Alexandrina

Never had it happen personally but I've seen a fair few people mention it on here. It seems to happen when a set is at the end of its production run or runs out of stock, from what I can see.

That will be disappointing if indeed it turns out to be the case - cloth skirts always look better on the promo pics than in real life, and now that there are multiple plastic skirts in existence the precedent should have been set.

That's a very comprehensive spreadsheet. I didn't realise there were so many different named characters released over the years - interesting that in some cases the UK name seems to have emerged as the "standardised" name in modern parlance, where in some cases it's the US name. In that case, my headcanon is that he's a descendant of Queen Matilda, cast out of time (and thus forced to seek home in a reality made of plastic bricks) by the events which led people to call the pretender Stephen 'King'.

If I was forced to pick something so far for the build, Agatha's basement might have an interesting aesthetic - but not enough happens there to justify a set, and you'd miss out on a lot of the characters.

The thing is, I'd be surprised if any of the main cast, heroes or villains, don't appear in future series or films - so if there aren't any obvious sets, I'd rather wait and get the characters next time. Course, knowing Lego they'll find something to turn into a set (or the set will be obvious after Episode Nine).

Lego have been making witch minifigures since the 1990s, they won't be put off by Wanda Vision. The question, really, is what would a set be of? Nothing so far in the series has really screamed "brick me".

I think this puts paid to my hopes of a new hennin piece. Lego are more likely to go for a pauper for their criminal civilian than a noble woman.

As long as you have an email confirmation from them, the order has gone through even if its not showing on your account. It will probably ship in the next couple of days, unless your region is experiencing slow shipping. If there's no email, I would wait a day or so then get in touch with customer services.

They probably would, which I do admit kills my outlandish hypothesis. Still, it amused me to think of it.

That's a lot of work! I like the parallels between the two factions. Though I gotta say, the thought of skeletons taking themselves off to the rec room for entertainment made me giggle!

Imagine if it turns out that the second wave sets are pure fire, a perfect Gringotts and a Hogwarts Belltower and everything else we've asked for, but they're actually released in June, and the only August set is a GWP microscale Mrs Figg's House or something else disappointing. Guyon and Falconfan would have been all Obi-Wan on us: "what we told you was true, from a certain point of view"

For what it's worth, it does appear to be back online at the moment. Though if it's been on and off all day, perhaps it's too premature to celebrate its return!

I wish! I've been checking five or six times a day since last Friday, but so far the only thing which seems to have come back in stock is the blacksmith's legs.

Is anybody else having trouble with the Bricklink database? I'm able to access the website just fine, but actually trying to search for anything is just timing out and giving me a database error report. Edit to add that after several attempts I'm able to access a part page, but it seems really pot-luck whether it decides to load price information or not for a given colour. A few attempts eventually clears it up.

That may well be the case. I concede that I'm probably a bit blinded by my own desire for more peasant figs. But that's a different argument to the Lion Knights as a specific faction being iconic to the world at large. It's been about thirty years since they were widely available - that's a lot of generations that have grown up and had their entire Lego-collecting years since then, many of whom now have kids who've also never known the Lion Knights. I don't believe there's a way to direct-link to individual parts on Lego's website, but the Black Falcon torso is element 6335192, the legs are element 6335666, the helmet is element 6327809 and the shield is element 6335631 (the tan horse, incidentally, is element 6343565)

At the end of the day, though, Lion Knights might be iconic within Lego circles, but they have zero penetration amongst the wider customer base (I'm talking parents, casual buyers, people who will buy what they see in a shop because that's what they know exists). To them, a Lion Knight is no more special than a Knights Kingdom Knight or a Kingdoms Knight. Nor is it accurate to look at how hard it is to get Black Knight torsos and assume that all iconic factions will be the same. Right now it's the only knightly torso available on B&P. That's going to give it a wider range of buyers than the iconic status of the Black Falcons specifically.

On top of that, even if they have rumours as to what the sets might be, they won't rush to shout about it until they can be more certain. Nothing better to take a site's credibility than dealing in fake leaks - so they're 100% going to wait until they know for sure that their information is accurate.

Exactly it. I used one quote as a springboard for a wider comment, rather than filling up the board with several quotes just to offer my view on them all in one go.

Is that necessarily true? Knights - not lion knights necessarily, but knights of some faction or another - are everywhere in Castle sets, going back all the way to 1978. I think the only 'Castle' sets without knights in a large quantity have been the Forestmen/Wolfpack (outlaws instead of knights as the main cast) and Ninja (ninja instead of knights). Civilians have never been commonplace, and are few and far between. The average person buying Lego (but not enough of a collector to go onto Bricklink or whatnot and buy what they need, just the sort who will get what's available on the Lego store or in shops) is going to have more knights than civilians. Female peasants, especially, are hard to come by - and the few decent torsos of recent years tend to be hard to find and/or very expensive. I'd assume that the portion who want more civilians is greater than the portion who specifically want Lion Knights.

The thing that's worth remembering is that it's not actually confirmed anywhere that the sets are brickbuilt, microscale, or anything else that's been bandied about on this thread - until we've seen the sets or had solid information on what they are, or until somebody in the know drops confirmation, there's nothing definitively saying that this is a minifigure-free wave. In fact, looking at the price counts from yesterday (especially the £29.99 one) I think they're bang on the money for playsets with minifigures. Maybe we'll get one brickbuilt set, and also not get the Gringotts fans were hoping for, but I'm sure we'll get plenty of minifigures.

Is the minifigure selection even known? If the sources for Guyon and Falconfan have only seen pictures like the June leaks, for example, it might not be possible to judge - or even identify - all the minifigures.

I would like to think that Lego could do a better job than that. It seems there's too much emphasis on the outside (most of which we never see, and the bit we do see doesn't seem quite right to me) and not enough emphasis on the lovely marble flooring and other goodies inside. I think I would prefer a Gringotts interior with the front door and columns rather than a full exterior with nothing inside.

County town, only city in the county - I'd rather not be more specific than that. Suffice to say, there's no Lego store within an hour of me, the nearest one opened since lockdown, and we didn't have a toy shop of any sort for ages. Woolworths was the hub until it closed down, and I'm fairly sure WHSmith trialled selling toys at my local branch because it was a guaranteed market.

I somehow managed to miss the fact that this set even existed. Not that I'm rushing out to buy it, it's a pretty ugly looking thing without interesting minifigs - perhaps that's why it's going so cheap!

I don't even know what retailers sell Lego near me. There's an Entertainer in town, no idea on their prices since I haven't been inside for about five years. Other than that it's all farm shops and gun shops that sell Lego on the side, at a mark up. Supermarkets sometimes have a deal, but you can't rely on them stocking a certain set.