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Review 41184: Aira’s Airship and the Amulet Chase


xccj

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I’ve been sick for the last couple of days, but the highlight has been getting in a Lego order and putting together some of the sets I’ve had sitting around for a while. The new Ninjago stuff has been fun, and the Nexo Knight year 2 sets aren’t too bad either. The BickHeadz are pretty meh outside of being parts packs. But although I was expecting to like the new Elves airship, it still turned out to exceed my expectations.

 

review-elves-airship-01.jpg

 

The set comes with three figs; Aira, Emily, and a goblin. The goblin is a single mold and kinda bleh. Same style of arms as the Nexo Knight imps (which can be given to regular figs) but otherwise I’m not impressed. Aira and Emily have new outfits, but it’s fairly minor. Emily’s necklace now comes as a separate piece, but it only fits loosely around her neck. Also, I tried to put it on a standard fig; too tight a fit. Still, I expect someone will find a neat way to incorporate it into a small MOC. Aira comes with a new medium lavender boomerang, which is a total plus.

 

review-elves-airship-02.jpg

 

It only has 343 pieces (plus a fair amount of extras) which may be a bit light for a $40 set, but there’s a lot of good stuff here. Some of the obvious choices are the lavender balloon pieces, white dragon wings, and gold tubing, some of which I think might be new. There are some gold twirely decorative elements that I believe are brand new, so they’ll be highly sought after. The set also comes with a decent amount of medium lavender and dark purple pieces (and some standard tans and browns too.) The goblin also comes with two purple ball joints with mouths printed on them. (Lego is certainly doing a lot of printing on ball joints nowadays.)

 

The goblin’s flying postbox is forgettable, so I’m going to forget about it for the rest of the review. The airship itself is fabulous, and reminds me of the Elves ship from the first year as well as the Ninjago pirate airship from last year. And yet it turns out to be so much better. The hull is built around the wing mechanism. They hang loosely down in a rest position, but when you pull the lever on the back, they snap up alongside the edge of the ship. It’s quite a cool technic design, and I very much approve. The use of the curved gold elements really provide the ship with its shape, and the air balloon is just the right size for the craft. (Aesthetically, now sure if it would actually be large enough to realistically float the craft.) There’s not quite room for the whole gang of elves to climb aboard it; you might be able to squeeze them all on, but it would be a tight fit. And Aira’s position by the wheel is quite exposed; one step backwards and she’s falling overboard. They should really install guardrails back there.

 

review-elves-airship-03.jpg

 

Overall, I’ve personally been less than impressed with the third year of Elves. It’s either more of the same or just straight up bland for my tastes. (Not saying it’s bad, just that last year’s selection was amazing so I personally don’t favor these new models as much.) But this airship is epic. I mean, it's taking design cues from two other great sets and then surpassing them. I might go as far to say it’s my favorite set of the year so far. (Although the Ninjago Dragon’s Forge and Samurai VXL have been quite epic too.) Anyway, the Airship is a great design and comes with some decent pieces too, so win-win there. I’d totally recommend it. (And I’d do a front page review, but that is way more effort than I can put in at the moment.)

 

(Also, no posting about how I'm wrong and Elves Year 3 is great and I should like it. You know who you are.)

 

:music:

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This airship is definitely great! I'm very excited to get it for myself—I'd been hoping for a larger airship ever since "Sira the Sky Captain" debuted last year, and while she doesn't get to claim this one a larger airship is still much appreciated. For that matter, the Goblin King's dragon also delivers on one of the wishes I had from last year (an evil dragon set) in a much more impressive way than I had personally envisioned. I also love features like Aira's boomerang—this year's story seems a bit heavier on weaponry than previous years, and it's neat to see the characters defending themselves with more than just their magic alone. But that's probably coming a bit close to defending the wave as a whole, isn't it? :P

Personally I like the "flying postbox" just for its zaniness. It's not a huge or complex part of the set but it has a decent color scheme and a quirky and cobbled-together look suitable for the goblins.

 

The functionality of this airship seems quite impressive and I can't wait to try it myself. All in all I much prefer the shape of this airship (with a distinct forecastle) to the earlier Ninjago version, despite the similarities in the envelope of both sets.

 

But in general I agree that this year's sets don't quite match up to last year's Elves sets, in much the same way that no other themes last year were as good as last year's Elves sets.

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Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I don't see what makes a front page review take more effort than a blog review (besides that I might word things more lightly).

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I've got 15 dollars on my VIP card, and I've been eyeing this and that new Elves dragon. We'll see which I decide on my next LEGO store trip!

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