fans can cherry pick the armies they have been calling for, or try for balance? Past sales - based on assumptions on how many times LOTR and Hobbit sets have been discounted, and the availability of wave 3 of The Hobbit, they haven't been that great. Why produce a CMF line for a series that hasn't been that good in the past? With the problems highlighted above, I'm not sure I'd release a CMF line if I was in charge. Sure, as a fan I'd love it. But financially, I'm not so sure.

I've glued lego to wood before. I made my kids a castle diarama board, about 3' x 2'. The board was painted green and brown and I stuck plates in greys, greens, tans, browns, etc. down to the board at various points, to make one large buildable diarama. There are large spaces with no plates for free build or battles, carts, whatever takes their fancy and then areas of glued plates for building castles, forests, etc. It is ideal for play since it can be lifted and carried without the builds shifting. They tend to build what they want off the board, then attach them to the board. I also went to the trouble of making sure every stud is aligned and positioned perfectly, so in theory they could place plates in the blank areas and build all the way from one side of the board to the other seamlessly.

The simple answer to both those questions is that it is their game and their rules. They will do whatever is best for them.

I think Tom Baker's hair is OK, and it's good you don't repeat the hairpieces in the same colours. It's funny, whenever I see MOCs of Colin Baker, they always remind me more of the Fast Show's Colin Hunt rather than Dr Who due to the clothes they both wore and similar hair...

It is useful to have some 2xX bricks if you want to have a studs up brick built roof, or a "boat" bottom, or hot air balloon. Similarly if you want to span a gap bigger than two studs, longer bricks are useful if you want stability.

It's perfectly legal for you to sell such items in most parts of the world, so long as you make it clear they are not lego products, or endorsed by lego, or use the lego logo in your advertising. A cross is not very difficult to make from brown plates. If there is a market, then be prepared for other people to sell exactly the same stuff. Whether they have interest in the religion or not.

That is a step forward for medical science. :-)

I don't remember Romans or Spartans being sold for a few euros no sites like bricklink or ebay, even when they were current series.

Having 2 or 1.333 army builders to every named character would still lead to a lack of army builders and thus price increase for the army builders. I would imagine most collectors would want more than two Gondor soldiers, but only one Denethor. So if someone wants 20 Gondor soldiers to form a pretty small but reasonable army, then on average that's nine Denethor minifigs left over. Now sure, some of those might go to people that only want one of every figure (like CMF collectors), but there is still going to be an excess of named characters. They would proabbly have to go to a much higher skewed distribution per box to satisify army builders, making the named ones rare, something like 20 Gondor soldiers 20 Rohan warriors 2 Faramir 2 Sauron 2 Denethor etc ... Of course, that satisifes the army builders, but leaves the 1 of each collectors annoyed.

Where did you hear it from? If from brickforge, then it could be true. If it was the discussion however many pages back about wishing they would do it, then it is probably false.

Or Bain in his pyjamas.

No, someone producing their own decals does not mean that. Lego stopping selling sets with Rohan soldiers in means you will never get them again, at least at retail. Similar ones may come out in castle type sets though.

^ If you created something original, then it is a creation, so a MOC. If you build an official set then make a few modifications, then it is probably better called a custom version of the set rather than a MOC.

Even if they did this (which they won't :-) ) you'd still be shelling out $10 for all the army builders. They would soon be cherry picked and unavailable.

That is what the rate the value 1-5 section is for.

I can't see any misprint either, except for the white on the edge if the red braces type things on martian manhunter.

I doubt you will get any financial details about LOTR sales. Lego don't give out such detailed information. They will say which themes are top, and I don't think LOTR will be up there.

By opening for modulars, I mean "lift off". For me, having a complete tower in which you could lift off the separate layers (or open separate layers like a dolls house) to see the features would have been nicer than having it open backed. In fact, I changed mine to do the former.

None of us really know if it is successful. We don't know how many were / are to be made, how many have sold / will sell, or how frequently they sell. It may be that lego had agreed to make a certain number in total, but only ships small numbers to distribution centres (due to it being large and slow selling). That would mean that it would go out of stock and put on short backorder. It's a nice set. It could have been better (final side in place, with a the possibility of opening like a dolls house or like a modular), although it gets decent reviews as it probably should do for a set that size. But we don't know if lego sees it as a (sales) success.

Invizable is coming in the Agents sets ... The glasses aren't quite the right colour, but combine that with a black suit and hat and you have him.

It is also down to the way it is marketted and sold. It is a standalone set, not part of any wave. It is an exclusive to lego only. I don't know if it is in production still, or if the backordering is just them shifting stocks around. It is a bit like the Haunted House from the MF rage, lasting way beyond the end of the normal retail waves. It sure does. I got eight :-) An alternative view is that it is a great set - a cheap way to get Saruman, one of the key baddies of the trilogy, with play features too. It's quite sad if a teen that cannot afford the entire range had to buy the most expensive set (Orthanc) just to get him. Remember that not everyone will buy every set in a range. Allowing a key good vs evil moment in a cheap set is good in my opinion.

New Elementary is great, although tends not to do all parts (esp minifig). You can also browse the BL catalogue by "what's new" and select parts ... http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?sortBy=D&sortAsc=D&catType=P