Review - 9525 Pre Vizsla's Mandolorian Fighter

[xowainx]

Ok, so before we begin, a few caveats. This is my first review, so don't go too hard on me. I also don't have any professional photography equipment or mini-studios, so alas, i've had to make do with my iPhone 4S and the laminate flooring of my living room (at least the pieces couldn't get lost in the carpet ). Anyway, hope you enjoy this, and as i'll reiterate at the end, please feel free to ask me and questions or queries you have about this set.

Review - 9525 - Pre Vizsla's Mandalorian Fighter

Name - Pre Vizsla's Mandalorian Starfigher

Number - 9525

Year of Release - 2012

Parts - 403

Figures - 3

Prices - UKP 49.99, USD 49.99, CAN 59.99

Lead the Mandalorians into battle!

Intent on returning the Mandalorians to their warrior ways, Pre Vizsla is returning to his secret base in his Mandalorian Fighter, the Gauntlet, after striking a deal with the evil Separatists. Can Obi-Wan follow him and prevent Pre Vizsla from plunging the galaxy into turmoil? The Gauntlet features rotating wings and turning cockpit for flying or landing modes, retractable landing gear, opening cockpit and cargo hatch. Includes 3 minifigures: Pre Vizsla, Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

• Includes 3 minifigures: Pre Vizsla, Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi

• Features rotating wings and cockpit, retractable landing gear, opening cockpit with space for 2 minifigures, darksaber compartment and cargo hatch

• Accessories include medium blaster, Obi-Wan's Lightsaber and Pre Vizsla's darksaber

• Rotate the wings!

• Battle Obi-Wan!

• Load up the cargo!

• Pre Vizsla's Mandalorian Fighter™ measures over 2"(6cm) high, 12" (32cm) wide and 12" (33cm) long

Ok, so a quick intro. When I first saw the photos of this set I was intrigued by it, and hoped to pick it up at some point. I eagerly awaited a review appearing on Eurobricks so I could take a good look at it first, but one never came . Roll forwards to May 3rd 2013, and I need to spend £50 to achieve "Owning Hoth Han Solo" goal. This was already one of the sets I had in mind to meet that threshold, and in the UK, TLG kindly discounted it by 10%, meaning that all I needed to do was add an Endor/AT-ST planet set to my proverbial basket in the Cardiff Lego store and I had passed the threshold. I then decided to my duty for the community, so here we go..

As tradition dictates, let's start with the box:

The box is large and squareish, possibly the same as the new Tie Fighter, although I don't keep my boxes and thus couldn't compare them together. This also means that it's of the design where the "lid" opens upwards, causing some damage to the corners, which may concern you if you keep your packaging

The front depicts the Mandalorian Fighter, The Gauntlet, flying in one of its flight configurations, with some mysterious red laser beams flying alongside. There is also a red glow around the engines, which, as you'll see later, doesn't match the colours Lego used for them.

The back depicts the craft landed, with Obi Wan and Pre Vizsla doing battle in the foreground. There are also various pictures of the set's play features, such as it's rotating wings, storage compartments, landing gear and opening cockpit. You get some idea of the landed height of the craft in this photo too.

Minifigure panel on the top displays all the minifigures and their accessories. More on them later.

Inside, you are presented with four numbered bags, two different sized instruction manuals and the obligatory sticker sheet.

Can't wait to see where these go..

Here you can see how the bags divide the construction, with one and two containing the minifigs and the cockpit/hull and three and four containing the wings.

Parts call out at the end of the second instruction book.

Completed set photo, also towards the rear of the second book. This is the same picture as featured on the back of the box.

A handy picture of all the minifigs from this wave.

Ok, now onto the actual build of the set, starting with the minifigs..

The set contains three figures, the brand new and exclusive Pre Vizsla, plus a Mandalorian and Clone Wars Obi Wan. The Mandalorian is the same as the one you get four of in the Mandalorian battle pack, and the Obi Wan is the same as the one that has previously been released in three sets (four if you include a Comic Con exclusive), so they are pretty uninspired inclusions. I imagine most people will already own both these figures, and are unlikely to need more of them, unless building a Mandalorian army.. Or Jedi army composed soley of Obi Wan.. Pre Vizsla comes with his "darksabre" (more to follow), the Mandaolorian comes with a small blaster and Ben comes with his lightsabre.

Pre Vizsla is much more exciting however and nearly single handedly makes up for the other two. He has sand blue arms and legs (with printing) which are lighter than the generic Mandalorian, and his (printed) helmet and jetpack are in Pearl Dark Grey instead of Dark Bluish Grey.

He also comes with this lovely printed side cape. Although it looks wonky, I believe the darker print is meant to look like that.

The figures from the rear, which allows a good view of his cape. No figure has back printing.

Unfortunately I just realised whilst looking through the inventory on Brickset that i'd used the wrong head on Pre Vizsla. His and the generic Mandalorian's are ever so slightly different, whilst still being very unattractive. His eyes are slightly more narrowed, which I guess makes it a little better.

Here's a composite so you can spot the minute differences that I failed to.

Pre Vizsla also comes with a hair piece, indeed he comes with Chancellor Palpatine's hair piece. I can't say i'm a huge fan of this, and I doubt even the correct head would have improved it to much. You can also see his darksabre here, which is a solid black rod placed in a standard lightsabre handle.

Having a read of the background for this on Wookiepedia, I feel this could have been realised slightly better. In TCW, the hilt is black and the blade glows black around a white core. Perhaps a black lightsabre handle and a trans-black rod would have been a better approximation of this? Still it looks good, if not 100% accurate.

On to the rest of bag one now, and the creation of the cockpit.

The most interesting parts in this bag to me were these snot plates, of which there are ten. I can imagine these are infinitely handy to anyone creating MOCs, and to get so many of them in a set is great too.

A few stages along, we have the start of the hull. To me, this kind of build always reminds me of building Castle boats in the late 80s. You can also see the technique used for the seats here, which is quite interesting. It reminds me of the Snowspeeder interior, but the 2x1 yellow foot plates are added to hold the minifigs in place, which works really well. The arch at the back of the cockpit means that whoever rides in the back doesn't have to remove their jet pack. The control panel is a sticker.

A bit further along, and we have extended the front, added to the back (both with the SNOT plates), and added the cockpit. At this stage there is quite a gap at the sides of the cockpit, let's hope that this gets covered up later or it's going to be a chilly ride in The Gauntlet.

No dice TLG! I am normally quite happy to apply stickers to sets, but this seems way too fraught with danger, especially with the added pressure of a review!

Next we add the landing gear for "wings up" mode, which is pretty sturdy, especially as it extends at a right angle to the hull when the set is completed.

Next, you construct two of these beams to attach to the side of the cockpit. They are mirror images of each other, but don't rush them like I did, as the second time I was left with a 1x8 white plate looking forlornly at me.

And here they are on the sides of the hull. You can also see the "foot" of the retracted landing gear between them, which I found to be pretty unobtrusive.

Next are the front laser cannons, fairly standard. They can move from side to side if you really wish, although this isn't an official play feature..

Bag two next and what's this? A printed part! This 2x2 plate is less blurry than my iPhone would have you believe, but is also the same printed plate that's included in 7930 Bounty Hunter Assault Gunship. Nice to have though. It goes on top of a Dark Bluish Grey crate later on.

Bag two is for the back of the hull, and is built in a few sub assemblies, of which this is the first.

And this is the second. You can see the ball socket joint here that will connect it nice and tightly to the front part of the hull next.

A bit further along, the sub assemblies combine and the back and front of the hull connect together.

The sides and rear are built up a bit more now. This is where the storage compartment will be later.

I've been collecting Lego on and off since I was a child. I got back into purchasing Star Wars lego regularly in 2008 and have purchased A LOT of sets of various sizes and themes since. In all the sets I have built, this is the first time I have encountered a build technique that simply does not work. At all. It's not that is flimsy, or easy to catch, the cones simply cannot get more that a miniscule amount of grip on the pistol pieces they've used, and not nearly enough to hold them on. They will fall off without being touched or knocked and I can't understand how this was approved. While it is a minor and relatively insignificant detail (as opposed to the wings not attaching for instance), I still find it weird that it made it to production. Have a go if you have the parts handy and see what I mean.

I ended up attaching the cones the other way, which looks fine, I guess they are thrusters instead of guns now. This whole section, minus the cones not attaching, is a little unsatisfactory to me. The round brick attaches on by a single technic pin, allowing it to easily rotate. The blasters are just held on by clips too, so trying to keep it straight and lined up with the hull can be a bit frustrating, especially as the rear of this ship is a natural area to pick it up by. Would be pretty easy to design an alternate solution though, and it's a minor part of the ship, so no big deal.

A bit further along and we add the storage compartment roof and slot the crate in. More photos of this to come later. There are some stickers to apply here, but I didn't at this stage.

On to book two now. The reason for it being larger than the first book becomes apparent in side, as the wings are built from lots of large plates attaching, so need lots of space on the page to make the instructions clear. Why the first book couldn't be this size, or even why it couldn't be one book at this size only TLG knows..

I hadn't seen these sockets before, they are used for rotating the wings up and down. They click round at equal intervals meaning that the wings fix into postion solidly on that axis.

I took an editorial decision to not show the stages of the wing construction as stacking plates onto plates onto plates isn't that exciting, and i'm sure everyone reading this has plenty of experience of that. Here we are with the two completed wings, which are a mirror image of eachother. I have turned one of them over here to show something that impressed me, which was how much care had been taken with the underside of the wing. Given that a common moan about set design these days (see the UCS Super Star Destroyer) is the underside of ships, it's nice to see that the designer has almost exactly replicated the pattern on the top on the bottom of the wing (minus the blue stripe near the front, and the round support plate). As one of the primary play functions makes the lower side of the wing displayable, it's good to see.

Spares at the end of the build, including Pre Vizsla's hair.

The wings clip on like so. There is a tiny, tiny bit of sag, but I think this is pretty much unavoidable. You can also see that I knocked the rear cones upwards before taking this, as mentioned earlier.

And here the set is, finished and in landing mode. It's very tall in this configuration and I routinely managed to chop the top of the wings off when photographing it. Still, it looks very imposing, and is sturdy like this too.

There are two downsides to this configuration though. The first is that the craft lands on it's engine thrusters, which depending on what you take the Trans-fluorescent Green dishes to represent might be problematic.

The other downside is that, like so many lego vehicles, getting in and out can be an issue for the minifigs. Do the Mandalorians really have to use their jet packs every single time they want to get in and out?

The Mandalorians can both fit into the cockpit, although needless to say, not without creasing Pre Vizsla's cape. It's a tightish squeeze, but i've seen much worse, and it's good to have a ship which can carry more than one person.

And here they are, tucked in, cockpit closed. The gap at the sides has been reduced, but it's a good job Pre Vizsla has gloves.. Again though, not the worst cockpit gap i've seen by any stretch.

The storage compartment at the back. The darksabre storage is a step up from the "clip it under the wing" of Plo Koon's starfighter, or the "dismantle it and place one blade in one clip and rest in another" of the Old Republic Striker starfighter. There is space on top of the crate for a few extra items, such as the Mandalorian's blaster, and the hatch stays shut in flight.

There are actually two hatches, with a second added below that the crate can drop out of. I quite like this, as it makes loading/unloading the craft when landed quite convenient.

And here's the rear with the hatches closed. You can also see the stickers i'd added by this stage. None of them are essential, but the extra detail is cool.

With the wings back down in one of the flight modes, this head on view is quite impressive. I like the shape and colour scheme, the blue and white, combined with the overall shape, give it a very classic space theme to my eyes.

It looks good from this view too.

As a comparison to it's original design, I think TLG have done a great job. The scale is somewhat off (as the Lego model definitely can't transport 25 Mandalorians into battle..), but the shape is ok and they capture a lot of the detail from it.

I don't have a suitable stand to display in it it's second flight mode, with the rings rotated 90 degrees, so this will have to do (along with the image on the front of the box. As with the T6 Jedi shuttle, i'm not really a huge fan of these modes. The rotation works fine, but it's not as clever as the gear method used on the T6, meaning that it's harder to line up and keep lined up, if that kind of thing bothers you. It's not loose like on the TIE Defender, but it's not perfect either.

So, in summary..

Pre Visla

- The Pre Vizsla figure is excellent, with lots of detail and printed accessories (including the cape). That hair piece is not my favourite though, but as he'll be wearing his helmet most of the time, it's not an issue for me.

- Sensible storage compartments for accessories, something I feel is missing on too many ships.

- Cockpit holds more than one figure, again something i'd love to see more of.

- Wing construction, especially the underside appears to have been designed with much more care than on some past ships.

- No tacked on flick fire missiles/associated risk of eye damage.

Pre Posterous

- The build technique for the rear guns (I presume that's what they are?) that doesn't work, at all.

- The rotation of the hull being too free.

- Multiple stickers on the cockpit.

- You probably have multiples of two of the three figures already.

Scores

Minifigures 7/10 - As excellent as Pre Vizsla is, the other two figures are uninspired due to their previous set inclusions.

Build - 7/10 - Hard to score much above average, especially when it uses a build technique that simply doesn't connect two elements with any degree of acceptability. The symmetry of the wing building might be frustrating for some, but ensures a strong final look so I have no problem there.

Design - 8/10 - An interesting craft, well realised in lego, with some fairly unique features and a strong aesthetic and no random colours on display. The wings have a lot of studs on show, but that comes with the territory.

Parts - 8/10 - Some interesting/useful parts including plenty of new SNOT plates, a printed plate and a printed cape. Few random colours and lots of useful plates would mean that I'd imagine this to be a good parts pack for those interested.

Playability - 9/10 - The storage compartment is well designed and concealed when closed. The cockpit holding two figures is also a huge bonus. The rotating wings could be stronger and lock into place somehow, but I don't feel this impacts too much for most people.

Overall 39/50

To be honest i'm not sure where I stand on this craft. It is a nice set, on the whole well made, with well designed play features and a strong aesthetic, but for some reason I haven't quite fallen in love with it. The T6 had loads of flaws (like the inside of the cockpit..), but for a similar ish craft, I definitely prefered that. It is growing on me though and it's good sized set for it's price, so i'd recommend it if you have an interest in picking it up.

Finally..

Pre Vizsla's henchman had used up all his jet pack fuel. Only one way to get aboard now..

[xowainx]

P.S. If a mod could add a poll, that would be much appreciated!

[Alfadas]

Well, for your first review, you did an excellent job. For the fotos, they look fine to me. For the review again, well, it is a great review of a great set. I do not have it, but after reading this, I am conciddering buying it. Good job and keep on reviewing!!

[Borex]

Nice review! Thanks

[Brickington]

Good review! Your actual picture quality is great! Have you considered joining the Reviewers Academy here at Eurobricks?

[Only Sinner]

This is a great review. Thanks for doing it. I have this wonderful set in my LEGO closet with about two dozen others I would like to write reviews for. I'm very pleased you added this one. A real treat, for sure.

[wilson3a10]

I'm deciding whether to buy this or not too. There is not much playable feature in this craft. Besides a large portion of white bricks have paused me since i would like to display it wide open in my home where sunshine may cause them turn yellow after years. The figure pre vizsla is what i want the most.

[MKJoshA]

I thought your pictures did an excellent job even though you don't have professional equipment. I know what that struggle is like. Oh what I wouldn't give for a light box!

But, concerning the set, I bought it from Walmart a few months ago and have not regretted the purchase. A nice build, very sturdy, and great part selection. Not to mention I'm a sucker for Mandalorians and had to get Pre Visla!