Entering Day 11, both SW and HP continue to trade daily victories atop the leaderboard while MCU slowly loses runway. Can it begin a streak and bring this back to a three-way race? Read on.

Day 11- MCU

Steve: On the 11 day of Christmas the Guardians gave to meeeee….

…. Ugh, more drone…. pod… things?

The lack of recognition when I opened door 11 is a repeated refrain for the MCU this year. Today we have two small micro(?) builds that Bricklink identified as “Mining Pod and Escape Pod).

I can’t judge the accuracy of the builds because I am unsure where in the MCU/Guardians canon they come from.  No prints or unusual techniques to set them apart – in fact one of the builds is practically a smaller version of the Drone from day 10. 

It’s a disappointing day, but I’m increasingly used to that by now. 

Day 11- SW

Pat: Star Wars stays on Tatooine for day 11 with an even more obscure build than yesterday’s, this time with a micro speeder. This is a pretty obscure ship, possibly the most obscure in memory for recent Star Wars calendars – its the V-25 Courier Landspeeder seen originally in Episode 4, but peppered throughout Star Wars since. The build is nothing special, but it’s our first time we’re getting it in micro scale, so it’s welcome enough. This comes not long after our first time ever seeing it from Lego, which was to scale in the 75290 Mos Eisley Cantina. Overall, nothing too special in this obscure micro, but a welcome addition to our Tatooine theme.

Day 11- HP

Matt: It’s been a two-day break from microbuilds for HP which has been a much needed change of pace in my opinion. However, based on the sheer number of microbuilds this year, I’m afraid of the calendar slipping back into that trend soon.

But not today. Day 11 gives us a system scale Triwizard Cup. Coming off the Goblet of Fire build from yesterday, these two items were touchpoints from Year/Film 4. Today’s build played an especially significant role as a portkey toward the end of the movie. As an aside, I’ve always marked the 4th novel as a pivotal point in the entire saga, as the atmosphere of the first three novels gives way to a decidedly darker tone from here on in. One could argue that the Triwizard Cup is a symbol of that. Once Harry touched that cup, there was no going back- literally or figuratively- to the ways things were before.

Back on topic. Today’s build employs some new and rare-ish parts. The new 1×1 plate with bar handles on both ends leads the charge here, but I’d like to point to the transparent dome top, as well as the angled bars in light grey (typically found in transparent variety, often to “pose” minifigures such as CMF’s). These are cool parts and are used in a neat way here to create a system scale cup. We had a previous variant of the cup in 2020’s calendar but I think this version is far more accurate and well made. Ironically, 2020’s goblet of fire was superior to this year’s version (printed tile notwithstanding). Oh well, at least if you bought both calendar’s, you now have a solid copy of each.

Verdict

With it’s system scale build and unique design, HP takes top marks today. IN second place, SW grabs a point with its landspeeder micro. In 3rd place, and we’re really not making this up folks- MCU finishes with zero points again.

With this result, HP takes its first narrow lead of the season and the scores are now:

HP- 14

SW- 13

MCU- 6

To be continued…