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Review: Harry Potter Hogwarts Castle (4842)

Pieces: 1290

Ages: 8-14

Description: This LEGO Harry Potter set comes with 10 minifigures: Lord Voldemort, 2 Dementors, Professor Snape, Professor McGonagall, Filius Flitwick, Argus Filch, Harry Potter, Hermione Grainger, and Professor Dumbledore. The castle consists of the Great Hall and three other buildings.

Pieces: There are a lot of neat parts to this set - plenty of tan and brown elements. The theme specific elements are fun - banners for Griffindor and Slytherin, Sirius Black's face in the fire, a shield that says "Seeker - James Potter", a Hogwarts crest, the Sorting Hat, Marauder's Map, a Basilisk Fang, and an issue of the Daily Prophet, just to name a few. The gold goblets are nice and plentiful, and there are three different owls. Best of all - there is an invisibility cloak, seen above in the minifig photo.

Playability: Tons! There are a lot of areas that reference the books. Tom Riddle's diary has a clever hiding place behind a rotating suit of armor. You can see Sirius Black's face in the fireplace of the Griffindor Common Room. Fans of the books will find plenty of detail here.

Overall: This is a pricy set, but it is jam-packed with Harry Potter fun. There is great attention to detail and there are a lot of great elements that make the set worth the price tag, particularly if you can get a deal on it.

Rating: 9/10 - price is the only real drawback, but the price is exactly in line with what LEGO usually charges for a set with this many pieces.

Review: LEGO Creationary

LEGO Creationary is labeled for ages 7 - 12, but this game is really fun for all ages. LegoBoy (who is 6) loves to play this game, as do adults. The object is to guess what a player is building. This game, and Harry Potter Hogwarts, are our two favorite LEGO games.

Unlike other LEGO games, there's not much setup to this one. You just have to sort the pieces however you want into the organizing tray which is provided. There are 96 cards divided into 3 difficulty levels which show pictures of different things to build, arranged into catergories. There are 4 different recommended styles of play, described below:

One builder: The builder rolls the die and selects a card at whatever difficulty she chooses. Everyone else tries to guess what the builder is building. One point is awarded to the correct guesser and to the builder.

One guesser: The guesser rolls the die and everyone else acts as builders, choosing a card at an appropriate difficulty level. The guesser tries to guess what each builder is building. One point is awarded for each correct guess and to the builder of that model.

Team play: One person rolls the die. On each team, one person acts as the builder, and the rest of the team tries to guess what is being built.

Collaborative play. One person rolls the die. One person is the builder, the rest are all trying to guess what is being built. Play continues for a set time limit. After a model is identified, the next player becomes the builder and play continues. The goal is to see how many builds can be correctly identified in a certain time period.

There are a limited number of pieces and not many specialized parts. Some may find this frustrating, but for our family it just adds to the challenge. You have to be really creative and resourceful, particularly when several people are building at the same time all from the same pool of pieces. Of course, there's nothing to stop you from adding pieces from your own LEGO collection to the game if you really are frustrated by the piece assortment that it comes with. Some may even want to go as far as buy the game multiple times so each builder has the same set of blocks to use.

As for the difficulty levels, most of the builds are in fact challenging given the limited supply of pieces. There are cards for the Eiffel tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which younger builders may not know the name of. From our experience with our 6-year-old, it's still possible to play. He can look at the picture on the card and build it, even if he doesn't know what to call it. With a little flexibility on the part of the players, this isn't a problem.

It's really entertaining to watch adults play the game, particularly those who haven't touched LEGOs in awhile. We played it at a birthday party, and everyone who wasn't playing ended up gathering around the table anyway. It was fun to watch as well as play. We also sometimes use the game without really playing it - we just choose a category and build & guess without keeping score.

This game inspires a lot of creativity because you have to use only what you are given. Those who are easily frustrated may not find this game entertaining, but our family loves it. It would be nice if LEGO would create expansion packs for the game, with new cards and maybe even new categories.

If you want to view demos of the game or read a pdf of the instructions, you can follow this link.

BrickJournal #13 has arrived!

If you aren't familiar with BrickJournal, you should check it out. It's a LEGO magazine published by LEGO fans for AFOLs - Adult Fans of LEGO. Kids will enjoy looking at the pictures, too. We've been subscribers for a little over a year, and we ordered all the back issues we could get our hands on.

The magazine runs about 80 pages and is filled with full-color photos of LEGO creations. Of course, many people post photos of their LEGO creations on the internet which you can get for free, and a BrickJournal subscription is a little pricey. We enjoy the magazine, however. In addition to the photos, which is what we look at first, there are articles on a range of topics covering LEGO history, interviews with LEGO designers, how-to articles, and coverage of LEGO conventions worldwide.

The models featured in the magazine are just amazing. I like to think that we could make things like that if we had an infinite supply of free time. :) The writing quality in the articles isn't always great, but this is a magazine you get for the pictures anyway.

When I first discovered the magazine, I was able to find it at our local Barnes & Noble. I haven't had luck finding it in stores recently. If you want to get a feel for the magazine, there is a generous preview pdf you can view here. A 6-issue subscription runs $57, so it isn't for everyone. There's still something to be said for the experience of flipping through the pages as opposed to viewing the content online (although you can do that too, with a digital subscription). When a new issue arrives in our home, it gets picked up day after day for a good solid week as we each discover something new in the photographs and run to share it with each other.

There is also a free BrickJournal app. I haven't used it enough to review that yet, however.

BrickJournal is another great way to explore your LEGO hobby and get inspired!

Review: LEGO Harry Potter Quidditch Match (4737)

Piece Count: 153
Ages: 6-12

Description: This Lego Harry Potter Set comes with a total of 5 minifigures - Rolanda Hooch, Marcus Flint, Draco Malfoy, Oliver Wood, and of course, Harry Potter.

It also consists of a tower, 3 goalposts, 5 brooms, quaffles, bludgers, the snitch, the Quidditch Trophy, and two catapults.

Pieces: There isn't much remarkable about the pieces in this set. The dark red pieces are rare, but there aren't many of them. Really the trophy is the only unique item in this set. The rest of the pieces are fairly standard. This set does not take long to build.

Playability: The catapults do work, and you can stage a fun Quidditch match using these pieces. LegoBoy has gone back to this set several times to do just that.

Overall: The major reason to get this set is for the minifigures. LegoBoy was very excited to get the Marcus Flint and Oliver Wood minifigs. It's a cute set and he does enjoy pretending to play Quidditch with it, but at around $20, it seems a little pricy. Most likely the minifig count is what drove the price up, as there isn't a baseplate as part of this set. If you're a Harry Potter fan this is a worthwhile set, but I'd probably pass it up if I was looking for an interesting building experience.

Rating: 6/10 (8/10 for Harry Potter fans).

Minifig Madness

We are in the middle of a massive Lego storage reorganization, and today I thought I'd share a recent discovery we made. Storing minifigs has always been a pain, as we have quite a few...a lot...a small city's worth. Below, with shame, I share our old "organization" system - separating the minifigs by theme in ziploc baggies.

Just awful. Then I discovered "the Scraponizer". It's marketed as scrapbook storage, but it works great for the minifigs. The storage system comes with four 8.5" by 11" cases. Inside are inserts that divide up the space. You get inserts with 2, 3, 4, and 8 compartments in the basic kit. The best part is that you can see directly into each organizer, making it super easy to find any minifig.

So much better! These also fit perfectly into our plastic storage units we use for the rest of our Legos. (And by the way, we have no affiliation with the makers of the Scraponizer System. We're just adoring fans!)

Lego Challenge #1 Results

Here are the creations we made with our "Fun Forty" Lego Challenge bricks. Click here to see the original challenge post.

Entry #1 is called "Crossbow Tower Attack" and was built by LegoBoy.

Entry #2 is called "Soldier Barracks" and was built by LegoMom.

It's neat to see what different things can be made from the same bricks!