I like Madame Malkin's hat. Is that a new piece?

I wonder with the grey roof modulars, if everything is going to have a certain spot, the boat house
Certainly has its spot.

Spider and Ship look great. And while the Great Hall is slowly becoming Harry Potter's Landspeeder, I like the direction taken here. You can clearly clip on the Boathouse and they will surely be making a more detailed tower with Dumbeldore's office next. Noice.

The Potion Class looks cute, but I am wondering how it will fit in the castle. Can it slide in below the Hall, as suggested in the promo pics of that set?

The fact the Troll attack is not set alone is stupid. Lego would make WAY MORE money, as people would buy multiple of these.
However 76431 is amazing. So many great pieces for any castle moc!
Its also REALLY weird how they made Carriage and Ship one set. Once again they would sell WAY MORE alone.

Bit surprised that 76427 and 76433 don't include minifigures.

@Jackthenipper said:
" @japadberg said:
"Horrid."

It’s spelt “Hagrid” and he’s not even in these sets"

I had the same thought.

Best Aragog ever released IMO, and Buckbeak looks great. Everything else is of no interest to me though.

76440 Triwizard Tournament: The Arrival
76433 Mandrake

For once goes with ships example pirates (not pirates theme ships..)
botanical sets...

Now if they could just do rest thay way.... multiple catagories sets...

Guess I am in the minority that I like Buckbeak. Will wait to see it in person.

I do agree that most of these would work better as multiple sets. The Durmstrang ship especially suffers from lack of parts.

The scale of the great hall is messing with my head. The courtyard looks absolutely tiny. The minifigures look like giants compared to the whole building.

That's a better Aragog than last time.

That ship looks spectacular! The only knock on that set is the lack of a couple more minifigs

@AcePilotHarryKane said:
"The scale of the great hall is messing with my head. The courtyard looks absolutely tiny. The minifigures look like giants compared to the whole building. "

It looks like the hall itself is taller than the one in either 76389 or 75954. Unfortunately, it looks like it's narrower than either one as well.

I'd love to know what, if any, plan there is for how the new Hogwarts sets fit together. I finally arrived at a pretty solid arrangement of all the 2021-2023 sets and was thinking of trying to combine them with the 2018-2019 sets as a summer project with the kids.

@Graysmith said:
"Not sure how I feel about the Great Hall being elevated. You end up paying A LOT of money for rocks, and if this year's sets are to mark the start of a new "modular" Hogwarts, this implies that every single set going forward will similarly have to be raised up to match this, which is going to make all those sets way more expensive than otherwise."

This. When first heard about the piece count rumors, I expected a definitive version of the central wing of Hogwarts. However, when comparing it to the 2018 version, it is evident a lot of pieces actually went into the basement compartments/rocks. Consequently, it does not really feel like a real upgrade imo with the scale and details being hardly better than in previous iterations.

The Great Hall looks incomplete without the tower next to it. Definitely a downgrade from 2018 imo despite the big jump in piece count. And although it is nice to see the inclusion of some characters we haven't gotten before, the lineup doesn't look quite as good as that from the past two great hall sets. The 2021 great hall was also elevated and I think everyone would agree the chamber was a much better inclusion than the troll/hufflepuff common room. The troll bigfig is great and really the only thing it has going for it but the troll in the bathroom probably could have been its own set. This feels like you need to get more add ons to really make it work, it doesn't work quite that well as a stand alone

@The_ghost said:
"Is the potions class modular? If not why?

Otherwise everything looks great, except buckbeak"

1: Yes, it can be folded up and fit into the spaces under the Great Hall.

2: Agreed.

That ship makes a perfect late-medieval/early-Renaissance carrack for the Lion Knights.

OH! The Great Hall is made to connect to the Boathouse. I wonder how far they will get in creating a new modular layout before messing it up like they always do. It will look cool with the Durmstrang Ship and Beauxbatons Carriage with it.

And why only one set of Diagon Alley shops? These are obviously made to go with the new smaller version of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, but can't they make a few sets at a time? Especially, if they are supposed to be the cheaper playset versions.

LEGO really needs an HP Fan to guide the line...

@Graysmith said:
"Not sure how I feel about the Great Hall being elevated. You end up paying A LOT of money for rocks, and if this year's sets are to mark the start of a new "modular" Hogwarts, this implies that every single set going forward will similarly have to be raised up to match this, which is going to make all those sets way more expensive than otherwise.

The troll in the bathroom deserved to be its own set, not a tiny little side-module. It'd be the perfect set for something similar to the Potion Class set, just a bit of wall with bathroom details, a troll, and then Harry, Ron and Hermione figures.

Aragog is fantastic but it's a bit of a shame that there's so little forest included. You kinda need to get 76432 if you want to have a nice little display piece to go with it. But at least both sets are fairly affordable."

This has been my issue with sets being mostly brick-built. I think they missed another opportunity to use BURPs (“big ugly rock pieces”) for raising the Hogwarts sets. This might be an unpopular opinion but for me, using such big elements on sets that require rocky features is probably the best approach to designing them aesthetics-wise. Not only will collectors save time from building endless rock structures that aren’t really adding value to a set’s displayability, it will also help create a “cleaner”, more uniform look. The micro scale Hogwarts Castle from 2018 was a perfect example of that.

Brick-built Buckbeak breaks my brain...

I love that rendition of Olivander's, though. I haven't followed closely, but have we ever had a bowler hat before? Love Barty's hat, makes me want to make a pair of Laurel & Hardy figs which should be pretty easy.

These look pretty quality as expected. It's one of the themes that has consistently good designers.

The Buckbeak actually doesn't look too bad. I think it looks silly in the pose like it is showing off some new shoes or something. But I'll end up getting it.

The rest look solid. I love the new figures. I know there is a ton of ideas for future sets, but getting some repeats can be okay. I hate that we are getting a new Ollivander's since the other one was in the massively expensive set. (I mean that's good for other fans, but I hate having to get multiple of the same building, like WWW).

I keep wanting to build my own big Hogwarts, I know it isn't anything new or inventive. But since they keep releasing details I would include, now I wonder if I should even bother. People will think it's just a set. It isn't like back 10 years ago when it wasn't on the market so seeing HP related MOCs was impressive. Now everyone is doing it.

76440's boat is very nice, but it sucks that they bundled it with the carriage. Should've split that to two sets. If you only want one, you're paying more for nothing.

@Gustoffr2d2 said:
"LEGO really needs an HP Fan to guide the line..."

If only we had a Harry Potter version of @StyleCounselor here…

@japadberg said:
" @jkb said:
" @japadberg said:
"Horrid."

Buckbeak, yes, the rest is fine."

I said horrid because I hate this theme."
I think these sets look amazing and it makes me furious because I hate this theme. Why can’t we get these cool, affordable location and creature builds in Star Wars? All we get are too many Landspeeders or vehicles that appear once in one of the new Disney+ shows and never again.

@brickwich said:
"As an adult collector, it annoys me that they're already doing another Hogwarts and Aragog set.
But as for my inner child, I remember how devastated I was if sets went out of production before I could get them.
It also helps that this is the best playscale model of Hogwarts so far (in my opinion)."

I mean, the last Aragog set was 6 years ago :)

It's insane to see the best Hogwarts sets ever this long into the theme! We've gotten some pretty great sets in the past but this new system is something else. That Great Hall is absolutely incredible. The rest of the sets look fantastic but Buckbeak definitely looks off. Why are his wings so small?

Expensive.

I'd have preferred having two sets rather than one for the arrival of the Triwizard Cup contestants, and I don't like the brick-built Buckbeak, but everything else looks good. Keeping to any sort of a budget is not going to be easy this year, I can tell already....

It looks like we're getting the greatest version of minifigure-scale Hogwarts yet.

The pictures on lego.com show that the potions class can fold up and go where the bathroom or hufflepuff common room goes under the great hall. Really incredible ingenuity to be able to fit dungeon rooms in the dungeons but also have them be accessible and playable.

So it looks like there will be more dungeon modules and hopefully some empty dungeon spaces for the potion classroom and the other modules sold as sets

@ha21 said:
"It looks like we're getting the greatest version of minifigure-scale Hogwarts yet.

The pictures on lego.com show that the potions class can fold up and go where the bathroom or hufflepuff common room goes under the great hall. Really incredible ingenuity to be able to fit dungeon rooms in the dungeons but also have them be accessible and playable.

So it looks like there will be more dungeon modules and hopefully some empty dungeon spaces for the potion classroom and the other modules sold as sets"

That's awesome. You just confirmed what I was curious about. So you can fold up the potions class, and prob other sets in the future, and fit them in the Dungeons. Great Idea!

One of the better LEGO Harry Potter lineups from recent years

@ra226 said:
"Brick-built Buckbeak breaks my brain...

I love that rendition of Olivander's, though. I haven't followed closely, but have we ever had a bowler hat before? Love Barty's hat, makes me want to make a pair of Laurel & Hardy figs which should be pretty easy."

The bowler hat has been around since 2012.

We’re getting one of the Hobbits’ torsos through that Ollivander’s set. :)

I was hoping to get more of those unique wand boxes but there’s only one included unfortunately. Still, that wand shop and Madame Malkin’ s store look the finest of the current releases along with the Triwizard arrival.

Gosh dang it, I actually want a Harry Potter set. The Durmstrang ship, while not exactly the best looking ship I have ever seen, is a boat. With some sails. Some VERY nice sails, that remind me of a Spanish galleon model my dad made. I want those sails.

@japadberg said:
"Horrid."

Hagrid.*

From my witch unrelated HP side, I like the mandrake. Magical and or poisonous plants would be a good follow up to 10329-1 in the botanical theme.

That ship is fantastic.

Those are some interesting wand pieces outside Kilgarrah’s wand shop!

76439 to me seems to be the absolute standout of this wave. Both storefronts are wonderfully detailed and have nice color palettes, and look especially nice in contrast to one another.

76435 is also interesting, but something about it just feels a little off. I think the front of the great hall (the courtyard area?) just feels a little too boxy for some reason. The base also feels just a little too flush; the bottom part seems like it should be jutting out just a little more. I'm guessing they're going to have more Hogwarts castle sets you can combine with this one to make a full castle? They've done that in the past, and it would be amazing to see that done on a bigger scale. Despite my complaints, all the details around the back seem wonderful.

76440 is also a set we've needed for a long time, and it looks really good imo. The brick-built cup deserves special attention.

I like a lot of what I see, but the proportions on the Great Hall set somehow look off to me. Can't really pin it down on any detail in particular, but the final look just doesn't do it for me. Thankfully I have two of the earlier versions and I'm very happy with those.

Just enough time to get the funds in order!