Subject:
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Review of set 8877, Vladek's Dark Fortress
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lugnet.reviews
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Date:
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Fri, 5 Jan 2007 23:13:16 GMT
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11193 times
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Sure, this is a very late review, but it could be helpful for anyone stalking
Target clearance sales.
8877
Castle System / Knights’ Kingdom II
Vladek’s Dark Fortress
La forteresse des ténèbres de Vladek
Fortaleza Oscura de Vladek
Ages 8-14, 967 Pcs. (C)2005. 106 page manual: 1 model (1 battering ram, 1
horse-mounted catapult, 1 horse-drawn catapult, 1 ballista and 1 fortress), 276
steps. Building time, about 2 hours 20 minutes.
Price Range: $100 USD
RATINGS (Scale: Must-Have Excellent Very-Good Good Fair Poor)
Set: Excellent / Models: Very-Good / Playability: Very-Good
DECALS? No.
SET DESCRIPTION
The huge red and black fortress of evil Lord Vladek rises out of the barren
wastes. The four brave knights of Morcia must storm the castle with the aid of
their mobile siege weaponry, but how can their tiny band ever hope to breech
such a fortress, with 3 elite Shadow Knights and Lord Vladek himself poised to
stop them?
SPECIAL ELEMENTS
There are too many unique or rare elements in this set to list them all, so I’ll
just gloss over a few of them. This is the only source for: 1 x 5 x 7 & ½ Doors
in Dark Red, the 1 x 8 x 6 Door Frame (from Harry Potter) in Black, Octagonal
shields with a white and blue diagonal stripe pattern, 3 x 3 inverted red-brown
dishes, a ‘Scala Finial’ piece of any color outside of Scala sets (even if it is
Trans-Mid. Blue), 3 x 4 33 sloped bricks in dark stone, double concave 2 x 2 45
slope bricks in red-brown, and one of only 2 sets in the past decade with black
3 x 3 x 6 wall corner panels. There are tons of other pieces that only appear
in one or two other sets as well, but if you really want to know, just go look
at the inventory on Peeron.com.
IMPRESSION
Before going into any details, I would like to mention two things that will
influence what I write about this set. First, I was not impressed with the
Knights Kingdom II line at all, and have only bought a couple of sets, mostly
because they were discounted and I wanted a few of the pieces out of them.
Second, I purchased this particular set at 50% off.
Minifigs
There are 9 minifigs with the Dark Fortress in all: 1 skeleton, 4 knights of
Morcia, 3 Elite Shadow Knights, and Lord Vladek. We’re all familiar with the
skeleton at this point (there are 2 additional evil-skeleton heads used to
decorate the front gate), so I’ll move on to the factions at this point.
I like this round of ‘Jellybean knights’ much better than the first. While the
armor may be less ‘generic’ than the first iteration, I find the color schemes
and shields much cooler. For example, the new ‘Gold and Grey Wolf Head’ pattern
looks better than Danju’s old ‘Yellow Lines’ pattern. Also, while I think the
octagonal shields are very interesting, the old ‘Howling Wolf’ pattern with
yellow outline pales in comparison next to the new matching gold/grey wolf head
on an old style triangle shield. While the armor and shields may be an
improvement, the visors are still the same bright, bulky helmets they have been.
Not only are they huge (should a helmet really be as large as an entire
breastplate?), but half of them are very loose fitting and flop around.
Lord Vladek probably had the coolest armor pattern in KKIIs first outing, so I
won’t call his new scorpion pattern an ‘improvement’, but I won’t say its worse
either! The black and silver scorpion on dark red armor and matching ovoid
shield are really cool (the shield pattern, again, being a huge improvement over
the graphic on the old octagonal one). Vladek’s helmet suffers from the same
bulk problem as the Morcian’s (though at least not loose).
The Elite Shadow knights better be good, there are only three of them to defend
the fortress! They all share the same face as Vladek, but all wear speckled
plate and have speckled helmets and axes (the small variety, not the huge
halberd, though one also carries one of those in his off hand, very elite!) The
speckled look works well with the armor, but not so much the axe.
All torsos are plain, which is disappointing (but at least you won’t need to
break out the Brasso to customize them), and if you haven’t already collected a
bunch of KKII sets, there is a good variety of facial expressions and hand
colors. Unfortunately, other than the Elite Shadow Knights, everyone wields a
KKII style sword.
Knight’s Arsenal
The weakest part of the set is the weaponry brought along by the Morcian
knights. The smallest, and probably best, of their accessories is the two
person battering ram. It is small, lightweight, has a method to hold shields
while in use, and is pointy. Simple, elegant, this one works for me.
The next step up is probably the strangest of the lot; a horse-mounted
catapult!? I do like that it is made with a saucepan (this is useful elsewhere)
and is powered by a rubber-band (this works nicely), but a saddle mount
catapult? I’ll move along now.
Third is a ballista looking contraption (labeled, humorously enough, a ‘blunt
shooter’ by LEGO). The good? It isn’t powered by the generic spring-loaded
cannon that usually fires these rubber tipped projectiles. Instead, it is
launched by quickly spinning a gear, which in turn moves a 1 x 8 gear rack,
which in turn pushes the projectile. Does it work? Well, sure, it just takes
two hands to operate (or else the whole contraption will go rolling away). The
bad? 2 large metallic copper shoulder guards are used for decoration (they look
strange in the set, though I can think of other interesting uses for these
pieces, if only they were a different color), and the overall construction
doesn’t look very nice to me. This, like the other equipment the knights bring,
is just spare parts.
Last, there is a horse drawn catapult. It looks very flat and plain. The only
thing that impresses me about it is that when launching a boulder, the whole
catapult does NOT flip through the air. Both this catapult and the ballista use
4 x 4 round bricks for wheels (the catapult in dark stone, the ballista in red
brown). This has its ups and downs. While I would rather see wheels (ala old
carts) used for this purpose, if you already have a bucket of wheels, getting
these 4 x 4 rounds is probably more useful.
The Fortress
Finally I can move on to the REAL meat of this set, the Dark Fortress itself.
While there are many things I can nit-pick about this castle, I will first and
foremost say this – it is cool! From the first few bricks I felt that this
fortress was something cool, and I wasn’t let down as I built on. Of all the
castles I can think of, this one is probably the most imposing looking of them
all. The dark-red and black color scheme looks evil (as it should), the dark
red flags and large scorpion banners are nifty. The tan baseplates and
red-brown BURP and LURP make it seem to rise out of the wastes (instead of from
a lush green field like every other castle).
Since I’ve started with praise, I’ll move on to the negatives, from biggest to
smallest, before finishing with more praise. First, while the castle folds, it
does not fold completely into a closed structure. This is unfortunate,
especially since it seems that it might only take some minor modifications in
the sets design to accomplish this. Second, the big ‘fireball catapults’ are
just silly. Again powered by rubber-bands, I will say that these things do work
(which is cool), and they are constructed with cool SNOT bricks (1 x 2 brick
with studs on opposite sides), but they are just silly, and silly looking (and
besides, those large spears with the scorpion banners block half of their firing
range!) They are easily removed, so just take them off and use the parts
somewhere else. Third, what is with those two giant swords in front of the
drawbridge?! Please, get rid of those and use the money saved to get the
knights some real weapons.
Moving on to the small problems and nit-picks, I’ll start with the fact that the
two ‘wings’ to the fortress are only connected to the central tower by a single
Technic pin each! Even trying to turn the fortress on a hardwood floor, the
pins cannot hold and the model comes apart. Next is the drawbridge mechanism.
It is a neat idea, and I really liked putting it together, but in practice, it
doesn’t work all that well. The chains bind and slip, and the drawbridge itself
stops before being all the way up. Since the bottom of the drawbridge is so
large and plain, the fortress looks the worse for it being up. Third, the huge
arch and opening in the wall to show off the cauldron of fire seems like it
should be closed up, hide the cauldron so it is only enjoyed from the rear of
the castle. Last, there are a large number of pre-built pieces that I just
don’t like in this set. There are two 3 x 8 x 6 Panel with Window pieces, and
NINE 4 x 8 x 2 & 1/3 Castle Turret Tops! These pieces have always made me sad,
and seeing such a large number of them in this set is disappointing. There are
many more nit-picks I could go on with, ask if you want to hear them all, but
they’re not really worth writing about.
Enough of the negative though, let’s move on to something more positive. From
the front of the castle, with the wings in any position, the castle looks
massive and thematically constantly evil. There are more levels to the fortress
than there are defenders to occupy them.
At the bottom level, we have sloped rock wall pattern panels, 2 x 4 x 6 rock
panels, and a BURP and LURP used quite well. Instead of the castle being on a
raised baseplate (like every other castle recently), or an open base as if the
fortress were built on pylons (like the Harry Potter sets), this castle has a
good solid base that looks to be built around and upon the terrain. The
drawbridge is pretty massive, being 8 studs wide (only 6 usable for riding
across it, but still!), and if the silly giant swords are removed looks great.
The double doors themselves are nice (and would only be better if they were
brick-built) and are flanked by evil skulls in a wall that is 2 bricks thick!
The second level is full of good old classic-wall panels (the next best thing to
brick built walls). The right hand side looks slightly unfinished in the spots
where the spears jut out, but the left hand side is awesome. The black and red
slotted wall is a great touch, and he massive pillars in front of it couldn’t be
better outside of a MOC. The skeleton on a spinning wall is a ‘play-value
added’ feature that I don’t care for, but backing the spinning panel with lots
of bricks and a rounded grilled window more than makes up for it.
The third level is where the rest of the ‘play-value’ comes in. The
fire-catapults, the drawbridge mechanism, the flame cauldron. These are
elements of the set I don’t really need, though if the cauldron was covered from
the front I wouldn’t mind it at all. But even if you take all of this away, you
are left with a MASSIVE third level. There is enough floor-space to pull up a
couch and a couple of chairs, and still have a sword fight or three! Something
this fortress really excels in that most older sets don’t is the large areas of
open space that you can PLAY with. The fortress actually has that ‘playset’
feel to it that most models don’t, especially when viewed from behind, but more
on that later.
The fourth level is where the two horrible giant castle wall panel parts make
their appearance, as well as the first two turret top pieces. But other than
these parts, you are still left with a large area for placing troops (not that
the set has that many of them, so use ones from other sets), a nice red door,
and an easy mechanism for reloading the fire cauldron. Simply putting a few
sloped bricks on the floor lets you drop pieces through into the cauldron with
surprising ease!
The fifth level tops off the side towers, but the central tower rises one level
higher (even though it’s a tiny little sixth level). Even this high, there is
still room for a duel or two, which is mighty impressive. Even the Vladek mask
featured prominently in the center of the tower, unlike the oversized swords and
shoulder-pieces, seems to work well. Putting a giant visage of yourself on your
castle is the type of thing that evil tyrants love to do!
Spinning the fortress around to examine the back side is where you really get
the playset feel. Since the fortress has so many levels, and it isn’t built
like a giant flat façade (the tower juts out further then the walls surrounding
it, which stick out slightly further than the walls and towers at each end), it
really feels like there are many different rooms and spaces to play in. The
ground floor is filled with fun little details, including (gasp) two sets of
stairs up to the second level. There is a firepit in one room, a fireplace in
another (with a removable wall for the Morcian knights to break through, where
they’ll find scorpions waiting), and a round table with crystal ball in another.
While these neat furnishings don’t compare to those put in many MOCs, they are a
great addition that livens up this set! The second level is sparser in these
details, which disappear completely by the third level (which is fine, go build
something more interesting out of the fire-catapult parts).
Likes/Dislikes
Like: Modular building bags in a set that doesn’t look over-modularized.
Like: Sturdy feel, no flimsy Hogwarts here!
Like: Figures accessories (minus KKII swords).
Like: Awesome color scheme and imposing size.
Like: Useable play area.
Dislike: Morcian knights’ extras (ballista, catapults), helmets, and KKII
swords.
Dislike: Fire catapults.
Dislike: One piece turret tops and huge wall panels.
Dislike: Step 4 on page 64 nearly gave me a headache!
Extra Elements
Along with the usual assortment of extras (Technic pins and 1x1 rounds) the set
I purchased came with an extra of the small #1 bag! That means 7 extra armors,
3 shields, spears, axes, etc. Not all sets have this extra bag, but mine is not
a unique occurrence, others have been reported as well. If you pick the set up,
good luck to you (that is, if you WANT more speckled armor and helmets!)
CONCLUSION
Even with the detriments of ‘thrown together play-value added’ elements, this
set is cool. At 50% off, this is a must have. I would even recommend the set
at full price.
REVIEWER INFORMATION
Review Written: 1/2/07
By: Brett Kingery (plucky)
Age 31 Favorite Lines/Themes: Castle, Star Wars
CA++++ #++++ CO LM+ LS++>+++ P++++ S- Hzl M- YB75mIC17
COPYRIGHT
This review is Copyright 2007, by the author as named above. The
author grants publication rights for all uses, public and private,
with the following exceptions: all information in the document must
be published in full; any for-profit use requires express written
permission by the author for publication in full or in part.
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