LEGO Avengers: Doomsday Epic Sentinel Battle 76348 Review
For years, a giant Sentinel has been my dream set. We’ve had two before, one as part of the first Blackbird set, one with the X-Mansion, but both were far too small to really feel like a proper Sentinel. Finally with Avengers: Doomsday, we get a Sentinel that lives up to the scale that those giant death robots deserve. It’s part of LEGOs recent “Epic Battle” subtheme, trying to capture iconic fights from the history of Marvel movies, like Spider-Man vs. Venom in Spider-Man 3, and Hulk vs. Hulkbuster in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
The bulk of the build is obviously the Sentinel itself, and it’s pretty much great. The design is obviously not LEGOs decision, but even then it’s pretty close to perfect, although the face design from the X-Mansion sentinel is better, and the grey vent on the front instead of some sort of power core could be improved. Compared to something like Galactus from the Fantastic Four: First Steps set, I really appreciate the bulk of the Sentinels design. It really feels like something built for combat. The articulation is great, but has a few flaws, the arms pop out of their sockets a little when moving them flush to the body and the legs don’t go as high as would be nice. The waist swivel is a great touch too, and the way it’s attached in a fully seamless way is much appreciated. The knee/shoulder piece is great for hiding joints too. The series of connection points for the see through connectors to attach minifigures are great too, although having to attach grey pieces on the end to actually attach the figures is annoying, getting a cross-pin connection on the build would’ve been harder, but would’ve made any figure displayed look way better. The lack of accessories with the Sentinel is a real disappointment too, not even a nice blast piece or tentacle connection to grab mutants. The swappable damaged arm and head are a great touch to build out the scene, and I love that they can actually be connected.
The base itself is a surprisingly nice touch, I really like how it incorporates the Sentinel scrap especially. There are a few bits, the lamppost especially, I really wish had a stronger connection to attach it to the base so the thing could be moved around a bit better. One of my main thoughts with this set was army building, but the “unique” parts of the base are super easy to detach (although the mansion gets blown up that often, what’s a few signs sticking around), and the swappable broken bits would help add some unique elements. The main hold back on getting the 5 of them I want is the price, at £89.99 it’s a pretty solid value with 846 pieces especially including 6 minifigures, but it’s a hefty price tag, hopefully we get a good discount in the future to make at least a second one affordable.
I’ll admit, when envisioning my dream Sentinel set, this was not the minifigure section I envisioned, and certainly not the costumes, but it’s a solid selection for the price and once again a good variety of groups from Avengers: Doomsday. Obviously, being a Sentinel it’s X-Men heavy, with 3 members, but we’ve also got one Avenger and one Fantastic Four member, as well as the Doom that appears in all 3 sets. I’ve gone into the Doom figure extensively in my Quinjet review, but in brief it’s a great figure that captures the look really well, and I like the new hood and armour pieces, even if they’re a little bulky in places. I’m curious to see the relevance of the two different sides of the head, each showing a different mask style. Mister Fantastic is included, with the same torso as the First Steps set despite him wearing a jacket in all of the promo we’ve seen, but the face is a much better likeness for Pedro Pascal and the longer, stretched legs are amazing (even if there’s no way to show the white boots on them). The Thor design in this movie is quite boring, but the figure captures it pretty well and it’s nice to see leg printing on a figure like this that doesn’t even really need it.
On the X-Men side we get Magneto, Mystique and Nightcrawler, all three of which have…interesting designs to see the least, all of which are captured pretty well. One thing I really liked on the Magneto figure is the likeness the head has to the existing Magneto/Gandalf figures, you can see the Ian McKellen resemblance, and even more fun the LEGO Ian McKellen resemblance. Much like Thor there’s some great leg printing where it could have been left off, and the plastic capes are starting to grow on me. Nightcrawler has a lot of potential, and I love the torso and face, but the tail piece especially holds it back. It’s not printed, leaving a big blue line over the waist that ruins the look. They’ve printed them before too, making it even worse. The hair piece isn’t terrible, but compared to the looks we’ve seen, the more recent piece from the Dungeons and Dragons with the bigger hair would work a lot better. Mystique is a great adaptation of that design, is the nicest thing I can say, but again a better hair piece could have been picked.
Overall it’s hard to say if this quite lives up to my dream set, but the build of the Sentinel itself certainly does, and I look forward to the opportunity to army build them in the future. The price is pretty good, both for the price per piece and general sense of price per stuff. I think this is the standout of the Doomsday sets for sure, which is saying something for an overall strong wave.
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