StormTheTrooper
Running to the Hills
I wouldn't call this tour's setlist conservative (by Maiden's standards). We got COTD, Powerslave, Blood Brothers and Wasted Years an an album tour, which is pretty cool. The most conservative that Maiden ever were was the ME tour. Apart from ATSS and Prisoner, it was pretty obvious what they will play.
By album tour standards, TFF (second leg) takes the cake, though. The closest thing it had to deep cuts were Blood Brothers and Running Free. The former hadn't been performed since 2001, if you discard the first TFF leg, the latter since 2005. Even with my notoriously relaxed attitude towards setlists, having that along with only five new songs felt a bit naff. Especially after seeing them on the first leg, with that daredevil 2000's set. To top it off, En Vivo!, apart from the new songs, didn't have any tracks that hadn't appeared on the previous two live albums other than Running Free.
There you have it, a setlist complaint from me, five years later.
It all depends on what's your base of comparison.
Personally, i don't have complains at all about Maiden's setlist choices. When I see how safe Metallica plays with their set choices, Maiden is a true daredevil on every single tour. But I can see a pattern on Maiden's albums tours. Let's take, for an example, the set of the last 4 albuns tours:
TBoS: 6 new songs, 4 "not-overplayed" songs
TFF (2nd leg): 5 new songs, 4 "not-overplayed" songs
AMOLAD (1st leg): 10 new songs
AMOLAD (2nd leg): 5 new songs, 1 "not-overplayed" song
DoD: 6 new songs, 2 "not-overplayed" songs
Except the 1st leg of the AMOLAD tour, the TBoS followed the pattern (even considering the "not-overplayed" songs were played at least in 2009). I'm 100% OK with this, but i'm analysing this on the thread point of view, of resting classics and play obscure songs (to the average fan. I have a friend that likes Maiden and went ot the concert with me, but would be completely lost if the band plays Dream of Mirrors or Longest Day). On this point of view, basically all the tours are conservative, the "bonus" songs are expectable or were played in a 10 years span, with the exception of Gimme Ed..., the 1st leg of AMOLAD and the 1st leg of TFF (the history tours is a whole different matter)