Building Groot

Normally, considering the length of my backlog, this should be posted up somewhere in may or the likes, but as a buddy of mine, Vincent, asked if the Groot is worth it, I shifted this one (and another heroes set) forward on my planning.

Having hauled the full Guardians of the Galaxy series of sets home from the Lego store last saturday, this was actually the first of the three I assembled as well.

Set 76020, Knowhere Escape Mission, is the middle one of the wave of 3 (okay, 4 if you count the Rocket Raccoon polybag, 5 even if you take in the overpriced SDCC set and 6 if you also want to include the Collector, so we keep it on the three mainstream ones).  Based on the scenes in the movie after Drax has contacted Ronan and the Guardians try to battle their way out using the mining pods.

Opening the box, we get three polybags, a sticker sheet and two instruction manuals.  Also coming with the set is one of the small Lego-ised comics that are often included these days in the Superheroes sets and usually contain a short, dialogue-less adventure around each set.

Nebula (Amy Pond... I mean Karen Gillan), stepsister of Gamora, comes in this set, and is a nicely detailed and fine printed minifig.

But also coming with this set is our beloved arboreal friend Groot.  This brick build treeman is nowhere near as big as the Ent from the Orthanc set, but after assembling him, I can already say he doesn`t look half as bad as he does on the box cover.

The chest pieces and branches on the legs are actual printed pieces, not decals, so that is always nice.  of course, the chest / head piece is a mold unique to this set...

The full Groot is about the height of 3 minifigs, and comes with jumpers on the outside of his arms, allowing him to carry his little furry, guns blazing friend around on his shoulders like in the movie itself.

The main `building` of the set is an industrial looking set of.. well... things.

The first is a catapult in a pit like structure, with a connecting walkway.

The next bag first and foremost sees our lovely furry friend with a very, very huge gun.

It also brings along the parts of the tower from the construction, staring with the yellowish liquid pool in which Drax had been dumped.  And then we stop building on this part of the set for a while, as we move on to the mining pod.

Coming in a sweet yellow and light blue colour scheme, the pod is well executed in look.

However, I`m not to wild about the canopy though, as it doesn`t seal hermetically.

We return then to the third bag of parts, and another minifig included, a Sakaran with their rather cool blaster rifles.  You actually get one of these guys in EVERY set of the range.

And we are back to building the main structure of the set.

The top level comes with a trapdoor to make unsuspecting heroes or villains take a drop into the liquid below.

The tower is then raised upwards, and all the parts are connected to each other, giving us the main structural building.

The final build of the set is one of the big laser cannons the bad guys bring along, using one of the missile shooters as central point around which the frame is build.

Like always, a nice heap of spare parts is included as well.

And the completed set:

Now, let`s be honest, we almost all buy these heroes sets for the minifigs.  I have build all three Guardians sets in the meantime (though it will probably take `some` time before they have all passed here with a build review), and this one is by far the weakest of the wave.

The building is, well, just that, the pod isn`t that great... but on the other hand, we get some very excellent minifigures with Rocket, a more then decently executed Groot and a good looking Nebula. 

So let`s say this isn`t a great set at all, rather disappointing actually, but it is made up largely by the figures, so if you like the Guardians, let THEM be the one and only reason you get this one...