Building the Mirkwood Elf Army

With (most off) my new Hobbit sets having dropped on the doorstep and my mate bringing me two sets that he found in a small toy store, it`s time to work away a bit of backlog on the buildings of the sets.

So this time, I`ve put together the Mirkwood Elf Army builder set, number 79012, that I found at the cheap in Bart Smit Groenplaats in Antwerp, the set I reported on aquiring a few weeks ago and gotten the polybag Good Morning Bilbo with on top.

A rather popular set as it comes with Thranduil, but interestingly also with 3 elven and 2 orcish troops.  A real army builder set in other words like the small Helm`s Deep expansion, though that one might have be better off with 2 Rohirrim and 3 Uruk-hai instead of it`s current 1-4 ratio.

Opening the box, we get an instruction booklet, 2 large polybags and the Warg in another small bag, together with the base plate.

The first bag yields us Thranduil, which is a very nicely done model with his crown and all, an elven warrior and the Warg rider.

We start the build by putting together the base of the central `tree` in the build.

This includes a storage space where the barrel is put.

The big plate which is the base for the treetop is then added to the bark.

The tree has a sort of catapult, whose play feature is apparently to launch an elf amidst his foes.

Branches are added to this, whom can `fall away` to allow use of the personel launcher, and thus completes the central tree of the build around which the fortress is positioned.

Bag 2 yields us both Elven archers and the Gundabad Orc foot trooper.  As most of the LotR / The Hobbit models imho, they come with some fantastic printed designs on the chests and legs.

The first thing we get from this bag is the small shrine, with space to attach some weapons to as well.

Now we need to start the `walls` of the set.  These are all small sections to be connected on a hinge, so you can position them as you like up to angles of 90 degrees per section.

These sections are made up of some intresting colour combination stacks of brown, tan and greens.

Though they are essentially following the same building structure, they do look all sort of different compared to each other.

Exquisitely beautiful designed shields are added to the front of the walls, as well as some sort of missile launcher.

The final thing to put together is a siege ladder for the Orcs, essentially a `light` version of the build featured in the Helm`s Deep set.

The wall sections, central tree and shrine are then connected to complete the full building, and we get an intresting mix of left over pieces as well from the set, including an extra elven dagger.

The set stands completed:

This is one of those sets I`m not entirely sure about `why` it turns out so awesome.  It is a rather simple and easy build, yet the finished model for some reason it looks excellent when on display.  Of course, you get a good selection of minifigures in the set as well, so if you can still find it not to overly expensive (mine was actually 10 euros under the RRP, and more if you deduct the value of the polybag), this isn`t a misbuy!