Mega Bloks Covenant Spirit Dropship

Technical Specifications:
Build Time: 3.5 hours sorting; 5.5 hours building
Set Piece Count: 2281
Minifigures: Elite Commander (Gold/Crimson), Elite Zealot (White), Imperial Grunt (White), 4X Grunt Minor (Shark skin grey)
Accessories: 2X Beam Rifle, 2X Storm Rifle, 2X Energy Sword , Focus Rifle, Carbine, 2X Fuel Rod (no fuel cells); 2X Concussion Rifle, 3X Needler Rifle (bronze), 3X Plasma Pistol, 5X Sticky Grenade (translucentblue); BUILDABLE Display Base
Special Features: Forward hatches open/close, side bay doors open/close, bridge canopy open/close, flip out gunner station panels (to fit figure), retractable plasma turret
Cost: $200 US; Mass Retail set

And on with the pics! (Click pics to make BIGGER)

Below is the buildable display base. It adds a certain dimesionality to the whole set.

I’m a little mixed on this being included. Last year’s signature series set, the NMPD Pelican came with a display base in the form of a landing pad and a small structure. That made sense. Here, I’m not so sure the display base is even needed. At the least, something more Covenant-like might have been a better decision. As you can see in the two pics here, there are a lot of small sloped parts that face several directions. It looks a bit mishmash. The colors do not really mesh all that well either. The dark grey pieces (that are camoflauge BTW) should have been either white or the brown you see in part of the rest of the stand. The translucent pieces (while cool and you folks know I LOVE translucent toys) seem out of place as well. Are they indicative of melting snow?

The amount of pieces the base requires is 237. Yes, I counted them from the directions. Subtract that from the total piece count of 2281and you still have 2047 pieces. Honestly, for the price of $200, without the base, the guideline of 10 cents per piece still applies here, so the value based on that is still good.

This is why I’m torn on the display base. It’s not particularly needed and doesn’t really fit the theme. However, if you consider the guideline I mentioned above, it’s as if these are ‘free’ pieces and again, it does add some dimension to the set. 

Here are 4 shots of the Spirit on the display base so you can get a better understanding of it’s use. What do you think? Do you like the base? Do you think it should be a different color or theme or not included at all?

Orthogonal views of the Spirit. It’s symmetrical left and right. There is a small exception to this. That being on the underside of the ship where it rests on the display base. One reverse-slope piece is rotated 180°. 

Three-quarter top and bottom views. Not a ton of detail on the bottom. But then again, most people aren’t likely to display this with the bottom showing, so it’s all good.

Plenty of hatches and doors to open and close. Not shown in the pic below are the forward hatches open.

Apoloogies for the blurry pic here. The bridge can hold 3 figures nicely. 

Here are the extra pieces I had (at left). Not much I could really make with them, so I just stakced them together. Into the parts bin they will go.

The Figures

The Imperial Grunt here looks great. Now that we have white versions of many of the grunts in Halo 5’s Firefight, this grunt makes total sense!

We get a whopping FOUR of the Grunt Minors. I call that blue/grey color ‘Shark Skin Grey” as thats the color it most reminds me of. It’s one of my favorite colors!

An Elite Zealot. Again, it’s white and fits in with the white Covies in Firefight.

For me, the best figure of what you get in the set is this Elite Commander. The Gold/Crimson two-toned look is well done. It echoes back to the traditional Greek Spartan armor of ancient history. I’d like to think that was deliberate. If not, well, then it’s one heck of a GREAT coincidence. IMO.

The elites are chock FULL of articulation. (Both have the same articulation, btw)

There is a bevy of Covenant weapons for the Spirit’s armory. Several of the weapons are painted. The Needler here looks great, as do the plasma pistols. I’m very happy with the selction here!

Below shows one good use for the front hatch areas. You can fit ALL of the included figures into one of the forward hatches. On the other side you can easily fit the figure stands and all the weapons. That’s EXTREMELY helpful.

And finally, the troops are ready to deploy and invade!

Summary: This, by far,  is an expert level build. It takes a few hours to sort and even more to build. Pay close attention to the color pieces the instruction manual asks for you to use. A large set, the Spirit has some great playability with all the opening hatches/doors. Plenty of weapons for the figures to use makes for a LOT of fun.

Overall Rating: I give this set 8.75 out for 10 medals.

Why did I give it a 8.75 out of 10?
• The display stand is my main issue here. Again though, given the 10 cent per piece guidline that the industry goes by (well at least we fans anyway), the display base is technically free. I would rather this been a Covenant theme base. Covenant crates could have been built for the raised parts. The color choice of the base is the thing that afected my feeling towards it. The dark grey camoflauge pieces are so close in hue to the indigo purple pieces that if you do not sort your parts carefully at the very beginning, you could EASILY make a mistake and put wrong color pieces in the wrong place and have to tear apart the ship and/or display base. I took off 3/4 of a star for the base. But that was a hard decision to make.
• The two rear most bay doors do not fit perfectly. The rearmost one especially is a bit glaring with the gaps peering into the bay hold.A quarter star off for this, mostly due to the large gap.
• The bridge canopy doesn’t stay in place should you have need to flip over the model. So You’ll need to be extra careful there as it might pop off and you could lose pieces if it breaks apart. Another quarter star here. Though, if you never turn the spirit over, it’s a moot point.

If you don’t include my concerns about the display stand, then the set is a SOLID 9.5 stars!

Value: The price of $200 is good for this set. The overwhelming amount of pieces go into the Spirit itself. Six figures, many weapons and yes, even the base help to make this an even better value.

I break down the value of the set’s value like this (in US dollars):
$3.50 Elite Commander
$3.50 Elite Zealot
$3 Imperial Grunt
$12 Four Grunt Minors
$10 base (yes, I halved the value here given the peice count of the base is actually 237 pieces) See above for my concerns about the base as to why I came to this decision.
$160 Spirit
Total= $192

So it’s VERY close to the retail price of $200. If you consider the value of the base to be worth it’s 10 cents per piece, then that goes to $205 total, which is slightly above retail.

• All in all, this is a really solid set. It’s heavy, so I would NOT recommend a younger/smaller child to try and lift this.
• As I consider this an expert level build, I do not recommend this for young children. The set says 8 years and above. I’d tend to go higher with a minimum of 10 years old, maybe even 12 or older. If you’re a parent thinking about getting this for your young child, take note that you should DEFINITELY be a part of this build with them and not leave them to build it on ther own. There is a lot of attention to detail needed here that even this griseled veteran of buidling block toys missed a couple of times.

Do I recommend it?  YES! Even with those concerns I listed, the sheer SIZE of this set is impressive and makes for a centerpiece of anyone’s Halo collection. Good figure choices and the amount of weapons really are an added bonus here!

Part 1: The Body
Part 2: The Top, Doors and Aft

If you have any questions about this set that I didn’t cover in the review, please do not hesitate to ask me. Either reply below or e-mail me at [email protected]

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think of the review. If you get this set yourself, please let me know your thoughts on it too!

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-Sal