MAB

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.

Especially if five spots go to the family.

I would also prefer a Minas Tirith set based on scenes from the movies in minifigure scale rather than a very micro microscale set of the whole city.

I thought that was because they were produced and packaged in a different factory to most other parts destined for sets and so don't make it to PAB.

I doubt it. Would they have known about the film coming out a year before the release of Krusty Burger? If they knew, other merchandise companies would have known and it would have leaked long ago.

Here you can buy the torsos on BL or ebay for about £2.00-2.50, when the PAB is about £1.20 I think. So double the price but if you are building an army of 10 then five of each at least helps break up the same details on the torsos. But it would be better still if they didn't add those derails to the torsos in sets, or had alternative torsos with and without. I got lucky through trades and finding them in store, I got I think 12 of the wolfpack men (but not wolves). I found two on a supermarket shelf just last week, they must have found an old box in the storeroom. I'm keeping them anyway as I want them, but they aren't really worth flipping anyway as on BL complete sets are only £7, just double RRP. They are not like the Tournament Knight or Viking.

Even with the variations in accessories, I find using the cheaper torsos you can buy on PAB is too repetitive as they have that print of the pouch and money bag on the belt. This is why I prefer the CMF torso as it doesn't have those details, so it works much better for army building.

Indeed. The boxes indicate that they license it from Warner Bros.

And Warner Bros would want it to look like what is in their movies.

For me, there are not too many colours so long as all basic parts are readily available in all colours. It is very annoying when they do some but not all (basic) parts in a particular colour. It happens especially with new colours when it might take years for sets to need those parts in those colours.

They've tweaked it again today and made it worse.

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This is my preferred option, but also with the beacon tower included. A bit like Rivendell, with the tower raised slightly higher to give the impression of another level rather than to scale.

Because some people either don't read the IDEAS rules or don't believe they should apply to them. And often ignore Eurobricks rules too and set up an account and start multiple threads promoting their IDEAS submission and never come back.

My kids have some k'nex but only the bars and cogs type stuff, not the bricks. Although both k'nex and lego are building systems, I think they are chalk and cheese. My kids never MOC with k'nex. The barrier to build with LEGO is quite low and it isceasy to start with something small. But for k'nex I think there is a huge learning curve before making even a small build that is good looking. But some of the k'nex sets are fun to play with once built. They have a huge roller coaster. It probably takes one hour to put together which is not so enjoyable but once done, the fun is more in the play than the assembly.

Yes, all fine now. It was a complete farce yesterday so they took bl offline for about 8 hours, but it all seems good now.

I think this point is interesting, in that I think it is becoming that ADULT LEGO is possibly not reusable. When I was a kid, we had a bucket full of LEGO which we built stuff out of, tore them down and rebuilt. Some (and I think, many) kids still do that. Whereas older kids and especially adults (at least ones that don't MOC) tend to buy, build and display. Keep it together, otherwise it loses its value. I am the same with some of my sets that I know I will sell on in the future. And in that sense, AFOL LEGO sets have become 'one use' i nthe sense of you build it and that is it. You can enjoy looking at it, but don't mix it up with other LEGO as you'll never sort it back out again. I also think this is why LEGO sales volumes are so good, selling their collectables that people need to buy every year rather than building with what they already have. Sorry if it wasn't clear. I didn't mean you personally come across as viewing childhood through rose tinted glasses, but that we all do. I actually think my childhood was better than yours, as we had the opportunity (and the need) to combine our toys into creative play whereas when LEGO started doing minifigures, they diluted that type of fun. It is the view of that is what I did and therefore it is the best. Whereas someone that grew up with minifigures probably thinks that is better because that is what they have experience of. And for the record ... I now collect and have 1000s of minifigures!

I've said this before but I don't think was true then but not now. Kids having Castle sets then would play with them based on stories they already knew, whether it was Arthurian legend, Robin Hood, or some other other pseudo historic stories. Pirates would be played with based on stories and movies of pirates (just with generic figures instead of movie lookalikes). Children can still play like that when they buy City, Friends, Ninjago. They can still make up their own creative stories or builds when playing with Star Wars, DC or Marvel. Is acting out forestmen stealing treasure from soldiers more creative than acting out a duel between Luke and Vader? I think it is looking at things when you were a child with rose tinted glasses, that your time was best. I grew up in the 70s, just about the time minifigures were introduced. We had a bucket of second hand LEGO but I don't think we ever got any new minifigure based sets. We didnt have any instructions at all. We just built what we wanted. For me, LEGO was a toy that you could use to enhance play with other toys. We used it to build buildings for model railways or Scalextric sets, or to build (very bad) ships for Kenner SW figures, or walls for Action Men / action figures to knock down, or smaller scale builds for battles with moulded toy soldiers, or farm buildings to use with our toy farm animals . To play with our LEGO, we didn't need those silly little minifigures that LEGO slightly later introduced to exclude all those other toys from play. We were imaginiative enough to combine LEGO with other toys and not need minifigures. But if I had been born 5-10 years later, I'm sure my childhood play would have been different.

It is a combination of those statements. LEGO has always been expensive and premium compared to other similar toys. When I was a kid in the 70s, there were other building toys such as wooden bricks or cheap quality plastic bricks or prebuilt plastic buildings and so on. There have always been low priced LEGO sets available but that doesn't mean they were not expensive compared to other similar toys. You can buy a CMF for £3.50 or a polybag for £5 but for a similar price you can buy a pack of 10 clone minifigures or 50 plastic soldiers. LEGO has introduced high priced sets in the last two decades but that doesn't mean they don't retain low priced points, even if the number of sets at low price points has reduced. I did most of my LEGO buying 2005-15, especially 2010-15 when LEGO was not selling well but stores expected to shift older products out of warehouses so gave regular large discounts to clear stock. Hence, especially for those five years, LEGO seemed to be available cheap but that was just a combination of lack of popularity and stores wanting to clear their stock. Before that time, stores didn't always try to clear stock as fast. After that, popularity increased.

If you want a GWP, then don't wait. They were not all bought by resellers, many consumers have them. If you want one to build and think it is worth less than £20 then purchase the parts or similar replacements from bricklink or pick-a-brick.