Darth Caedus

Hidden audio recordings from the Danish Lego Thinktank: HANS: Everyone loves Jar Jar, right? FRITZ: Yeah dude, and you know what? Let's make an AAT, one of the few cool things in the prequels, and make him the centerpiece of the set. And make the set chibi. HANS: Dude you read my mind. FRITZ: I was being sarc- HANS: Hey dude, people still want to armybuild battle droids, right? What if we made a set with FOURTEEN of em?! FRITZ: That's.... higher than I can count, bro. But seriously, that would probably make the set prohibitively expensive. HANS: ARMY-BUILDIIIIIIIIIIIN! HANS: You know which characters have generic, pretty-round heads where the face is the only iconic part? FRITZ: Tusken Raiders. HANS: Tusken Raiders, bro. FRITZ: So we can easily use the existing standard lego head mold! HANS: Nah man, I made a brand new mold. It's so awesome, I'm gonna pack it with a vehicle nobody gives a shit about that never even appears on-screen. FRITZ: Fair enough, I suppose. HANS: You know what was the [bleep], bro? FRITZ: What? HANS: Force Unleashed, bro. FRITZ: Yeah man, that was pretty fun. HANS: I'm making a battlepack of Imperials who specifically appear in that game. Shadow Guards and Shadow Troopers dawg. Light-staffs, man. So tight. FRITZ: That game came out in 2008! AND IT ISN'T EVEN CANON ANYMORE! HANS: Suck my light-staff, dawg. HANS: Bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. BRO. Two words. AT-DP. DP. DP! Get it? FRITZ: That's such an obscure vehicle, even I don't remember that off the top of my- HANS: DP...hehehehehehehehehe FRITZ: ...[bleep] off, Hans.

Unfortunately, Game of Thrones Lego will sell better than LOTR lego at this point. It's far more popular right now, AND is huge with teens, geeks, and adults, all of whom would buy the hell out of any and all Lego produced. Can you imagine a GoT CMF series? It'd sell out every bag in seconds. Especially since GoT is so good at making you care about so many characters. We only actually needs like, what, 2 dozen total characters from LOTR? The Fellowship, some variants, a few villains, and the key Gondor/Rohan big names? We lament the death of Lego LOTR so much because they were so close to completion - all we truly needed was the WK, Eowyn, and Faramir. Look at GoT for a comparison. Even if you're a pretty big fan (not a true fanatic), you're gonna want the entire Stark family, the Lannister family, Team Dany, among many others. I mean, hell, I'd buy pretty much every single character who gets a line of dialogue. Furthermore, GoT/ASOIAF has even more armies that the hardcore fans go bananas over than LOTR. In LOTR, we'd be fine with a few Orc variants, Uruks, Gondorians, and Rohirrim - Noldor and Numenoreans would be gravy. If you were an obsessed fan collecting GoT Legos, you're going to want contingents of Stark men, Lannister men, Kingsguard, Hill clansmen, Unsullied, Wildlings, Night's Watchmen, Ironborn, probably some of Stannis' troops... and that's just scratching the surface. I'd buy battlepacks of Frey men, Bolton men, Eyrie knights, Dornishmen, Wights, Others... So if you want LOTR to have a chance in hell of coming back, pray Lego doesn't get the GoT license - they'd never have a reason to make anything medieval for years down the line. Especially since Classic Castle fans would like it more than LOTR because GoT is full of more traditional Castles and medieval troops.

Felt up the entirety of 3 cases at my local Lego store this morning. Wiped out their stock of Huns and Athenas for the time being, and picked out a few others here and there (27 total CMFs, which with Double Points was awesome). I Dream of Jeannie was by FAR the rarest - we found less than half a dozen of her in more than 3 cases.

I'd purchase WKB and LT for the full prices, though obviously would prefer a sale. The other two I really, really want to see a discount on. We had that excellent online TRU discount with the TDOS sets - everyone keep their eyes open for a similar steal this year!

Well, now that these have started to show up in stores...everyone keep your eyes peeled for good online deals like we got last year with TRU for the TDOS wave. Especially important since the 2 biggest sets this wave are overpriced.

Deathleech, how about dumping Gandalf the White and including Madril? He doesn't appear with Grond, but he DOES interact (via spear, lol) with Gothmog.

This is currently the state of the Lego Tolkien fandom. Sums up my mood, at least.

I'd give it about 1% at this point.

This is the first LDD that's sold me on the "Minas Tirith First Circle" concept. I still really would rather just have an Osgiliath based armybuilder and a larger scene of some other iconic location, but this isn't bad. The armybuilder expander "wall chunk" set is essential. Given that those would be purely armybuilderriffic, I'd recommend a slight adjustment to the characters in this set. Swap the 2 basic Orcs with Guritz (skull hat orc) and Murgash (long hair 'nothing can breach it' orc). Normal Orcs can be armybuilt in an expander set. I also think for an armybuilder, the Orcs should be based on the most memorable random Orcs of the battle. Only true diehards are gonna be in this thread anyways, so you know these ones I'm talking about. The Darth Maul skinned orc who bites a Gondorian. The pale, mohawk Orc with a ring-like flat nose who looks ridiculously happy while firing a bow at the charge of the Rohirrim. The big, scale-armored Orc who Pippin kills while defending Gandalf. Diversity is key with the Orcs - something Lego failed to pick up on. Uruks are standardized, it's okay for them to look identical. Orcs are inherently slipshod and ramshackle - that adds to their weird, chaotic fearsome aspect.

Thing is, this will forever remain speculation, as there is zero proof from Lego that this is the case. Lego's PR is terrible in this respect - it would have taken a single sentence from a rep saying "there are ratios that we are contractually obligated to stick to, thus we cannot make battlepacks in the Star Wars style." Boom. Done. It's not like that's going to hurt sales of the line or alienate any fans. Why not tell us? The tragedy of the LOTR line really showcases how Lego has serious issues in its corporate structure: minifigure/set allocation is poorly planned and disregards the fact that there is almost always a perfect product that can satisfy KFOLs and AFOLs - instead they release stuff like the Corsair ship and don't really "wow" either faction. And then on the PR end, Lego should not be this towering, silent stonewall that leaves us guessing 99.99% of the time. Also, come to think of it - the Dol Guldur Galadriel set proves that the ratio contract thing is total crap. That set has only 100 pieces at 3 minifigures, pretty darn close to the Forest Ambush. There was nothing ever stopping lego from putting out a $14.99 armybuilder with 100 pcs and 3 troops before now. Even if there is a 1-named-character stipulation, there's always an easy way to please KFOLs and AFOLs - pick a named character who can be re-used as a standard grunt with a basic headswap. Witchking becomes basic Nazgul with a black hood. Armored Faramir becomes Gondorian with face-swap. Same thing if they made a Braga for Laketown. There are also numerous named Orcs from the franchise generic enough to be reused effectively: Narzug from the Hobbit, Snaga, Mauhur, Guritz (skull hat), Murgash (Gothmog's lieutenant), heck, even Lugdush technically exists in the PJ depiction....sure, Orcs are more of a stretch, but a name's a name.

Exactly this. I'm a longtime fan of Eowyn, easily my favorite female Tolkien character - but she doesn't fit into "one final set" properly. The idea I was putting forth there was something that hits as many main characters as possible and functions 100% as an armybuilder as well. So many of our complaints about LOTR boil down to: not enough Orcs, no Gondorians, no Witch-King, no Faramir, no Eowyn. You can't do 'em all in one set (include Eowyn and you damage the armybuilder functionality), but you can hit the first 4 perfectly. Especially since such a set would serve another purpose as a source of Orcs for the Battle of Five Armies - as the Hobbit line has only ever gotten those odd brown-orange Hunter Orcs. Morgul Orcs and Dol Guldur Orcs are essentially the same thing. Honestly, the best place for Eowyn would ironically be in a set without the WK. Here's my outline for the "perfect" final LOTR wave 3 we'll never get. $12.99 Second Age Battle -2nd Age Elven Swordsman (new helmet) -Numenorean (new helmet mold, reuse twice in next set) -Mordor Orc (thinking grey color scheme with stitches on the face, like the one that snarls in the Prologue) -small catapult or mini ballista $19.99 Sauron Showdown -Sauron (toy story woody style legs, big shoulder pads, big cape) -Isildur with sword and helm -Elendil with sword and helm -Gil-galad with Elven spear (optional, depending on Lego's budget) -Mordor rock structure, maybe a little lava $29.99 Osgiliath Escape: -Faramir, mounted, armored, helmet (new rubber mold) -1x Gondorian Warrior, with shield (Roman or classic Orc) and helmet -3x Morgul Orc (standard orc hairpiece and/or new mohawk, new light green Orc skin color, like Gorbag, maybe make one have dark black skin, or the red-black Darth Maul style Orc we see attacking Minas Tirith) -1x Witchking on brickbuilt Fellbeast (new rubber mold for WK helmet) -Small Osgiliath archway or monument Detailed earlier, this is the 'perfect' armybuilder. Headswap and Hoodswap turn Faramir and WK into generic soldiers and nazgul respectively. I'd blow $300 on these in a heartbeat to get the 9 on their Fellbeasts and a huge army of Gondor and Orcs to boot. $39.99 The Balrog -big, badass, poseable, action-o-riffic Balrog -battle-damaged Gandalf the Grey (torn robes and sooty face) -2x Moria Goblin Archers if Lego could manage it. This is gravy. $129.99 Mumakil Charge (or a bit lower, however much it needs to cost) -Big Mumakil, like the Chima mammoth thing -3x Haradrim Archers -2x Easterlings w/ reskinned Roman shield and polearms -1x Mumakil Driver -Rohirrim Eowyn, armored with horse (if they want to make a new helm for her, fine) -Rohirrim Merry, armored (helm very optional) -Very, very optional inclusions: armored Olog-hai and/or Gamling on horseback. This ticks all the boxes left in the fandom. Eowyn, WK, Faramir, check. Sauron, check. Prologue characters, done with a vengeance. Gondorians, diverse Orcs, Easterlings, Haradrim, even more Rohan of a sort, check. Balrog, check. Mumak, check. Literally the only thing that doesn't fit is Treebeard. He's the lowest of the low in terms of priority because 1. could pretty easily be brickbuilt 2. guarantees a useless Merry/Pippin rehash 3. only new anything else is maybe a Grishnakh. And it wrecks the $20 or $30 slot. There's no world where Treebeard gets in a fantasy LOTR Wave 3 without shunting a far more crucial batch of characters/troops out of position. So he gets the axe (no pun intended).

Flieger, unfortunately the DG Witch King cannot be reused - the WK's hood and crown is completely different in every way. I think any Minas Tirith version of UHA is a waste of time, honestly. Getting the lower wall and gate is just silly, it's not like we can have the rest of the city. LOTR looks 99.99% dead at this point. If we only got one single, simple D2C, the fandom would be best served with $29.99 Osgiliath Escape: -Faramir, mounted, armored, helmet (new rubber mold) -1x Gondorian Warrior, with shield (Roman or classic Orc) and helmet -3x Morgul Orc (standard orc hairpiece and/or new mohawk, new light green Orc skin color, like Gorbag, maybe make one have dark black skin, or the red-black Darth Maul style Orc we see attacking Minas Tirith) -1x Witchking on brickbuilt Fellbeast (new rubber mold for WK helmet) -Small Osgiliath archway or rubble This is what I would call the "perfect set" insofar as it ticks the maximum number of boxes for the LOTR franchise in one set with minimal molds at the perfect pricepoint. Faramir, the Witch-King, and a perfect armybuilder to boot. Faramir is one headswap away from being a standard Gondorian, and the Witchking's helmet can be swapped for a standard black hood. I know Alcarin, myself, and countless other AFOLs would probably end up buying 9 of such a set to get 9 Fellbeasts, and an excellent quantity at the proper ratio of good-to-evil figures: Orcs will always outnumber Gondorians. It's also a super KFOL friendly set, with 2 important named characters, Faramir and the WK, the always cool flying fellbeast, and a good bunch of baddies for their heroes to mow down. If they REALLY needed to cut costs even more, scrap the Witchking helmet mold and make him a normal Nazgul. I can live with that. This is why I'm quite dismissive of any Minas Tirith focused sets - they just don't include the right figures that the fandom really needs.

It's not about extending the line on after the movies - of course that's going to be a place where sales are weak, with no screen presence for the license. At least what I was posting outlined how Lego messed up royally in every wave after LOTR Wave 1 in terms of armybuilders - the existing sets they released could have been easily adjusted with no more original molds or parts than the actual sets we got, but would have made sets that'd sell equally well with the kiddies and dozens of times more with AFOLs. It's all water under the bridge now, but the sad fact is that Lego's handling of the Tolkien license after 2012 took a sharp left turn into the boneheaded, the lazy, and the half-baked, when literally a couple of hours of planning could have created exponentially better - and exponentially more popular - sets. I love Lego, and I'll keep buying it for the rest of my life. But I will never fully forgive them for fumbling the ball halfway across the field after finally getting their hands on Middle-Earth (which for me, was at the top of my personal 'dream licenses', the absolute epitome of epic storytelling - second only to a Game of Thrones license, which would be even more incredible, but is of course, sadly, a pipe dream).

You're correct, I didn't mention the Gondorian shields. I think I'd be satisfied with a Roman shield with a nice White Tree print. Basically I was trying to outline how Lego could have done with barebones effort what AFOLs wanted to buy bucketloads of while still satisfying KFOLs everywhere. Armored Elves...IMO the Helmet is more key, they could scrape by with that shield that they did throw in randomly in the existing set. But a good Elven Shield Mold could be reused for the true ultimate battlepack - for Last Alliance Elves in a battlepack that would also include Mordor Orcs and Numenoreans. Sigh.It's funny that the very first armored warrior we see in action in the series, the line of Elven Swordsman, remains by far the coolest armor design in the entire PJ universe. Many people post that image of the Lego ranger Faramir, but Armored Faramir is the no-brained way for Lego to go - it can be repurposed with a simple head-swap to a standard Gondorian Warrior. (Yes, I know his helmet and armor is slightly different from the rest of them in the films, but this is Lego).

This. A thousand times this. It's so easy to make a set that's not just kid friendly (action figures, cool minifigs, decent build) but also has major multi-purchase value for AFOLs. This could have been done easily in every single wave. LOTR Wave 1: They already did it properly with UHA. Hobbit Wave 1: Riddles for the Ring sold like a stale turd. They should have tossed Gollum and Bilbo in the Goblin-town set. The littlest set should have been $14.99: Battle of Azanulbizar. Rock outcropping with action gimmick, 2x Azanulbizar Orc 1x Erebor Dwarf. Molds required - zero. Give the Orcs a cool print but reuse an old helmet from KK or the original fantasy line. Reuse Gimli's helm for the Erebor dwarves with dark black printing - it's close enough. LOTR Wave 2: Council of Elrond was always a mistake, we were gonna get another Elrond in Hobbit Wave 3 anyways. Scrap it and replace with $29.99: Osgiliath Defense. 1x Armored Knight Faramir w/ helmet. 1x Gondorian Warrior. 1x Ithilien Ranger. 3x Morgul Orcs. Molds required - one. Gondor helmet instead of the hair required for Elrond/Arwen. Could stretch to two if they wanted to make an Orc helmet. Otherwise just keep using different colors of the Orc hair mold. The ULTIMATE armybuilder this set would be. Gondorians and Orcs. Hobbit Wave 2: Adjust the Mirkwood set. Instead, the set should have been $29.99. 3x Armored Elves. 2x Hunter Orcs. 1x Narzug. Molds required - one. Armored elf helmet. Narzug could have that mohawk hair from Wave 3 I suppose if Lego could afford it. Narzug fulfills named character requirement and is generic enough to fit in as a standard Orc. Hobbit Wave 3: Combine Laketown and Smaug to fill $60 slot with armored Bard. $30 slot is modular Dale Ruins (basically current BoFA minus ballista). 2x Dol Guldur Orcs. 1x Iron Hills Dwarf. 1x Armored Elf. 1x Dain (make sure helmet has removable plume). Fulfills named requirement. Dain can easily be de-plumed and reworked as a normal Dwarf. Molds required - one, the IH Dwarf helm. Then make the $130 set have Armored Thranduil to make up for him not being in Wave 2, and it can have angry Azog, Bolg, King Thorin, Fili, Kili, armored Bilbo and whatever other named characters Lego wants to toss in to a big Gates of Erebor or massive Dale ruins set. There you go. Kiddies are satisfied, all the key points they want are still there, and instead of being disappointed, AFOLs buy dozens of every armybuilder. Lego makes $$$$$$.

You are quite right. Personally, there is only one way Lego scrapes out of this catastrophe with their dignity vaguely intact: an Iron Hills Dwarf polybag. Honestly, that's the lowest-priority armybuilder of the Big Three we needed from BoFA (an armored Elf taking maximum precedence obviously, followed by a proper armored Dol Guldur Orc), but getting it would be something, at least. The Laketown Soldier polybag was one of Lego's few wise maneuvers in the latter half of their Middle-Earth line - I know I bought over a dozen of those. An Iron Hills Dwarf could use Dain's helmet, hopefully with a different or removed plume, if the plume is in fact detachable. If an IHD poly cam with a ridable ram as well, then, heh, I'd stand up an cheer. But that's a pipe dream. I guess the only other potentially acceptable poly would be an Orc with the new hair. Not really that desirable if it's the same hunter-orc type print, but if it was a DG-style print, that'd be another matter entirely.

"slip up slightly" "do their best" - sorry, no. I have no issue with catapults. The ballista is dumb but could have been forgiven. Lego has put ZERO effort into including appropriate minifigs ever since the first Hobbit wave hit. It's been a random shotgun blast where we've lucked out and scored some good figs (Gandalf the White, King Aragorn, Radagast, Galadriel, etc.) but by and large the choices have been highly counterproductive to Lego. This is not a KFOL vs AFOL issue here. Look at a couple set examples. Mirkwood Elf Army: An overall fail because it included the wrong kind of Elves - boring green hooded ranger type. Thus, AFOLs barely army-built any. If Lego had swapped those 3 useless green elves for armored ones, AFOLs would have bought them by the truckload (myself among them). And there would be zero harm done to the KFOL interests: they're still gonna like the set since it's a cool little build, has Thranduil, orcs and wargs, etc. Black Gate: The Mouth of Sauron is an incredibly cool character. But he should have been a Gondorian warrior. Kids would still dig the set - it's got Gandalf the White, Aragorn in his coolest outfit, an Eagle - and then Lego could release a Gondorian Warrior polybag. Switch the MoS helmet mold to a Gondorian warrior helmet mold - so simple. So very simple. KFOL and AFOL satisfaction is by no means a mutually exclusive proposition. It worked in LOTR Wave 1. It worked in Hobbit Wave 1. But then Lego decided to drop the ball - no, not drop the ball. Douse the ball in gasoline, set it on fire and then throw it off a cliff. And here we have Hobbit Wave 3, where everything finally crashes and burns. I've outlined how simple it would have been to make everything work for both KFOLs and AFOLs - Smaug and Laketown in a $60 set with armored Bard (Lego has never cared about canon), $30 BoFA armybuilder, and big ticket BoFA set with lots of Dale structures or Erebor gates, and all the key main character leaders. It's not like Lego made anything iconic with the Erebor set - it's little more than a green turd rehash of the old Dwarves Mine. What a perfect wave that would have been - mid range affordable Smaug battle, big, awesome conflict with all the armored uber versions of the main characters, modular armybuilder expansion, and a little set for Dol Guldur with cool minifigs. 100% satisfying to KFOLs and AFOLs. AND it hits all the key BoFA movie scenes. This is what kills me. This took me what, 10 minutes to type out? Lego designers are a team that gets paid to think this up. They have weeks and weeks to plan out the sets, the lines, the figures...and they lazily toss it together haphazardly with terrible minifig and scene distribution. And as a result, they lose out 10, 20 times the potential revenue from AFOLs. I mean, a $30 armybuilder here with 2 Armored Elves, an Iron Hills Dwarf, and some proper, awesome Dol Guldur Orcs? I know dozens of people in this thread who would have bought dozens of such a set. Instead, you have half the fandom wrinkling their nose up in disgust at Lego's pathetic output. Sigh. They didn't balance these sets well. They didn't make builds of any great note. They generally failed to appeal to AFOLs and KFOLs when it would have been so easy to do. So yes. Until a Lego designer actually comes out and explains WHY they made the mind-bogglingly foolish, inane choices they made with (all of the Middle-Earth line after 2012, but specifically) Hobbit Wave 3, they will continue to be seen as crazy, inconsistent, and lazy creators. Lego IS a great company, and the greatest medium of tactile toys every created. So to put so little effort into set design and minifigure choices is doubly offensive.

Honestly yes. There's a lot of ways to get Orcs, and the forces of Evil really aren't the highest priority - it's the Free Peoples that needed armybuilders in both lines: Gondorians for LOTR, Armored Elves and Iron Hills Dwarves for the Hobbit. But in a perfect world (a world where Lego actually put more than half an hour of work into planning) this wave looks like this. $15 WKBattle: Same as it is, this set is fine. Witch King could be swapped out for a TDOS Sauron if Lego was feeling generous. $30 Battle for Dale: modular Dale buildings/rubble. Armored Elf x2, IH Dwarf, Armored Dol Guldur Orc x2, Gundabad Orc General (since we know that old mold is probably still kicking around somewhere). $60 Attack on Laketown: Basically the same Laketown set with armored Bard, Bain, Smaug, Alfrid. Throw in either the new Tauriel or Braga to round it out. $130 The Battle of Five Armies: Large Dale structure or Gate of Erebor. King Thorin. Armored Fili. Armored Kili. Bear Beorn. Armored Bilbo. Bolg. Dain. Armored Thranduil. An armored Dol Guldur Orc or two. A warg. Perhaps an Eagle.

There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men for this treachery. Sigh. I mean, I was sort of half-joking when I said the Lego designers were getting high and crapping out random garbage as the post-Wave 1 Middle-Earth sets, but goddam...all of our petty squabbles over the 'lackluster' Hobbit Wave 2 seem absurd now. That wave is gold by comparison. Ironically, these sets are so bad they actually make me more likely to buy the green overpriced turd that is Erebor, simply because the BoFA set sucks so much. Well, let's survey the damage... Erebor: Already discussed at length. I'm still not paying $130 for it, and will wait for a sale. Witch-King Battle: The only gem. Nice little bit of Dol Guldur wall, a decent looking new Elrond, a well-done Galadriel (of course she'll have a reversible head), and a truly wonderful rendition of the Twilight Witch-King. Sure, it ain't the WK we wanted, but he looks awesome. As a consolation prize, this set is so small and cheap ($14.99 if I'm not mistaken) that it's actually a viable quasi-army builder in a limited capacity - collect 5 Nazgul in Twilight form to recreate Weathertop, repurpose the Elronds as Noldor warriors (sans helmet, unfortunately). Galadriel herself, well, still a cool figure. Laketown: It's...not bad. Presuming this is the $30 that's long been reported, it's sort of acceptable. The major SNAFU is repacked Bard. The armored Bard should have been here. Orc hair molds are a left-field, too-little too-late choice, but they're still cool. Movie-garb Tauriel is an unexpected addition as well, not great but I'll take it I suppose. Bain is Bain. The set itself is the second biggest fail - this should have been a lone tower with the windlance on top, not a generic ballista. Windlance has four prongs! BoFA: There is no curse... Yeah. Lego's greatest failure of the entire Middle-Earth line. Lego not only gives us a terrible set, but betrays the fact that they had the power to make a great one! We get 450-odd pieces. That's fine. Dale ruins, whatever, fine. Ballista? Gah. Nobody cares about another darn ballista. So, so, so boring. We have more than enough of those from UHA already. Then, the minifigures: -King Thorin: Cool. Awesome. Definitely gonna get him. -Dain: Duh. Awesome. Of course gonna pick him up. -Azog: WHAT. Where the heck is Bolg?! We already have Azog. Not needed. Not necessary. -Orcs x2: You make a brand new Orc hair mold....and THEN DON'T USE IT IN THE SAME WAVE?!?!?!! -Bard: Armored version should have been in the Laketown set - honestly we didn't really need another Bard either way for that matter. -Legolas: The sin of sins. The calamity of calamities. Of all the Elves we actually need, we're given an IDENTICAL Legolas. Fail beyond belief. And this stings all the more since by including 7 figs, Lego proved that this could have actually been a good set!!! Off the top of my head, here's the 7 that should have been included: -King Thorin -Dain -Armored Mirkwood Elf -Iron Hills Dwarf -a double of either the Elf or Dwarf -Bolg -1 Orc with new hair -and dump the darn Eagle for a bear Beorn. Well, there it is. Among the top 10 biggest fails in Lego's history. Easily the most significant licensed fail of all time. So it boils down basically like this: totally grabbing the WKB. Laketown is alright for $30, worth getting. Erebor needs a big sale. BoFA, not a chance in hell. Thorin and Dain on eBay.

Large update to my priorities and haves. Lego Merry is a real goal right now.

Lego really mucks up the gloves in the whole LOTR/Hobbit line - not really an issue since all AFOLs are gonna have a ton of spare hands lying around you can just swap in from old trash torsos. That's what I did for Gimli immediately.

If LOTR is dead like we think, and given the crappiness of Erebor, this would be the ONE saving grace of the Tolkien line. They ain't as cool as armored Gondorians or Elves, but you take what you can get. We may never get to armybuild Gondorians, but if I can go out and buy hundreds of dollars worth of polybag Dwarves... hope... is kindled.

Lego acquires LOTR and Hobbit license. Lego makes spectacular LOTR wave. Lego makes great Hobbit wave. Lego proceeds to screw up royally from there, ignoring key characters and oddly abandoning the crucial concept of the armybuilder after one Wave 1 set. They refuse to tell us if LOTR is alive or dead, making every day a living hell of limbo. Their choices for the final Hobbit wave leak and are utterly baffling (no army builder for the The Battle of Five Armies?!) Now for their SDCC debut they show off an overpriced set with weak minifigures and a weaker build, and the indication that the next biggest set in the wave will be packed with named characters almost exclusively. And there you have the recipe for a truly desperate fanbase.

My feelings exactly. Lego's designers took the day off, got high, and ordered a pizza for this set. The throne itself is good, not great, altogether pretty basic stuff...and the mining section is just utter rehash garbage. Seeing how it is in the final set makes it even more absurd - the rail for the cart just abruptly cuts off. And far be it from Lego to waste some of this set's limited piececount on a massive, pointless crapatult! Oct 15th as the release date is the one saving grace. It means there's a chance that amazon will discount this and it can be snagged for $100 - with the rehash minifigs and the terrible display value, it's just not worth a penny more. -

The Black Pearl is a set I bought a couple extra copies of 70 apiece and held on to for a year or so. Sold em for 225 apiece so it was a nice investment. LOTR and Hobbit lego, probably will be a bit of a longer wait. Definitely target the desirable sets. 10 years from now nobody is gonna want a Goblin King Battle that bad, but you bet they'll want a Bag End on their desk. I'd say invest in: Bag End Helm's Deep Uruk-hai Army Orthanc