AFOLguy1970

A nativity scene would be nice. Also, you might want to think about producing minifigures of people from Biblical times that are not produced now. I would also not mind having a bishop or clergy minifig to go with a cathedral MOC I am slowly putting together.

Yes, that is what I would expect as well. Besides, if it had the latter, then there would be too much overlap with the Death Star duel set. But you DID get a wonderful stormtrooper battle pack this wave! </sarcasm> Maybe the Death Star duel set will offer one or two, although the big 3 and the royal guards would probably take precedent. Of course, if it is on scale with Palpatine's Arrest, then a stormtrooper or two would not seem unreasonable.

I too have faith in Lego's ability to produce a Scooby mold accurate to the show. The big question now is, which show/concept art are they going to use? I am compelled to agree with you. Of course, it is perfectly natural for an AFOL like me who remembers the original show to hope that whatever Lego makes, it resembles what we remember. Between the original show and Mystery Incorporated, I can see some differences in the animation art, but they are close enough in appearance to me to be acceptable either way if Lego designs the Scooby character similar to this.

Just speculation of course, but regarding the group in review where the window closed earlier this month, I think the piano is going to be the chosen set. Before it snuck in there at the last minute, most, if not all of the projects that made it, seemed larger than what we are used to seeing in Lego Ideas. Even the jet and the marble maze looked like they used a fair amount of parts. If one of them had to be picked, then it would probably have set a new precedent for size and cost of the set. I personally hoped for either the History Museum or Minas Tirith to pass review. They would be a day 1 purchase for me. The piano is nice in itself, but the fact that it slipped in gives it quite an advantage. I really, really hope I am wrong on this, but having the piano compete against a host of large sets probably just handed Lego the easy way out on a silver platter. Sure, there is not a stated size limit on a submission, but it does seem like anything over $50 has a difficult chance of making it.

Minidolls would not only eliminate AFOLs , but boys would not want it either. If this is what the sets are going to be based on, the minifigs should be OK, because they are still wearing the classic attire, and once they are translated into minifig form, they should look fine. The real problem is then going to be Scooby. If he is a new mold, and I am fairly certain he would be, they are going to have to choose which version they are going to do, and that will be very distinguishable from any other version. Check the stormtrooper in Star Wars Rebels vs the original trilogy ones to see what I mean. In other words, if Scooby looks like the above photo, especially with that facial expression, my wallet will breathe a big sigh of relief. My only other concern is the Mystery Machine. I hope we do not get the dreaded STAMP--stickers across multiple pieces, but the sides of the MM is going to be hard to do in Lego without big stickers.

Headless Horeseman would be good. I hope the lighthouse set has a Captain Cutler with glow in the dark elements.

If this is true, and if they do not take the Simpsons approach with designing the minifigs, then this will get my attention and it could be a very expensive summer. For Fred and the gang, regular minifigs should do just fine. I can see Scooby getting a special mold since there is nothing in Lego that even remotely resembles him. I just hope the actual builds are not too much like the Junior theme. I expect a lot of play functions like Fred's traps, secret doors, clues, etc. If done right, this will be great. And yes, Mystery Machine would be a day 1 purchase. Of course, I fully expect Lego to spread out the crew into multiple sets where you have to buy a majority of them all to get the big five. So you know the Mystery Machine will not have Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby all in it together. Hopefully not London since they do not allow any photos.

The final duel is more than the price of Palpatine's arrest? Hmmmm, so much for getting a cheap Vader. That implies more minifigs than just the big three in the scene. Other than the collapsing catwalk, the chair, the stairs and the window, I do not see what else they could include. Perhaps, the main platform will be elevated, and the set will be fairly high with many parts dedicated to making it tall enough to have the shaft deep. Otherwise, shaft where Palps meets his fate would have to be fairly shallow, like the well in Mines of Moria. Royal Guards would seem like the next obvious inclusion, but like others have said, we have a battle pack. Stormtroopers would be nice, but they are not really in that scene. Lots of questions......

Totally agree. I thought we had explained the business with the Pirate Ship 32 pages back or so. The ship suffers criticism not because of its design. In itself, it is a fun set. The Army of the Dead are some of the best minifigs in the line. Had they released something related to Gondor in the second wave and then released Pirate Ship in a third wave, we would not be having this conversation. Why is Gondor so important, especially in the Lego LOTR theme? Simply because the biggest battle in the whole Middle Earth series happened there. Forget about AFOLs for a minute. What do kids want, especially in a fantasy line? They want to stage battles! Thus, the success of Helms Deep and the reason why you can still purchase the Council of Elrond. Return of the King featured a battle with a huge city, men, orcs, trolls, seige towers, battering rams, catapults, trebuchets, Nazgul, Fell beasts, a wizard, hobbits, an elf, a dwarf, a Witch King, and oliphants (sorry if I missed anything). And they totally gave this a pass in favor of EE scenes. Giving me a pirate ship in favor of Gondor would be like selling some train track but not offering the train itself. Oh yeah, the ratings. The sets that we did get were for the most part great. I would go in the B+ to A- range. The handling of the line overall? No Gondor and ignoring THE most epic battle of the movies=C

Well, I have finally decided that maybe it is time to own a GG. My strategy with the sand greens is to probably tack on a few pieces at a time to any given Bricklink order. For example, I will buy a batch of other parts and maybe add 5-10 of the rare sand greens to it to keep from paying a huge amount of money on any given order. Eventually, I should accumulate enough to make the model. My focus will begin on the bottom floor, which does not have too many rare parts and make sure I can order at least a few sand greens with each order. That way, when I get to the expensive second and third level, I already have a head start and will not be left with 50 1x8's to try and get. I feel the need to try and knock out as many of the rares in advance since they are only getting more scarce. For now, the first 20 sand green 1x4's are on the way bundled with a Bricklink order to finish a current MOC. Then, I will go through my spare parts and see what I already have. Seeing that most of you are glad you followed through, it only makes sense to try and have one while it is still possible.

This is a great MOC. Although I have yet to combine a non Lego entity with a MOC or existing set, it certainly would not be out of the question in the future. Even though Lego has made baseball players in the past, like you, I honestly would rather have authentic major league insignia and trademarks rather than the generic Lego one. If it was me, one team would be the St. Louis Cardinals. The other would either be the Rangers or even the Cubs if I decided to try and make a mini-Wrigley Field in the living room. My boys were looking at the Oyo stuff in one of the sports stores in the mall. They were quite captivated by the football players. If Lego ever did license with MLB or the NFL, then that would be my first preference for a minifig. In the meantime, Oyo looks just fine in your MOC.

The PR is well received by most people. It is smaller than the average size, and a lot of the pieces in the total piece count are small and dedicated to the interior. It did not bother me as much as some, because the exterior also received a great deal of attention to detail. A common denominator in the criticism for the DO appears to be the unnecessary focus on the particular storyline. In the PR, the storyline was an engagement in the restaurant. You only needed one extra piece to tell that story: the ring. All other pieces would have likely been included even if you did not have that storyline. The artist studio required some extra parts as well, but that was not really the main story as presented by the designers. The message I am receiving from some commenters is that a significant portion of the design has been centered around the cookie prohibition storyline. In addition to the cookie barrel itself, passageways, the kitchen, and hiding places had to be created for it, and that goes against the piece count. I plan on purchasing the DO, however agree that the storyline is not necessary, and I do not want exterior detail or size sacrificed for the sake of it.

The Death Star Final Duel and Shuttle Tydirium certainly have my attention and are potential buys. I am glad they finally got around to create a Death Star scene without making you buy the big set. As long as it has Palpatine in it together with Vader and Luke, this should work. The play feature would probably be the collapsing catwalk where Vader threw his lightsaber at Luke. Palpatine's swivel chair and the round window behind him would seem like likely inclusions. As for Tydirium, my hopes would be for a decent sized shuttle. Minifigs hoped for would certainly be Han, Chewie, and Leia. They will probably add Luke too even if he is exactly the same as in the DS final battle above. A rebel soldier or two would be a bonus. Going back to the DS set above, I wonder if the time for retirement of the big DS is near? It seems like they have avoided building any DS related sets other than the planetary system model for the last couple of years in order to not compete with it.

What a fantastic MOC! The detail is outstanding and the backstory is quite entertaining. Hopefully the Gundabad orc will be assimilated into society. I could imagine the gift shop full of Stings and one rings. If such a setup exists in NZ, that is just one more reason to go. Now, about that airfare......This would be very competitive in a contest indeed.

Haha, I knew someone was going to say Legolas would have been worse. As tired as I am of that minifig as well, there are at least a couple of advantages it has over a Bain rehash. The hair has elf army builder potential, the torso and pants can be used in other settings, and the legs at least bend. Honestly, if you had presented me with a list of every Hobbit minifig and had me rank which one I would prefer in a rehash, Bain would have come in dead last. Legolas would be fairly low on that list for me too, but Bain would own him the race to the bottom. Even a Gandalf repeat would be better. I am not. All that was shown was a picture. My first thought was "yep, I would never have guessed him.". The second thought was that April 1 was still four months away, and there could not be any relation to that. I do reserve some doubt that this going to be the promotional minifig. It looks way too deliberate and stupid given the general fandom's reaction and sometimes criticism to the Middle Earth lines. Would Lego or Warner Brothers really believe this is the best way to promote the product?

There are many nice sets, but An Unexpected Gathering must be my favorite. I built it on Christmas Day and have never taken it apart since that time two years ago. It is such a nice cheery scene with some really amazing building techniques, especially the window.

I would expect most reviews to be positive in general, simply because the reviewer already had the expectation it would be good. Otherwise, they would not have made the purchase in the first place. In the case noted above, the main issue is price, and that is in fact one of the things you rate the product for on the Lego site. Therefore, stating that the product is overpriced is fair game to me. There are a few reviews I have done where I thought the product was excellent, but the price was terrible--yes Lonely Mountain, I am looking at you Eurobricks and Brickset are far more reliable for reviews than the Lego site, in part because people can comment on them and the reviews are not filtered.

I am actually waiting on all three movies to be released as one set before purchasing them. Surely, they will be bundled together as a trilogy. Whether or not Lego makes a promotion with such a set is anyone's guess, but I would still purchase that over just the BOFA release with the most useless Hobbit minifig imagineable. My guess is that it will at least be available through Lego S@H. I have seen it at Toys R Us as well band its relatively high cost should keep it from selling too fast.

Bain!!??? I assumed like the others that Old Bilbo would be the most logical option, although I secretly hoped it would be Bilbo with a mithril shirt printing. Either would be an appropriate tie in to the whole Middle Earth series, but instead we get this? I really hope this is a joke. Seriously, who makes these decisions?

It would be great to see Lego take on a commercial airliner with the liveries of various airlines. Hopefully it would be on a larger scale than the Best Lock ones. I did see quite a few of those for sale at the CR Smith American Airlines Museum near DFW.

Since you have the key Fellowship figures that come in the Moria set, I would then recommend the Lonely Mountain. You could always use Bricklink for the cave troll and Moria orcs. The build for Moria is mainly parts in grey and dark grey and loads of stickers. The dwarven mine in Lonely Mountain is far better in my opinion than Moria, although it is nice to have both. Chances are you would certainly want to have Smaug, so I too would vote the Lonely Mountain.

I look at the current train station in the City lineup and feel like it is really just an interior shell completely lacking an exterior. I could envision a modular type train station having a nice exterior in the spirit of a European train station, maybe with a clock tower, and certainly not modern. A mini model of something like the Amsterdam Centraal Station would be great. It seems doubtful Lego would produce an actual modular station, because it would have to be larger than the 32x32 mold. The only other chance I see of an official set would maybe be something in the winter village offering, maybe a North Pole station?

I think the museum is really good and would actually fit quite well with other modulars. Yes, its weakness in the review is its size. Unfortunately the piano Ideas set just slipped in and made it into the same review as the Museum. A lot of sets in this review are large, and with the piano being small, I fear TLG will take the easy way out and choose it over any of the large piece count sets. I had been hoping that the review would consist of large sets to "force the issue" and finally have a large set made for Lego Ideas. If anything, that piano is going to be a threat. Dont get me wrong, I like the piano. I would just rather see the Museum or Minas Tirith get made instead.

I would not compare the modulars to City structures any more than I would compare them to the Architecture series. City structures are built for play features and they always have an open back, therefore they are more of a half building. They are nowhere near as detailed as the modulars and fairly simplistic . My guess is that the modulars' largest market is adults or older teens. They bought these sets precisely because they are detailed, more challenging to build (unlike City or Architecture), and make good display pieces. As someone mentioned, I mainly use mine for display, therefore the interior is not really visible. Like most of the others have said, exterior detail is most important. I do not mind a few interior details, but I do not want the exterior sacrificed in order to furnish an interior. I can always go back and furnish the interior myself. If these become more like doll houses, and goofy play features like cookie prohibition barrel routes take root along with a diminished exterior appearance, I could very well change my buying habits. I would probably be more inclined to create my own MOCs or even purchase the instructions on a third party site if I find the building really appealing. I do plan on purchasing DO, but am certainly not in a rush. I have never purchased architecture due to the total lack of detail and the disproportionate cost. I could probably build the Empire State building cheaper from online PAB than I could be purchasing the kit. Sure, I do not get the printed tile label or the book, but is that really the selling point? As for City, only the train accessories really appeal to me right now. Most of Lego is made for kids, and rightfully so. If there is a small fraction of sets targeted for adults and teens, why do we need to dumb them down, fix what is not broken, and make them kid friendly? Isn't that what City, Ninjago, Chima, Superheroes, etc. is for?

Now that I have seen the movie, it really seems like Lego did not have a lot of inside information to the final movie. The Mirkwood Elf Army is a nice set, but they look nothing like any elf I saw in the movie. Nothing even comes close to an armored Mirkwood elf. Someone will make a lot of money customizing one, along with Gondor soldier, Witch King, etc. The lack of Iron Hill dwarves is also puzzling. We have a lot of orc varients, so I do not think that is really a problem. Seeing the movie changes my opinion on the sets... Witch King battle--definitely a nice set. The characters are great. Galadriel and Elrond seem accurate to the movie. I like the Witch King, however he seems like the one we saw in AUJ rather than the semi transparent one in BOFA. Attack on Lake Town--Smaug really, really should have been in this set. Bain, Bard, and Smaug would suffice along with the bell tower. That would have also made it cheaper to get Smaug. Lonely Mountain--As discussed, the absence of Thorin is especially puzzling. The build is nice, and the colors are good. I would have left Smaug out, and had Thorin, Dain, and the armored dwarf variants here. BOFA---No better evidence than this set that Lego did not get all the details before producing the set. I somehow missed the importance of the ballista. Also, the whole confrontation with Azog did not occur in Dale. If they could leave Gandalf out because they assumed we already had him, why could they not have done the same with Legolas and Tauriel? Thranduil clearly should have Legolas' spot as the Elvenking. Azog does not have the sword/arm, and Thorin only wore the crown in the Lonely Mountain while he was suffering from dragon sickness. No one fought with a golden sword either, because gold is a soft metal. I really wonder if Lego was forbidden to make battle packs. I would think that kids who saw the movie would love to form a small army or armored elves, IH dwarves, men of Lake Town, and orcs. As others have stated, I think there should have been another set with the vital missing generic good guys. Seriously, if there was ever a time for a battle pack, it would have been this wave. You could have the large set with the leaders, and then the smaller battle pack with the soldiers. Now you have a set depicting a battle of five armies made up of a grand total of 7 people. Each set has some nice elements, but like LOTR, I think this was mishandled at least to some degree unless Lego really had their hands tied in this one.