MAB

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

The problem there is would all the building sets sell if they were all done on the scale of Helm's Deep or Orthanc? Sure, The Council of Elrond could have been 4-5 times larger, but it would have cost 4-5 times more. It is easy enough to buy multiples of small sets and sell of the minifigs not needed. Especially for MOCing larger builds where the architecture would essentially be repeated multiple times from the small build.

Yes, and in fact many people were doing this ten years or more ago (for LOTR). There are many yellow skinned custom LOTR figures out there, which slowly got better with things like the release of the CMF series 3 elf. The addition of the new official minifigs really gave some extra detail (and probably some inspiration) for the masses. It's a shame we don't have Gondor soldiers with the correct official printed parts or molded helmets, but people will get by after the official Middle Earth sets are done just as they got by before.

If it mentioned price then it did violate the instructions, as they say not to discuss "info that changes, such as price". That is what the value for money rating is for. It wouldn't surprise me if those options start to dry up too. BL sellers will be paying more, games (a good source of baseplates) are no longer being produced. There other other ways (LUG purchases etc) but they may increase prices there too to reflect the increase of the retail costs.

Requesting three licensed minifig torsos from the same set may also have flagged up the request to be dealt with manually. I'd try phoning. I found they didn't respond to two requests about the Ghostbusters instructions falling apart that were done online, but phoned after a month and they agreed to send a new copy of the manual.

Yes, don't use paint-on paint. Acrylic spray gives a much nicer result.

While they are not a direct copy, nanoblocks already make a modulex style brick / sets.