Blakstone

I see a red flag, an axe, and some 4(?) dark gray masonry 1x2 bricks. From your post, I had hoped for some rare bits like the Chima set with two lion bricks.

Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are different themes for LEGO even though they were both covered under the same license. The Hobbit had obviously had a much larger Change budget to pay for new molds and prints. I don't think we will get anywhere comparing those themes. I think the Black Gate was needed to pay for the Eagle mold which they wanted for the Orthanc but until this year, there was never a new mold in a D2C set. So the Black Gate has five minifigures. Two new versions of heroes. I can see why they wanted to have more villains then heroes. Otherwise the heroes would not look like they are in danger. Having a main villain also makes sense and the Mouth of Sauron is well known to fans. I am glad we got him. I don't think they had the Change budget to create a new Mordor orc print for the Black Gate. But you are still right that we needed a new one and LEGO could have gave it to us. In the same wave, we got the Pirate Ship Ambush with three heroes but they are identical to the wave 1 versions. We also get the King of the Dead and two different Soldiers of the Dead, a Pirate of Umbar, and one Mordor orc. If LEGO reused the Soldier of the Dead torso for both minifigs, they could have given us a new Mordor orc print here and reused it in the Black Gate. I would also preferred that they omitted Gimli from this set since he was already in wave 1 and the Council of Elrond set. They could have placed another Pirate, Soldier of the Dead, or even another Mordor orc then.

We still have many months to go for pictures, I am afraid. However, a TV show has to have main characters for the kids to follow. It stands to reason that they would be very distinctive. The green character could be an wood elf archer for example, the yellow could be heavily armored dwarf, the red could be a female wizard, and the blue could be a heroic knight. Something like that would make more sense to me than all the various brightly colored ninjas. I thought ninjas all wore black as camouflage. Unless Ninjago ninjas are trying to high in a neon skyline they are not camouflaged. Since there are very flew LEGO sets I keep intact, as long as the parts, prints, and accessories are useful for me, I will be happy. Perhaps there will be a character with viking styled helmet (no horns).

I haven't yet bought any 3rd party LEGO compatible pieces and I don't plan on changing any time soon. Instead I will keep an eye for anything useful in other LEGO lines. Pirates of the Carribean gave me some fleshie civilians for Bree for example. While it is true there are more stuff we want for Lord of the Rings, this line provided a lot more characters than most non evergreen lines have.

Most of the Castle lines did not have a banner. They only said System or LEGOLAND. The excepts are: Castle, Kingdoms, and Knights' Kingdom. The series that fans can Fantasy said Castle on the box. It seems doubtful to me that LEGO would create a Fantasy banner if this line does return to the fantasy style as Brickjagger has indicated. That is unless there is a TV show whose title they will use. How about Herorica, Heroes of the Kingdom?

Announcing the next OKLUG meeting: Location: Panera Bread, 3321 NW Expy, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73112. Date / Time: August 1 between 1 PM and 3 PM We are hoping to move to another regular meeting place by September. The Oklahoma LEGO User Group is open to all adult fans in Oklahoma but we meet in Oklahoma City.

Orthanc came out about a month after wave 2. The Black Gate was likely created to pay for the Eagle mold in the Orthanc. I could have used a Gondor soldier, but hopefully not at the expense of Gandalf the White, Aragorn in Gondor grab, or the Mouth of Sauron. But they needed generic orcs to fight the heroes.

I am fine with the current split between yellow and flesh. I try to avoid mixing them in a MOC though. I just wished we got more detailed yellows outside of the CMFs. Judging by Friends, I think LEGO would go all the way with flesh except for the longstanding traction.

I believe there is also the translucent hair the the specter too.

I might get a couple of the cheerleaders and businessmen zombies. I have some extra zombie chaufers so I can swap some heads there as well as hair for the cheerleaders. I just don't feel the need to horde them. Gargoyles, though, will be the army builder. I probably only want one spider lady and the hints of the specter is very interesting.

I will definitely need a pair of gargoyles now. The horn pieces are amazing. I hope they have wings too.

While I would love the Black Falcons back with a few updates like Kingdom Joust did, I mostly want new factions that would not look out of place along side Kingdoms. The detailed classic coat of arms is perfect. So give us others the would fit in with them such as stags and wolves. You could even have color on the minifigs if done right. This last season of Vikings had soldiers with yellow coats which the armor was attached to. Common soldiers wouldn't have coats of arms on their chests and belt buckles though.

Your water texture and the objects/rocks/sunken boats look amazing as well as the reeds.

This is an excellent build. I especially like the buildings and the water plants. I might suggest some elevation to the ground though.

As so much time has passed since LotR sets came out, if there was a new wave, I suspect they would repeat many of the main characters. I would hope though they would have new printings though. For example, Gandalf can have battle damage on his grey cloak in a Balrog set. Perhaps Sting could be glow in the dark. If wishes were horses...

US Shop@Home shows Orthanc as being Out of Stock and shipping in 30 days. Would that mean a new production run or just moving stock from other locations? I think LotR is a success for LEGO, but they may want to target an older audience than when they did the first two waves. There just is no reason to promote it as heavily in the Dimensions game otherwise.

Yes, I believe the interview hints at the MMV though. Matthew Ashton said that they would try to get the sets out by a Direct 2 Consumer approach might work best to not clog limited shelf space with the sets. Both sets also included soliders.

We know that LEGO has used focused groups with kids that have panned civilian sets. In case you haven't read it, here is an interview on the 2007 Castle sets. So most of the core audience isn't interested in civilian sets, but LEGO is aware of the appeal to us.

A couple years ago at a function, I met someone who told me of his time in the US Navy. He said one time where bad weather two gay men were pulled from their bunks and dropped overboard. They were reported lost at sea. He did not say that he took part in it or approved it. He did not say he was shocked or upset by it. The lack of context on his part was very unsettling. I find this work very much the same thing. Some viewers might take this as an historical act that the artist approves. I am left baffled by the artists intent. And lynching is not a topic that I think we can say that good people can come to different conclusions. I agree with this. It depends on how the subject manner is presented. Guilds of Historica, for example, is a fictional world by it does draw on historical analogy. The only MOC in my signature, though, it based a real historic time, where the Romans were suppressing conquered Britannia. One culture was destroyed while a new fusion of culture was created. There was much atrocities during that time or any time of conquest. But a MOC between Alied forces and Nazis could be seen as highlighting the struggle between good and evil. A MOC focusing on a specific atrocity could be celebrating it or denouncing it.

I didn't expect it to win. But the UCS Tumblr, UCS Sandcrawler, and the giant helicarrier did not win either but we received very similar sets.

I felt that the build does not tell me what the builder makes of the event depicted. That is very unsettling. The ghosts as stand ins for the KKK come across as comical though. I would recommend just completely white minifigs instead. I saw this when it was initially posted and my first thought was to report it. Instead I decided to wait and see the reactions of others. At this point I think it is shocking but adds nothing to the conversation of lynching in either the historical context or the white fear of blacks in the U.S. which in my opinion is driving the current spate of whites killing unarmed blacks in "self defense". LEGO is art and can be used to move people emotionally on an important topic. I just feel that it fails to do so here.

Based on designer interviews for Castle 2009, LEGO builds sets and has kids review them to see what they like and what they don't like. It is not just set names, but the actual builds. I don't think they will ever open up their design process to allow the Internet to design a wave. AFOLs that spend this much time on the Internet are not representative of the over all fan base.

There are a lot of competing interests that have to be balanced in making any line or wave. I don't see another traditional Lord of the Ring wave coming. The best case scenario would be a line of Direct to Consumer sets similar to The Simpson's. Even that is highly unlikely. But it is better than nothing. Perhaps Dimensions can throw us a bone with a witch-king with his iconic helmet or a Sauron. But new molds are very rare there with only a Portal gun, sonic screwdriver, Doc Brown / 12th Doctor hair, and hoverboard so far.

As the Kingdom's jester is returning in the birthday cake set soon, I would be quite happy if Kingdoms itself returned next year. http://www.thebrickfan.com/lego-exclusive-birthday-cake-40153-official-images/

Have you looked at the Witch-King Battle? I added the Galadriel figure and the twilight version of the Witch-King to my LotR collection even though it is actually a Hobbt set.