Yesterday, we took a look at the not-exactly-groundbreaking-but-still-pretty-great Moff Gideon’s Imperial Light Cruiser Hallway set.  I’ve said it multiple times, but I dig these sets.  They really make the figures pop, and as I get along in my collecting years, I seem to be more interested in an item’s value to elevating my displays, rather than it just being another item to add to my collection.  I felt that the Cruiser Hallway was perfect for what I would like, and I hope Hasbro just keeps pumping these out.  And so for the second day in a row, we’ll do just that, and pump out another review of a playset.

Someone commented yesterday that Hasbro should stop calling these playsets.  I believe that most of them do not have that word in their title, but a few do.  This is one of them.  However, as they are more geared towards adult collectors, they eschew the typical “play features” that would warrant such a name.  I’m very happy about that.  I look back at things like E1’s Theed Hangar Playset, Saga’s Geonosian Arena Playset, and ROTS’s Mustafar Playset, and I thank the collecting gods that we’ve moved beyond launching projectiles, moveable figure stands, and breakaway/exploding walls in favor of better accuracy and display-ability.  Of the three I mentioned, The Geonosian Arena is probably the one that has somewhat stood the test of time - but has major shortcomings.  The Theed Hangar was poorly designed and barely stays together as it’s (almost literally) bursting with terrible “action features.”  And the Mustafar playset is just a worthless disaster from the start - not doing anything well.

This set isn’t perfect, but it’s still pretty nice.  Hasbro has given us an environment that recreates one of the more memorable and important set pieces in The Mandalorian.  As The Great Forge was the center of Mandalorian culture on Mandalore, the Armorer and The Tribe have been on the run and are using a “mini-forge” to keep tradition alive.  Think of it as her working from home, with a laptop.  Anyway, we first saw such a forge in the tunnels under Nevarro City.  It was where The Armorer not only shared her knowledge of Mandalorian history and culture with us, and not only where she built Din Djarin’s Beskar armor, but also where she proved her worth in close quarters combat, when she dispatched a squad of stormtroopers with a pair of smithy tools.  After relocating the Covert [I always find myself wanting to say Coven] to the caverns on the unnamed planet with the Shriek Hawks, she worked another forge.  This item is that forge, although I suppose you could pretend the stoney-sculpted rear wall is the inside of the tunnels under Navarro City and have it do double duty. 

The forge itself is fairly simple, consisting of 6 parts:  The top and bottom of the forge itself, the floor, ceiling, and rear wall of the cave, and a Banthaskull Mythosaur skull wall decor (which is awesome).  Once assembled, the forge has a really nice sculpt, although it is the focus of the biggest problem with the set:  lack of paint details/weathering/wash.  While the sculpt is excellent, and the forge itself is awesome, the rocky parts look very toy-ish due to the lack of paint details.  Collectors have come to expect higher quality elements of these items to feel like they are…not toys.  This set struggles to make me feel like it’s not meant to be a toy.  If you are able to put aside this significant shortcoming, the rest of the set is pretty great.  Regarding the forge, maybe one thing I would have liked to see is some kind of lever that might allow you to lower the flames so the forge could be “off.”  Hasbro made it so that you could use lighting to elevate the display.  I believe that the hole in the ceiling behind the upper forge piece is intended for you to be able to shine a light down from above, and the bottom of the forge’s blue flames can be lit up with some lighting below.  While I do have some lights that I occasionally use for these galleries, I don’t have a light that would fit inside the forge, nor does it appear to have a place where you could run wiring underneath the floor to reach the inside of the forge.  So for the last shot where I had lit up the flames, I had to have the set elevated above the surface of the shooting table so that I could position a light underneath.  It looks cool, but isn’t practical for display.  So if I wanted to do something like this more permanently, I’d need another solution that I am not knowledgable enough to execute - although I would assume someone reading this might be able to share some ideas.

Included with the set is a workbench, which opens up revealing some sculpted and stickered tools, as well as some clips to put the included physical accessories.  There’s a storage space underneath for your whatnots, should you run out of room in your pockets.  The workbench is a nice piece, but like the stoney environment, isn’t painted and therefore lacks some depth and quality. 

The accessories included are 2 different tools, a stand that supports two different anvils, and 3 painted helmets.  The tools add to The Armorer’s repertoire, and can either go in the workbench or hang on the sides of the forge.  The straight anvil is pretty cool just because it reminds me of Coyote and Roadrunner.  I wish Hasbro had sculpted “ACME” on the bottom, just for fun.  The three helmets are repaints of those that come with Din Djarin, Paz Vizsla, and Bo-Katan.  I suppose you could use them on some other figures to add a little variety, perhaps if you had a spare set of Shriek-Hawk Mandos, that might come in handy. (Hmmmm…). 

The last “accessory” is another Grogu.  He’s new, with his shmata pulled open so you can see that he’s wearing his chain mail shirt and his new rondel with the mudhorn sigil.  He’s adorable of course, and this is different enough that you might want it.  But the best thing about the “figure” is that the arms are articulated better, I believe, than any previous Grogu.  You can see in one of the photos that he’s doing The Force thing, and the arms were never in danger of popping out. 

The pack-in figures with these sets tend to be somewhat underwhelming.  An example was the Mandalorian Privateer from the Cruiser Hallway.  It was a simple repaint, but lacked a holster for the pistol and a swappable helmet - something that was important for the Privateers that differentiated them from The Tribe.  However, this set comes with a significant upgrade to the existing Armorer figure.  Sadly, that upgrade does not include the new-style barbell hips.  However, it does have two significant changes.  The first is the retooling of the torso to have a notch in the back to accommodate the new jetpack, which The Armorer uses during the attack in the Imperial Base on Mandalore.  The second caught me off guard.  I guess I wasn’t paying attention to the glam photos when the set was revealed at SDCC.  It was something missing from the first release of VC179, that Chris, in his review, lamented the shoulder range of motion being severely limited by the sculpted fur shawl:

The plastic fur on the back is a case of form over function, but it does look good aesthetically.  This particular part of the Armorer’s costume might actually be an impossible nut for Hasbro to crack.  Lord knows this type of soft goods could go sideways quickly (looking at you Gamorrean Guard and your giant fur diaper).

As if Hasbro was telling Chris to hold their beer, here we are with a soft goods fur piece.  And it is executed almost flawlessly.  It looks nothing like the Gamorrean Guard’s giant fur diaper.  It looks fantastic, allows for the full range of shoulder motion, and even has a hole (that can be “combed over” somewhat convincingly if you try) to accommodate the jetpack peg.  This is a huge upgrade.  Unfortunately, the decision to skip the hips kind of offsets that improvement, so I’ll end up keeping the figure grade at a 9/10:  one step forward, one step back.  All in all, it’s a really great looking figure.

So the set is well executed, comes with tons of accessories, a new Grogu, and a significant upgrade to The Armorer’s outfit.  Aside from the hard-to-overlook lack of paint details which leave this looking too much like a toy and not like a collector item, it’s a really nice set.  Don’t sleep on that pack-in figure, either.

If the cave environment had better paint, and if the figure had new hips, this could have been a 10/10 set.  Instead, I’ll give it an overall 8, with the figure being a 9.