Alexandrina

Not wanting to spit in the face of new leaks - but how does that not run really afoul of Lego's policies? If he's actually got the physical minifigures to hand, that's a bit of a bigger deal than someone saying what the sets are going to be or maybe sharing a low-quality photo. I'd have thought they'd have been trying to prevent that happening.

I have used Bricklink before for BAM parts (the hair piece on my avatar, for instance, was Bricklinked) but not all pieces seem to find their way to Bricklink. There's a lavender Medieval torso from 2019 which I'm dying to get my hands on, but it's not on Bricklink.

I'd love to know what specifically leads you to believe this. There's no unwritten law of nature that says any successful theme/subtheme must have bad guys to fight. True, the last few decades' Castle themes have, but going back further to the 1990s, most subthemes weren't put in direct opposition to one another. They coexisted on the market - but in some cases that was the same as it would be nowadays, when one subtheme is no longer getting new sets but still having its old sets made, while a new subtheme is overlapping. The golden age of Space didn't have bad guys to fight. Fire - one of the most enduring subthemes of any Lego theme full stop - hasn't ever had a 'bad guy' to my knowledge (someone will link me to a set with a naughty arsonist from 1989 or something now!) Yes, fire itself is the nemesis, but there's nothing to stop a medieval theme having environmental foes. I fully suspect that the Blacksmith will turn out to be among 2021's biggest sellers. The 3-in-1 still hasn't had any images leaked, to my knowledge, so until that time we won't know for sure - but I'd be surprised if that was also a strong seller by the standards of the 3-in-1 range. If Lego genuinely felt that medieval sets couldn't sell without bad guys, they wouldn't be releasing two sets without any bad guys. But Lego clearly believe the sets they've got planned for this year will sell perfectly fine.

How long do parts stay available at BAM stations, generally? As far as I'm aware all Lego shops in the UK are currently closed - certainly there are huge chunks of the country (including my area) from where you cannot reasonably travel to a Lego store under our current restrictions - and I'd hate to miss out on parts that got removed from sale before I had a chance to legally go and buy.

Are we expecting anything special for the frontages? I assumed it would simply be the lines of the standard print on a golden torso.

I completely agree - and even if Castle is no longer seen as popular enough to justify a full theme, that doesn't mean it never will be. What's popular has changed in the past and it will change again.

Not necessarily. The Lego Ideas Friends set was out of stock for months and months last year - I know because I wanted to buy it for a birthday present for someone, so I checked Lego.com every day - and it is eventually returned.

Big deal sets then. Wonder why they're doing one for Harry Potter now...

There's plenty of untapped heraldic charges that a new faction could revolve around, so there's really no need to resurrect another faction. In fact, I'd argue that it's best not to during the lifespan of the 2020s Black Falcons. Let them get the nostalgia focus for a few years, and give them a new enemy where appropriate. An ash tree herald might be interesting - it would thematically tie in with a Viking-inspired faction that would have dual appeal. I don't think that says much. The 3-in-1 is still in production as far as I know, and I wouldn't find it strange to see an in-production set in a shop, even in non-Covid times. Nowadays, footfall is going to be lower than normal with people buying online or not at all, so stock will naturally take longer to go. I'll point out too that anecdotally the last time I was in a physical shop, shortly before the start of lockdown in the UK last year, its shelves were full to bursting with old Star Wars sets. I specifically remember about a dozen of set 75177, for instance, and one or two of 75153. I wouldn't argue based on this that Star Wars is no longer popular.

You're referring to 7094, presumably? I don't actually have the set - so take my advice with a pinch of salt - but it looks from the pictures as though you'd need to insert any additions into the heart of the construction. I don't know how easy it is to split the walls, but I would bisect the left-side wallway to insert a building in the middle there, sticking half in and half out of the walls, and increase the battlements along said walls. Not sure what sets would provide the right pieces - to be honest I think you're better off designing your expansion in Stud.io and Bricklinking the pieces you need. Buying an unrelated set is just going to leave you with parts you don't need or necessarily want, and if you're buying the set not for the set itself but for how it can help your expansion, it might be a waste of money.

The point is, though, that this has not been said by Johnson, or if it has then the quotes were not included in the article. At most, it's confirmation that no new theme is coming next year - but purely because of Covid alone I don't think 2022 was ever especially likely. Johnson doesn't appear to know the ins and outs and intricacies of every single department at Lego, so if there's a Castle theme in the works (which he did voice support for) he wouldn't necessarily know.

Do they normally do livestreams for standard themes? The only one I remember before was for Diagon Alley.

This is definitely the right place, and yours is definitely a great build. It's a deviation from the Rivendell we see in the films, for sure, but it makes up for that in the quality of the build. You've detailed the buildings and made the trees very cleverly given the small scale of the model.

Herbology. Why? It's the only one I have. In all seriousness, I think the colour of the big tiles in Herbology lends itself better to other creations than, say, the Ravenclaw one.

A minifigure pack. I have very little ability to limit myself creatively, so trying to design anything 'big' would lead to about 16000 pieces of mess. But characters? I can do that. And I can get my Ernie minifigure.

I get that. Having a Castle theme means so much more than having odd sets. But nobody from Lego has said that Castle is over (exactly the opposite in fact) so I don't understand the need to complain about imagined quotes when there are legitimate grievances about Lego's Castle output.

But pink castles can and do really exist. Suffolk Pink has been used since the 14th century, and while I don't know of any castles in that colour that doesn't mean it can't happen.

I'd love to know which mad executive read Philosopher's Stone and thought "I know what one image represents this book best - that unicorn that was dead in the one scene!"

Ooh, please!

Are the images still on Instagram or anywhere? It's hard to go into specifics about what you like/dislike - beyond initial reactions - when you can't look at the images any more. I'm finding myself running out of anything to say about the sets because I can remember only a very small amount of the details from those prelims. We need minifigure leaks to save us from this.

I don't want to be rude, but this seems incredibly melodramatic. You're reading an awful lot into quotes that weren't even in the article in the first place. We will absolutely continue to get new Castle sets in the future - as Johnson explicitly said in one of the quotes that does exist. Maybe it won't be next year. I'd be surprised if any new in-house theme launches next year, given how much of the development time would have been taken up by Covid. But one day. And so what if we don't get new heraldry in the 3-in-1? We don't need it for every set. If there was a full Castle theme, you wouldn't be complaining that the sets in the second wave were using the same heraldry as the sets in the first wave. Think of the Blacksmith and the 3-in-1 as two waves in a micro-Castle set; it's just a couple of Black Falcons sets. They might do a few more next year, or they might not, and then we'll get new heraldry again. Just as it's always been. I'm a Castle fan myself (I wouldn't be here on this thread if I wasn't) and I'm not weeping. Nothing about Lego's offering is putting me off. What's more offputting is the melodramatic, defeatist whinging because a Lego designer gave diplomatic answers to questions outwith his remit and a news site decided to sensationalise what he didn't say to whip their readers into a frenzy.

Why not?

In that case, colour me excited!

I can't remember: is Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets set? If not, I'd be surprised if we get him any time soon. Not sure where else he'd fit.

I think it would look perfectly fine. No stranger than a yellow castle. And aside from that, Vidiyo sets aren't supposed to be facsimiles of different time periods, but they might send a message regarding the sort of periods that are popular.