Alexandrina

If it's the book I'm thinking of, the author is employed by Lego (at least according to Amazon)

Blasphemy! Really, without knowing what specific part of Star Wars you want to emulate for your display, it's hard to judge a best baseplate colour. Grey is a good baseline, but for Tatooine/Geonosis/Jakku you'd want tan baseplates, for Kamino you'd probably want blue baseplates, for Endor you'd want green, Rhen Var you'd want white, etc. (do white baseplates even exist?) Don't forget, a few cleverly placed plates can join baseplates. You could very easily do multiple colours for different parts of the display, depending on how much space you have.

True - and figure discussion is genuinely interesting, even if it will oscillate between the ever-present minifigures and debating which obscure character might appear this time. It just feels far too early to be getting a great big piece of information for the August wave. If next year is anything like this year, we'll have nothing more to pore over until the next June wave, a couple of Moments sets aside - and I'm fairly confident posters here have nailed the next four Moments sets and at least one minifigure from each. It'll be a long second half of the year!

If you replied with an image of that set in an attempt to prove your point, you've also proven mine - that this is all subjective. That set looks better to me than any castle/pirate hybrid could realistically achieve. I will say, and I don't mean to accuse you of anything by this, that it seems to be the done thing to assume that Nexo Knights was an unmitigated disaster and should never ever be repeated, and yet also assume that a theoretical fusion of Castle and Pirates would be a success. I don't see it. If one hybrid works, why not another? I wonder if it's down to a shared clamouring for Castle and Pirates sets and the desire to see them both, even if they come together.

Again, though, that's a subjective call. I would argue the other way - Castle and Pirates are too different to combine without one seeming like it was lazily tacked on to a different time period. At least with space you've got the automatic knowledge that it's not based on real world history.

What Gif is that?

That's subjective though. Lego are best off keeping Castle to itself and letting people mix it with other themes if they want to. Combining it with other things anachronistically will only alienate certain fans.

Aye, but then that's done to death by the end of April, then the minifigures leak on Instagram and we have three or four months of nothing but waiting for the sets to come out. Give me the drip drip dirp of information like last year with Diagon Alley.

I might be the only one who doesn’t want set descriptions and all that soon. The mad speculation is one of the best bits of being an AFOL, and when we have the set names what's left to speculate on?

In your opinion, maybe. I'd personally much rather Lego kept the themes separate - but if they have to combine two, I'd prefer that they combine the theme set in the future with one of the historical ones, rather than jamming together two different historical periods that don't fit together. What are the key archetypes of Castle? A castle, perhaps. Knights. Swords and bows. The key archetypes of Pirates? Pirates, ships. Redcoats, muskets and flintlock pistols. These don't belong together. (There is some limited overlap between late Medieval and the existence of guns, but certainly High Medieval has little to nothing in common with Pirates beyond being set in the past).

I definitely need to rewatch then! I barely even remember Hogwarts being in Fantastic Beasts, let alone in flashbacks. Though come to think of it, I can't really remember anything that happened in the second film. I may never have seen it!

Why is Castle-Pirate inherently better than Castle-Space? One is combining two historical time periods which had limited overlap, while the other is taking a historical archetype and carrying it into an imagined future setting.

Slightly straying from topic, where does the image of the 1910s uniform come from? That's too early even for Fantastic Beats, isn't it?

Are there even any Luna variants we haven't had yet? I know Neville has the Battle of Hogwarts one.

She'll come eventually. Most likely in the third week CMF - I can see her holding a bottle of Skelegro. Course it is!

Was Leanne not Cho's friend who snitched to Umbridge about Dumbledore's Army and got the boils on her forehead? Book only I know but that would make an interesting minifigure.

To be honest, I missed your post and thought @koalayummies had posted his comment to revive the thread. This one's on me for not being able to read things properly!

That's the previously-mentioned aviator cap, isn't it? Or is there a new mould? I'm having trouble envisaging what a football helmet would be anyway - presumably Petr Cech's skull cap didn't exist in the 1920s!

Why?

I'm a big fan of this. The hinged roofs get exactly the right shape - and more than that, the whole thing feels right at home in any medieval city. Nice and compact, and well populated with minifigures.

How do Fred and George differ on the Quidditch pitch though? They're both beaters so accessories can't be the way. It's got to be the Emily Dale version.

Chamber of Secrets might be more interesting, depending on how detailed they go. She's blonde in the first two films with a hint of dark roots visible - and I don't believe Lego have ever done a hair piece with visible roots.

The only thing that makes me doubt this is the presence of Justin in the Great Hall set. The Dueling Club scene is Justin's big scene, so it would make more sense to put him in that if it was coming than to rush him into the Great Hall.

It's a pity Sinistra leaked after the set she was in. Imagine the months of speculation if all we had to go on was that Sinistra was coming, but no idea what set she might have come in!

The excitement of new sets. I have no idea if it's actually a factor Lego considers - but I know I sometimes cool on sets once they've been out for a while. If Lego release four sets and someone can afford them all on release day, they might buy the lot, but no longer be so interested in a few months' time. If they have to pick and choose sets, they're more likely to not end up getting them all. Splitting the release allows them to double-dip on these people.