SWMAN

I wish that Lego had decided to make an armored Aragorn for Helm's Deep. But I'm sure we'll get one for the inevitable Minas Tirith set.

I am glad that Lego appears to have abandoned the cheap plastic Battle Packs for this line. Some more Rohirrim would be nice. Also I am very excited for when they tackle ROTK and the Battle of Minas Tirith.

I have never seen Lego go to so much trouble to make new molds and completely new pieces as they have for the LOTR. I am really impressed. They could have reused a lot of weapon molds from earlier Castle themes but instead they made them much more realistic and in line with the movies. These are awesome.

I really like that they finally decided to make the Luke that comes with the Skiff movie accurate. In the movie his vest his grey and his sleeves are black. Glad Lego finally paid attention to that.

There are way too many orcs. I realize that in the books/movies the orcs vastly outnumber the humans. But Lego still needs to give us a few more human soldiers. They should make a companion set to the Orc Forge like a Rohirrim Campsite from ROTK or something to that affect.

After seeing the picture of Helm's Deep actually built I am much more impressed with it than I was originally. The blurry box pictures had made it look small and unimpressive. It looks much bigger and more detailed in the build pictures.

I really like that so many of these sets have legitimate new figures, not just rehashes and figures labelled as "new" because they have a slightly different facial expression. I also like the attention shown to the OT and The Old Republic. I have never been a huge fan of the CW sets and am glad to see only 2 of them.

While these sets look great, there are way too many Uruk-Hai and not enough soldiers of Rohan. I realize that obviously in the movies/books the uruk-hai vastly outnumbered the Rohirrim but it would be nice if either the Uruk-Hai army set or the Helm's Deep sets included a few more of them. Also I cannot wait for sets from The Return of the Kind. Minas Tirith will be epic.

Nothing special here. I'm not really impressed with any of these. I'm glad that Lego has decided to release an OT and PT Battlepack in the same year. But if they're going to do this then they need to do it well. I'm hoping that he X-Wing is an improvement but i'm not holding my breath. The other sets seem pretty standard and don't have a lot of potential for really new or cool figures.

The new helmet for the Death Star Trooper and was appears to be a new gun look really awesome.

This is by far Lego's worst attempt at a Star Wars "playset". It is entirely inaccurate and in general just looks really bad. The Han, Luke, and Leia figures are cool, but other than that the rest of the figures are kind of standard. Lego should have included a Rebel commander and rebel soldier. I'm curios to see the inevitable mod's that are going to come from this. I'm also curious to see how people incorporate this with the last Echo Base. Maybe with some modifications the two can be combined into a decent base.

The mini figures are very cool. I'm glad Lego is expanding the super hero genre beyond Batman. I am not a big fan of the larger figures though. They look too much like Bionicle knockoffs.

Very interesting technique used to make it appear that the man's legs are crossed. Its very creative.

I really like the Panaka. It's a pretty awesome figure. Hopefully it is a sign that Lego will release future sets that include Naboo troopers.

I like the new Dengar. It's definitely more movie-accurate. Its nice to see that Lego is finally making an effort to make things more accurate instead of just using existing pieces and doing the cheap and easy thing.