Alexandrina

Are the astronomy tower and Gryffindor tower really all that recognisable - as towers themselves rather than the interior locations.

Wow. I always assumed the helmets were about 300 or 400 pieces. Fair play - this new set is presumably a helmet then.

If you ever get to the point of needing proofreaders, I'd love to have a read! Something I think would make a really interesting selling point in a series would be to have a female monarch (not the wife of a monarch, but straight up the ruler) in a series aesthetically inspired by the era of the Angevins. A story with multiple factions is the perfect place for this - one faction can have a female leader and one a male leader. As well as being a really empowering thing for little girls everywhere, it would give us the chance at some great unique minifigure pieces. Take, for example, Queen Matilda, England's first Queen - the headdress/crown combination is a unique combination, and could make for a very distinctive minifigure if incorporated into sets.

Are helmets normally that much/that many pieces? I'm not sure what else Star Wars would qualify as 18+ - but that seems incredibly steep for a helmet.

The key thing for me is that the Chamber of Secrets is a very important location which, canonically, is underneath the school. It makes them more money to split the Long Gallery and the Chamber up (and I know there's no Long Gallery/Bell Towers confirmed yet, but the theme hasn't ended yet - that could be next year's sets), and on top of that, any display of all of Hogwarts would look weird if the Chamber of Secrets is sitting pretty between the entrance to the school and the Great Hall. I know that the Lego modular Hogwarts is not 100% screen accurate in terms of rooms' locations, but it's not that egregious.

But when the assumptions were that it was going to all be in keeping with the 2018-20 style, it is crazy. The June wave is a more simplistic Anniversary style, not the previous style which would have been more parts. In any case, why would the Chamber of Secrets be the interior of the Long Gallery? That would be something separate surely. It doesn't have to be on its own, but it's the location of two of the most important scenes in the entire series, and has a very distinct and unique look to it. It's only natural that it would take up more pieces than a generic room.

I'm not sure it could. The Astronomy Tower is about 950 pcs, and the Clock Tower 900 (minifigures excluded). Let's split that in the middle and say a Bell Tower is 925 pcs. The original Chamber of Secrets from 2002 is over 500 pcs, and you'd need a comparative amount of detail - for the sake of argument, let's say that they cut out the upper towers from the original and used that piece count for added detail. Just the Bell Tower and the Chamber is 1500 pcs. The Long Gallery is actually bigger than the Bell Towers, so that would be probably another 1000 pcs to do it justice, and the Dungeon/Slytherin Common Room would probably be another 200. That's nearly 3000 pcs, plus minifigures (and you'd need a lot in a set that size - probably a dozen or so).

In the next two hundred days, at any rate.

Not strictly on topic, but that summer Santa set is awesome.

The Marvel thread was ahead in mid-February. Once they've got their D2C leaks out of their system, Potter will shoot back ahead! That would have been an absurdly big set, though. The Chamber of Secrets needs to be its own thing, really, if we're following the 2018-20 style, and if you aren't compromising on the quality of the Chamber or the Bell Towers, you're getting a few thousand pieces. And that's before the Slytherin dormitories appear. Let's not get into all that again.

It would be easy to just not do loads of vehicles. A merchant's cart, a King's litter, wagons and the like, plenty of boats (which might even draw in some of the Pirates crowd!) Have the story take place at locations, and turn those locations into sets. Travel is going to be devoted to either exposition/character development (boring for sets) or ambushes/conflict (exciting for sets - but the conflict would be the set, so no vehicles necessary).

I'm well aware. I was just asking why - if the August wave is another anniversary wave, and if you like the look of the August sets - it would matter if they were anniversary sets. It's been a few posts back now, so apologies if I misinterpreted you, but I read your initial comment to mean that the quality of the August sets is irrelevant - them being anniversary sets would make you not like them regardless of whether you thought they looked good.

I get that - but if you hate the new style, would it not follow that you hate what sets in that style look like?

If you think the sets look nice, why does it being an anniversary wave matter?

Then you aren't scared enough!

Is that the reason why? Reading some articles on the subject, it seems that he was in a single scene, and that scene was cut when the film had a change of director. It's very common for directors coming onto a project midway through to get rid of some scenes, and it's just playing the odds that eventually one will be cut that coincidentally has some uproar online about it. Then because that will get angry clicks from certain demographics, all the news media jumps on it and makes it a big deal. It's really not. Scenes get cut all the time. If he was in a large portion of the film it would be different, but a single scene? It happens. Do you know how many lines Charlotte Skeoch has in her two Harry Potter apppearances as Hannah Abbott? None - all of her lines were in deleted scenes. (And actually, Hannah got a minifigure, so there's hope for Pepe Le Pew.)

It's possible that your text is seen as inadequate in a way the Violin is not because of the content of the text. There are just under two hundred words in the Violin's description - and the vast majority of them are used to describe how that model specifically was built. Compare that to yours, where the entire first paragraph is devoted to a (very interesting) summary of what radio towers are - with real-world examples - but doesn't actually mention your model at all. Common sense says enough, but purely from the text of your first paragraph there is nothing explicitly stating that you are submitting a radio tower. I would hazard a guess that this is seen as being "irrelevant, filler text" (is it? A matter of debate to be honest, but you spend one hundred words describing what a radio tower is - the Violin, for example, spends about twenty-five words describing what a violin is, so you can see the discrepancy). If I were you, I would distill that opening paragraph to its essence: "Providing radio and television broadcasts to a wide area, radio towers often define a city's skyline." Cut the rest of the paragraph out. Focus on the specifics of your build - what techniques have you used? Notice how the Violin mentions specific parts that it used in specific places. You do touch on the building of your model, but it's only surface level stuff - facts and figures about how big it is, what play features you've included, what bits you haven't put in (sidenote: I would leave this out, personally - Lego will add in anything you missed as and when it comes down to designing the final set for release, and I guarantee there will be at least some people who see those notes and think "why didn't Exetrius get all this done before submitting it? I won't support this." That's not what you want!) Obviously also don't mention IPs that aren't the focus of your model. I don't know the ins and outs of IP law, but I'm sure Lego do, and if they're asking you to remove these references it's probably best just to do it. Worst case scenario, they're being overcautious and your description misses a bit of colour as a result. Best case scenario, Lego avoids a lawsuit. Also, I'm not sure what you expected when your response to the submission being rejected for having too many minifigures was to resubmit it with the same number of minifigures, just not showing them all together. They're obviously going to catch that - and it might well colour their view of you, putting them off the submission and leaving the submission reviewers less flexible where it comes to edge cases in the rules. Good luck with the submission, though. You're right: a radio tower is a new idea - and very possibly one that gets the nod.

Very impressive! The sides look very smooth, but very sturdy too - and this is one beast I wouldn't want to cross in the open seas!

I mean, I've never watched a Lego TV show (bar about five minutes of Monikie Kid, which I couldn't stand) so I don't think I'm even near to the target audience. I would rather Lego tell their story through comics included in the sets than a TV show

True, but they don't usually stick a licensed brand on the box. Though I wouldn't complain if they did release a wand set. Wand colours are useful to have in bulk.

That's the thing - it would just be a brick pack.

The viewers might be, but it doesn't mean I'll enjoy it any more. I'm not saying it won't sell - just that it does nothing for me.

I actually think this is the one thing we will never get. There aren't any wands that are visually iconic, and the shape isn't distinctive enough to sell well. It would just be a selection of black and brown bricks and maybe instructions for prefab segments - good for parts, maybe, but not really a Leo set.

Nothing, per se. It's just that a lot of the genre conventions of adventuring groups of friends, especially in children's entertainment, don't really seem to fit a medieval setting.

For what it's worth, I've encountered this on the Town subforum - but only sometimes, with no apparent pattern.