LEGO Lord of the Rings new set: 10237 The Tower of Orthanc

epyon396

Day one purchase.
There will be a brawl in my household to see who gets to build it.

woony2

@jockosjungle ^yep that's going to need a very odd shelf

maniac

jockosjungle said:

Any idea on the RRp? Looks pretty cool but a bugger to display

Brick Fanatics has reported that it's £169.99, 2,359pc.

Diggydoes

Sorry for posting another webpage, but http://www.fbtb.net/2013/04/26/official-unveiling-of-10237-tower-of-orthanc/
With better pics ;)

Bumblepants

Can't wait to build it, the details inside and out are fantastic

epyon396

woony2 said:

@jockosjungle ^yep that's going to need a very odd shelf

This deserves better than a shelf.
End table treatment for this beautiful thing. The only reason I'm getting away with that is my wife is a huge LotR nerd.

mdelleman

This is incredible!! What a way to wake up. Love this set and will buying on day one for sure. Now off to finally get my Orc Forge!

andhe

mdelleman said:

This is incredible!! What a way to wake up. Love this set and will buying on day one for sure. Now off to finally get my Orc Forge!

I'm guessing there will be a surge in sales on the Orc forge. A set that was previously a bit underlooked, is now essential to flesh out the lack of orcs with the tower.

kylejohnson11

andhe said:

I'm guessing there will be a surge in sales on the Orc forge. A set that was previously a bit underlooked, is now essential to flesh out the lack of orcs with the tower.

For me personally, I prefer the Orcs that come with the Wargs set. All that needs to happen is switching out the legs to dark brown. Then it is the same Orc as the Orc Forge set with the Orc hair.

Also found it is a little cheaper to go that route on BrickLink.

FenrisAkashi

In talking to some Lego store employees and a manager they were saying they've been told this set will get the VIP early release ala the Theatre.

Legoboy

Legoboy said:

richardh4388 said:

There will be no mini figs with this set. Shame..

This will be interesting....I reckon there are. ;-)

Interesting. :-P

Jonn420

Jonn420 said:

I wouldnt mind seeing saurumon, wormtounge, battle damaged Gandalf, and an Eagle

Darn, no battle damage. Lol

TheLoneTensor

Besides being chock full of Death Star-ish play value and pure black goodness, this big set wins for being vertical. My Z-axis display area far outweighs the X-Y.

emilewski

I am loving the set, so excited! Too many stickers but I will live. I find it interesting that Saruman comes both with regular minifig legs and the slope skirt that can be switched out depending on what is desired.

I guess I will now take the Wizard Battle set off my want list. I only need one Saruman and I have enough Gandalf the Greys already.

Diggydoes

Where is the Light-Brick supposed to be put???

***Ooops found the answer myself ;)***

Nelly

Is anyone else thinking they need to buy 2 and put them back to back to create the real effect?

Legofanscott

Nelly said:

Is anyone else thinking they need to buy 2 and put them back to back to create the real effect?

True, don't get me wrong, lego had to put play features on it to make it more child friendly but i am somewhat disappointed that it isnt a pure 360 degrees display piece which is what i thought it was going to be, think it wouldve been nicer if it was a dollhouse like the haunted house but i guess the piece count wouldve been over 4000 if they did that.

cloaked7

Nice set. It's a must have for me. :-)

111ins

^ just buy two and put them back to back

The_Mack

It seems to be designed to put two together. It would make sense to do it that way. You'll get some people that will buy two just for that reason. Not quite the same but #10233 is a fine example of this kind of set. It's great in it's own, but adding another makes it that much better.

samiam391

Looks spectacular. No, I don't like the way you can "see through it", and the fact it has "play features", but it is to be expected for marketability. Other than those small kinks which can be easily fixed, quite the wonderful set. I'm quite excited too purchase it, definitely a must buy.

I think it's important for everyone too remember, that this is LEGO... if you don't like it, fix it :o)

maniac

Designer vid is up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7aOdjObziYg

rchadd

looks good

samiam391

^^Looks about 2X bigger than it did in the pictures... Now it's a must-must-must buy.

mdelleman

Only thing I don't like is that I have to wait until July.

The ent and grima oh man I just keep getting distracted from my work and going back and paging through the flikr photos!

thornie

That thing is truly incredible. Wow.

Vortex

The silence is finally broken and i am salivating , oh boy , Set of the year as was hoped . 2400 Pcs times 2 and you have a monster 5k piece Orthanc. I think im going to wet myself

cloaked7

Just watched the video. I think LEGO hit it out of the baseball park (a home run) on this set. The minifigs are appropriate, great, and some are exclusive.

I too would have liked a stand alone/solid set, but I understand the need for playability. And, as has been mentioned, a person can convert it to a stand alone set. A good reason to buy 2 of them! :-)

kez

This set looks awesome, hopefully il get it after my birthday with my money :-)
I'm also very glad to hear it has a July release.

samiam391

kez said:

This set looks awesome, hopefully il get it after my birthday with my money :-)
I'm also very glad to hear it has a July release.

Personally, I'd prefer an April 27th release.

Si_UKNZ

OOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhh!


LotR gets a 'death star' too.
Nice.

emilewski

What, no flick-fire missiles?

Great set! Now where did I put my orc forge set?

TheBigLegoski

At €200 the Tower of Orthanc will be the most expensive set for me yet to buy! And I am already contemplating whether or not I should buy this set twice!?!

The most expensive set I bought thus far for me was #10228 Haunted House last October (and I still to my great shame have not even build that one yet), although I am building #10937 Arkham Asylum Breakout now which I bought a couple of weeks ago, which by the way is a fantastic set, and a lot of fun to build! Only bag number 8 and 9 to do tomorrow, and it will be finished!

Just scrutinized all pics on flickr
flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/sets/72157633356881658/with/8683701908/

Looks great, as a LOTR fan a must have for me, and it seems to me to be an absolute blast to build this set! Cannot wait!

To more months before it becomes available....Doooooh!

TheBigLegoski

I only wish they would have included not only a couple more orcs, but also ones with different torso, leg, and face prints. And why do non of all the orcs in the 2013 LOTR sets have pointy ear hair pieces?

kez

samiam391 said:

kez said:

This set looks awesome, hopefully il get it after my birthday with my money :-)
I'm also very glad to hear it has a July release.

Personally, I'd prefer an April 27th release.

Yes if I was to be honest the earlier the release date the better, but I'm glad it isn't coming out in October (near Christmas) :-)

I don't exactly see why lego released a palantir set, but I still have to get it because of the eye of sauron, the palantir print in the Orthanc set looks really cool though.

Devastator

I have to say this looks even more impressive than I thought it would. I'm just glad I no longer have to look at the pic of it hiding on the shelf at Lego. I couldn't take much more of Buzz and Woody staring back at me, it was really starting to creep me out.

Jverweij

Amazing set! The details are so good. I'm happy I have 2 orc forges lying around here (and loads of Helm's Deep stuff).

I am disappointed with the open back though, and I can't really see how buying 2 will solve this, since the upper portion is 360 degrees done, while the rest is 180 degrees, but I might be willing to spend 400 euro's to find out if I can :)

DadsAFOL

To everyone that questions the open back - compare it to the Death Star. Maybe Lego finally realized that the best selling large sets include lots of playability. Maybe Orthanc will be the next set that has a 5+ year run? My guess is that this set will be a home run with TFOLs.

0909090

It looks absolutely amazing. I have never seen Lotr but the level of detail of this tower is amazing. I would love to buy it someday, such a shame that it's so pricey so it's gonna have to wait.

Brickarmor

Another Gandalf the Grey. Yay.

Otherwise all good!

TheBigLegoski

@Jverweij

I am disappointed with the open back though, and I can't really see how buying 2 will solve this, since the upper portion is 360 degrees done, while the rest is 180 degrees, but I might be willing to spend 400 euro's to find out if I can :)

Besides the money (even though €200 is in my opinion quite a staggering amount of money for a Lego set, and double that amount for two), the thought that I immediately had was: 'buy one, experience the build, enjoy it, appreciate the end result (if the Lego designers did a good job, I think they really did judging from the pictures!), and ponder on customizing this epic set, maybe buy a second one. Make it bigger, and taller. I imagine that with two sets, I could make this symmetrical building bigger, add hinges to open it up, ad some extra lustre to the interior. From what I gather from the films and remember from the book, Isengard in former days enjoyed more splendour and brilliance, being the seventh tower to house the seventh seeing stone. Especially if you plan on adding the Orc Forge next to / under Orthanc, in the subterranean pits and canyons dug out in the plains of the inner ring of Isengard. I have collected all LotR and hobbit sets, plus plenty of other Lego castle sets. Maybe for me this will be a nice incentive to really build a huge MOC, by now I have the bricks (if I can make the time for it). If not, just tinkering with two towers of Orthanc, merging the bricks and building a bigger one will be a nice challenge too.

In my view the summit of the building needs improvement anyway, I don't like the look of the underside of the plates showing on the sides of the four horns/blades.



Here is the link if the pic did not (!?!) get posted:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/8683701192/in/set-72157633356881658

y2josh

DadsAFOL said:

To everyone that questions the open back - compare it to the Death Star. Maybe Lego finally realized that the best selling large sets include lots of playability. Maybe Orthanc will be the next set that has a 5+ year run? My guess is that this set will be a home run with TFOLs.

This is an interesting comparison, because there's a pretty striking dichotomy between the LotR sets and the Star Wars sets, and I think that's particular evident here.

Disregarding battle packs, there's no Star Wars set I can think of where I feel compelled to buy a second one just so it looks like a full set, whereas, with LotR, there are very few of the $40+ sets that actually DO look like complete sets (Weathertop being the exception).

At first I thought this was just severe mis-marketing on TLG's part (marketing an AFOL-centric line to kids), but with the reveal of Orthanc, I feel it may be a more intentional move to strike some sort of balance between the two crowds - where kids can have something generic to play around with, and AFOLs can buy two or three of each set if they really want them to be more 'epic' in nature.

This is all conjecture on my part, obviously, but that's the only way releasing a nearly $300 half-set makes sense to me. And of course, I'm not sure whether or not that's tolerable on Orthanc's part, as it will likely be difficult to obtain at the 40%+ discounts most of the rest of the line has been available at. Time will tell, I suppose.

On the plus-side, by requiring two to 'complete' the tower, I'll wind up with two ents, which I could realistically use twenty-ish of... so there's that.

Bumblepants

a few pick-a-brick and/or Bricklink orders would probably be much cheaper than buying a second set to cover the back. It has 3 sides already. Although with two sets you would have enough parts left over to go taller which would be cool. Ideally, I would like to build mine on a raised foundation with the Orc Forge + other MOCed bits underground below/in front of it.

y2josh

Bumblepants said:

a few pick-a-brick and/or Bricklink orders would probably be much cheaper than buying a second set to cover the back. It has 3 sides already. Although with two sets you would have enough parts left over to go taller which would be cool. Ideally, I would like to build mine on a raised foundation with the Orc Forge + other MOCed bits underground below/in front of it.

That's true. I'll likely figure out what the cost of an extra Ent is, plus whatever bricks are necessary to build the back. A second set would likely be a lot more feasible to swing if this set had more than just Wormtongue as a minifig to offset the extra cost.

Side note: With Wormtongue's inclusion here, the only minifigs/brickbuilt characters I absolutely WANT to see before the line retires are Eowyn, Faramir, the Witch King (on Fell Beast, preferably) and Durin's Bane.

sidersdd

I'm ok with the open back. I plan to have this on one side and my Guns of Navarone playset on the other. Too bad TLG didn't learn from these guys that you should include lots of figs.

cavegod

You all say its amazing but the only nice looking part in a sea of black is the tree guardian.

TheBigLegoski

^
I suppose as a cave deity perhaps deprived of sunlight your utter dismal dejection about 'a sea of black' isn't difficult to grasp. ;-)
Nonetheless I think it is simply magnificent.

@bumblepants @y2josh
Just out of curiosity, do you think you can order +/- 2150 bricks (after having subtracted the minifigs and bricks for the Ent creature) cheaper via pick a brick, that is to say if you can even buy all the different desired type/model bricks from PaB, instead of simply buying an extra set. Even though it is likely depending on how you wish to further MOC and customize the Orthanc you may still end up looking for certain type of bricks which are not in the set.

mathew

^^^ those Marx sets were awesome. I had the dinosaur one as a kid. I wish I knew what happened to it. They sell for quite a bit too.

y2josh

cavegod said:

You all say its amazing but the only nice looking part in a sea of black is the tree guardian.

For me, I'm impressed with this set simply because I think it's so much better than previous (and upcoming) LotR offerings... but yes - the tower is way too stubby versus the 'real thing.' Turning this into a playset was a bit of a disappoint for me as well, especially since the only interior scene that's even remotely relevant is already coming out as set unto itself, but this should at least be easily correctable.

TheBigLegoski said:

@bumblepants @y2josh
Just out of curiosity, do you think you can order +/- 2150 bricks (after having subtracted the minifigs and bricks for the Ent creature) cheaper via pick a brick, that is to say if you can even buy all the different desired type/model bricks from PaB, instead of simply buying an extra set. Even though it is likely depending on how you wish to further MOC and customize the Orthanc you may still end up looking for certain type of bricks which are not in the set.

As @Jverweij pointed out, two full sets would be overkill for the sake of completion, even if you really wanted the extra Ent (which I do). The minifigure selection is pretty poor from the standpoint of selling them to offset the cost, so I would imagine it's likely MUCH cheaper to go the Bricklink route.

nkx1

TheBigLegoski said:

^
I suppose as a cave deity perhaps deprived of sunlight your utter dismal dejection about 'a sea of black' isn't difficult to grasp. ;-)
Nonetheless I think it is simply magnificent.

@bumblepants @y2josh
Just out of curiosity, do you think you can order +/- 2150 bricks (after having subtracted the minifigs and bricks for the Ent creature) cheaper via pick a brick, that is to say if you can even buy all the different desired type/model bricks from PaB, instead of simply buying an extra set. Even though it is likely depending on how you wish to further MOC and customize the Orthanc you may still end up looking for certain type of bricks which are not in the set.

Even if one could buy the necessary pieces via PAB or BL for less, why would anyone want to do this? It seems like a big hassle versus just buying the boxed set, and the resale value would be considerably less. Perhaps it would save a few dollars in the short run. But if you were to buy a boxed version and sell it used in the future when you were done with it, you would likely make up the difference and then some by having purchased a boxed version versus piecing it together without mini figures.

In summary, it seems like it's a lot of work with little benefit, even if it could be done.

More on topic, this set looks really cool and I'm excited about building it. I'm not really a LOTR fan, but I will definitely be buying this one!