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I agree that this artwork is a good depiction of Diagon Alley, but I don't think this image much resembles the movie version or the Lego set as revealed. For me, Diagon Alley should look like you've started with a normal Victorian street and then twisted it and turned it a bit bonkers. Whereas the Lego set feels like a series of completely distinct buildings without any real thematic unity or common aesthetic.

I think much of my disappointment stems from the fact that I am first and foremost a fan of the HP books rather than movies. In most sets, the difference can be mostly ignored. But I think the difference between movie Diagon Alley and how it's described in the books is perhaps greater than with e.g. Hogwarts castle. For reference, here is the artwork of Diagon Alley that was posted on Pottermore:

I dunno about it. Obviously Diagon Alley has volume going for it, and a high level of detail. I am sure there are going to be all sorts of wonderful details in there once we get proper pictures, especially of the interiors. But I'm not sure that it's necessarily all that striking, when you get over the sheer size/detail of it - I question some aesthetic choices here. I think I would have preferred it if it had been less colourful and more grounded/realistic looking, more like the Diagon Alley we see in Philosopher's Stone with a strong Victorian aesthetic. To me this set looks like if you took Diagon Alley and gave it the Willy Wonka treatment. Weasley Wizarding Wheezes is supposed to stand out for its colourfulness. Also, the minifigures are not mind-blowing. All the schoolkids have short legs which I've never liked. Would have added much more value if they had mid-legs. Really, when it comes to the mini-figs, the only 2 that I feel I would miss not having are Lucius Malfoy and Gilderoy Lockhart. And of those two, it seems likely that Lucius will come around in another set at some point in the future. I'll reserve full judgement until we get full resolution pics of both exterior and interior. But I'm feeling like I can safely skip the Diagon Alley set. I've been holding off buying any HP sets this wave until the CMF and DA sets were revealed so I could look at my options. And those options are either: 1. Diagon Alley. Total 5544 pieces, 14 minifigs, £350 (£0.06 per piece), or 2. The Burrow (£85) + Astronomy Tower (£70 on sale) + CMF (say, £80). Total 2018 pieces, 32 minifigs, £235 (£0.11 per piece) With Diagon Alley you get more pieces for sure, and better cost per piece and therefore theoretically better value. However, overall I'm leaning towards the latter as giving you more stuff, especially when you take the minifigs into account. And of course option 2 is for substantially cheaper.

Between Kingsley, Lily and James in the CMF2, and Tonks, Molly and Arthur in the Burrow, this wave is really filling out the Order of the Phoenix members. We also have Dumbledore, Sirius, Remus, Snape, McGonagall, Hagrid and Moody from previous waves. Who are we still missing, from the Order? - Mundungus Fletcher - Bill Weasley - Aberforth Dumbledore - Dedalus Diggle - Emmeline Vance - Hestia Jones - Sirius in non-Azkaban robes. - Elphias Doge I think that covers it? There's also a number of characters who died in the first war, but those are known only by name so I'm not sure Lego would ever do them. On the other side, we've got Voldemort, Wormtail, Barty Crouch Jr, Bellatrix, Fenrir Greyback, and Macnair. The main ones we're missing there are: - Lucius Malfoy - Narcissa Malfoy - Yaxley There are of course many more Death Eaters but little is known about the others. What I wish we would get, however, are Ravenclaw, Slytherin and Hufflepuff students, both male and female, with their robes depicted in a similar level of detail to CMF1 Harry, Ron and Hermione. At the moment, the Lego Hogwarts student population is very Gryffindor-focused, and of the other Houses, the figures we have tend to be more basic e.g. just a tie and jumper. Edit: In terms of buying strategies, I'll probably order 10 or so blind bags and see what I get - I enjoy the experience of opening them without knowing what you'll get - and then fill out the gaps with more targeted purchases.

If the DA set is (as some have predicted) modelled on being a slightly larger, Harry Potter version of Assembly Square, I wonder if Lego will leave the door open to further expansions along the lines of the modular buildings. It would be great if over a number of years you could build up a full Diagon Alley in the same level of detail as the modular buildings. If there are any form of technic pin connectors, we will know... (Assuming we are getting a DA set.)

Looking at how the Hogwarts sets connect, I honestly don't think Lego had a plan for this "modular Hogwarts". If they'd had a plan, surely they would have done it so that there was some depth to the models in the way they connect, rather than all of them just going in a line. I think perhaps their original intention was just for the Great Hall and the Whomping Willow sets to connect, and then the next wave they would do something different. But then they were taken by surprise by the popularity of HP wave 1 and the clamour for more modules of Hogwarts, so took the idea and ran with it. But obviously the way the Great Hall and Whomping Willow sets were designed limits how much can be done with the modular idea.

Wave 1 corresponded to Years 1-3 (Hogwarts Express was a Prisoner of Azkaban set) while wave 2 corresponded to years 3-4, so I think the idea is that each wave will overlap slightly with the previous wave. So it's possible that the 2020 wave will contain Goblet of Fire sets, though the Beauxbatons Carriage and Graveyard Duel sets are I suppose technically a separate wave. My wishlist for 2020 wave: Set 1: Durmstrang Ship Price; £60 Pieces: 750 This set would conclude the Goblet of Fire sets. It would also be the 2020 wave's "mode of transport" set. It would include the ship but also have a small second task sub-build. Figures: Karkaroff, Krum, Hermione, Merperson. Set 2: Room of Requirement Price: £35 Pieces: 400 This would be a medium-sized set which would attach to the modular Hogwarts. Based on OotP, it would contain the Room of Requirement and Umbridge's office. Figures: Harry, Cho Chang, Neville, Umbridge. Set 3: Thestrals Price: £20 Pieces: 150 A small set, this would contain a bit of Forbidden Forest scenery, a thestral (as moulded in Grindelwald's Escape), Harry and Luna. Set 4: Ministry Duel Price: £30 Pieces: 300 Based on the Order of the Phoenix, the construction part of this set would be centred around the Fountain of Magical Brethren in the Ministry of Magic. Figures would be Voldemort, Dumbledore, Harry, Bellatrix. Set 5: Astronomy Tower Price: £85 Pieces: 900 This set would be the wave's major addition to the modular Hogwarts, focusing on elements of the Half-Blood Prince. It would contain four levels: the astronomy platform, Gryffindor common room, the Charms classroom, and on the ground floor a relatively large section of courtyard. A wall section which connects it to the rest of Hogwarts would contain Slughorn's office. Figures: Dumbledore, Snape, Fenrir Greyback, Slughorn, Harry, Draco, Ginny, Ron.

Looking at the rules in: And The only prohibition I can see is that they state you can't post pics which are marked "confidential", which this one is not - so far as I can tell, there's no general prohibition on leaks (which, if there were, presumably this entire thread would be against said rule). Happy to remove if I'm wrong but I'm not sure that there's a general rule against leaks.

Here they are, for people like me who get annoyed that people post these on Instagram rather than on proper websites: Looks like the middle one is Lupin as a werewolf. No idea what's going on with the tail.

Re: hoods, the films depict them in multiple different ways, so I imagine Lego will take the OotP "decorated full face mask" approach over the GoF KKK hoods with eye masks. Which I'm fine with, as the OotP ones look better in my opinion. Probably they will be alternate faces.

Pretty much every big movie scene has already been made into a set at least once. While Lego's set design has improved considerably compared to the original HP Lego waves, thereby justifying updated versions of those sets, it still seems a bit silly that we're getting Hagrid's Hut for the nth time. I don't see why they couldn't look to less prominent items to make into sets to go alongside the new iterations of the "big scenes", especially locations that fans will obviously know well like Azkaban. It's in the title of the book/movie! They take this approach with Star Wars, no reason they couldn't do it with HP.

You know what would have been a fun set? Azkaban prison. Although it's not seen directly in Prisoner of Azkaban (book or movie), you do see it in the Order of the Phoenix film, so the source material is there. The way it's depicted in the films is an interesting shape (see below) and it would have been a good opportunity to include some Death Eaters in their cells, a Dementor or two, as well as Sirius in the process of escaping. You could even have included Cornelius Fudge, who said he visited the prison shortly before Sirius escaped. Build-wise, I reckon you could do it hinged at the back, so that you had the full triangular exterior, but then it opens up (splitting down the gully at the front) to reveal the cells.

Assuming that these are correct, I can't help but feel like Lego has made a couple of mistakes with the minifig selection. Firstly, what's up with the Knight Bus set? I get that it's going to be one of the cheaper sets but it's still odd that it only includes such minor characters. Even if they didn't want to include another figure, they could have added some extra value there by including a moulded figure of Sirius in his animagus form (from where Harry sees him on Magnolia Crescent, just before catching the Knight Bus). That way the set would have paired well with Expecto Patronum. Secondly, there's a serious lack of villains across the entire wave. The only non-creature villain we have is Macnair, a minor Death Eater. In the first wave we had Quirrell/Voldemort, the primary villain of the series. This wave just seems a bit lacking on that front. They definitely should have included Peter Pettigrew, who has a prominent role in both Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire, and could also have included Barty Crouch Jr or Karkaroff. A really great set that would have boosted villain numbers would have been a courtroom set based on when Harry goes into Dumbledore's pensieve and sees Karkaroff, Bellatrix, Barty Jr, Rudolphus and Rabastan Lestrange, and Bagman.

Best set: from an objective standpoint (ignoring my love of all things LotR/Hobbit) I think it has to be Santa's Workshop. It was so cute, with clever building techniques like the brick-made reindeer. Best mini-figure: Galadriel from the Witch-King set. Great to have a female mini-fig kicking megablocks. I don't buy enough Lego to comment on the worst. For me the worst thing about this year was that it marks the end of the LotR/Hobbit theme.

I think a hospital would be too big to capture in a modular building. However, you could do a GP's surgery pretty well. Waiting room on the ground floor, doctor's office on the first floor, records room on the 2nd floor. You could have fun with the details too. Some mini-figure holding a bucket with a piece designed to resemble vomit inside! Haha. I suppose if the whole double building was taken up by the hospital, like the fire station, then it could be big enough. A schoolhouse would be good too. I can't recall there being many (any?) Lego school sets. A blackboard would be a nice detail. The headmaster/mistress could await on the top floor for naughty children to be sent to them, I like the idea of a city hall. You could have people getting married on the ground floor, a courtroom on the second floor, and the Mayor's office on the top floor. Post office would be interesting. Garage with a vehicle for sure. Sorting room. Police station would be nice to see, just to have all the emergency services, but I'm not sure if it'll happen. There are already a lot of police station sets. I'd love to see a library or a bookstore, filled with bookshelves and books! The way I imagine it is something of a hollowed out building with massive bookshelves up the sides and ladders to get to higher levels, with some other features up the walls as well to keep it interesting. I'm thinking of the library from Beauty and the Beast. A theatre would be good too, as has been suggested.

I would have loved to see a final Hogwarts castle that dwarfed all the others. The grand Daddy of Hogwarts castles. I'm talking huge. A kind of collector's edition thing. The way I'm picturing it (and the only way for it to be affordable, really) is an entire line of HP sets, maybe 10 or so, each of them the size of the modular buildings in the town theme (grand emporium, etc.). Each module would be a large and very detailed part of Hogwarts. When you put all those 10 or so sets together, you'd have a huge Hogwarts castle, maybe around 20,000 pieces in total. All in amazing detail, all designed to slot together without non-lego gaps in between them. The models could be: Outer walls. Forbidden forest and Hagrid's hut. Greenhouses. Quidditch pitch. Great hall. Room of requirement. Central courtyard. Gryffindor tower. Astronomy tower. Dungeons and Slytherin common room. Chamber of secrets. Classrooms. Each set could be designed and marketed as an individual set with self-contained play opportunities, so that it's worth getting even if you aren't able to collect them all. But it would be amazing to see them all come together. And then a couple years later the same could be done for Hogsmeade. And then the castle and village could be put together next to each other. And you'd be in Lego Harry Potter heaven.

It is perhaps bad that my first post on these forums is on a complaint topic, but oh well! Hi everyone. One trend I dislike in modern models is the lack of base plates. If you look, for example, at the castles, you'll have various wall segments and towers, and they can be connected in various ways, but you still have non-Lego space between them. I'm not a fan of non-lego space within models, e.g. courtyards that are just holes on the model. I like my models to be situated in a Lego landscape, not just floating buildings. I also dislike the increased use of special parts. If you look at the old models, that is, those from the '80s and '90s, it was a lot more about making new themes and models with existing pieces, with maybe a few new pieces here and there for special features. Modern models seem to include a much higher use of special bricks, which seem to make it a lot less about imagination and a lot more about brining your image for a build to life through producing bricks to make it work. I'm not totally against new/specialised bricks mind you, as some of them add great functionality. I remain mystified as to why the largest base plate is still only 48 x 48 and only available in grey. And, of course, money. But that's more to do with me than Lego >_< That said, there are lots of things I think modern Lego is doing right. The turn in the last couple of years towards realism is great. More grey, brown, green, and sand coloured blocks are what I always lacked as a kid. And the modular town sets are great. More of that please, Lego!