Lego Build: 76031 The Hulk Buster Smash

The Hulk Buster, or Veronica like it is lovely called, is by far the coolest set that Lego released in the wake of the Avengers Age of Ultron movie.

In the movie, Tony Stark designed this huge and powerful suit to complement his Iron Man suit in case the Hulk would go berserk and needed to be stopped... which of course he does, triggered by the (then still evil) Scarlet Witch.

The set comes with a heap of polybags, a sticker sheet and the comic each line carries.

The first part is all about the trap in which Scarlet Witch ensnares the Hulk to gain mind control over the monstrous brute.  As suche, they are also the first minifigures we get out of the boxed set.  I really like the Scarlet Witch rendition in Lego.

Starting with two black 2x4s and a light grey 2x10, we are underway to build the ensnarement.

This is mounted crosswise on another long section.

Using triangle pieces, connectors are added where the panels will come.

Those panels are stickered on one side, to reflect the `mesh` of the equipment plating.

Once added to the basic set up, we also include a long transparent pole on which the Scarlet Witch will be able to be hovering above the Hulk as she works his brain.

But then we move on to the other, even bigger guy in the set, the Hulk Buster itself.  The first bag for building this suit contains the third of the four figures included, being Iron Man himself.

The first thing we build for Veronica is the central part to which the torso plating and the limbs will be attached.  This is based around two plate wedges.

Technic bars around the middle secure the whole section together and make sure there is a lot of posability in this giant armoured exo-suit.

Small thrusters are added to the back of the body.

The first pieces of limb we are building are the armoured top parts of the arms.

Next up is the central torso part.  This can fold forwards, so you can place Tony inside the suit to control the mighty machine.

Now we need to make the small shoulder pieces in between which the head will rest.

This head is a cupola piece, printed with the design of the suit on it, which is fantastic as that would be a tricky element to add stickers to.

Adding this to the torso, we will be moving on to the bags that contain the arm and leg pieces.

The first thing though we get before starting those is the final minifigure in the set, the mighty Ultron himself.

The feet and leg builds are compromised of connectors from mostly the Mixels range and Technic angle pieces, all covered up by more regular bricked plating.

This results in the massive feet and armoured shins of the machine, and after building a mirror build, the machine can stand on it`s own legs.

Up next are the hands, with fully poseable fingers.  This is not an exact mirror build though, as the right arm, instead of additional plating, gets a stud launcher instead.

Once those are connected to the body, we can place Tony inside his high tech Exo-Suit.

It closes up nicely, but mind you you have to close Iron Man`s visor to be able to lower the Hulk Buster canopy...

And the full set stands together.  It really is a big and powerful looking machine

Of course, we also get some additional pieces from this build...

Like in the movie, Veronica is an imposing machine, and I must say I just don`t really get it why they needed to put an extra Ultron inside it.  He wasn`t really an essential part of this particular sequence in the film, but heck, a minifig villain is a minifig villain :-)