More details of the Great Hall, two more, better detailed shots of DA2 and Potions!
More details of lego Harry Potter's 76435 the Great Hall, followed by two more, better detailed shots of Ollivander's & Madame Malkin's and the Potions Classroom (*swoon*), well worth scrolling through:
76435 Great Hall at Hogwarts set - 1732 pieces ($200 - $220). This gives us a better view of the Pepperpot and the stairs to the area where the Boathouse can be affixed. There have been complaints that the stairs don't switch back and forth, but I can't help thinking that it's not something you're going to want to spend much of the budget on, and it's easy enough to MOC if it's something you really care about. I don't ding them for things that are simple to build, that don't require a great variety of pieces and are easily and not expensively MOCced. It's when you need a wider variety of things that will be more difficult to source that I'm less forgiving (note to self, post my Anglia MOC after the summer wave is fully presented). You can also see how they've added dark blue plates to the exterior base to form a water line in keeping with the way the Boathouse was made, which is nice. (We'll just skip over the artwork that puts the rock structure on a... lawn? I guess? 😆 To be fair, they were going to have difficulty displaying the characters on the front otherwise, but it looks a little sloppy compared to the artwork we used to see.)
I still think the courtyard doesn't quite work, mostly because you can't see inside it. They've continued the new tree design and dotted a couple across the rock face. As a whole, I'd say it works. The question is always: how much more do you want to spend to make it look the way you think it should? This is far from a cheap set, personally I don't need it to be more expensive yet for the rockwork. (That said, I might have spent some of the budget from the sub-floors there instead, though.) You can also see how the modules from the sublevels can be removed and then folded open for better access and play. I think that makes the Hufflepuff Common Room more successful, as it allows the coffee table to perform double duty as a desk.
It looks like we aren't getting House points hourglasses, which is a shame. As you can see below with the art from the rear of the box, we now have several views of the Great Hall's interior. All of them have the five holly place settings. There are five puddings between the Great Hall and the Hufflepuff Common Room. I guess the dark orange version is sort of a pumpkin pie colouration, while the dark red is more red velvet cake / Xmas pudding. The holly are a whopping ten pieces, and I still think they should have made a Halloween variant. I haven't ruled it out, it may yet be included, but it would be odd that we don't have a single picture of it on the box. I think the clever thing to do might have been to make the default version in the set the Halloween scene, fitting with the troll, and left the Xmas decorations entirely to the Advent calendar as a way to divide them up sensibly.
We can now also see the secret passageway in the rockwork, which is cute. I don't care if it's canonical. It's a nice callback to the early years of the theme. The corridor they've built I find less successful (that would be one of those things where I think we could have saved the pieces and used them for something else, although it does offer a good and sensible space to display the portraits). The destruction of the lavatory echos the same approach I made with my MOC of the Polyjuice Potion Mistake into the Troll in the Lavatory set (here pre-destruction and here post trolling (the lefthand lav on the ground floor)). It's a real shame they didn't sell this separately, possibly with a Halloween kit to spruce up the Great Hall, or even Nearly-Headless Nick's Death Day party as an extra scene. Perhaps they could have made this the house elf run kitchen instead, something that might be attractive in a set like this, but that I can't see ever being a standalone set. I like the damaged sink in the lav build, and especially like the puddle that forms beneath it.
76439 Ollivander and Madame Malkin stores - 744 pieces (ca. $90 - $100). Madame Malkin's looks a lot better from the front, although things are still a bit too cramped. The scissors (gold!) on the sign, for example, are too high and difficult to make out. I'd have placed them lower so they're more visible.
76431 Hogwarts Castle: Potions Class - 397 pieces ($40). And here, once again, the set we're waiting for! The Potions Class, in greater detail. As you can see, the platform Pansy is standing on is six studs wide, with two stud wide walls that fold closed around the platform. That would yield a ten stud wide unit when closed. (UPDATE: it looks like they squeeze in the ingredients bench beside the centre plate, making the closed build 12 studs wide.) I feel like adding two more hinged bits midway through the double arched pieces would have better helped the set capture the feel of the original, but it isn't bad. The ingredients are lovely, covers for them would have been nice. The red 2x2 jumpers the cauldrons are on could have been some piece in transparent orange to better represent the flames. The distilling unit is a tad lacklustre, which is a pity as (silly as it might sound) that was something I was genuinely looking forward to seeing their approach to, but I love the Potions notes 1x2 flat tiles, and it looks like we're getting three of them! And poor Seamus has managed, once yet again, to cause his cauldron to explode. At this rate, it's only a mater of time before Snape's second face also puts in an appearance. He may have justification though. 😆
Snape, once again regretting all of his life choices that have led him to this moment, and Seamus regretting only that very last one. Oops. Meanwhile, Pansy eagerly anticipates the House points this is likely to cost the Moggies. Hee hee
76435 Great Hall at Hogwarts set - 1732 pieces ($200 - $220). This gives us a better view of the Pepperpot and the stairs to the area where the Boathouse can be affixed. There have been complaints that the stairs don't switch back and forth, but I can't help thinking that it's not something you're going to want to spend much of the budget on, and it's easy enough to MOC if it's something you really care about. I don't ding them for things that are simple to build, that don't require a great variety of pieces and are easily and not expensively MOCced. It's when you need a wider variety of things that will be more difficult to source that I'm less forgiving (note to self, post my Anglia MOC after the summer wave is fully presented). You can also see how they've added dark blue plates to the exterior base to form a water line in keeping with the way the Boathouse was made, which is nice. (We'll just skip over the artwork that puts the rock structure on a... lawn? I guess? 😆 To be fair, they were going to have difficulty displaying the characters on the front otherwise, but it looks a little sloppy compared to the artwork we used to see.)
I still think the courtyard doesn't quite work, mostly because you can't see inside it. They've continued the new tree design and dotted a couple across the rock face. As a whole, I'd say it works. The question is always: how much more do you want to spend to make it look the way you think it should? This is far from a cheap set, personally I don't need it to be more expensive yet for the rockwork. (That said, I might have spent some of the budget from the sub-floors there instead, though.) You can also see how the modules from the sublevels can be removed and then folded open for better access and play. I think that makes the Hufflepuff Common Room more successful, as it allows the coffee table to perform double duty as a desk.
It looks like we aren't getting House points hourglasses, which is a shame. As you can see below with the art from the rear of the box, we now have several views of the Great Hall's interior. All of them have the five holly place settings. There are five puddings between the Great Hall and the Hufflepuff Common Room. I guess the dark orange version is sort of a pumpkin pie colouration, while the dark red is more red velvet cake / Xmas pudding. The holly are a whopping ten pieces, and I still think they should have made a Halloween variant. I haven't ruled it out, it may yet be included, but it would be odd that we don't have a single picture of it on the box. I think the clever thing to do might have been to make the default version in the set the Halloween scene, fitting with the troll, and left the Xmas decorations entirely to the Advent calendar as a way to divide them up sensibly.
We can now also see the secret passageway in the rockwork, which is cute. I don't care if it's canonical. It's a nice callback to the early years of the theme. The corridor they've built I find less successful (that would be one of those things where I think we could have saved the pieces and used them for something else, although it does offer a good and sensible space to display the portraits). The destruction of the lavatory echos the same approach I made with my MOC of the Polyjuice Potion Mistake into the Troll in the Lavatory set (here pre-destruction and here post trolling (the lefthand lav on the ground floor)). It's a real shame they didn't sell this separately, possibly with a Halloween kit to spruce up the Great Hall, or even Nearly-Headless Nick's Death Day party as an extra scene. Perhaps they could have made this the house elf run kitchen instead, something that might be attractive in a set like this, but that I can't see ever being a standalone set. I like the damaged sink in the lav build, and especially like the puddle that forms beneath it.
76439 Ollivander and Madame Malkin stores - 744 pieces (ca. $90 - $100). Madame Malkin's looks a lot better from the front, although things are still a bit too cramped. The scissors (gold!) on the sign, for example, are too high and difficult to make out. I'd have placed them lower so they're more visible.
76431 Hogwarts Castle: Potions Class - 397 pieces ($40). And here, once again, the set we're waiting for! The Potions Class, in greater detail. As you can see, the platform Pansy is standing on is six studs wide, with two stud wide walls that fold closed around the platform. That would yield a ten stud wide unit when closed. (UPDATE: it looks like they squeeze in the ingredients bench beside the centre plate, making the closed build 12 studs wide.) I feel like adding two more hinged bits midway through the double arched pieces would have better helped the set capture the feel of the original, but it isn't bad. The ingredients are lovely, covers for them would have been nice. The red 2x2 jumpers the cauldrons are on could have been some piece in transparent orange to better represent the flames. The distilling unit is a tad lacklustre, which is a pity as (silly as it might sound) that was something I was genuinely looking forward to seeing their approach to, but I love the Potions notes 1x2 flat tiles, and it looks like we're getting three of them! And poor Seamus has managed, once yet again, to cause his cauldron to explode. At this rate, it's only a mater of time before Snape's second face also puts in an appearance. He may have justification though. 😆
Snape, once again regretting all of his life choices that have led him to this moment, and Seamus regretting only that very last one. Oops. Meanwhile, Pansy eagerly anticipates the House points this is likely to cost the Moggies. Hee hee