User blog:Rando07/More Summer 2015 Sets!

Greetings, !

So today Skull Warrior, Skull Slicer, and Skull Scorpio arrived in the mail, completing my Summer 2015 collection. Just like in the last blog, I'll do a bit of a review for each, along with images detailing the construction processes.

Skull Slicer
So, Skull Slicer. After already acquiring Skull Basher, I was not surprised to see that Skull Slicer was actually smaller than my initial prediction. The inclusion of trans-lime green in this set is wonderful, in my opinion. I'm quite fond of the trans-lime, gunmetal silver, and trans-orange colour scheme. As is typical with the new sets, Skull Slicer makes user of a variety of TECHNIC elements for the torso, giving this set a pretty decent MOCing potential. However, he has 4 arms, which means that he has 4 ball joints! The MOCing potential of this set is much greater than I expected.

I'm no fan of the stickers on these chest pieces. I feel that they detract from the overall image of the MOC. I can see the kind of look they were going for with the sticker's design, but it doesn't suit the set's heavily skeletal theme. This brings me onto another point, the limbs. I understand that skeletons are skinny and this is what their limbs would look like, but man, these limbs seem very lazy. The 6 limbs consist of 24 pieces in all (excluding the armour on the upper arms), which gives an average of 4 pieces per limb. This is, in fact, larger than the average for a creation with the standard limbs (excluding armour), which would be only 3.5 pieces. I'm aware that these figures may not mean much to some of you, but to me they indicate thrown-together limbs that make the MOC look skinny instead of skeletal. It's just a bit uninspiring.

The overall look of the MOC is, well, a skeleton with 4 arms. It achieves this relatively well, but I think this mainly lends itself to the trans-lime rib cage piece. The use of the armour on the upper arms is a nice touch. I prefer the look of the gunmetal silver HF piece with the claw sticking out of it because it gives Skull Slicer a much cleaner, intimidating look. I'm not a fan of the other armour piece. It's quite clunky and doesn't suit the theme of the set. One positive I have to point out is the weaponry. I like the look of the grappling claw, which also contains some handy TECHNIC elements. The other 3 blades are also quite nice, and I can see them being used on a variety of MOCs. The use of the liftarms on the feet for stability is a nice idea, but it unfortunately does not help much in my experience. I often had to have the set lean forward or bend its legs significantly to reduce the risk of it falling over due to its top heaviness.

Overall, I'd give Skull Slicer a 6.5/10.

Skull Scorpio
It's not secret that I dislike the Skull Scorpio. After getting my hands on the set and building it for the first time, I'd like to think my dislike was well-founded. The beginning of the build was great, in my opinion. Slotting together lots of TECHNIC pieces is fun, and seeing the main frame of the set is quite satisfying. There are a number of useful liftarms. In particular, two of these and two of these. As a result, the MOCing potential of Skull Scorpio is excellent. The colour scheme isn't bad either. Definitely my least favourite of the new sets, but still not a bad colour scheme.

However, this is where the positives end. The legs are, well, immobile. You cannot bend them without directly bending the plastic, and there is no mechanism to move the legs in any direction. Perhaps he just, kind of, drags himself along with his claws? Speaking of his claws/pincers, they're a bit strange. They only have 2 independently moving parts, which is nice, but those two parts are parallel to one another. While I don't agree with the design choice there, it does, in fact, make it easier for Skull Scorpio to hold onto things. They just look very awkward. The anatomy of this set gets stranger and stranger. While the tail is clearly supposed to represent the tail of a scorpion, it doesn't actually resemble one. It widens towards the top with those blades, which actually resemble pincers more than the pincers themselves. The tail isn't all bad, though. By pushing down the exposed liftarm, the tail moves forward and the blade pieces come together. Pretty handy for grabbing masks and whatnot.

One point I'd like to make is that scorpions, like spiders, are classified as arachnids. This means that they have 8 legs. Skull Scorpio is obviously based on a scorpion, so it would be nice to at least see something a bit more anatomically correct. While I know that LEGO doesn't have to give it 8 legs, this kind of thing bugs me.

Overall, Skull Scorpio receives 4/10 from me.

Skull Warrior
As a bonus for reading this far down the page, this is how I store my Skull Spiders.

I will be reviewing the new sets on video soon. I'm close to acquiring a tripod which will allow me to film hands-free, and will allow me to make even more videos. Stay tuned for those!

&mdash; Rando 07  18:18, July 16, 2015 (UTC)