Clone OPatra Posted March 16, 2016 Tall skeleton legs! All four of them and more in this review of… Set Name: The Wither Set #: 21126 Theme: Minecraft Pieces: 318 Minifigures: 3 Year of Release: 2016 Price at Release: USD 40, CAD 50, GBP 30, EUR 35 (Germany) Bricklink Brickset Flickr Album DISCLAIMER: While this set was provided by the LEGO CEE team (thanks LEGO CEE team!), all of the glowing praise is purely my own and I am at complete liberty to trash this set in my review, should the feeling hit me. DISCLAIMER 2: I know very, very little about Minecraft, but I do know a thing or two about using Google and hence will do at least, if not more than, half of my best to identify some of the bits and bobs in this set and see how they stack up to the source material. DISCLAIMER 3: I did not look up how many pieces this set contains, nor how much it costs in any market, until starting to write this review. I built and thought about the set completely blind to its 'value,' as it were, which has actually been a fun exercise because we sometimes get way too caught up in how much a set costs, which can overshadow the quality of the design itself. Therefore I am going to spend the bulk of this review in the mind-frame I had prior to five minutes ago when I went to Lego.com and looked up the price and parts count, but I will discuss 'value' at the very end. So, stay tuned, or scroll down right away. It's in your hands. BOX While the uninitiated might not be awe-struck by any Minecraft set box, their attention could be grabbed by this one because HOLY HECK LONG SKELLIE LEGS YUUUSSSSSS. Even though the LEGO stuff looks kind of garbled and unpleasing to anybody who doesn't know what it's supposed to be (and maybe to Minecraft fans as well), the overall box design is quite pleasing - it's a well-themed package that places a LEGO representation into a Minecraft world, just like a City package places a LEGO representation into a real-ish world. LEGO's not messing around… they know you came for the long Skellie legs, and therefore placed a Nether Skeleton on the top of the box. The set looks even worse on the back of the box… it really just looks like nothing, one big orange plate with some stacks of things, and a feature that involves shooting TNT blocks out of a lump of grey. I'll be honest with you that at this point, I was really only interested in the Skellie legs. CONTENTS Slice open the box, dump out the stuff (arrange it neatly for a photo), and voila! Two very thin instruction booklets, one 16x16 orange plate (exclusive to this set for now yay!!), and three unnumbered bags, which surprised me in their unnumberedness. Even though I didn't know how many parts this set contained at this point, I still figured it was enough to generally warrant numbered bags. Either Minecraft builders are just experts with blocks anyway so they don't need numbered bags to help them out, or since a lot of the pieces are fairly large LEGO figured numbers weren't necessary. And really… they're not necessary. The instruction booklets build completely different things, for once, instead of just switching over in the middle of a build as per usual. I appreciate when the different booklets actually correspond to different builds because it means husband and wife can work on a set together, since obviously that's a thing most married couples would do to pass the time. #JustImagine Here's the parts list, as if you couldn't find that on a myriad of websites more usefully these days. The parts look pretty and cohesive and pretty cohesive in this set. Just the two greys, dark red, and orange, with very few of anything else mixed in. If you like one or more (or best: all) of those colors, this set could make a decent parts pack for you. I would say this definitely appeals to castle builders, and perhaps builders of life-size orange creamsicles with dark red handles. Just buy this set a lot of times and you're good to go. In the way of interesting and/or very useful parts, we've got some jumpers, printed 8-bit style TNT blocks, dark read masonry bricks (which are still quite rare), two dark red bricks with groove that I neglected to show here, other things you can use your own eyes to see in my picture, LONG SKELLIE LEGS FTW, the printed tile with four studs for the Wither's face, and two curious 1x2 tiles with minifigure neck protrusion (which might be exclusive to this set, but I'm not entirely sure). There are also plenty of nice leftover bits in fun and useful colors. MINIFIGURES Included in this set are just three minifigures, two of which are the same and one of which has appeared in many Minecraft sets already. #negativity In reality these minifigures are fantastic and I love them! #positivity The two Wither Skeletons, who appear in the Nether regions (lolol), I mean Nether fortresses, look excellent from both a LEGO and Minecraft accuracy standpoint. The tall skeleton legs look so cool and will be so useful for custom creepy figures. Steve is Steve, a good figure, but a bit dull. This time around he comes with Iron armor, the second from strongest armor in the game. It would have been nice to get a variant with iron-armor colored arms, or better yet dual colored arms since it seems the armor looks like short sleeves in the game, but alas. Not much else to see with these, really, but here are some side views anyway. The tall, black skeletons with square heads look so perfectly spooky to me, like something out of a Miyazaki movie. Just wait until I get to the Wither itself (in the next section), which REALLY looks like something from Spirited Away. Here's Steve's torso, if you hadn't seen it before. It could be good for making a companion to the gamer Midway Arcade kid from Dimensions, since perhaps you could see it as a shirt with a v-neck cut to resemble an 8-bit aesthetic? Just trying to think outside of the box here, y'know. #creativity For accessories we just get the aforementioned Iron armor to go on Steve, two stone swords for the Wither Skeletons, and a bow. From my various googling, it appears that all of these accessories make jolly good sense for the environment of the set. Wither skeleton always have stone swords, so that's perfect. The Minecraft wiki recommends Diamond armor, a step up from Iron, for going at the Wither, but Iron still ranks fairly strongly and Steve has constructed a TNT launcher thing in the set, that's fine. The wiki also suggests an enchanted bow - enchanted bows still have a brown color with a purple or blue-ish shine, so I'd say it's fine for LEGO to have stuck with the all-brown bow. A swirled plastic one combining brown and purple might have looked like vomit, and nobody wants a vomit bow. Just to demonstrate how awesome long skellie legs are, look at this fun pose! Ooooh, fun! Can't do that with regular skellie legs now can you? WITHER This set has the name "The Wither," so it better include a Wither! And it does! Oddly, though Wither skeletons only prowl the depths of Nether fortresses, the Wither mob itself can be created/go on a deathly rampage anywhere. I guess the designers made a decision that they'd like to include some Wither skeletons in a set, and make another set to go with the 21122 Nether Fortress set from last year, so they threw in a Wither and here we are. All of these things are quite nice, so I'm not complaining. The Wither itself can be described just one way: disturbing AF (for the un-hip, AF means 'as megabloks'). It's a three-headed, rib-caged floating monster that shoots excess heads at you and you have to create yourself - I suppose Mojang wanted to work sadism into the game somehow. If the concept of it wasn't frightening enough, the dead-eye look really sells the 'holy crap this thing is going to come after me in my sleep' feeling. The LEGO designer has done a wonderful job on that count. The rib-cage build involves far fewer connections and less sturdiness than I would say usually makes it into LEGO builds, so rough play will get this thing disintegrating quickly, but maybe that's what you want. I can't see how making it bulkier would have worked, and this design does look quite true to the source material. Since it's built with click-hinges and understandably anchored to a base for stability, this Wither can be posed a little to go from 'la dee da just going about my day' to 'I'm gonna get you sucker!!' The tiles with minifigure necks allow for some customization that can lighten the mood and make the spooky turn to silly! This Wither likes to rock out with its side-heads. MINECRAFT BLOCKS All of the Minecraft sets follow a single design principle of having some easily removable items that represent certain elements in the game. I think this was a really smart idea for the theme, since it LEGO-fies common game things and brings the game into a physical toy in a smart, very playable way. In this set you specifically build up a few items that are indigenous to the Nether, which are the red mushrooms (and brown mushrooms I forgot to picture here), what I think is Nether Quartz Ore but could also be Netherrack (the dark red/white thing), and fire. You also build a redstone torch, and TNT blocks. The redstone torch ultimately gets placed near the firing mechanism for the TNT, which makes perfect sense because redstone torches activate pistons and the like in the game. All in all, the LEGO designers really know their stuff and/or also are great at Googling, and it shows in the things included in this set. THE SET Here we are at the meat of the thing: the builds. The main build is a sort of crumbly portion of a Nether fortress. The design mimics that of 21122 The Nether Fortress, but while that set was robust this one looks like a ruin. The overall blocky landscaping looks just right in its haphazardness, evoking a pleasing Minecraft-y vibe to me. From the pictures, including the box image, I really thought this design just looked a bit of a mess, but in person it works. I hope my various angles convey why - it's not for everyone, but in evoking a Minecraft aesthetic in LEGO, I think it does a tremendous job. I especially like the broken column bit that uses SNOTTED tiles, masonry bricks, offset, and a grooved brick all together. I'm also pleased with the amount of surface area available for posing figures and setting up scenes. I know in Minecraft the large orange area would be lava and therefore pretty much useless space since you couldn't put anything on it, but to a kid who is following her imagination it provides a nice large amount of studs to work with, which is getting rarer and rarer in this largely post-baseplate era. Up to this point, I doubt you would have even known that there was a major play/destruction feature in this set. It's really quite hidden, integrated very minimally into the design. Even from the back, you might not completely be able to tell had you not built the set yourself. Plus, due to the blocky nature of the thing in general, the back doesn't look horrid for once. I am going to leave you with a cliffhanger on the play feature point, for now, but fear not, it's coming. Next we turn to the other build, this stone pile that basically represents an elaborately constructed firing mechanism for the TNT blocks. This thing doesn't look bad, but it doesn't look exciting either, and perhaps more of these parts could have gone into the main scenery build rather than this launcher for Steve. Since I've never played Minecraft myself, I only know what I can find out online, but I'm guessing you could build up some defenses/a machine to fire TNT out of stone. Of course, to do that I bet you'd need a pickaxe which isn't included in this set, but hey this set is about the fight with the Wither after you've already made this thing. I'm not really complaining. On the back go the redstone torch and two adjacent redstones, which as I mentioned earlier are necessary to power this sort of mechanism (as far as I understand from my reading). That's great attention to game detail. PLAY FEATURE I'm sure you noticed the jarring red technic beam on the launching thing - that's for launching the TNT, of course. It takes quite a lot of speed slamming down to get the TNT to slam anywhere significant, but when you take an action shot like this it looks quite exciting despite having done nothing in reality! What you probably did not notice on the main scenery build of the set is that one block is attached to a long technic rod, which can be removed in order to 'unlock' the ruined walkway section and get it ready for destruction. The discreet integration of this locking mechanism into the terrain of the build is really quite masterful. And now… onto the video! This video demonstrates two things above all: getting the TNT mechanism to fire with any considerable distance is not particularly easy, but it can ultimately be done and turn into a lot of fun. It doesn't work terrifically, but it does work and knocking down the skeletons gives a satisfying thrill. ALTERNATE BUILD You didn't think I'd leave out the alternate build provided in the instructions, did you? You DID? How could you think such a lowly thing of me! The whole alternate build provided is constructed just from parts that go into the firing mechanism, which is great because it means you can leave the nice terrain bit intact. In general, it's just fantastic to see LEGO fully re-embracing the fact that sets are meant to be a jumping-off point and that kids should be taking them apart to build new creations. I'll admit this thing looks rather ugly and bland, but the spirit of it still sits firmly in the right place. It tells kids: hey, take this apart and make it into something else. It does have a lot of surface area going for it, so you can set up battles on this as well. This too has a play feature, which works swimmingly. I especially like that you place down the TNT block right in the middle of the exploding portion - that's good design. CONCLUSION Above is a final look at all of the components together (before I'd taken apart the launcher to turn it into the alternate build). There are lots of positives here. The design of the crumbling Nether fortress looks terrific and provides a lot of studded area for figure-posing and play. The major play feature is expertly worked into the body of the design so that it does not detract at all. The elements referring to specific Minecraft blocks look pretty good and fit the biome. In general the attention to detail is excellent, what with the redstone torch and the proper accessories. The minifigure selection is completely decent for a set of this size, and the skeletons especially are the stars of the set, what with their new long legs. I hope those aren't IP-locked to Minecraft, and we get to see them in more spooky or fantasy sets in the future. The designer also did a good job on the Wither, which I now want to disassemble or else keep as far away from me as possible, so it doesn't haunt me in nightmares. I get that the Minecraft aesthetic isn't for everyone, but I think the whole design team has done a wonderful job constructing a cohesive vision for translating Minecraft into LEGO. This is my first Minecraft set, and to me the translation from game to LEGO works very well - it evokes Minecraft in a LEGO way, which is just what it should do. The attention to detail and care put into the design really shine in this set. The only problem I have here is the price. I really dig the design of the set, in fact I think it's great and would provide a lot of fun to anybody or make a good pack of parts, but I was aghast when I saw the price (not a ghast, that's a different Minecraft thing). 40 USD for THIS!??!!? 40??? Just one word comes to mind: unjustifiable. I can only speak to the US market, since that's my market, but in that market the price is outlandish. I'm sure some arguments could be made due to the fact that it has a large 16x16 plate, 318 pieces in total, a couple new moulds (if the plate with minifig neck piece is new), etc. I don't care. Going off the size of this completed set in front of me, there's no way in hell (sorry, in Nether… ?) that this stacks up to 40 bucks. Maybe 30, at most. What can I say to conclude? I think it's a great set, fantastic, superb design, fun play feature, great LONG SKELLIE LEGS WOOT, but not for the price that LEGO is asking. It's really rather absurd that a set that amounts to a crumbling piece of terrain could be forty dollars. All in all, I'd recommend that you pick up this set on sale, should you be lucky enough to find it on sale one of these days. Otherwise, Bricklink the long skeleton legs. CloneyO out. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Clone OPatra Posted March 20, 2016 This review is now ready for public consumption. Check it! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SpiderSpaceman Posted March 21, 2016 Super cool, thanks for the review! One tiny correction, I think the red mushrooms are meant to depict nether wart. I'm a big fan of anyhing jungle or nether fortress so the last few waves of minecraft have really appealed to me. Hope to see some swamp and mesas in the future. Also big fan of the neck plate after seeing it in the LDD parts update, and it looks great "in the flesh". Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Exetrius Posted March 21, 2016 Enjoyable and helpful review, thank you! One of the best sets out of the Minecraft line, but I agree about the price point, which is imo also the main flaw of this line in general. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lyra42 Posted March 22, 2016 Agree about the price - I've been tempted to pick up the new minecraft sets but the price keeps me thinking twice about it. They're $10-$15 over what they should be Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BrickJagger Posted March 22, 2016 Excellent review, Clone O'. Never understood the appeal of these Minecraft sets. If Minecraft is meant to be a lower resolution, digital version of Lego, then why would you want a Lego version of a digital version of Lego? The dog seems to be chasing its tail here. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Staslegomaster Posted March 22, 2016 It reminds of old Dandy games. The skeletons are just cool! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Exetrius Posted March 22, 2016 Never understood the appeal of these Minecraft sets. If Minecraft is meant to be a lower resolution, digital version of Lego, then why would you want a Lego version of a digital version of Lego? That's not what it is. Minecraft is a sandbox game, which basically means that you can break, replace, reshape and craft everything in your environment. It's based only real sandbox: our universe and everything in it, not on LEGO. The attractiveness is in the fact that Minecraft and it's merchandise is incredibly popular, just like Star Wars, Ninjago, anything that has a large fanbase, really. But I do understand your point, as I'm much preferring more intriguing shapes, building techniques and pieces in sets, rather than this simple blockyness. I like it mostly for the licenced pieces. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
