Darth Shadowthrone

I'd say half are from recent sets and half are purist customs. I've got about 10 Gryffindor torsos from the 2010 wave and those are distinctive because they have the Gryffindor coat of arms shield on the torso. I've also got one Slytherin jumper and two Gryffindor torsos from all the way back in 2004, when I got a few of the original Prisoner of Azkaban sets. One of those even has time-turner printing on it which is very useful but at the moment I've been using that for Percy instead of a prefect badge! I really like customising my own students especially when over the last 15 years the jumper printing has been fairly consistent. As I said a few pages back I'm waiting for a few copies of the Hogwarts Students Accessory Pack to be delivered and then I should be able to customise most, if not all, of the Hogwarts side characters. Good idea looking at the 3d puzzle! That model actually has the clearest pictures of some of the shops I've seen which is very useful for if there are more individual shops than the original set (which in my mind is very likely) I would be very surprised if this is all that the set includes as I feel like a Lego set would really need Gringotts and the Leaky Cauldron on either end to complete the street.

Don’t forget the Zouwu! That was my favourite beast in Crimes of Grindelwald I’ll have to look up the mc game of thrones dragons, they sound cool

I've liked some of the playsets, the Ewok Village was amazing and although it wasn't a UCS Jabba's Palace is now one of the only Star Wars sets I still display along with the 2015 Millenium Falcon.

Yeah I am and I think I'll be using the same hairpieces as they use in that set . However I'm more interested in minifigures in their Hogwarts uniforms than party variants, especially when the Yule Ball female figures don't have legs. It was very helpful seeing the official figures though, and the fact they officially have the same skin tone as Cho Chang makes me feel comfortable with reusing the Cho Chang heads from the Students Accessory packs. That looks great! I love the textured brick door frame piece you've got at the centre of the display and the fact you've got doubles of the Percival Graves and Moody figures to show their alternate identities!

I'm actually not sure yet! I'm going to use the Cho Chang heads from the packs but with different hairpieces so I guess it will depend on whether Padma looks different enough from Cho even if they both have Ravenclaw torsos. If Cho and Padma look too similar I'll probably use a Gryffindor torso for Padma just so she and Parvati look like they did in the films. From what I remember there's a thread on here for Harry Potter customs, I'll put what I make on there once I get the packs I remember thinking it was quite lame for a City Arctic set to just revolve around thawing out a frozen rat . The other two sets were great though, introducing a sabre tooth and a mammoth is lego animals. That being said I much prefer it when moulded or brick-built animals have articulated legs rather than just being one great big block like the Lego Dewback and Mammoth. Hopefully if we ever get a Zouwu it will have proper articulation (which is sadly even less likely than a moulded basilisk)

I really really hope we got a proper Werewolf Lupin! It would be different to the other Werewolf figures they've made as most of those have been wearing clothes, even the Chima wolf figures whereas I imagine a proper Werewolf figure with fur printing like wookies and moroff from Star Wars, as well as printed grey faun legs and a tail. Also I finally bit the bullet today and bought three copies of the Hogwarts Students pack and a Room of Requirement set so I would still get free postage! Very excited about these as between them that means I'll have 15 more students to join my Hogwarts Castle and fill up the Great Hall. Also I love customising Harry Potter side characters so I'm hoping to use the pieces from the students pack to create the Patil Twins, Ernie Macmillian, Blaise Zabini and Cormac Maclaggan

I completely agree! I got all the animals from Series 19 and thought there were some obvious opportunities for figures in this CMF such as Fang, Ron's dog patronus, Ginny's pygmypuff (this is the biggest missed animal opportunity in my opinion), a new printed frog for Trevor, Sirius's dog form as padfoot, Werewolf Lupin, more owls, or a Cornish Pixie. I know that's a big list (and many aren't useful for real-life animals) but that could have made some blander figure choices much more agreeable. Definitely a marked difference to Harry Potter Season 1.

Thank you! I have got the advantage of collecting Harry Potter since I was a child so I combined the 2010 Hogwarts Castle with the new Astronomy Tower I've been trying to get more glass display cabinets for the sets I want to display. Unfortunately my Hogwarts towers are so tall I had to put most of my castle on top of the glass instead of inside it!

Yeah I just put my figures wherever they fit in with my other Harry Potter bits. For students and teachers from the CMF especially that's very easy as I'm very fortunate to have quite a considerable Hogwarts built up now. Sometimes I do like to display particular minifigures together as well: I recently built the Viaduct bridge connecting the Great Hall with the sidebuild from the Astronomy Tower and used the bridge to display all my Hogwarts students I'm planning a display for the Hogwarts teachers as well at some point so it's always fun to switch the figures around!

Considering we know for a fact that the 2019 Advent Calendar was designed at the last minute when Lego realised the success of the theme I can't help but wonder if the two August sets were designed late as well, which would explain the extra details like the Beauxbatons uniforms and Madame Maxine having different hair. I guess if that was the case then this year we got a cmf and d2c instead of smaller exclusive sets. Also wasn't there an interview with a set designer where they said that they originally thought up 40 sets for Harry Potter that they definitely wanted to make and that the Beauxbatons Carriage was not on that original list, but a later idea. Or was that in reference to a different set?

The more I see the minifigures which are included the more I want them, which is really going to take a strain on my wallet! Although I think Lego put the much more interesting figures and accessories on the front of the bag we've seen since February I actually really like the Lily and James Potter and Fred, George and even Ginny figures which I probably wouldn't have been as interested with before seeing the pictures. Even the variants of the trio are interesting for the new faceprints which are superb. Honestly the series is a success in my opinion when the only figures I will definitely try to skip are Harry, Ron, Hermione and Luna. And even then, I wouldn't even be that disappointed if I got them by accident (except for budgetary concerns )

Oh god, that just remind me that that the only Tonks we’re getting so far is the HBP one from the Burrow! I was sure she would be included in the CMF i guess I’ll have to customise her for OotP or Deathly Halliws but I don’t know what hairpiece I’ll use...

To my understanding Bayona just directed the film, while Colin Treverrow wrote the story and script, which is where most of the problems came from (in my opinion Bayona introduced some great horror touches into how the film was shot) Theseus would be a fun character to make too, I might have a try at him too as I’m planning on a (loose) Ministry minifigure display at one point with Fudge, Umbridge, Percival Graves and Kingsley

I definitely think following trends this year with the Harry Potter summer wave the pictures of the CMF will be of digital renders. Even the box art this year was rendered, which actually looked less attractive to me personally, especially when it made minifigure details look really flat and fakey. I originally disliked a lot of the Astronomy Tower minifigures, especially Hermione but when I had the physical figures they're actually really fun, so much so that I'll probably get the new Ginny to go with them. At least if the CMF pictures are digital it will mean we can see all the details clearly

Ah thank you! Speaking of ordering pieces I really want to try to find that blue coat torso you used for your Dumbledore, that's such a great piece! It's a shame Build-A-Minifigure is looking like it's going to stay closed because of the pandemic James Potter's glasses as well seem like very fine printing that is hard to make out. It's just a shame that official pictures will probably not include all the alternate faces and back printing - does anyone else remember the first series when we had no idea what Grindelwald's alternate face looked like? We only knew we were getting a Colin Farrell face because the photographer had included his black printed hairpiece on the Grindelwald face print!

I've just had a mess around with some pieces and the result definitely isn't as good as TheRandomBlocker's but it's a start. Weirdly both my attempts used dark blue Star Wars torsos as that was the closest thing I could find to that blue coat look

Bofur came in the Bag End set, didn't he? I've still got that set built and displayed, its one of my favourites! Also I've just looked him up and is the GCPD figure you're talking about the black guy with a goatee? Because I actually got his dual-moulded blue and dark brown legs from build-a-minifigure in December! I'll have to look for a matching torso close enough to that blue peacoat to start making my own Dumbledore

Oh brilliant, I've got all those pieces as I was a big collector of all the Middle Earth waves. I wouldn't have thought of Bofur's head but I'll give it a try. Less lucky with those parts as I haven't got those figures. Most of the customs I've seen of Dumbledore have used that Nomad head piece but that widow's-peak hair sounds like it'd be a really good fit!

Those sound really good! I improvised an OOTP Sirius but it was just the Azkaban head and hair on Bilbo Baggins' torso from the Hobbit . Are you on Instagram or Flickr as I always really like seeing people's custom figures.

Yeah another CMF Grindlewald figure would be amazing as then then they can give him an accurate hairpiece, which I would argue is the most important thing missing! The Carriage Grindlewald is an annoying figure in terms of accuracy, though I was thinking of using him to customise a figure of Grindlewald in Deathly Hallows when he didn't have facial hair. Also in terms of the fandom one figure that really needs an official figure is Fantastic Beasts Dumbledore! I've seen so many customised versions online that it really sticks out as a figure that would be very popular.

One feeling I did get after seeing figures like Lily and James in the series was a feeling of worry, like "What if this is it?" in terms of getting such unlikely Harry Potter side characters. We have been incredibly lucky with this revived theme and I could not be happier with the sets and figures - I'm going to collect this series religiously even with the current difficulties! But I really hope there's at least another couple of years of life left in the theme so that we get another wave after Deathly Hallows to fill in the gaps throughout the films and one more minifigure series to cram in all those missing side characters! The third Fantastic Beasts will probably be delayed to 2022 with everything that's been going on so maybe that might help prolong the theme if there's another tie-in

I agree about the possibililty of a Gringotts Escape set next year rather than spending lots of pieces from Diagon Alley on a dragon for the D2C. But I think it's more likely that there's a repeat of Griphook with a slightly different facial expression just like Dobby this year, although if the (very speculative) set came with unique goblins that would be much more valuable! The patronus idea sounds amazing to me but I think in this example I actually prefer the Slub Club variant we're getting than her in a Hogwarts robe, as I've actually ended up really liking the Harry, Hermione and Luna Slug Club figures and look forward to displaying another figure with them. Also it is quite easy to customise a uniformed Ginny minifigure - I made a First Year Ginny with her 2010 head and hair and short legs which actually fits really well next to the younger versions of the trio! Ok, on the other hand if Lego had included a skirt print that would work with the Hogwarts jumpers that would have been amazing! It's a shame that wasn't used in the Room of Requirement where it could have worked for both Luna and Hermione.

Looking back through Luna's hairstyles the 'old' hairpiece is actually quite accurate to how she wore her hair in some scenes, though the Elizabeth Swann piece would also work especially well for Half-Blood Prince. It's a shame it looks like Lego is selling off their Build a Minifigure stock as that might have been a good place to get the Elizabeth Swann hair in yellow.

Thanks, I'll have to check that out!

I think with the new Dumbledore and Baby Harry it will actually be very easy to recreate the opening of Philosopher's Stone outside Privet Drive, which is amazing. The only element we still need is Hagrid's motorbike, which could very well be a set next year (though I don't suppose anyone's had much luck MOCing one? )