Posted by A few weeks ago, I wrote up a review for the free Lego Fell Beast gift with purchase for the Barad-dûr set. It took me a while to find the time to sit down and build Barad-dûr, especially seeing as The Final Shape released for Destiny 2 and that’s eaten up a lot of my time, but I finally finished building it this past Friday. As I said in my Fell Beast review, I’ve been wanting a Barad-dûr set and Sauron minifigure for over a decade, and I was always disappointed that Lego never released one. Now that the set’s out and I’ve finished it, I can answer the question of whether or not it lived up to my hopes and expectations.
First and foremost, Barad-dûr is impressive. Far more impressive than any of the images of it would lead to believe. Even with the impressive size, there’s something about the scaling that feels off. Brad-dûr is an enormous stronghold home to legions of orcs. Translating that to Lego is… difficult. As a result, the outside of the tower scales some of features down to what almost feels like a miniature level sometimes. This scaling contrasts with the inside, which includes five rooms in the tower varying in size from comfortably accommodating five or so minifigures to barely fitting one. The end result is still a very impressive structure that’s cool to look at, even if the scaling feels off at times. And apologies for the suboptimal photo of the set used in this review. Since the set is so tall, WordPress was being finicky with the photo so this is the best I could get.
The internal rooms of the tower include a dungeon/forge room with a little cave for Gollum, an orc dining room, Sauron’s throne room, a small study for letter writing, and a library. Beginning with the dungeon/forge, this is the largest room because it’s the base of the tower, and it’s a girthy base. The room features plenty of cool little details here and there, like the lava flowing into the smithy that the orcs use to forge weapons and shields. The majority of time spent building this level went into constructing the outside. The outside base looks really cool, though building it was a pain at times. In order to get the rounded look of the tower, hinge bricks are employed A LOT. The hinge bricks look awesome, but sometimes the assembly on the walls was really annoying. That being said, the coolest feature of this section is the ability to twist a knob and open the tower’s doors. The next major section is the orc dining hall. It’s a cute little area, albeit relatively simple. Meat being back on the menu is a nice little detail. The outside portion for this section is a bit simpler, but it still has some cool construction done to achieve the desired aesthetic effects with the rocks. Sauron’s throne room is probably my favorite room in the tower. It has a little lever that you can pull on to open the throne and reveal Sauron’s palantir behind it with his plans to attack Minas Tirith and the Shire next. I’ve heard speculation that Minas Tirith might be next due to this reference, but only time will tell. Above the throne room sits a small study for the Mouth of Sauron to collect Frodo’s mithril chainmail and write a letter. The final room is a small library filled with dark knowledge (at least according to the Lego instruction manual). Both of these rooms are fine. Something about them strikes me as being a bit out of place, likely because I don’t associate Sauron’s forces with reading and writing. The outside construction on this section is interesting because it changes from focusing on structural integrity to verticality. The result is the use of pieces to build small but tall rooms, and then construct long panels to place on the outside. I can’t deny that the end result looks really good. The final section is the Eye of Sauron itself. The eye looks fantastic and was a lot of fun to build because of how unique and different it was from everything else in the set. It can turn and look up and down, and there’s a light block included to really make it look menacing.
Overall, I really like the features included with Brad-dûr. I think that they all fit and make sense in the set. Except for two. The set features two fake rocks that can be pulled out, and one has a little spider hiding away while the other has information on the three rings of power given to the elves. To be honest, these features don’t add much, especially the spider. They feel like hidden features that were added just to be there. They don’t really serve a purpose like the other features do. While this paragraph may sound negative, I don’t dislike the features. I think that they’re fine, but if they weren’t included in the set I doubt I would’ve noticed.
So how was the building process? Honestly, it was kind of tedious at times. Because Barad-dûr is a tower, there’s a lot of repetition with building portions of it. The tower isn’t symmetrical, so there are some variations, especially as you get farther and farther up the tower, but the beginning can definitely get a tad tedious. I still had a lot of fun with the set, but I think I enjoyed the building process for Rivendell a bit more (except for the roof). That being said, I think that the final result of Barad-dûr actually looks better than Rivendell, at least in my opinion.
Finally, the last thing to talk about is the minifigures. The set includes Frodo, Sam, Gollum, Sauron, the Mouth of Sauron, Gothmog, and four orcs. Frodo and Sam are fine. They’ve been included in plenty of sets so another figure for each isn’t particularly exciting or noteworthy, but this time they do come with new orc helmets, so that’s actually really cool. The set also comes with a nice little rocky platform for them stand on and hide from the eye. The Gollum figure features some new printing, so he makes for a nice enough addition. Sauron is the figure I was most excited for, and he looks awesome. I’m a little disappointed that he’s not taller, but I’ll take what I can get. The Mouth of Sauron looks to be slightly different from the previous one released in the Black Gate set, so he’s another welcome addition. Gothmog is probably the next most exciting figure because this set is his first appearance. He looks as good as he could given the Lego medium. A more accurate Gothmog figure would be possible, but Gothmog is such a disfigured and deformed orc that I think any attempts at making a more deformed Lego version might backfire and look worse. I’m very happy with this iteration of Gothmog and I think it serves its purpose well. The four orcs are also feature brand new printings, so that’s another exciting detail to note. Finally, in addition to eight brand new figures with two of them being first appearances ever, the set includes A LOT of new pieces and recolors. I don’t know the specifics (especially for recolors), but a lot of the weapons and armor are brand new made just for this set.
Overall, Barad-dûr is a very cool set. I’m not sure if its worth $460 though. Legos have grown increasingly expensive over the years, and spending hundreds of dollars on little plastic bricks that I then struggle to find a display for doesn’t feel great. I don’t regret buying the set because it is something that I wanted, but much like the Fell Beast, I don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone except the most avid of collectors and fans.
Broad Scope Entertainment 