Building Ambush at Dol Guldur

The most recent build I did for my ever nearing completion of the Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit range is set 79011, Ambush at Dol Guldur.

The set, like Uruk-hai Army in wave 2, is a smaller `companion` to a bigger set, and where the first one connects to Helm`s Deep, this set is an attachement to the bigger Battle at Dol Guldur set.  These sets basically connect to the side of one of the bigger ones, extending them a little with.


Ambush is also about the only one you tend to find still in mainstreet Belgium toystore chains, sometimes alongside the Pirate Ship set (the big boat with the Army on the Dead), so I grabbed it before this one disappears from the shelves as well.  I really am going to need to up the tempo of acquiring all the sets before they really become hard (and expensive) to get...

But back to this particular set.  Numbering 205 pieces and 3 minifigures, it goes around 25 euros overhere in stores.  Cracking open the box, you get 2 plastic bags of parts and the instruction manual, so we where out to start building.

The `concept` of this set is a small section of wall guarded by orcs, and comes with a small double catapult, the first thing the book let`s you build and a quick thing to put together.

After that, we start laying the foundations of the wall section.  Around 12 to 16 studs wide, this isn`t to big of a build, and it contains a doorway guarded by booby traps.

The first of these are a double axe trap, to slice and dice your opponents into pieces.  From the other side of the door, a huge hammer swings inwards to give the unallowed entrants a bad case of headache.

Add to that some detailing on the front wall conatining of a tree and some spiky teeth parts, and you basically are done. 

The set isn`t that big to put together, and not to hard, but that is to be expected for a smaller set.  It is also not too much of a looker, but the thing that I feel is that it will look great once connected to it`s bigger brother companion set.

The Minifigures

The set has two Orc warriors, always intresting for army builder people, and Beorn Bearstruck, which I believe so far is unique to this set.  Yet somehow, even his presence doesn`t seem to impact the sales value of the box, so I doubt when the line ends, this will become one of the high value sought after sets.  Unless Beorn starts playing a HUGE impact role in Mr Jackson`s final installment of the The Hobbit trilogy.

Is the box worth getting?  I would say YES if you are a collector of the theme, if only for Beorn, but NO if you are just looking for cool things to display, as it is a bit of a bland set on itself.


And now I`m going to turn my attention to building the LotR set which has perhaps one of, if not THE best minifigure Lego has produced to date... see you next time!