LEGO Dimensions

Here in this blog I try to focus on fan creations rather than news about official LEGO offerings, but I did want to note the latest official development. It seems that there will not be a new wave of Tolkien themed sets. There are rumors that there was a planned run of sets based on Return of the King, but it got canceled. That said, a week ago LEGO announced LEGO Dimensions. This is a new video game where you get to play LEGO characters from various themes, including Lord of the Rings, in an interactive world. It will be kind of like Skylanders and Disney Infinity, where you buy little models, and each one you buy gets you access to that character in the game. In the initial announcement, Gandalf is one of the initial figures, along with Batman and Wyldstyle from the LEGO Movie. Some of the add-on sets include Gimli, Legolas and Gollum. Also, it looks like orcs, cave trolls and oliphants will be among the enemies you encounter in the game. The game is set for release at the end of September.

Quick Comic-Con post

Sorry it's been so long since I've regularly blogged. I just wanted to put up some real quick news regarding San Diego Comic Con. Those attending will have the opportunity to win exclusive giveaway minifigs each day, two comic-themed figs, one from the LEGO Movie, and, relevant to Tolkien LEGO fans, an exclusive Bard the Bowman. According to Ace at FBTB you'll have a chance to scan your badge at the LEGO booth once each day and will have a randomized chance at winning a fig. Also, according to the Hollywood Reporter, one of the large-scale LEGO sculptures on display will be of Smaug, built by Eric Varszegi.

Next round of Hobbit sets

Hey all, the big Hobbit LEGO news this morning is that good pics of the upcoming sets have hit the intertubes. As you've seen in the trailer, there's going to be a lot of action sequences in Desolation of Smaug, and that's certainly reflected in these sets. The name of the game here seems to be army building. These photos are thanks to Huw at Brickset, and seem to originally come from an eBay auction. No word on how these sets got out into the wilds of eBay.

79012 Mirkwood Elf Army

This appears to be from that scene in the trailer where we see orcs, including Azog, leaping over the walls of an elf fortress. Three generic elves, two orcs and a warg in dark brown - time to start gathering up characters for that massive Battle of Five Armies scene you've been wanting to build. BTW, I see the newish gothic half-arch in brown. I'm a little bummed that Thranduil's crown seems to make that hairpiece not generically useful, and also that two of the elves have hoods - it would be good to get more generic elf-hair. But OTOH dark green hoods are nice.

79014 Dol Guldur Battle

There's been rampant speculation on Dol Guldur. In the books we know that Gandalf and the White Council "put forth their power" and drove out the Necromancer (i.e. Sauron). So, the question comes, will this be translated in the movies as a big battle on the scale of Helms Deep, with elf armies coming out of Lorien and joined by all the wizards, or will it be more of a magical duel where just the Wise show up and fight, or will it be something at a distance (like the contention between Galadriel and Sauron she alludes to when talking with Frodo)? When I heard the name of this set, and also a glimpse of massive orc armies in the trailer, I thought that was clear proof that we would see a big Helms Deep style battle. But this suggests something different. We also see in the trailer Gandalf and Radagast sneaking around the ruins of, presumably, Dol Guldur, and running into trouble. This seems to suggest that. Two interesting foes in this set, and I'm curious what this implies for the movie. First we get Azog (so I wonder what just happened to the value of those BrickCon Azogs?), which means he's going to be one busy orc, if he's overrunning an elven fortress in the north of Mirkwood one moment, and down fighting wizards in the south of Mirkwood the next. Second is that dark figure. Is that Sauron? Some of the rumors about this set were that it would include the Necromancer. I would not have been surprised to see Gandalf clash with a Nazgul, since we know there's going to be an exploration of the opened "tombs of the Nazgul", but I did not expect that.

79011 Dol Guldur Ambush

This set looks great as an army builder, since it should be less expensive and includes two of the "hair orcs", which I like quite a lot. I can't say I'm terrifically thrilled with Beorn's mohawk/mullet hairdo, but oh well. Interesting that this fits together with 79014, which suggests that Beorn might come to the rescue of Gandalf and Radagast? Or somehow otherwise Beorn will be involved in the action sequence around Dol Guldur.

Just to complete the set, we've already looked at 79013 Lake-town Chase, but I'm not sure I've posted the box-art here. Also, I suppose it's time to give up hope of a fifth set in this run. I'd based this hope on a mention of "five sets" in the official video presenting the Lake-town chase set this summer, and my assumption that a hypothetical fifth set would be centered around Smaug (presumably in the treasure-chamber).

Possible upcoming sets? Spoilers, I suppose.

I suppose I really can't let this go by without comment. Brickset and Lord of the Brick are reporting a list of upcoming Hobbit sets:

79011 Dol Guldur Ambush ( UK RRP £ 19.99 )
79012 Mirkwood Elf Army ( UK RRP £ 29.99 )
79013 Town Lake Chase ( UK RRP £ 49.99 )
79014 Dol Guldur Battle ( UK RRP £ 69.99 )

Before I go any further, can we agree that there is no reason to worry about spoilers? This is a book that came out 75 years ago, so if you don't really know the plot by now, I can't be held accountable. Yes, the Peter Jackson movie introduces some variations from the book, most importantly adding in material about the Necromancer that Tolkien wrote later to connect his earlier children's tale to his later epic adventure, and some other changes made for movie-making reasons. But from here on out on this blog I'm not going to worry about spoiling plot points. You've been warned.

First up, a few random thoughts. The thing that really jumps out of this list is what's not there, i.e. no Smaug set. We know from the trailer that movie 2 will at least get up to the point that Bilbo enters the mountain and sees Smaug for the first time. Presumably we will get his riddling conversation with Smaug. I suspect that we won't get Smaug's assault on Lake-Town in this movie. Basically, my thinking, based in part on what's in the book and on what hints we've gotten from Jackson and company is that movie two will have three story lines, and we'll cut back and forth. In the Bilbo story line, he and the dwarves will pretty much start with Beorn, go through Mirkwood with time spent on the spiders and the halls of the Elvenking, escape down the river, intrigue in Lake-Town, arrival at the Lonely Mountain, and initial confrontation with Smaug. Along the way they will be harassed by Azog and other orcs, which is part of story line 2 - growing conflict in the north of Wilderland. In addition to the orcs chasing Bilbo and company, we'll also get conflict between orcs and the elves, mustering of the elven armies, and possible involvement of Lake-Town. The growing conflict in the north of Wilderland will really be just sort of a side-note to the even larger conflict happening in the south, in story line 3 - Gandalf and Dol Guldur. Here Gandalf (and probably Radagast) will discover the truth about the Necromancer, fight with Nazgul, rouse the White Council, and go to war against Dol Guldur for the big climax of the movie. The movie will end with apparent victory over the Necromancer in the south, and a cliff-hanger in the north where Smaug has flown off and the dwarves don't know where he is. This will then set up movie three, which will start with Smaug's attack on Lake-Town and his death, and then the growing conflict in the north from movie 2 will break out in the Battle of Five Armies. There will be some sort of epilogue where we (the audience, and maybe 'old Bilbo' in narration, but not the characters in the time of the main story) find out that the victory in the south was hollow and that Sauron is reestablishing himself in Mordor, and probably the reveal that Saruman has been a traitor all along. Perhaps, and rampant speculation here, Saruman will be communicating with Sauron via Palantir when Radagast walks in, and Saruman turns around and kills him. This would establish Saruman's character, and also account for why (in the film version of the story) Radagast doesn't appear in the Lord of the Rings.

Okay, back to the LEGO sets. Even if you ignore my rampant speculation, as I said we know from the trailer that Smaug is in movie 2, at least the first time Bilbo goes into the mountain. But no Smaug set listed above. Wait! Remember the video previewing the Lake-Town Chase set? They said there would be five sets coming out later this year. Mystery solved. On to the set list:

Dol Guldur Ambush Pretty cheap, this should be Gandalf, Radagast, and a Nazgul in some ruins. Basically we've see this minus the Nazgul in the trailer.
Mirkwood Elf Army Army builder set (yay!). This will presumably include the Azog fig from Comic-Con in a different color, and may recreate the scene from the trailer where some sort of elven outpost is getting attacked by Azog. Probably we'll get at least one of the three key elven characters - maybe Thranduil, since Legolas and Tauriel are already in the spider set, or maybe they will save Thranduil for the Battle of Five Armies sets.
Town Lake Chase Set we've seen (shown again, below).
Dol Guldur Battle Expensive, lots of characters fighting around some sort of fortress. Do we finally get a Galadriel fig? How about a Sauron fig?
Unnamed fifth set Bilbo, Smaug, treasure chamber.

And there's my thoughts. I think that these, along with the spider and barrel sets we've already seen, hit most of the notes from movie 2. About the only thing really missing (assuming they include Smaug in a fifth set) is something around Beorn. Maybe they're saving a big bear for the Battle of Five armies releases, but I would love to see a set based on Beorn's house (with, of course, dogs serving dinner: "I hope you're hungry because Epsilon is the finest chef I've ever had").

Lake-town Chase, Azog

Yesterday LEGO revealed the upcoming set Lake-town Chase. It will come out in December and cost US$50. In a video they say that there will be five sets for the Desolation of Smaug. I'm assuming that this is in addition to the Spiders and Barrel Escape sets that have already come out. Also in that video you can see that this set is mostly normal brown - the color balance seems off in the set photo. In other news, I suppose I should spend a moment on the exclusive Azog fig. On second thought I think that this will have to be included in an upcoming set. The fig includes two new molds, and there's no way they would do that just for a promotional giveaway. Perhaps the fig that comes out in some future set will have a different torso print, and it will certainly not have the Comic-Con packaging, but I'm sure we'll get an Azog sooner or later.

San Diego Comic-Con exclusive

It looks like this microscale Bag End is exclusively available to Comic-Con attendees. On ComicBricks I complained about exclusives, as they are pretty much impossible to get without paying outrageous prices on ebay, but this one doesn't bother me. The Bilbo fig is available in two sets already, and I think the micro Bag End could be reasonably approximated with most people's existing collections. So the only people who really need this set are completist collectors.

Orthanc set

Okay, anyone who reads this blog already knows this, but I have to note the Orthanc set that will be released in July. At 2359 pieces and over two feet high, this thing is pretty amazing.


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I just want to note something that made me do a Tolkien geek happy dance. If you look closely at the library level, there are portraits of five wizards! So at least in picture form we get LEGO versions of Alatar and Pallando. On the back wall on the left is Radagast and the right side has Gandalf. Saruman's portrait is in the middle of the back wall under those arches (blocked by the fig in this picture, but you can see it in another picture). Then on the left-hand side wall there is another figure - and if you look close you can see the edge of a sticker (yes, unfortunately these are stickers) on the right-hand wall.



In another interesting little detail, there are five wizards' staffs in the set. The simple brown one is Gandalf's as has already been seen in released sets, and the one with the white light bulb cover is Saruman's, as seen in the box art. So what are the other three? Did Saruman steal them from the other three wizards (as he accused Gandalf of wanting to do)? Are the LEGO designers implying that they've disappeared by the time of the events of the Peter Jackson movies, and that this is due to some underhanded doings of Saruman?



Add to this a fully furnished interior, a great set of figs (including Wormtongue who seems to be exclusive to this set), an eagle and a sweet brick-built Ent (presumably Treebeard), and this turns out to be a pretty epic set.

2013 sets posted

I know that some of these have been available online previously, but I avoid linking to images leaked from dealer catalogs. Now, however, LEGO has publicly displayed (and allowed photography) at the New York Toy Fair. Toy News International has photos and there are also videos going up at Brick Show. FBTB has a correspondent there, so expect a full report from them in due course.

79005 – The Wizard Battle - Great way to get the two wizards for cheap. Love the Palantir with the Eye - obvious MOC is to put that Eye at the top of a microscale Barad Dur


79006 – The Council of Elrond - Yes, as a Tolkien fan I appreciate the inclusion of Elrond and Arwen. I'm a little annoyed that they chose to highlight one of the points in the movie where Gimli is treated as comic relief. Most exciting to me, though, is the inclusion of a new gothic arch piece. As a castle builder I really appreciate this more than anything else. Orange leaves, new printed tiles, and great torsos make this (IMO) generally useful set for castle builders.


79007 – Battle at the Black Gate - While I haven't linked them, of course I'd already seen the leaked pictures of the Black Gate, and knew it would look cool. I'm pleasantly surprised with how good the Eagle looks here. I think the previously leaked image included an unfinished prototype.


79008 – Pirate Ship Ambush - Again, I'd seen the leaked image, and this looks even better. I was most excited to see good pictures of the ghost warriors, and they look great. Those six shields on the ship will make for a nice army faction as well. My main complaint here is that they dumbed down the name of the set.

Various official theme news

I just wanted to wrap up some various news that has come out since the last time I blogged on this a couple of months ago:

Video game

LEGO has released new heroes and villains posters to promote the video game. Most interesting to me is that these may hint at future sets - oliphants, fell beasts, trolls and balrog.




It looks like you will get a free Elrond figure if you pre-order the game. Preordering will also get you codes to unlock other characters.



Reports are that the game will include 85 playable characters, so you can play through again and again. Here's some other cool promotional art.



Hobbit sets

I'd previously noted a listing of upcoming sets. I'm not sure if I just missed one, or if one has been added, but Brickset reports a list with one additional entry.

79000 Mystery of the Ring (€13) Minifigures: Bilbo Baggins, Gollum
79001 Fleeing from the Mirkwood Spiders (€30) Minifigure: Bilbo Baggins
79002 Attack of the Wargs (€60) Minifigures: Gandalf, Wargs (unknown amount)
79003 Bag End (€80) Minifigures: Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Balin, Boufer, Dwalin
79004 Escape in Barrels (€70). This is the new listing.
79010 The Orc King (€100) Minifigures: Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Orc King

It is interesting to note that this list includes 'Escape in Barrels' - see my previous discussion about the possible ending of the first film. If the film ends after 'Flies and Spiders', this would be from movie 2 as well. Also, the fact that 'Fleeing from the Mirkwood Spiders' lists Bilbo shoots to heck all of my rampant speculation on Radagast.

That set list should be taken with a grain of salt until we see confirmation from LEGO. The one thing we know for sure, of course is the Bag End set. Here is the box art.



BTW, the Flying Dutchman put together his version of the official set based on photos from ComicCon. He had to make a few substitutions because certain pieces are not yet available (or not available in the right colors), but it looks awesome.



John Callen, who is playing Oin in the movie, showed off his minifig likeness on his Facebook page. No word on what set this will be in.



Board game

The Hobbit board game is now on shelves (the official release date is October 1, so you may have to wait a week to find it in your local store).



It seems to be essentially a memory matching game where you turn over tiles and try to make pairs, but there is also some component of moving figures around.



Captain BeerBeard picked up a copy. Here is a close-up of the microfigs.



He also posted the tiles. I'm happy that they don't seem to be stickers.

Comic-Con and other official news wrap-up

Okay, a ton of various official news. First, let's start out with the biggest item. Yesterday at the San Diego Comic-Con LEGO announced the upcoming Bag End set (follow the link for a hi-res picture):



As you can see, this set will include the six figures revealed previously. BTW, someone put together this picture, which shows these figs to be quite movie-accurate. So any accusations of silliness (particularly with regard to Bofur) can be squarely laid at Peter Jackson's doorstep.



Ace from FBTB has lot of and an article. He reports this will be available December 1 and will cost US$60. I've seen this called 'An Unexpected Gathering' at multiple places online, so I assume that is the official name. Why not 'An Unexpected Party'? I have no clue, but again I'll just blame Peter Jackson. Anyway, on to the set itself. I'm pretty happy with this overall - as many have said it looks more like a MOC than a set, which is always a complement. Fully furnished interior is accessible from the back. I see some cool elements like a new pretzel and what I think is a new round plate with hole used for the windows. Also awesome new maps (of Mirkwood, the Lonely Mountain, and the Shire), Bilbo's diary and board elements, but sadly those are stickered. It may be that this is a demo and the ultimate set will have printed pieces, but given the Moria stickers I'm not going to hold my breath. Oh, I see Sting there, which is kind of odd since this is supposed to be set before Bilbo gets it,* but good for the fact that you can also use this set for the start and end of the Lord of the Rings scenes.




In other set news, Will from Lord of the Brick reports that the list of Hobbit sets has shown up on a German toy site. The list they give is:
Mystery of the Ring 12.99 €
Fleeing from the Mirkwood Spiders 29.99 €
Attack of the Wargs 59.99 €
Bag End 79.99 €
Cave of the Orc King 99.99 €
There is no confirmation on this, but it seems pretty reasonable. I'd like to point out that this is extremely close to my predictions. My speculation had combined their 'Cave of the Orc King' and 'Attack of the Wargs' into one set and I'd also suggested two other sets for the encounter with the trolls and a long shot set of Gandalf at Dol Guldur. I'm assuming here that 'Mystery of the Ring' will essentially be a small set for the Riddles in the Dark chapter. Given the report from Comic-Con that the Bag End set will be US$60, you can make estimations of what these may cost in the US.

Okay, back to San Diego. Yesterday at Comic-Con you could pick up a map of 'ComicCondor' and pouch at the LEGO booth.



If you traveled around to the Weta, Mondo and Warner Brothers booths you could get the elements to build a Bilbo. Note that the head is reversible. This is the same fig that will be in the official sets, so I don't know why this is called an 'exclusive' (unlike the Super Hero figs, which reportedly (sadly) will not appear in sets), except, I suppose, that Comic-Con attendees get this five months early.




In other news from Comic-Con LEGO had two great Hobbit-themed displays. As part of the LEGO booth they have huge sculptures of Gandalf and Bilbo. Also, throughout the day, attendees could help assemble a mosaic that turned out to be a LEGO-ized version of the Hobbit movie poster.





LEGO had announced that they would also preview some Lord of the Rings videos that will air on the Cartoon Network. I don't know if these are the ones that you can see on the official site or not. Be sure to go watch those, if only to see what the Nazgul look like when Frodo puts on the Ring. If the videos turn out to be something else, I'll be sure to note that here (or if they go up on YouTube I'll embed them here). We were also supposed to hear about a contest to build any scene from the Lord of the Rings to win a trip to Legoland and Warner Brothers Studios, but I haven't yet seen anything from San Diego or on the official site. Also, no images of the Bilbo model that was supposed to be raffled off yesterday.



One last bit of official news. Over on the official site they've posted a Helm's Deep game (warning - performance seems to be a little browser-dependent). You control Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to repel the hoards of Uruk-Hai.



*I just had a horrible thought - maybe in the movie Bilbo will already have Sting before the adventure begins. That would allow Peter Jackson to avoid the admittedly problematic questions of why some random trolls have a cave full of treasure from Gondolin, and also why Gandalf and Thorin seem to have no swords of their own before beginning the journey. But on the other hand, why would a respectable Baggins have something like a sword on display, and where would he get an elf sword in the first place? That would go very much against the character development of Bilbo as he gains and later names his sword. Not to mention the fact that he runs out from Bag End with not so much as a pocket handkerchief. I'm concerned that Peter Jackson will screw up the whole conflict between Bilbo's Baggins and Tookish sides. I promise, sometime soon I'll pull out the DVDs and rewatch the whole trilogy and then go off on a whole Peter Jackson rant on this blog. Short thumbnail: in every place PJ gets the 'look' just about perfect, but he constantly belies a complete befuddlement over anything deeper than the basic aesthetics of Tolkien's work.

Hobbit figs

As part of the promotions surrounding next week's San Diego Comic-Con, LEGO released the first images of figs from the upcoming Hobbit series. These represent, left to right, Gandalf, Dwalin, Bombur, Bofur, Bilbo and Balin. I'm not a huge fan of the Bombur, Bofur and Balin figs (at least the headwear - the heads and torsos seem fine), but I'll assume those are pretty movie-accurate. Also, I guess all hobbits go to the same hair stylist.

More video game

Okay, on the heels of that prior article, the trailer video is now on YouTube:



Here's a still of the glimpse of the Balrog (sorry, you really can't see much):


They've also released this teaser image. That article also has the official press release.