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Review: 79011 (Dol Guldur Ambush) and 79014 (Dol Guldur Battle)


aidenpons
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I'm doing these togther because they're closely related.

Review by aidenpons

 

79011 (Dol Guldur Ambush)

 

NOTE: The stickers aren't on in these photos.

 

First off, the box art and what was is it:

 

 
 
It's a big set. 2 instructions and six packets.
(The largest set I have is the Agents truck, which had about 10 packets and 4 instructions)
 
In packet 1 there is two minifigures (well, the statue doesn't really count); the statue and the Necromancer.
There's also the bricks for the statue and the middle bit of Dol Guldur (the bit with the Necromancer)
 

Why'd they give me three rings?
 

Two pictures of the statue...
Due to the nature of it's pedestal's hinge, you can swivel it all the way to the other side.

That's what it looks like when fully swivelled as above.
 

The Necromancer's porch in progress...
 

Hey, a new brick! It's a 2x2 circle with no studs on the top BUT a hole in the middle! It's a doughnut! :P

That's where it goes... to an extent.

And this is the porch completed.
You probably have no idea what's going on with that brick, so...
 
Turning the torch on the top results in the Necromancer swivelling around. You place him on the back, swivel around the torch, and voila! He's facing into the courtyard. To get this to work Lego needed a smooth brick (so as to not cause friction) with a hole in the middle (so the bar could go through).
Here's a frontal view of the porch:

Packet One Done.
 
Packet Two contains Gandalf, Radgast, and bricks. Radagast's hairpiece comes in a polybag.

Is that bird poo on his hair? Almost certainly. (On the left - you'll see it looks white)
 

Am I alone in noticing that if you take Gandalf's beard, hat/hair off he looks like Denethor?
 

These are the two wizards. I didn't like their staffs very much, nor Gandalf's sword, so I did this:

I quite like it. ;)
 
The bricks were for the connections between the sections... that place where the staircase leads to?

The join.

Finished. Notice the 2x1 piece.

They also put something on the top to secure it.

Finished so far.
With those joins it is really tough. So tough that it is pretty hard to remove it!
Packet Two Done.
 

Azog's body is the only one to come in a polybag. I'll talk about him more when I get to the Minifigure section.

Bring me his head.... :smug:
 

Hey, a new brick! It's the stud type on the top that's new. It's just... different.

This is the next section in progress.
On the stop, not quite built, is a mechanism where you turn the leaf on the side and a skull will fall out of a container. It's also the main gate. Leastaways, it is a gate. With no traps.

As I said before, turning the little fern on the left (NOT the tree) will tip the skull off.

Again, there's plenty of room for a minifigure to stand.
 

The way is shut. It is made by those who are dead, and the dead keep it. The way is shut.
:P

So this is it from the back so far...

 

 

The locking proves remarkably effective. It's tough.

Packet Three Done

 

 

Why does the orc have an Uruk-Hai sword? Come to think of it, why are they called 'Gundabad Orcs' when they came from Dol Guldur?

Another new brick! :D It's the stick down the side that is now attached to the web.
 

This is the frontal view. Do you see how one bronze spike is missing? It's missing for a very good reason. 1) It adds to the 'ruined' look, 2) It keeps the price down (a bit :P), and 3) with another one there it looks HORRIBLE because you have to put them nearly vertical.

 

Do you see a silver tooth? Turning that will cause a blade to swing out. I swapped it with the Uruk-Hai scimitar because the orc should have that cut, ragged blade.

And again, there's plenty of room for a minifigure to stand on.

Another sturdy lock.
And so far we have this:

Packet Four Done.
 
 

The tower's a fairly nice structure, with lots of stuff.
At the top you can either put a catapult or the cage (not built yet). The catapult's fairly iffy, and makes for so much more fun when you rebuild it and the one from 79011 (Dol Guldur Ambush) into a triple catapult (see the spoiler under the heading 'Put both together and watch what happens...')
Packet Five Done.
 
 

The stairs are frankly amazing. I continue to be astounded at the fact that they are solid brick all the way up.

Finished staircase.

This is where the staircase goes,
 

and that's it done.

You build two staircases, one for each side.

 

This is what's done so far.

Hey, another new brick! This is used for the cage!

 

This is the first time I've seen this done in a set by Lego. Hmmm...
After building the rock cage, we're all done!
 

 
To recap:

The bits and bobs in the set.
 

The tower, which you can either put a cage on or a  catapult on top of.

 

The spider's web with its sword.
 

The Necromancer's porch and torch, the two stairs and where they fit.
 

And the gates with the skull-dropper.
 
MINIFIGURES:

ORCS:
The Gundabad orcs are very nice, and the shoulder armour makes them pretty nice. It's a pity you only get two, but you can get more fairly easily.
GANDALF:
Same ol' wizard as usual. He's captured very nicely. The one problem is that a) he doesn't come with a hat (probably due to the movie; in Dol Guldur he lost his hat); and b) since he doesn't come with a hat, he comes with a hairpiece and thus a double sided-face, thus leading to c) that you cannot give him a hat.
NECROMANCER:
I don't see why the bothered to make him a minifigure. They needed something, sure, but.... oh well. He's pretty nice.
RADAGAST:
A very nice wizard, and he is almost identical. My only regret is that you can't put birds in his hair! Speaking of his hat/ hair, it looks funny on the back:

Of course that's for the cape, and fortunately it looks a lot better when he's actually wearing it.

The other note is that due to a little thingy on his hat (lights grey, looks a bit like a bird feather) you can do this instead:

It had me cracking up for a while. :P
AZOG:
Very nicely done. Three points about him:
  1. His front and back (without the head on) are practically blank (this doesn't affect him at all as his hairpiece cores these);
  2. His metal army thingy is fairly spiky on the side, and before you get the gist of what to do it does hurt a bit;
  3. His metal hand actually can't hold anything. It looks designed to fit something, and after much experimentation I found it was a neck. The problem is that necks are really hard to grab without conspicuously moving the character's head up.

Otherwise, he's great.

 

Rating


Design: 10 / 10 Very sturdy and aesthetically pleasing.*
Quality: 9 / 10 Eh, what is this category anyway? I think it's something to do with the pieces used. In that case, it had some nice building bricks, a couple of new bricks, and could be easily dismantled into something else (that's rocky)
Fun: 9 / 10 Lots of nice functions, and best of all, NO FLICK MISSILES! :D More could have been done with the Necromancer, though.
Price: 9 / 10 NOTE THAT THIS IS NEW ZEALAND DOLLARS It's $150, which is pretty good. If it wasn't licensed and thus didn't have and awesome Radagast and Azog I would expect it to cost ~$130, which isn't too bad.

Overall 9.25 / 10 Great job Lego.

 

*Even though some bricks have been taken out to lower the price, that adds to the ruined look and does not affect sturdiness.

 

79014 (Dol Guldur Battle)

 

So here's the box art:

And here's what's in it:

 
There weren't any stickers, which was nice.
 

Beorn's head and hair are all one piece! This gives him a slightly taller look, but otherwise you don't notice it.
 

A new brick! It's a wheel for the catapult:

 

Building...
 

And more building...
 

And more building... This is one freakingly huge hammer. It's two studs wide, but longer than a minifigure.
 

The axes and hammer are added. They can be turned via a silver tooth on the top of them.
 

The front view of the nearly finished product.
 

This little rock...

Does this! It reveals a flick missile. How fun. -.-
 

The completed front, and

The completed back.
 
MINIFIGURES:

 

Beorn's quite nice as a minifigure. He doesn't entirely fit in here at Dol Guldur, but they needed to put him SOMEWHERE in the wave of Hobbit sets, so they put him here. Fair enough.

 

One orc has that awesome shoulder armour, and why does Lego give them Uruk-Hai swords? Surely they've other weapons not from Isengard? Saruman hadn't even got a metal forge in Orthanc yet! (sorry Masiaf :P)

 

Overall, it's quite nice. It's small on its own, but what d'you expect? It's a small set!

Rating


Design: 8 / 10 Occasionally the hammer/axes would break off and I'd spend 3 minutes repairing them
Quality: 8 / 10 Pretty good
Fun: 10 / 10 Lego did well to cram this much into such a small place.
Price: 9 / 10 Good for a licensed set.

 

Overall: 8.75 / 10 :D

 

Put both together and watch what happens...

This happens:

You add it onto the side by the tower. I think they should have added it to the other side, as doing it here creates a long side and a comparatively small side to the courtyard. It suits the theme overall, though it is a larger door than the others...
But there was nothing wrong with that? :P
 

Oh yes, my triple catapult. I didn't like the puny little one so I merged them into this behemoth. :smug:

 
EDIT:
How the HECK did 1) I misspell 'Guldur' as 'Gulfur' and 2) nobody noticed that? WHAT IS THIS

 

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Gandalf and Radgast's staffs didn't look very good.

If you have this set and don't like the staffs I probably could ship the parts off to you... :P

O.T.
BTW, I changed Radagast's staff again so that it had the conical 1x1x1 bit with the point end facing downwards. Then I put the cylinder on the top. I don't have a picture, but I did that to make the staffs look different.
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