Set Review: 70655 Dragon Pit

[Hapori Tohu]

Today we go big and look at Ninjago's 70655 Dragon Pit. This set features the Dragon Hunters from the latest wave of Ninjago, and showcases the Ninjas facing off against an earth dragon. Although this set is quite expensive, is the design and parts value worth it? BZPower Reporter Xccj takes a look into this set, so read on or watch the video review to find out how good it is.

 

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[Lyichir]

Great review!

 

A minor point about the prison tower—the lower gate opening at the same time as the trapdoor is in fact the point, since it deposits prisoners directly into the dragon pit where they’ll (presumably) meet their demise.

[Aanchir]

Good review! Regarding the comment about sets not usually coming with a full set of the original four ninja, it’s interesting to think about how often that has happened with some of the larger releases at this point. Ultra Sonic Raider in 2012 and Ultra Stealth Raider in 2016 both had all four of the original ninja, while Temple of Airjitzu in 2015, Temple of the Ultimate Ultimate Weapon and Destiny’s Bounty in 2017, and the upcoming Monastery of Spinjitzu set for 2019 all have a full set of six ninja.

 

Of course, the Hunted wave in particular is surprisingly generous when it comes to giving multiple options to get the main characters, even if some might mean slight variations or missing out on other less familiar characters. For example, the four original ninja and all the pieces of dragon armor except the flag and decorated torso/legs pieces that are exclusive to this set’s Dragon Master figure can also be obtained for even cheaper by getting the two other dragon sets, Firstbourne and Stormbringer. Or if you don’f mind spending a bit more but getting some beefier sets you can do the same with Firstbourne and Dieselnaut (the latter of which has a full set of dragon armor by itself, plus a Teen Wu minifigure in dragon hunter clothes who doesn’t appear in any other standard sets).

 

As for the two remaining ninja, they and Harumi can be obtained either in the Throne Room Showdown set (which also includes Skylor and Samurai X) or the Oni Titan set (which also includes Garmadon). It feels like a big step up from some previous waves which seemed carefully engineered to require getting all or nearly all of the sets if you wanted every collectible AND every ninja.

 

Of course, this might feel like a double edged sword to people who were planning on getting every set anyhow for other reasons besides the figs/collectibles, but I suspect that most Ninjago fans quickly learn that even if you can afford that, it’s often more trouble than it’s worth. Better that the sets target the much bigger audience that has to pick and choose one way or the other and would rather not miss out on the most significant characters or artifacts in the show by doing so.

 

Overall, there is enough overlap between the contents of this set and Dieselnaut that I knew right away I’d probably only plan on getting one or the other. Generally I’m leaning towards this one, since I’d rather get the Golden Dragon Master, the new Earth Dragon, and Arkade and pick up Teen Wu via BrickLink or a convention vendor than vice-versa. While Skullbreaker is technically unique to Dieselnaut as well, it’s easy to recreate him by swapping Muzzle’s muzzle with a spare ninja mask, and I’ll have a duplicate Muzzle after getting both the dragon sets.