Random set of the day: Ogel's Mountain Fortress
Posted by Huwbot,
Today's random set is 4748 Ogel's Mountain Fortress, released in 2004. It's one of 6 Alpha Team sets produced that year. It contains 436 pieces and 5 minifigs, and its retail price was US$70/£49.99.
It's owned by 672 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
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43 comments on this article
looks spoopy
What about ssertroF niatnuoM s’LEGO?
Black Tahu swords, why not?
Besides those it's not much of a fortress, more like Ogel's Mountain Facade.
Never paid much attention to the third wave of Alpha Team sets, although I did buy the snowski that turns into a helicopter. Tht was pretty cool.
LEGO taking 2003 off from Alpha Team does not seem to have been spent in making sure the theme's design was REALLY sharp. Instead, we get... well, kind of a unique bunch of pieces. That baseplate, those colours... but also heavy juniorisation and the worst figs in an Alpha Team theme ever.
The invasion of Bionicle pieces into System themes is well underway and looks natural here, if only because adding large single-use parts to a set full of large single-use parts is thematically congruent. I don't hate this, but that's only if I imagine I'm already buying it with that sweet early 2000s 40% discount.
Caveat: Ogel with a blue hook is badass.
Alpha Team was my jam back in the day. I love this theme. This, Orient Expedition, and Bionicle were my lifeblood.
I have this set, I use it as an Imperial snow base or a CIS base.
I question the usefulness of an offensive vehicle that can only shoot backwards
Alpha Team was a fantastic theme, but this last subtheme and set is pretty slapped together.
Just got this in a bulk lot. 0 interest so now all the interesting parts are in bricklink my store.
Ogel was a criminal mastermind who used several powerful Orbs to mind control the populous and create an army of skeleton henchmen. The Alpha Team was an elite squad of spies and agents sent to to take him down.
In the third year of the Alpha Team's adventures Ogel fled to a secret artic base.
That's the short lore, but I still haven't managed to get my hands on the first AT game and I don't know how much story was developed for the later years.
@GSR_Matanui
There was a trilogy of flash games made for Mission Deep Freeze which IMO are the best official LEGO licensed flash games. Since there are three games whose total length is nothing to scoff at, I will tell about them tomorrow by editing this comment because now it’s late at night.
This set represents what LEGO's offerings were in the early 2000s - a lawless wasteland. Fortunately they started recovering in 2005 with the new game-changer City sets like 7239.
My 4yo: I think that it is pretty cool, because it can shoot backwards.
I don’t understand the hate for this wave of Alpha Team. This wave of Alpha Team, along with Bionicle, were what really got me into Lego back in early 2005, and I’m proud to say I own the entire Alpha Team Deep Freeze line.
All of the vehicles had the ability to seamlessly transform into totally different vehicles without having to disassemble anything, and the alternate modes were typically just as good as the main model. They had some of the best playable functionality of any Lego theme.
As @Norikins mentioned, the Mission Deep Freeze flash game trilogy on lego.com were some of the best games the website ever had to offer. I still have vivid memories of the first time I beat the final boss.
I gotta go find an internet archive that has those games.
Ewww. Poor box design and far too many large, bulky pieces. There's a balance between too much detail and not enough. This leans way over to the "not enough" side.
Grade: D. It's not downright awful but I wouldn't take it if it were free.
Also, I agree with the above commenter about 7239 . That set could be sold today and I'd buy it.
Not even for the parts... That's all I have to say...
The thing that annoyed me about this Alpha Team subtheme was that while the first two had a cohesive set of six agents, this one eliminated Cam and Crunch in favor of Arrow and Diamond, while completely redesigning Flex and Charge... actually, it would explain some of that if they just got Flex and Charge's names reversed.
Hasn’t aged well, but my opinion might be different if I was five years old.
Honestly Mission Deep Freeze was alright with some of the coolest sets on the bottom end of the price spectrum. This is just pretty poop tho.
Correction: Lego's mountain fortress. That's right, this is where they scheme which mech should they make into a Marvel set next muahahaha.
Wish I had gotten Mission Deep Sea instead of Mission Deep Freeze. Making Tee Vee a regular robot minifigure was the dumbest idea. The new characters didn't add much character. The orbs were bizarre. Other than that, though, I gotta say the sets looked really good. I didn't have this set, but I did have 4746 Mobile Command Center.
@Zordboy said:
"Never paid much attention to the third wave of Alpha Team sets, although I did buy the snowski that turns into a helicopter. Tht was pretty cool."
Same, 4743.
@Mr__Thrawn said:
"I question the usefulness of an offensive vehicle that can only shoot backwards"
Right? It's a massive downgrade from the one that had outriggers and a turret with twin cannons that could spin 360 degrees AND aim lower or higher (6775). Then again, we did get much more awesome things like the aforementioned 4743.
I don't get all the dislike for this set and this wave of Alpha Team in general. The set does suffer from early 2000's juniorization, sure, but it is still pretty cool in my opinion. The set does include some really cool pieces, like those black Tahu swords. And while the design might not be the best, it is still a pretty cool concept that I would love to see reimagined in a MOC.
@MrBob said:
"I don’t understand the hate for this wave of Alpha Team. This wave of Alpha Team, along with Bionicle, were what really got me into Lego back in early 2005, and I’m proud to say I own the entire Alpha Team Deep Freeze line.
All of the vehicles had the ability to seamlessly transform into totally different vehicles without having to disassemble anything, and the alternate modes were typically just as good as the main model. They had some of the best playable functionality of any Lego theme.
As @Norikins mentioned, the Mission Deep Freeze flash game trilogy on lego.com were some of the best games the website ever had to offer. I still have vivid memories of the first time I beat the final boss.
I gotta go find an internet archive that has those games."
My 8 yo self would envy you so much. All I've ever had to do with Alpha Team was spending hours looking at the 2004 catalog imagining how cool it would be to play with these sets.
The game was great but I don't think I've ever managed to get to the ending.
The trans blue plates over the pits are an amazing idea. Never noticed those before. This was probably a good playset but it lacks the classic LEGO charm of the earlier two Alpha Team waves.
Speaking of raised baseplates...
https://brickset.com/article/60663
@WesterBricks
They got me hooked again since around 2000. It may have been lawless, but TLG did get their act together imho.
Guy just really loved the skull theme didn’t he?
By the box picture alone, I can't tell which guys are the good ones, and which are the bad ones...
I bought this one at a clearance sale, parted it out and I have never built it. I think it was the baseplate that drew me in, which I never used.
Almost as good as a secret volcano lair. Almost. Because it's too cold for me.
Too bad Alpha Team didn't get a fourth wave: Ogel would build another super secret evil HQ...
IN! SPACE!
@Mr__Thrawn:
I’m sure Sir Robin’s minstrel could explain it to you.
I never understood the set name 'Ogel's Mountain Fortress'. After all, we know Ogel froze the desert. This is what the game tells us (by the way, I wonder why it's called 'Arctic Missions' instead of 'Deedp Freeze' on Biomedia Project) and information from the Lego website. I also never understood those snow-capped mountains in the background on the boxes.
The Mission Deep Freeze games were really great, some of LEGO's best online games imo. You can get them from here: http://biomediaproject.com/bmp/lmp/
@Formendacil said:
"The invasion of Bionicle pieces into System themes is well underway and looks natural here, if only because adding large single-use parts to a set full of large single-use parts is thematically congruent."
How exactly are they single-use pieces if they are getting different uses in this very set?
@Gatanui said:
"The Mission Deep Freeze games were really great, some of LEGO's best online games imo. You can get them from here: http://biomediaproject.com/bmp/lmp/"
Yeah, I really like old Lego games like Alpha Team games, Mission X, Robot Chronicles or Indiana Jones Adventures. I'm lucky I discovered the Biomedia Project in March 2014, while I was searching the internet for the game "Mission X". A little time later, I discovered that they have almost all the old Lego games.
@WesterBricks said:
"This set represents what LEGO's offerings were in the early 2000s - a lawless wasteland. Fortunately they started recovering in 2005 with the new game-changer City sets like 7239."
Strongly disagree with this because of one theme alone: Orient Expedition. I can't even think of a bad set in that entire theme... Coherent design, and a (for the time) ground breaking density of play functions... And why not, a random board game too...
man, so happy I was in my Dark Ages by then....if this would have been the LEGO from my childhood days, I would have never been an AFOL.
So glad to have lived LEGO through it's golden ages of the 80's en 90's
@MusiMus said:
"(by the way, I wonder why it's called 'Arctic Missions' instead of 'Deep Freeze' on Biomedia Project)"
Fun fact: The Mission Deep Freeze name started off life purely as a fan designation. None of the official media of 2004 used that term, which would probably be why Biomedia doesn't either: I'm sure I remember they were just referred to as Arctic Missions on Lego.com back in the day, too. It was only later that the fan-term Mission Deep Freeze - coined to match the previous subtheme, Mission Deep Sea - started to be used officially by Lego.
As for this set... all I can say is it looks a bit of a downgrade from Ogel's previous bases - 6776 and 4795. I guess he blew his budget on his ice orb technology, and on replacing his red hook hand with a blue one (tangential question: is there any canon explanation for why Ogel lost his hand between waves? I've never heard it mentioned, but he clearly had two normal hands in the first wave, and one of them replaced by a hook in the subsequent subthemes...), and didn't have much left to spare for an third impressive base.
The black Tahu swords are a cool recolour, though ^^
@Johnny__Thunder97 said:
" @WesterBricks said:
"This set represents what LEGO's offerings were in the early 2000s - a lawless wasteland. Fortunately they started recovering in 2005 with the new game-changer City sets like 7239."
Strongly disagree with this because of one theme alone: Orient Expedition. I can't even think of a bad set in that entire theme... Coherent design, and a (for the time) ground breaking density of play functions... And why not, a random board game too..."
I think you might be biased there, Johnny
I am drooling over yet another breathtaking RAISED BASEPLATE!
@Gatanui said:
"How exactly are they single-use pieces if they are getting different uses in this very set?"
Fair enough from a literal perspective, though I think my meaning still conveys well enough without going for literal precision. "Pieces designed to fulfill a single purpose" is quite a bit clunkier to say, especially in a sentence that would have required doing so twice, than simplifying it to "single use piece."
Really, the set designer is to be commended for the NPU (but the whole concept of NPU, which is the joy of LEGO's wild creativity distilled into an acronym, does require that you think some pieces are more "single-use" in their intenton than others).
Ogel's Mountain Fortress? I prefer the other "Villain's descriptive Fortress" in Vladeks Dark fortress.
One has white. The other, lots of black. Combine them, all you need is a dash of Trans Neon Green, and you got yourselves a Blacktron Dark Mountain Fortress!
@Mr__Thrawn said:
"I question the usefulness of an offensive vehicle that can only shoot backwards"
It's to discourage tailgaters.