LEGO Set Review: Battle at the Black Gate

Set#79007
Pieces: 656

Hi Bricks of the Dead readers!

Miy stockpile of sets needing building has been staring at me every day, so I got a bit of time to build some sets and today I will be reviewing the third set from the second phase release of the Lord of the Rings theme: Battle at the Black Gate. So let’s get on with it.

Out of the Box

Out of the box you get four main bags, a smaller bag containing the giant eagle, two instruction books, and a loose plate. Inside the main bags we have smaller bags protecting Gandalf’s hair piece and the Mouth of Sauron’s helmet, also have the small cardboard box protecting the cloaks. Box size is good, not too much sliding around inside.

The Build

The Tower

The first two bags and instruction booklet one contain and cover everything to build the tower and include Gandalf the White and Aragorn minifigs. We start off with bag one building the towers bottom half which includes some minor technic piece usage to create a hidden door in the front of the tower. Bag two covers the top half of the tower and the interesting part for me here was the spikes on top of the tower and that they aren’t solid LEGO® plastic, they feel more like a rubber compound, they are attached to the top of the tower utilizing more technic pin pieces and I like the overall look. We also get a play feature in form of a small catapult on top of the tower so the orcs can fling rocks, among other things, at our heroes. There is also a bunch of grey bricks and slopes which are utilized to make small parts of mountainous terrain to go at each end of the gate.

The Gate

We move onto the second instruction booklet, along with the third and fourth bags which have the components for the gate itself with the Mouth of Sauron, his horse and two orc minifigs. Starting with bag three you build the bottom plates of the gate to hold the whole thing up along with the skeleton of the gates themselves, complete with a locking mechanism. Bag four is lots of plate and small pieces that are used to sheath the gate structure, and do all the fiddly bits along the top of the gates to give them the finished menacing look; again the bigger spikes are the rubber compound pieces.

Once this is done, we attach the tower and mountainous terrain to the model to get our completed set.

Minifigs

OK, this set is very strong when it comes to the minifig side of things, first up…

“The eagles are coming!”

In this set we get a giant eagle, I personally really love the detailing, in particular the wings which look really good. I would like to have legs/talons that move on them, but I understand why they are static. The eagle has studs on its back and can hold a stud in its talons, so it can perform transport duties as required.

Next we have a couple of Mordor orcs who are the same as they have been in other sets, which makes sense when you think about it.

The Mouth of Sauron makes his only appearance in this set and he is a good recreation of what they made him look like in the movie, the face print only features the mouth and not much else other than some minor straggly hair detail that we will never see. The helmet is fantastic and even has the cloak that extends from the helmet downwards which is then continued by an actual cloak. He is perched on top of one of the newer posable horses which have the same print as the Nazgul horses; he is also sporting a dark grey sword, so overall pretty great looking figure.

Gandalf the White also makes his first appearance in this set as well and has a basic detail print on his torso to break up the monotonous white you might have got otherwise. His face prints are pretty much the same as his Grey iterations, and his staff and cloak have changed color. The rubberized hair piece he has is very well detailed and this is what gives him his distinctive look, minor overlook by Lego in my opinion is that he is missing a sword.

The last minifig entry in this set is Aragorn, but not as we have seen him before. In this set he has set aside his ranger outfit and is sporting a multi coloured cloak (black inside, red outside) with his well detailed armor complete with the tree and stars of Gondor, along with blue base clothing. His face detailing, hair and sword are still the same as we have seen in other sets.

Final Thoughts

I’ll get my very minor grizzle out of the way first; if you look at the above gate photos you will notice there are two grey 1×1 round bricks in the middle of the gate. These are there to represent the handles of the gate so you can open it up from the outside… wait, what? really? I have now replaced these with two black pieces as I strongly believe the Black Gate of Mordor doesn’t have grey handles half way up for people to open it from the outside.

The two small mountain terrain pieces you build hide the technic pins that are present so you can connect your second Battle of the Black gate set, which is how you get a tower at each end and get a really decent sized gate. So as a stand alone set with only one tower it does feel a little bit unfinished, although if you built your own tower for the other end without doing anymore extensions on the gate that would finish it off nicely as well.

The Mouth of Sauron and Gandalf the White minifigs are exclusive to this set, although I expect Gandalf the White to show up in future sets. The minifigs in this set are really strong given that four of them are new to the line figs, so even if you don’t want to buy the set for the gate, it is probably worth it just for the minifigs, and the fact you would get a bunch of black pieces to add to your collection of Lego.

Last thought is the rubberized spikes. I have no problem with them being rubberized as it means kids aren’t likely to stab themselves or someone else with long sharp Lego spikes, I’m just hoping that long term is doesn’t discolor or perish or any of that fun stuff rubber can do. This is because I have the Orthanc set which I am planning on having on display for a good length of time, which I assume utilises the same spike pieces.

Overall, I like this set. The gate itself works well and looks menacing enough, I reckon you need two sets joined to get the real “look” so this feels half finished as is, however we also get a lot of black pieces and a very strong minifig line up.

Grade: 

Buy Battle at the Black Gate