I saw these first at New York Toy Fair this year and immediately was excited for them. They are a fun small size in realistic detail. Great for building massive and small dioramas alike. They also are affordable.

The boxed High Ground Gate set seen here retails between $27-30 depending on store. It’s an okay price, but is leaning toward being a little over priced. I really hope McFarlane doesn’t up the price on these as that would price these sets out of my budget.

The carded pic are directly from McFarlane’s website, the loose shots are mine.

As you can see the set comes with the gate, a Warthog (same as the small carded set), a shooting Spartan, and a Machine Gun Spartan. The micro figs and Warthog make up only about $7 of the set, so that means you’re paying about $20-23 for the Gate piece.

The one really great thing about these sets are their detail and this one doesn’t fail. It’s very detailed and would look great in a diorama.

The turret has little slots to fit the hands of the gunner.

While the place where the turret is normally positioned on the gate swivels. Not really necessary, but a nice added feature.

The Gate opens and closes and looks good from both the front and back sides.

It’s a good set and will look great with the other High Ground sets. I look forward to getting the Laser Tower set to complete this scene from one of Halo 3’s multiplayer maps.

-Sal

I saw these first at New York Toy Fair this year and immediately was excited for them. They are a fun small size in realistic detail. Great for building massive and small dioramas alike. They also are very affordable.

The large card sets seen here retail between $16-18 depending on store. I think it’s a fair price, not just for what you get, but the overall quality of what you get in something this small in scale.

Both “carded” pics are directly from McFarlane’s website, the loose shots are mine.

First up is the Falcon set: This set includes the Falcon, Carter (Noble 1), A crouching marine, and a Pilot. The Falcon has several moving parts that really make this a sweet set. Not only does the cockpit open to put the pilot in, but the rotors spin as well as swivel from top to front. Add to this the side gun mounts fully retract and are quite posable, considering their diminutive size. It might seems steep to pay $16-18 for this, however the detail is great and the moving parts really help to make up for any perceived shortcomings due to price.

Next is the High Ground Bunker set. I thought this a little strange at first but then when you couple it with the High Ground Gate and the very soon to be release High Ground Tower/Missle cannon, it really sells the whole thing. However, this set did have it’s drawback for me. The set comes with the Bunker in several pieces that you can choose to combine or not as you see fit. As well it has a Shade Turret in game accurate colors. For micro figs it has a Red Spartan, Marine, and strangely a Reach style grunt. I say strange because this set is depicted from Halo 3, not Reach and the grunts are completely different.

Be certain to check the bottom underside of the bubble as that is where the two connecting baseplates are. I almost threw away the bubble before realizing they were there.

In the above pic you may see where the front most piece of the bunker doesn’t quite fit well with the rest of the set. In order to make it flush, I had to tape it underneath. Also, these pieces are slightly flexible, which may mean you could have some sag over time. That remains to be seen though. The assembly of the bunker isn’t tight either. The little pegs on the baseplates don’t exactly fit right, but with some gentle nudging you can make them fit.

It may be a little hard to tell that the grunt I’m holding has peg holes so it can fit in the turret. The problem for me is that the legs weren’t evenly straight and the peg and holes were so darn small that I gave up after 5 minutes of trying to make the little guy fit. I’ll try again later, but this time I may use tweezers. The Shade is very nice. As you can see it can pivot up and down as well as rotate 360°.

These two sets start to border on expensive, so I hope in future waves the price doesn’t go up. The Falcon is a solid buy, while the Bunker set alone isn’t impressive. However, if you really want to make a High Ground diorama, then it’s a must buy. In my case I want to make a diorama, so…

-Sal

I saw these first at New York Toy Fair this year and immediately was excited for them. They are a fun small size in realistic detail. Great for building massive and small dioramas alike. They also are very affordable.

The small card sets seen here retail between $7-9 depending on store. I think it’s a fair price, not just for what you get, but the overall quality of what you get in something this small in scale.

All “carded” pics are directly from McFarlane’s website, the loose shots are mine.

First up the Banshee set. This set comes with a Reach style Banshee (my preferred version as it’s sleeker than previous incarnations), as well as two micro figures. One is an Elite Pilot while the other is an Elite Ranger.

The Banshee’s four wings rotate slightly and independent of each other. VERY cool set. I want to get another one of it.

Next is the Ghost with Wolf Spider Turret set. This set includes Emile (Noble 3 from Reach) and an Elite, I think it’s supposed to be an Ascetic, hard to tell. Also of course the Ghost and Wolf Spider Turret. The turret comes with an extra “closed” hatch if you want to display it that way. Be forewarned, trying to pop that closed hatch on should be done be small nimble fingers. It’s not for thick fingered folks… The turret does rotate. Do NOT try to take the Ghost off it’s stand. It is not removable. That’s a feature I wish McFarlane would have considered. I broke mine off the stand after shooting the pics…

Thirdly comes the ODST Drop pods. This is a good set with lots of detail. Comes with one deployed pod and one landed pod. Each pods’ front doors pop off and can be put back on easily. As well the side doors swivel out on each. There is a small steel color stand for the deployed pod and a highly detailed dirt base for the landed pod. The micro figures with this set are as follows, Buck, Dare, the Rookie. I think this one has some good value to it given the two pods.

Lastly is the Warthog/Mongoose set. I think this is my favorite set and I can already see this being reissued as a Gauss hog set and/or Rockethog set. Included are a Chain Gun hog, Mongoose (Reach style), micro figures of Marine Gunner, Spartan Warthog Driver, Spartan Mongoose driver.

All in all really good sets. Detail is fantastic at this scale. Price is good to great. If you want to build a diorama, these are certainly the ay to go. I highly recommend them.

-Sal