Blakstone

Orthanc and Unexpected Gathering are the best actual builds. I think that Helm's Deep is third though.

SpiderSpaceman, this site does not interact well with Internet Explorer. At last every time I try to use that brower, I get weird stuff such as carriage returns not working. You might try Firefox or Chrome.

I like the zombie businessman, zombie cheerleader, and the vampress. I am on the fence about the witch girl and turning over the mad scientist's head in my mind. There might be something good there. I just am not sure yet. I wonder what I could do with the cat girl mold. The rest I am not interested in at all. Each series there are some I love and a few I want to skip. Right now it looks like I will want to skip more than usual.

I think they checked. But that does not mean that there were lengthy discussions on it. It may be as simple as IDEAS asking at a staff meeting if they should stop projects on expiring Middle Earth licenses and were told "No." After all, if they want to do it, they could negotiate a new license. They did for Ghostbusters, Minecraft, and Back to the Future. The unknowns is whether WB would want too much for it and whether TLG thinks there is enough sell potential to justify large sets. After all, there could be no new molds. The best I hope I see is The Simpsons. TLG is willing to run a D2C exclusive line just for them. There are enough hardcore fans to keep Orthanc going and I believe would could for future sets of the same size on a yearly basis. The Simpsons has the CMF series to provide new molds. Middle-Earth likely would have to survive on the existing molds.

I never experienced that. I have frequently found opened bags at Walmart. For the first time, I looked in open bags to ensure they were complete and bought them. It was surprising that whomever did that did not want all those goblins.

I would have just assumed that the photo is of something larger than the actual project. That is what happened with the Ghostbusters set that was approved. So I don't even know what the actual set looks like. Still it is stunning.

Lord Tyrus, last year the first batch was not mailed out until Jan 22. But the last regular winners did not ship out until Feb 4. The extra winners took even longer to get their prizes. But the thing is that the Mods do this stuff in their spare time. It is a massive project to both run this raffle, sort all the various components, and to coordinate international shipping to so many winners. It takes time. I am not watching my mailbox. It was just be a very pleasant surprise when it does come.

This was the series of the sword. There are five minifigs each with a different type of sword. What a series for fantasy and history LEGO fans.

I just swung by the local LEGO Store at lunch today and they have Dol Guldur Ambush on clearance. If you have a local store, you might check that out. Two orcs with ears. Very nice.

Nice build. I think another photo at a 3/4 view would present more of Galadriel's face. I also like the irregular shaped base. Great use of the plates from the Warg Attack (I believe).

Lothlorien dropped out of the Popular This Week spotlight unfortunately. We did gain a beautiful MOC with this Rivendale but I just cannot support it. It is under 5,000 pieces but I would never spend $500 on a set. I would drive 100 miles to see it on display. That said, I know that many here would support any beautiful Middle Earth set and this one is definitely stunning.

However, one of the Target cubes did have a short sleeve wetsuit. I think it is safe to say we will see more of those this summer. I am also excited for the town square. I wonder if there will be new minifig prints involved. City has been getting a few each year.

Give me some more clues on your interest. It seems like you are not wanting to do Brick Comics specifically for Middle Earth though. In that case, I wonder if there is much point in getting these sets. Would you want to get rid of the flesh colored heads and hands of the elves, dwarves, and humans? I think the orcs, Uruk Hai, and goblins would be just fine either way. I read on this board all the time the expense of this conversion and how many licensed minifigs even have flesh on their torsos. If you wanted to keep the flesh, I find that the Middle Earth minifigs have wonderful detail. But so do the CMF. If you just wanted fantasy in general, I would probably do CMF and hunt eBay for decent Fantasy / Kingdoms sets.

I only meant we knew that we were going to get that Bain for a while now. So the revelation that it was combined with Bard doesn't make it any worse... to me at any rate. I would rather they put it with the Extended Edition instead. But this was expected.

Why is that bad news though? I thought we expected Bain that way. A reissue of Bard is unexpected though. That way it is two minifigs for that price instead of one.

BrickSev, this is not likely something you can wait for clearance on. You seem to appreciate the minifig selection. Beyond that, you should consider the bricks. Do you want to make MOCs with tan, brown, and a bit of sand green? If so, this is a good set for you. The parts in this set is more to my liking than any of the Dol Guldur sets. That said, I bought it and it is in the closet for some day in the future when I am ready to build it, scrap it, and sort the individual bricks. It is clearance season so I am also looking at a bunch of sets that I got at 50% off at Target to do the same. But those are mostly Chima. Retailers had to put a lot of wave 1 and 2 Hobbit sets on clearance in the past so they seem to really have trimmed their orders this time. I have not heard of a single report of Walmart having wave 3 at all.

There are a couple of factors that increase the cost of a mold. One is the number of connection points. The Hot Dog Suit only has one as it fits onto the head. The other is how often LEGO expects to reuse the mold. Another is the material such as ABS (hard plastic) which is more expensive and requires the higher pressure or a soft material. There are many, many CMF molds that are not reused. At least not yet. It is rare that a CMF mold goes into a regular set later. But perhaps that will change as time goes on.

I just booked a room at the local library for February 21 and I will look into getting a regular webpage created to help promote it as well.

^ I would think the bigger threat would be that the whole project just ended without either a DLC or a second game.

Series 13 codes. I did not pay any attention to which minifig each came with but I bought two paleontologist, a sherrif, goblin, and fencer. 378-T3U-9Y3-GCX WKJ-T67-VPU-WXK M43-3TC-UHT-PWM TM9-JD4-Q7V-3KB

I looks that LEGO is going the route of exclusive large sets for The Simpsons. Perhaps, if the contract is favorable, they could continue with exclusive Lord of the Rings sets too. Lets get more Ideas sets to the review stage!

While I don't mind the Monsters series, it seems like an odd choice. With WhiteFang's Series 13 review, the designers talked about having a wide variety in each series to appeal to a lot of different fans. I only bought two Simpson's minifigs. Both were Maggie for the new torso mold and teddy bear. Monsters might be fun but there is a good chance there will be nothing in the series to appeal to me. It always depends on the prints and molds.

The Pirate Ship makes sense to me in the second wave. I think it is a fair compliant to say they could have only provided one ghost warrior print and had a new Mordor orc print. That print could have been used for both the Pirate Ship and the Black Gate without increasing the change budget. I would also have liked Gimil to have been left out of the pirate ship in favor of any any other fig... another pirate or another orc. But those are minor issues for me. The goal of the designers is not to cover everything that the fans want but to sell the most sets. The Pirate Ship was an attempt to broaden the people buying this line. It is a pirate ship after all and kids like those. I don't think it worked. But most of that is that the younger boys are more drawn to Chima and Ninjago. Building off of Bricksev's point, If the license wasn't too expensive to maintain, I would be very happy if LEGO just release an Orthanc sized set every two or three years. These exclusives would not allow for new molds, of course. But it would still be great. I know LEGO got around that restriction with the Ewok Village by introducing Leia's hair in CMF first. So maybe they could do a Viking chieftain and reuse the new helmet for Eowyn. However, they could not do that to make a Witch King helmet.

I have been a member of the OKCAFOL Facebook group for a while now. There were a few meetings back in 2012 that I did not go to. Since then, though group has been dormant. I would like to jump start the activity and would like your suggestions. We had talked about a meet and greet for tepidly but at this point I thnk I just need to schedule it so people can see if it fits their schedules. I have my eyes on a library closest to The LEGO Store. I figure that I could invite people to bring up some of their MOCs as a conversation starter and we might bring a cake and refreshments. Also how does everyone promote their LUGs?

Agreed. However, I think LEGO was banking on The Hobbit being as big of a culture phenomena as the Lord of the Rings was when it was released. Since it wasn't, LEGO concluded the line early and focused on other things instead. It is a shame but it doesn't diminish my enjoyment of what we got.