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Set Review: 7066 Earth Defense HQ
 Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at 6:53pm by Andrew, BZPower News Manager[Source: Sisen] Today we check out one of the largest Alien Conquest sets - the Earth Defense HQ. BZPower Forum Assistant Sisen takes a look at this mobile base of operations for the humans and shares his thoughts on it. To learn more, read on to see what makes this set tick! Presentation
The box is massively enormous beyond the sizes of those little puny sets you can purchase. Unfortunately somewhere in the process I forgot to take a picture of the box before disposing it... The design of the box is not what's important; it is the stuff on the inside that counts! Here's the basic gist of the box though... On the front of the box is the depiction of the wondrous Earth Defense HQ in action fighting off the alien invaders. On the reverse side you see the HQ broken down into its respective parts to divide and conquer the alien foe. Building
The size of the box is relative to the amount of pieces contained within it, and there are a lot of pieces. There are around eight-hundred and eighty pieces in the box which equates to about seven big bags. Once you get everything opened and out of the bags, this is what your spoils look like.
There was a lot to build for the Earth Defense HQ and you work your way up from the small stuff. You start off with the mini-figs. In the set you get two aliens, to Earth Defense agents, and a doctor. The cyborg alien is impressive and a pretty cool concept for a mini-fig. It looks like there might be a hostage situation... but the doctor came to the rescue!
The next things on the list are the Alien UFO and Earth Defense Jet. Each of the ships is equally awesome in their own right. Throwing together the UFO and fighter jet is a lot of fun. It was hard not to stop and play alien invaders, zooming around both of the ships.
Oh! Don't forget the stasis pod for detaining and studying the alien specimens.
Building the Earth Defense Jet was probably the best part of the entire set. The plane was so much fun to assemble. It was confusing at first because the set did not appear to be a plane. Once you added on all of the pieces there was no denying its combative force against the alien invaders.
Finally we have the actual... I'm not sure what you would call it. Let's refer to it as the meat and potatoes of the set. The actual HQ itself is a hearty meal of beef and vegetables. There are a plethora of pieces to it. The actual construction of it spans a majority of the bags included in the set. You start off by building the front car of the center. It is a pretty neat process and all of the pieces fit together perfectly. No aliens are getting inside this Earth Defense HQ! You finish off the set by building the second half of it, which is reserved for the doctor's mobile laboratory. The headquarters serves a lot of purposes and the build of it plays out nicely.
Set Design
The design of the set in all is spectacular. You get a lot of blue pieces, but I am not entirely sure which are old, new, or borrowed. There are an abundance of pieces included in the set and they make a great addition to any collection. It looks like something is missing from the headquarters though...
Oh right! The launch pad for the fighter jet is equivalent to the set's awesome level. Plus the forward cannons.
All in all the design of the set is quite ingenious. You get so many different elements and they work wonders together. This is a LEGO set at its finest. You have a cybernetic alien, UFO, super awesome mobile headquarters made of meat and potatoes, and one super sweet fighter jet. There is oodles of playability with this set, and that's not even counting taking it apart to build something else!. Playability
The set is a superb piece of LEGO designer craftsmanship. Each of the items of the set stands alone well and works together collectively. If you want to have a mini-fig battle you can. You can take the combat to the skies with the UFO and fighter jet. You can take the battle to an even larger scale and utilize the entire set as it is meant to be. The headquarters is a great design and lets you play out things as you will. You can ready the jet for lift off or launch a barrage of missiles at the alien invaders. The missile design of the forward battery is a nice addition and improvement to the flick-fire missiles utilized in other sets. With just one push all four missiles fire from one silo at once. There is so much you can do with this set just by itself... it is hard to imagine how much fun it must be incorporating it with the other Alien Conquest sets.
Final Thoughts
All in all, the set is a wonderful piece of LEGO to own. There is a lot of potential with it and I am very glad to have added it to my system collection. This was a great set to start rebuilding my system pieces, but I do not predict me taking it apart anytime in the near future. And that concludes today's review - big thanks to Sisen for taking the time to review this impressive set. As always, keep checking back for more set reviews and all the latest LEGO and Bionicle news! |
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