With only two days to go, HP has already secured an overall tie in this year’s calendar. SW needs to sweep the last two days in order to secure an overall tie this year. Can they come back or will HP grab the win? Let’s find out:

Harry Potter- Day 23

Matt: After Hermione came to the rescue yesterday, HP needs to grab a point today or tomorrow to secure the seasonal victory. Behind Door #23 are festive Hogwarts house presents. Owners of last year’s calendar will recognize today’s gift as the 2019 calendar also offered 4 gifts representing each of the Hogwarts houses (Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin). Worth nothing that the shapes of each gift are different than their 2019 counterparts adding to the variance from year to year, which is nice if this is your 2nd annual HPAC. The main difference, however, is the wrapped Firebolt as the Gryffindor house gift. I think this is a cool addition, and it is synonymous with the 4th novel/film, as Harry gets an upgrade to his Nimbus 2000 at Christmas time by receiving the Firebolt from an anonymous sender (his godfather Sirius Black). I think the gold and dark red work best here on the broomstick, unlike the dark yellow/dark red Gryffindor present colours last year. The main knock on today’s entry are the use of 1×1 clips on the presents. With all the accessories now available to us via Clickits and Friends theme lines, they could have instead gone with pieces such as bows, flower, star, heart, quarter tiles, etc. It’s a minor gripe, but I definitely think this would have improved today’s offering. Overall though, a solid to-scale, festive and themed gift today. Could there have been better options for the 23rd of December? Yes, no doubt. But the gifts today certainly aren’t among the lower tier entries this year and I look forward to tomorrow’s offering.

Star Wars- Day 23

Steve: Star Wars needs the ‘W’ today to stay in it. Behind door 23 we have a microscale version of Darth Vader’s castle! This is a well designed build, a great example of microscale – it evokes the shape of the original in just a few well-chosen pieces and techniques. The model itself may not be iconic to more casual fans, having only appeared on-screen for a brief shot in ‘Rogue One’ but we’ve seen it in many games and other media before and since. Accompanying the castle is the smallest (nanoscale?) TIE Fighter I’ve ever seen. Ideally, this should be Vader’s custom TIE, but the twin hulls mark this as a TIE Bomber variant. It’s hard to criticize at this scale, given it manages to say ‘TIE’ with only 3 pieces! Darth Vader can feel the presents of today’s HP build, but takes the win today to force the contest down to the wire for Day 24.

Verdict

While HP provided a to-scale, festive, and on theme build today, it was SW that came out on top with a microscale rendition of Vader’s castle with nanoscale TIE fighter. With the win, SW keeps their hopes of a seasonal draw alive, and it comes down to the last day of advent. With the win, the score is now:

HP- 12

SW- 11

To be concluded…