Alexandrina

I've gotta be honest, I've never seen that for a new set still sealed in the box - and shipping costs are going to add to that amount too.

So far nobody in the know has called the sets bad. Unexpected, yes. We've been advised to lower our expectations (and they were lofty expectations) but Guyon at least seems of a mind that the sets - while perhaps not being what he would have chosen - are of good quality

Is it really that much cheaper? Obviously when another retailer has a blowout sale it is (Amazon in the UK have a lot of Harry Potter sets reduced by a fair chunk right now) but at normal prices it's always worth the little bit extra for the points imo.

Careful now! You'll have Guyon and Falconfan showing up to the get us to lower our expectations again!

More points for next year!

Unless I missed something, there was no hate speech. Unfunny, sure, but hate speech is a bit of an extreme characterisation. On the subject of Lego Harry Potter, the cheaper of the August sets seems about the right price to be another classroom a la Room of Requirement/Girl's Bathroom. If it's another block this thread might just explode!

The downside to popular threads like this is that it's really hard to find half-remembered details from ages ago.

I don't remember this ever being said. I could be wrong, mind, but my recollection is that the £250 set has always been the D2C this year.

Yeah, I wasn't being entirely serious. If this was some playset as part of a theme, I think it would be more likely, as a cost-saving measure more than anything - but for a CMF they'll definitely have the budget for unique head moulds. Having said that, perhaps they'll dig out the old Quicky mould! Give us a dual dose of cool new mould and turn-of-the-millennium nostalgia!

Don't blame your wording! Blame a) Lego's reuse of the phrase "arachnoid base" and b) my coming into the thread without really being clued up on the year's Monkie Kid sets, Flower Fruit Mountain aside!

A microscale GWP I can see. A £20 set not so much, to be honest - at that price point you're expecting minifigures, and any build of the prison is going to look too dinky in comparison. In any case, my personal suspicion is that the theme won't last long enough for them to be digging that deep into the possible sets.

On the surface this looks a simple build, but I suspect that's not the case up close. In any case, there are plenty of details that elevate it to something superb - the waterwheel, the little birdie atop the tree, the mottled roof. In fact, everywhere I rest my eyes I see another little delight. The whole structure's a joy, to be honest!

Azkaban is unlikely imo because it wouldn't be a very exciting build (it's either an open-centred Toblerone in the ocean, or an open-centred Toblerone in the ocean with a small hole in the top, with walls that are pretty smooth) and it's a pretty large structure. On top of that, there are no scenes explicitly set there (excluding two very brief flashes, when Sirius and Bellatrix respectively escape) and the only minifigures that would make sense are Sirius, Bellatrix (already released in the CMF) and a number of Dementors (already released). To sell a a big Azkaban set would need some very good minifigures, and I can't see what they could be.

I've been doing a fair chunk of sorting vintage late 90s parts recently, so for a moment I read that and thought Lego had pulled a sneaky on us all and resurrected Insectoids!

That might unironically be a worse set than the fabled Dobby's Sock! Nothing but brown and bleurgh. Surely it can't be that bad - there's a world of difference between "lower your expectations, you're not getting Gringotts" and "lower your expectations, the Lego design team have genuinely lost their minds".

It might be unpopular, but I'd genuinely be interested to see Lego pull of an action battle for Harry Potter. If they can somehow conjure up some brick trickery to represent the flashes of light from wands, I'd be down for an action battle set. Plus, what else could it be but the Battle of Hogwarts? Or the Boggart-Dementor scene perhaps - we've not had that in the new range, unless I'm forgetting something, and it's exactly the sort of scene that Lego might feel would need a novelty play function to make compelling.

If that's the case, and it's not something special, they might not get the sales they're hoping for. Harry Potter is getting to be an expensive buy, so I bet there's lots of people looking for justification not to buy all the sets - and there are only so many things in Harry Potter that are iconic enough and big enough to make a good-selling microscale set at that piece count. Something brick-built gives more options, but I'm still not sure if the same market's there. I know my money will be going elsewhere if that's the case; I can only afford so many £100+ sets a year so if the set doesn't grab me I'll find something in another theme that does. I hope you're wrong, though - I'd take a minifigure-sized playset with lots of cheap pieces over a brick-built model.

I have to say, I'm not normally a huge fan of this style of MOC, but I will 100% make an exception for this. I love it! It's not an exact copy, but the moon does remind me somewhat of Meliés' "Voyage Dans La Lune" - perhaps it's because of this that the whole thing feels timeless and almost fairytale-esque. I don't know what you've tapped into, but it's like I'm looking back into some forgotten piece of nostalgia. Bravo!

I miss the thread reopening by half an hour and there's an explosion of talk! Those are very promising figures if correct. Are the second-biggest sets in waves normally in the 900 piece region? I suspect 76393 being so cheap for the parts probably means there are lots of cheap parts. A set with a high proportion of 1x1 round plates would have a decent ratio, no? Perhaps it's a lot of studs to represent the enchantment-clearing waterfall of Gringotts, or the flood in Yaxley's office at the Ministry? (Side-note: imagine if we got a Ministry of Magic set, but it's just Yaxley's office and the lift with an out-of-scale statue of the downtrodden elves and a flushing toilet play feature. That would certainly qualify as lowered expectations!)

You've made a very impressive start there! I'm looking forward to seeing where you develop this - though at the moment it looks like a very good representation of a Black Falcon outpost immediately after a run-in with a cannonball or six!

I love little historical quirks like that. It's probably the only downside to the standardised names of the modern day. I'll certainly be Stealing some inspiration from those names - some thanks for sharing your research with us! Out of interest, are there any other similar named characters you've come across?

In my experience, you'll have a hard time finding a single seller who has every brick you need - especially if you want large quantities of a single brick, lots of uncommon parts, or you don't want to pay international shipping. But as others said, the fewer sellers you can split the parts amongst, the better. What I would do personally is put all of the parts into a wanted list, but rather than letting Bricklink automatically take me to a shop, I'll start with the rarest/most expensive parts. Especially if you need parts that cost a couple of quid each, it's possible that the difference between the cheapest option for the bricks and the option from the most comprehensive seller is not dissimilar to your shipping costs. Once you've found a seller that's got the rarer parts, you can see every other part they have in stock from your wanted list - hopefully that will clear a good chunk for you. Don't buy until you've checked other stores, though, because you might find that the store selling your rare part for 10p more is also selling a load of other parts at 2p less, so your overall saving is greater. Another thing you can do, to save costs at least in the short term, is see what parts you can cobble together from your own unbuilt bricks. (I'm not sure from your OP whether the 800ish parts you need are excluding parts you've already got, or just the flat total from the parts list). Even if you intend to build all your sets up in the future and so don't want to be left short, it can be a good way of amortising the costs over a longer period. If you can find, say, 400 pieces from your own collection, you now only need to buy 400 to get your model built. The remaining 400 pieces you can get here and there over the coming months and years, perhaps as hangers-on to other orders you make in the future.

"Mammatus" isn't a common word in English, and it's also not an outlandish name to make up for a character - it's very common for people to make up random names with the '-us' ending, and given the amount of Latin words borrowed into English especially in the sciences, some are bound to also be a real word. Unless the character is specifically related to clouds (is he? I don't actually know the specifics of the upcoming series but the minifigure doesn't look especially cloud-y) I'd assume that the writers were unfamiliar with the word. As such, if the name is pronounced differently in the cartoon, the safe assumption is probably that it's an accidental homonym rather than that the Ninjago writing team researched comparatively obscure words to do with cloud science - or, indeed, were already familiar with the words - but didn't think to check the pronunciation.

Technically speaking they could be bringing back the old printed panels. Not likely, but I for one would spend more money than I can afford if they did.

I've never come across those names before. I assumed earth blue would be a brighter colour, like earth orange is. For the sake of anyone else who was unfamiliar with the names, I found this old post by KamalYAfi which compares the Bricklink and LDD colours. Very useful!