The Northern Summer 2021 wave of LEGO® Star Wars sets focuses almost entirely on sets based on Television Series: Clone Wars season 7/The Bad Batch and the Mandalorian.
At LEGO® Con on the weekend, 3 sets from the Mandalorian were officially revealed – The Imperial Armored Marauder, Boba Fett’s Star Ship (the ship formerly known as Slave I) and the Imperial Light Cruiser. All three of these are integral to key moments in the series, and along with 75299 Trouble and Tatooine, as well as the 75314 The Bad Batch Shuttle shows an ongoing commitment to presenting more LEGO® sets from the newer, Disney managed, faces of the franchise.
The AFOL Engagement team at the LEGO Group sent over a copy of the the new wave to review, including the Clone Wars sets, and today, we will take a look at the 75311 Imperial Armored Marauder. Appearing in the Mandalorian, series 2, episode 4: The Siege, the Armored Marauder is a heavily armoured version of the Troop carrier, seen in the finale to season I.
The set has 478 pieces, and 4 Minifigures. It will cost $59.99 AUD, and go on sale on August 1st. Is this an enjoyable build, or just a big grey box with guns? Read on to find out.
There are four bags, containing those 478 of elements in this set. Here are all the parts laid out: as you can see, there are lots of dark and medium stone grey elements. – predominantly plates, but there are a good number of brackets and sloped bricks that contribute to the shape of the model.
The Minifigures:
There are four minifgures included with this set: Greef Karga, the Magistrate on Navarro; a new Atillery Stormtrooper and two regular stormtroopers.
The Greef Karga minifigure represents a significant update on the one we originally saw the with Razor Crest set, bearing a closer resemblence to his on screen appearance. The prints reflects his magistrate robes, extending from the torso to the front of his printed legs, with a little gold trim. On screen, his robes translate to a cape like affair, but I think the printed result is quite effective. He has a grey beard along with a tight black afro hairpiece.
The Artillery Stormtrooper has yellow markings, and a backpack, presumably carrying additional artillary shells to go with his mortar. There is a new printed fabric pauldron, however the figure uses the same basic head print that we have seen in many stormtroopers (and super hero sets) in recent years. The printing is essentially identical to the standard stormtroopers, with the addition of the yellow stripes.
Our regular stormtroopers demonstrate that the troops of the Empire are no longer clones: we have 2 new stormtrooper faces here: one reddish brown male, and one female. They are not currently listed in catalogs, so I presume they are new in this wave of sets. The trooper armour design is consistent with what we have seen for the last few years.
I am delighted that diversity is being introduced to the underlying characters in the Stormtrooper armour: these hidden heads are a potentially great way to increase the variety of elements at hand, without necessarily having the characters utilising these elements. This is potentially important when dealing with an external IP, with limited representation amongst different genders and skin colour.
The Build.
The build is relatively straigh forward, spread over 4 bags. There are no stickers involved in the build!
We start by building up the walls of the aft end of the vehicle, leaving a cabin space 4 studs wide, with a couple of seats in it. there is a turntable base at the rear, and some some bars on the lower front ends. I solitary tab points forward – somewhere for the drivers cabin to be added later.
We move on to add the outer wall detail to the vehicle: we build up panels containing the side gun turrests, as well as a space towards the back. I a sure we will learn what that is for later. Sloped bricks are placed on the snot bracketsThis adds significantly to the width of the vehicle, and adds significant detail to the craft.
From here, we move on to the front cabin, adding a door that folds down, as well as the driver’s control panel.. as well as the
It’s starting to look a little like a generic grey box – and in the final bag, we add the roof and a myriad of things that open and shut. there are no fewer than 11 doors on this vehicle for you to open and close, providing reasonable access to the entire craft’s interior. The rear compartment of the the Armored Marauder contains a seat for the rear gunner, and rotates, in concert with the roof mounted rear guns. The front door and roof open up, and there are two other opening roof panels. there are dual panel doors on each side, as well as doors for the side mounted storage lockers.
Overall, there is formal seating for 4 figures in the vehicle, with standing room for a few more.
The final model bears very reasonable likeness counterpart, and also comes with a couple of boxes, labelled ‘Cargo’ in Arobesh. These can be placed in the aft lateral storage lockers, and tucked in tightly.
Overall, I enjoyed this set more than I thought I would. I fround the technique for detailing the side panels to be interesting, and there are so many doors that you can access the entire vehicle to place your figures inside. It is a little smaller, relative to a figure than the ‘real one’, but it is certainly roomy enough. The gun turrets, including the rotating gunners seat all add to the play value.
While I cannot fault the minifigures included, it provided an opportunity to include a Mythrol – an alien species that was involved in the assault on Moff Gideon’s facility in ‘The Seige.’ Indeed, this could have been at the expense of a stormtrooper, as it could also have provided an opportunity to create a scout trooper Battle Pack – a couple of scout troopers on speeder bikes, and another few stormtroopers along the way. After the Armed Marauder was comandeered by Greef Karga and Cara Dune (who appears in another set in this wave), it was chased through a canyon by a number of speeder bikes,
Battle Packs have been conspicuously absent this year, despite being a continuous part of the LEGO Star Wars line up for over a decade. At the recent Recognised LEGO Fan Media Days, Jay Ong from Jays Brick Blog and I asked Jens Kronvold Frederiksen and Michale Stockwell, from the LEGO Star Wars Team about the Fate of the battle packs. This has been reported elsewhere, but for completeness:
Jens: It’s good you bring this up, because I was going link it to what we were talking about before, because that’s been our way to make minifigures accessible at a good price. When you get several and most often and something that was contained with a minifigures that you’d like to collect an army of, and no, Battle Packs are notblue are not gone forever. There are many factors that decide how a LEGO Star Wars Assortment looks like. And in the overall picture, it just didn’t fit in this year and that’s why there are no Battle Backs. But, without saying too much, we can definitely say that Battle Packs are not gone forever.
Michael: They will definitely return.
Jens: So, so we know that is loved concept and is, again, a way for us to offer minifigures at a low price, or at a good price.
One thing that was highlighted in this interview was the desire to bring a popular minifigures to sets at a reasonable price, something we are certinly seeing in this wave of sets. With the increasing presence of scout troopers in the Imperial remnant seen in the Mandalorian, it would make sense to release such a battle pack sometime. It could be set almost anywhere in that series, or even Endor.
On the whole, this is a solid set: the craft has some great play value, and the minifigure mixture is good. I appreciate the fact that the presence of a stormtrooper helmet is providing an opportunity to provide some additional head prints into the mix – on the whole, they wont be noticed during ‘standard battle-play,’ but making the elements available will be appreciated by many. The new artillery stormtrooper provides another variant for those keeping score, and the Greef Karga minifigure is a great improvement on the previous version.
The set will go on sale on August 1st. If you like, you can purchase it from the LEGO Store using these affiliate links. If you you, the Rambling Brick might receive a small commission, which helps to offset the costs of running the site.
I give this setr a solid 3.5 out of 5 Arbitrary Praise Units. The set itself is great, but maybe a little more expensive than I would like it to be. It mat not need to be a day one purchase, but I think it may well be popular as a army builder, As such, you may not want to dally.
What do you think of this set? Why not leave a comment below, and share this with your community. Until next time…
Play Well!
This set was provided by the LEGO Group for review purposes. All opinions are my own.