Building the Mirkwood spiders

Set 79001, Escape from Mirkwood Spiders, is one of the smaller sets in the previous Hobbit wave.

Detailing the scene where the dwarfs are captured in the dark forest, Legolas and Tauriel come to their aid against the dark beasts.

Now, this is actually a nice part wise set to boot, as it contains a couple of glow in the dark elements with the 1x1 stud `eyes` for the spiders and mushroom bases, and the white spider minifig.

Opening the box, we get 2 polybags and an instruction booklet.

The first bag contains the elvish duo, Legolas and Tauriel, with their signature bow and daggers.

The rest of this bag focusses on building both spiders.  As you`d progress through the steps, you`ll get a `x2` at the end, so I went and build the beasts side by side from the beginning.

The legs are build up to the body using angling parts and long daggerteeth at the end.

Gloomy eyes peer out of the darkness...

Once the main body and leg assemblies are put together, we go on to make the backsections of both beasts.

These are then attached, and the legs are posed in order to give the beasts an evil look.

The second bag will be the `forest` of the spiders.  Opening the bag, we first get the dwarf brothers Kili and Fili.  I especially like Fili, with his beard `beads` printed on the face.  But why he carries a quiver while using his daggers is beyond me...

We start by building up the smaller of the two trees.  they come all in black and dark red, adding greatly to the grim atmosphere that is part of the forest.

A second bow is added (for Fili??) amongst the grim decorations.

The base is then laid for the bigger tree.  the play feature of this set is that you can launch the small transluscent spider from the base of the tree.

We then start covering up this feature with the roots and branches.

The whole side section of the tree is added snot wise.

This part of the tree can be forced to fall over by pulling out the pin at the side and it will fall sideways.

Foliage and webs are then added to the tree.

As are the unfortunate dwarf brothers in fabric web bags...

Details like the mushrooms are put on the build, and it stands completed and ready to join my displayed collection :-)

And it comes with a very good selection of extras, including one of the elvish daggers!

All in all, not to bad a set but definitly not one of the `wow` sets of the line.  But it comes with some great parts for those hunting out those through clearances and all, and is a set to watch for on BL for cheap minifig less sets.  The dark reds, reddish foliage and glow in the dark pieces are all very handy and not to common parts after all...