makoy

Battle Goddess.

I feel between a rock and a hard place selecting this set because it is my first Nexo Knights to review. Could this be the last? Let's find out in my 7th RA review, set number 70349 - Ruina's Lock & Roller. Overview Name: 70349 - Ruina's Lock and Roller Theme: LEGO System / NEXO Knights / Season 3 Year: 2017 (1H) Pieces: 208 Minifigures: 3 Price: USD 19.99 / EUR 19.99 / GBP 14.99 / SGD 34.99 / MYR 89.90 Resources: Brickset and Bricklink Introduction We are on a rocky start because I have to admit I am more of a Ninjago and Star Wars fan. However, I do appreciate the villains in Nexo Knights. Now before anyone cries foul, there were only 2 things I expected from this set when I bought it - (1) the minifigs must be great and (2) the parts should be serviceable for MOCs in order to give it a decent rating. Now join me as I pick this set apart starting from the packaging. The front panel of the box shows Ruina riding a rock creature pulling a carriage, prison carriage or tumbrel. Whatever you want to call it, that's how the set got it's name "Lock & Roller" if that wasn't obvious enough. Btw, the rock creature is called GargoBike but I will just call it the rock creature because it does not look like a gargoyle enough to me. At the back of the box, we see Ruina fighting against Aaron and it shows the play feature of the prison carriage. At the side panel, we see the minifigures included -- Ruina, Queen Halbert and Aaron. At the side flaps of the box, you'll see the name of the forbidden power as "Wrecking Wrath" and the power up as "Gorilla Roar". Inside, we get 3 clear plastic bags without numbers, 2 dark bluish grey wheels and a stapled instruction booklet. I'm very glad to report there is no sticker in this set. Build As there is no numbered bags in this set, all I needed to do was arrange all these parts in one go before I built the entire set. In order to judge this set fair and square, I watched a couple of NEXO Knights episodes to appreciate the character of Ruina Stoneheart more, as well as understand how her Lock & Roller prison carriage was used in the series. The first thing I immediately noticed while watching the TV show was the absence of pole holding the forbidden power shield. It is not on the carriage at all; there is no "target" per se. It's possible that the designer added this play feature for the sake of adding play feature because it is not integral in the episode's story. Unless you watch the TV show you will not care about the difference. Depending on how you appreciate or dislike NEXO Knights, not caring about the TV show could be a good thing or a bad thing. Pick your poison. Moving on, I like to add that I am not a fan of medium blue as contrasting colour or highlight for the build, especially the one on top of the roof of the carriage. In the show, the carriage has a roof with spiky rocks that look like fangs or stalagmites rising at each corner of the roof. It did not translate well on the set or perhaps the designer was trying to achieve a different design altogether. Those medium blue cheese slopes just look like meaningless greebles. Best-angle-view The use of trans-light blue looks good on the wheels and on the claws of the rock creature pulling the carriage, representing the flowing current of electricity. However, I have to nitpick on the use of trans-light blue rock panel in front of the carriage. It is supposed to be a current of electric field serving as the windshield of the carriage. The problem is -- I associate this colour of rock panel with ice or glacier. It does not help that I also own Elsa's Castle so it is just hard to imagine it an electric field covering the carriage. Frankly, I prefer if it is just a panel, not a rock panel. Maybe it was a mistake watching the TV show after all because this makes me compare the version of the rock creature in the TV show. The beak of the rock monster should have been just dark bluish grey and not this fancy medium blue. I think that the use of medium blue colour is unnecessary when the animated version looks fine (arguable better) without a different coloured beak. Back view (ugly view) If you think it is narrow, it's because it is. This is comparable to the several old-school Castle carriage that I own since they are also 4-studs wide inside. I guess the standard accommodation inside LEGO carriages has not changed since then. Not the best place to be in As shown at the box front panel, the carriage has a mechanism to open the floor when you hit the shield holder. I will discuss more about this play feature in great detail later. Side view The carriage has a slight tilt and you can see the shadow of the 3rd wheel in front of the carriage to keep it from tipping over. When you detach the stone creature, the carriage will still keep its balance. Front view The front view is decent. I'm still not a fan of the medium blue colour but I do like the use of purple cylinder as bike wheels because even without the carriage, the stone creature can balance on two wheels and it can be played independently of the carriage. The creature's head can also tilt up and down apart from swivelling sideways. Hit me baby one more time! I want to address the most frustrating thing about this set: the play feature that won't work most of the time! Hear me out. This is the single feature that was unnecessarily added in the carriage so that you can target something and yet it does not function well enough. I'm not a Physicist but I found out that the shield piece works so well in deflecting the towball "bullet/arrow" so much that the force is greatly reduced when it hits the target. This renders the stud shooter useless. A simple solution to make this play feature work more effectively -- just remove the freaking shield. The shield holder will catch the towball easier because the recessed area is exposed without the shield. This will force the shield holder to push the mechanism so much easier. To be fair with this set, the official description mentioned that you have to "push" the Forbidden Power shield holder to open the cage doors, not hit with the stud shooter. Wait... what? Open the cage doors? Even the official description is wrong! Pushing the forbidden power shield does not open the cage doors. It opens the cage floor. The cage door can swing open but it does not open when you hit the shield holder. It's a poor description to a poor play feature that is poorly executed. I honestly wish that I was posing a horse, not a stone creature, when I took this picture above. To wrap things up in this section, here are the extra parts not used on the build after following the instruction booklet thoroughly. Parts This set contains some new parts (new moulds) as well as new colours of existing LEGO elements. Unlike the previous sets that I reviewed, I am not really excited with the new parts selection here. I still like the new parts included but there is nothing fancy about any of these, in my humble opinion. Just to highlight what I like the most -- I already mentioned the excellent purple cylinder piece. You get 2 of these in the set. The rock claw/fingers piece was also introduced in NEXO Knights in this set along with Jestro's Headquarters so this is also a new part. Getting this set is the cheapest way to get them at the time of my purchase. You get 3 of these. The blunt spear head, which looks cool as an ornament but looks ridiculous as a weapon, was also introduced in Season 3 wave of NEXO Knights sets. You get 3 of these and they are used as limbs in Aaron's bow (1 spare). If you don't believe it's ridiculous as a weapon, just look up an image of 70366 Battle Suit Lance. Minifigures I am very glad to share that I enjoy the minifigures in this set. It is odd that when I bought this set, I was looking forward to Ruina the most. However, when I already opened the set and had a chance to stare and take pictures of the minifigures for a couple of days, I now like Queen Halbert minifigure the most. Many people raved about Ruina's hairpiece and it is one of the reasons why I was looking forward to getting Ruina. In a lot of ways, getting Ruina from this set had paid off my excitement, but with diminishing return. Apart from the hairpiece, there is nothing to be excited about the minifigure. Her appeal to me is shortlived and that's why I appreciate the Queen Halbert minifigure more lately. Queen Halbert's torso is printed with metallic gold and silver patterns which match the design of King Halbert armour from set 70327 - The King's Mech. All the minifigures have excellent printing on torso and legs. All have dual face printing. How I wish that all LEGO minifigures always come with dual face printing. If they can do it in NEXO Knights they can certainly do this in other themes. In comparison to the Season 1 armour, the new armour looks sharper and it covers less area of the torso. It is supposed to be an upgrade to the season 1 suit because but I guess more is less? The trans-neon orange parts are good but I think it's a little overdone. I prefer the non-transparent visor though I won't mind using the trans-neon orange visor to upgrade my Ice Planet minifigures. Conclusion I am glad that my opinion about this set did not hit rock bottom. It has some good things that I can appreciate even if the non-functioning play feature had frustrated me. I normally don't allow my son to use stud's shooter because it's hard to look for missing round plates or towballs so imaginary arrows will. I also observed that even if he does not like NEXO Knights villains in general, he played the GargoBike. I detached the bike so that Ruina can rock and roll really well without the weight of the carriage. The thing about NEXO Knights -- the story and character development is so poor in the TV show that even if I take the time to learn more about the characters, I don't get the same level of empathy or interest at all when compared to Ninjago and Friends. Most of the villains in NEXO Knights are disposable. Perhaps it was meant to be that way. Don't you know it's rude to stare? Somehow, removing the medium blue piece at the tip makes this stone creature look more fierce. Let me make up to you dear If I will weigh the reason to buy this set, the biggest factor is getting the minifigures only. If you have King Halbert, Queen Halbert in her gold armour matches very well with King's Halbert armour. IMHO, the royal Halbert family is probably the best thing in NEXO Knights because the family dynamics is funny and quite different than what LEGO has done before. Queen Halbert can win her own battles and Macy is one of the more interesting characters LEGO had developed in recent years. Enough of the Halbert family. Let me reveal the final verdict. Review summary Playability: 6/10 - The poorly executed play feature ruined it. Yeah right. Ruined Lock & Roller. Design / Building Experience: 7/10 - Design follows typical carriage design. Rock creature looks good. Use of medium blue pieces in this set is questionable. Minifigures: 9/10 - Awesome looking minifigures and probably the best reason to get this set. Price / Value for money: 8/10 - An average value for am average set. Parts selection is okay. Overall: 7.5/10 - An okay set if you're getting the minifigures; however, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Life is not fair... So as the CMF game. Let it be.

In the TV show someone else turned to stone... Maybe it is really just the statue. The real queen minifig was already released in 70325.

You're kiss of death aside, you're doing a really good commentary of the game. To make your example even simpler -- say that 5 Simpsons or 5 DFB minifigures are in the same group of of any space minifigure. There is no way the space minifigure will lose that round. Therefore, the starting group matters.

I bet it was not a hard choice to make.

I voted for these guys

The summer sets are all available in TRU Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. At least these are the places I friends that I can confirm. HK had been selling the sets fore more than a week. I am eyeing the battle packs for tomorrow.

Totally debatable... but if I'll go with your opinion it's actually a good thing for me because I have so much Star Wars this year that I cannot afford building another set of army.

Got Kanan's speeder bike on clearance :)

You're right Lightning jet has a crab (orange). How do I know? I just know.

Here's what I know Fire Mech - jellyfish, hammerhead shark Lightning Jet - jellyfish Water Strider - pufferfish (purple) Garmadon's Shark Mech - shark Manta Ray Bomber - shark

NK villains might be visually appealing but they are disposable characters. I think the head gears were intentionally made to stand out much like how you will identify all kinds of sea creatures. You remember them by the head gear and not through something else. I can't recall the names of these henchmen but I know there is jellyfish head, shark, angler fish, squid, etc. I think that's clever. At the same time this accentuates Garmadon as the ultimate boss.

Hmmm. I'm growing old. Can't remember if I voted for Grandpa. Sorry Grandma, I will vote for Laser Robot.

Not trying to be cheesy but those who voted Granpa should vote Grandma because Grandpa will be lonely in the next round if Grandma doesn't advance the next round.

I shared the exact same thing on WhiteFang's review. Casual people won't buy the Highwayman for a lot of reasons -- but more importantly, they don't know he even exists. I don't think you need to figure out what's TLG is trying to do with the Highwayman. The sales performance of S17, in general, will speak for itself. There is a Hamley's store nearby my place and they stack the blind bags on a circular dish. Previously they replenish every day (S15, S16 as I recall) but with this series, there is less interest; therefore, fewer boxes were opened and the rate of replenishment is much slower. It's also possible the price hike pushed many casual buyers away from buying this series.

@BrickHat please don't vote the Samuria. ktnxbye

I echo the reasons listed here on why I did not vote for Mr Gold. On a related note, I don't know if the reason TLG included Highwayman in S17 is to reverse the stigma left behind by Mr Gold. I think they equally failed to gain interest around "secret" character and did nothing much on marketing. For collectors, Highway man is very easy to get For builders, it's not particularly great for army building unless you are building a band of bandits or outlaws. For parts aficionados, Highway man offers very little - both flintlocke pistol and tricorn hat had been around since 1989. What I learn in the elimination rounds so far, the more recognisable (familiar?) the minifigure is, the more popular it is. Whether it is pop culture or history reference, the minifigure tends to perform better in the polls. Most of the elimination round winners can be categorised under either pop culture or history references.

Death trooper!

or it could be an army of Grandma Visitors also.

It's because you voted for the Alien Trooper!

I am voting Series 13 Alien Trooper I like its colour scheme so much

I cannot unsee. The more I read about this series the more it sounds ridiculous. I hope the end product is charming and not over the top... I really hope. Speaking of Skeleton Guy -- he does not even wear a costume. The printed skeleton on torso and legs make up the costume. So, do you think we'll get some costumes done the same way?

Larry lost the previous round... @BrickHat Anyway, moving on.... I can't decide which one to vote now so I'll return later to see it there's any chance of having a tie

That's what I like to do with mine soon as I can't stand its stubbiness anymore. Thanks for sharing your opinion. I agree with you to a certain extent because I didn't have the impulse to buy any TFA sets 2 years ago. However, judging this set on its own merits, this is still a good set that was not based on any previous design so I enjoyed the building process. My opinion on this set had also been normalised after playing it with my kid. If I didn't spend time playing with this set, I could have scored it lower.