9474 The Battle Of Helm's Deep
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9474 The Battle Of Helm's Deep
Posted by Huw, 17 May 2012 06:50. Filed under Set review.
This is the biggest of the LotR sets, weighing in at 1368 pieces and $130. In fact it's so big, I had trouble photographing it satisfactorily...
Its size is actually most impressive, it certainly looks as if you get your money's worth. It's around 50cm long, and the tower is about 25cm high.It comes with eight minifigs: King Theoden, Haldir (both unique to this set), Aragorn, Gimli and four assorted Uruk-hai, including a berserker, which only appears in this set.
The King has a articulated-back-leg horse to ride and has been suggested in comments to previous reviews, if you put two plates on his feet, you can achieve a more realistic pose as you can see from the picture.
The castle itself is modular, constructed from six sections that are held together with Technic pins. Like the other LotR sets, they are constructed from a lot of bricks, plates and slopes and while there are some large castle-wall pieces, you don't get the impression that the castle has been designed around them, I guess partly because it's based on a 'real' castle rather than one that LEGO has designed. The use of the new 1x2 brick piece, 1x1 slopes and sand green parts give the exterior walls a nice-uniform appearance.
The aerial view below clearly shows the size of the set, which is most impressive. If you want it even bigger, you can extend the walls using the 9471 Uruk-hai Army set.
It's an expensive set but I'd say it's worth every penny: excellent figs, well designed castle and, once you've done with it, a thousand useful parts for your own castle constructions.
Thanks again to Darren and Tim for loaning me these. Tim is offering Brickset users a 5% discount in his BrickLink store Brick Buy Brick, and will also do so in his new web toy shop, ToyAddict, when it launches in June. Darren is also offering 5% discount on orders under £50 and 10% on orders over £50 from his BrickLink store Gizmocom, until the official release day of the LotR sets. Just mention Brickset in the notes when you check out!
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