Lord of the Rings Ongoing Discussion

[Black Falcon]

54 minutes ago, TheDoctor said:

I'm starting to wonder how early I need to get the the LEGO shop to grab this on the 1st.

Last time; Rivendell came out of the blue for most people, but was hugely advertised on unrelated news sites and people were starting to queue an hour early at my local LEGO shop.

This time way more people will be aware of the return of LotR LEGO and expectations will be absurdly high following on from Rivendell, plus the exclusive GWP.... I think it's going to be an early start for me on that Saturday!

Given how fast some of the more recent GWPs were sold out, like the Space GWP or the Dungeons and Dragons one, I would say rather sooner than later. Or try to order it online but even then you would likely have to be there when the offer is avaiable. I do hope Lego has made more of them though, since they should expect more LoTR Sets sellign than D&D ones I guess.

[TheDoctor]

18 minutes ago, Black Falcon said:

Given how fast some of the more recent GWPs were sold out, like the Space GWP or the Dungeons and Dragons one, I would say rather sooner than later. Or try to order it online but even then you would likely have to be there when the offer is avaiable. I do hope Lego has made more of them though, since they should expect more LoTR Sets sellign than D&D ones I guess.

I wasn't aware of that!

Guess I'll get there for at least 8am then.
Last time they issued 'tickets' in the queue line and took card payments in-line to stop the store over-crowding.

They already had the set bagged upped with the GWP ready to hand out, so it was a pretty quick process. Didn't even have to step inside the store.

[Altair1]

I own all of the existing LOTR sets, except the BrickHeadz, as I don't want to spoil the rest of my collection with this crap :-)

[TakeaBrick]

8 hours ago, Altair1 said:

I own all of the existing LOTR sets, except the BrickHeadz, as I don't want to spoil the rest of my collection with this crap :-)

That is the spirit. Why can't LEGO just give us a decent LOTR battle pack?  80% of LOTR fans are probably castle fans. And 80% of castle fans only want one thing. FREAKING Army Building. Instead, we got dumb BrickHeadz. It is way too hard for me to understand what LEGO is thinking.

[mirkwoodspiders]

7 hours ago, TakeaBrick said:

That is the spirit. Why can't LEGO just give us a decent LOTR battle pack?  80% of LOTR fans are probably castle fans. And 80% of castle fans only want one thing. FREAKING Army Building. Instead, we got dumb BrickHeadz. It is way too hard for me to understand what LEGO is thinking.

I've never been an army builder for Star Wars or castle, but I would be an instant convert if LEGO ever released LOTR battle packs.

[RichardGoring]

I've never quite understood the need for huge armies of minifigures. Enough to fill a scene, yes, but not hundreds of them. To me it's not that fun to have to place so many figures, so I usually top out at 8-10.

I could see the appeal for more if they did Minas Tirith or a UCS Helm's Deep though. But even then, I likely wouldn't get more than about 20 figures for each group.

[MAB]

17 hours ago, RichardGoring said:

I've never quite understood the need for huge armies of minifigures. Enough to fill a scene, yes, but not hundreds of them. To me it's not that fun to have to place so many figures, so I usually top out at 8-10.

I could see the appeal for more if they did Minas Tirith or a UCS Helm's Deep though. But even then, I likely wouldn't get more than about 20 figures for each group.

I'm similar. I tend to aim for 16 figures now for an army of one type, plus one for a leader. I find that is a decent number to depict most scenes I'd ever want and was perfectly doable in the past with the original wave of LOTR sets, bolstered by CMF figure parts.

My first big army was the S6 Roman, I collected just over 100 but never actually used most of them so sold off most keeping only the ones I'd use. I also did it with an Uruk-Hai army up to about 50 a decade ago (they were in a cheap polybag here, as it was a newspaper freebie), but never used most of them.

[Artanis I]

On 5/4/2024 at 7:16 AM, Altair1 said:

I own all of the existing LOTR sets, except the BrickHeadz, as I don't want to spoil the rest of my collection with this crap :-)

Same... (but I didn't get Rivendell - too expensive). I don't get the appeal. They are uglier blocky versions of Funko Pops that look terrible enough in the first place.

[unclejeffie]

20 hours ago, RichardGoring said:

I've never quite understood the need for huge armies of minifigures. Enough to fill a scene, yes, but not hundreds of them. To me it's not that fun to have to place so many figures, so I usually top out at 8-10.

I could see the appeal for more if they did Minas Tirith or a UCS Helm's Deep though. But even then, I likely wouldn't get more than about 20 figures for each group.

Honestly im late to the party but i very much like to start up a LOTR army.

reason for that is that i’m starting up my an old hobby of mine (mesbg) but in lego as i stopped the hobby because i sucked in painting. At the moment i’m building 5x7 mils plates for a modular warboard with lakes and difficult terrain in tan color. 

[RichardGoring]

58 minutes ago, unclejeffie said:

Honestly im late to the party but i very much like to start up a LOTR army.

reason for that is that i’m starting up my an old hobby of mine (mesbg) but in lego as i stopped the hobby because i sucked in painting. At the moment i’m building 5x7 mils plates for a modular warboard with lakes and difficult terrain in tan color. 

I really enjoyed painting my Warhammer armies, but didn't have time to paint them all. But even then, a limit of 20 or so figures per unit was sufficient for the game mechanics. Finding someone else with a suitably sized army to go against anything bigger could be hard, but more importantly, the time required to complete a game based on huge armies was impossible. I remember once we set up a multi-player game, joining three or four forces together on each side. It took soooooo long and despite the great anticipation for it, it was pretty dull.

The MILS plates is a good idea though. Post some photos when you have some of them done!

[unclejeffie]

30 minutes ago, RichardGoring said:

I really enjoyed painting my Warhammer armies, but didn't have time to paint them all. But even then, a limit of 20 or so figures per unit was sufficient for the game mechanics. Finding someone else with a suitably sized army to go against anything bigger could be hard, but more importantly, the time required to complete a game based on huge armies was impossible. I remember once we set up a multi-player game, joining three or four forces together on each side. It took soooooo long and despite the great anticipation for it, it was pretty dull.

The MILS plates is a good idea though. Post some photos when you have some of them done!

For a decent sized mesbg battle youd need around 35-50 models in average.

its a much better game than warhammer - more balanced

[Gorilla94]

On 5/4/2024 at 4:39 PM, RichardGoring said:

I've never quite understood the need for huge armies of minifigures. Enough to fill a scene, yes, but not hundreds of them. To me it's not that fun to have to place so many figures, so I usually top out at 8-10.

I could see the appeal for more if they did Minas Tirith or a UCS Helm's Deep though. But even then, I likely wouldn't get more than about 20 figures for each group.

Depends on the type of army for me. I get to some degree why people want a lot of Clone Troopers. If you have an ATTE, a Gunship and a few more vehicles you could really use 10 clones per model just to display the vehicles nicely on your shelves with a whole crew and some infantry next to the walker... So yes, I get that.

What I never understood was the tolerance of taking either Star Wars clones from different waves, so they do not look identicalin their uniform designs, or several copies of the same Rohan soldier, so they look like clones, which you certainly do not want them to look like.

For me it is allways quality over quantity. I prefer for example to have a group of 15 perfect 501. Soldiers (Rex, 10 Troopers, 2 Heavy Troopers, 2 Snipers) with custom guns, custom printed arms and everything than to have 100 standard figures without arm or in many cases even leg printing using the standard Lego weapons. I have in fact a quite large dwarven army, which is a mix of pretty much everything lego offered me, some of my own customs (painted beard pieces in different colours for example) and 3rd. party products (I just adore the boar mount and dwarf armors they put out a while ago). They should be around 100, are all completely unique except for some faces, where I wanted twins, and all cmf-quality.

Edited May 5, 2024 by Gorilla94

[mirkwoodspiders]

On 5/4/2024 at 9:39 AM, RichardGoring said:

I've never quite understood the need for huge armies of minifigures. Enough to fill a scene, yes, but not hundreds of them. To me it's not that fun to have to place so many figures, so I usually top out at 8-10.

I could see the appeal for more if they did Minas Tirith or a UCS Helm's Deep though. But even then, I likely wouldn't get more than about 20 figures for each group.

I bought enough snowtroopers to fill my UCS AT-AT and then quit buying them, so I think I'm in the same boat for army building as you. Enough to make a scene interesting, but nothing nearing a hundred for me. And yet, I think of the scene in the Two Towers where Saruman overlooks the hordes of Uruk Hai from Orthanc and think, "Hmmm, I wonder what it'd be like to recreate that in LEGO." And then I remember I don't have the money lol. But, I know that sort of thing would appeal to many others if LOTR battle packs ever did materialize.

[AndrewJohnN]

Glad to see LOTR is making a revival..shame the old sets are still $$$

[Lion King]

With Lego continuing making new LOTR sets, is it likely for them to make /bring back molds for cave troll, giant eagle, etc?

[TheDoctor]

13 minutes ago, Lion King said:

With Lego continuing making new LOTR sets, is it likely for them to make /bring back molds for cave troll, giant eagle, etc?

Hmm, unlikely at this time as the original moulds were destroyed.

Maybe if the theme takes of with smaller sets that might change.

I've noticed LEGO is MUCH more willing to produce one-off moulds and unique parts than they used to be pre-2020ish

[RichardGoring]

Out of interest, I used Brick Hunter to calculate costs for Orthanc, without figures. Almost all the parts are available through Pick a Brick, so shipping costs don't really apply, any it came to just under $300. That's not 'do it immediately' money, but depending on what they do with Barad Dur, it might be tempting to piece it together. If you remove Treebeard and a bunch of the interior, it would be a bunch less.

[Lion King]

3 hours ago, TheDoctor said:

Hmm, unlikely at this time as the original moulds were destroyed.

Maybe if the theme takes of with smaller sets that might change.

I've noticed LEGO is MUCH more willing to produce one-off moulds and unique parts than they used to be pre-2020ish

Probably you have a good point that molds were destroyed but they could create new molds in a few years or so. 

Agred, I would love to get some small sets rather thann 18+ sets. 

Hmm? What do you mean? Could you provide an example how willing they are to make one-off molds?

[unclejeffie]

But there are no rumours for ant sets after barad dur?

[Black Falcon]

24 minutes ago, unclejeffie said:

But there are no rumours for ant sets after barad dur?

I think it is way to early for rumours about next years sets. The only reason we had the leak of Barad-Dûr that early was because of the leaked survey.

[Lion King]

26 minutes ago, unclejeffie said:

But there are no rumours for ant sets after barad dur?

No rumors, i was just wondering they would make molds for cave troll, giant eagle, etc.

[MAB]

5 hours ago, RichardGoring said:

Out of interest, I used Brick Hunter to calculate costs for Orthanc, without figures. Almost all the parts are available through Pick a Brick, so shipping costs don't really apply, any it came to just under $300. That's not 'do it immediately' money, but depending on what they do with Barad Dur, it might be tempting to piece it together. If you remove Treebeard and a bunch of the interior, it would be a bunch less.

The minifigures, at least Saruman and probably Grima, and the stickers are quite important for that set unless you just want a bare tower. 

[RichardGoring]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

The minifigures, at least Saruman and probably Grima, and the stickers are quite important for that set unless you just want a bare tower. 

Yes, true. Saruman certainly, but if Barad Dur doesn't lean into displaying the figures, then it might work. With the exterior not being minifigure scale, I think it might look odd to have figures posed on the outside. Again, stickers make a big difference on the inside, along with a few other minifigure parts, but less impact on the exterior. I doubt I'll do it. Just an idle thought really. Made easy with Brick Hunter.

[mirkwoodspiders]

12 hours ago, Lion King said:

With Lego continuing making new LOTR sets, is it likely for them to make /bring back molds for cave troll, giant eagle, etc?

Looking at the troll mold in the newest HP Great Hall set, I think it's more realistic than it may seem. 

[Lion King]

11 minutes ago, mirkwoodspiders said:

Looking at the troll mold in the newest HP Great Hall set, I think it's more realistic than it may seem. 

Agreed