6079 - Dark Forest Fortress

Rating:
Pros: Neat dragon master wagon
Cons: Lots of bricks but I expect more or a better variety if I'm paying fifty bills.
Contents: 461 pieces, including 7 mini-figs and 2 horses
Price: $49.99 - Discontinued
Reviewed: 10-Jul-1996
Reviewed by: Joseph Gonzalez

The dark forest has always been a suspicious sector of Liandrus Keep, but in these last few years it has become an even more ominous place. Now supposed to house more than a hundred of the enigmatic dark rangers, no rational townsman lingers more than a second near its borders. Once known as Martinvale, the densely wooded range of low hills and rushing canals is said to hold the ruins of druid dwellings and worship circles but none dare venture to investigate any of these claims.
Perhaps even more mysterious than those woods are the unknown men that infest the once tranquil dales. Rumored to be some motley mixture of Patriarch War veterans, outlaws of the king's new census laws and otherwise landlocked pirates, it is claimed the thieves will raid and plunder any traveler foolish enough to wander onto those dark-wooded paths. Led by an equally-cryptic man known only as "Frank with a beard", their true history is a well-kept secret while plans for the future may entail the enlargement of their already unmeasured borders into the vulnerable villages that happen to be near the edge of the dark forest!

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Oh boy. I only recently wrote a review extolling the virtues and wonders of any Lego set costing more than $50 (something about them all being five star sets) and then I stumbled upon the Dark Forest Fortress. I guess life is a big lesson in humility 'cause I honestly can't give this set five stars. My apologies to all forestmen fans, but to be quite honest the set doesn't even appear to be worth $50 on first sight. I found a store that had it on sale for 20% off and so I picked it up. I'm very disappointed.
Our little fortress consists of one main edifice, a small camouflaged catapult, a tower and a small ground-level turret. The turret and catapult are not worth mentioning. The tower is the most prominent feature (mostly using brown corner wall sections except for a small prison cell at the top and a small living compartment at the bottom that use grey and black bricks). The main section of the fortress does have an interesting entrance ramp which is raised and lowered like a drawbridge, and the "fallen" tree which looks to be some sort of defense mechanism (dropping on passing wayfarers and either pounding them six feet into the ground or crushing every bone in their body). The high point of the set is the dragon master wagon. It has a great wheel base with a hidden compartment for treasure or weapons, while the upper compartment is a more spacious area to carry supplies or soldiers (there aren't enough of these cool wagons, it seems like most Lego wagons carry only one person or exclusively carry supplies, I like loading up a covered wagon so I can have three or four armed men inside waiting to leap out and attack).
Figures include three forestmen, one forest chick, one skeleton, and two dragon master soldiers (not much new here but one of the forestmen has a pretty cool brown chainmail body print I never saw in earlier forestman sets).
New/unique parts include the base plate itself (which for some reason appears almost as long as two plates in one of the catalog pictures - this is the same plate first used in the 6278 - Enchanted Island Islander set), the brown corner sections which make up the trunks of the trees, and the new body print I mentioned.
Now on to the complaints. My first complaint is that this set just seems scattered all over the place. Maybe it is supposed to give the impression of a small grove of two large trees and I suppose it functions in that context, but I like to have one main-piece structure and not little weenie sections placed here and there. You'll undoubtedly be able to make a better structure of your own design, and that leads me to my next complaint. There seem to be a lot of the beam bricks with this set (1x1 4-brick high pieces and some 1x2 3 or 4-brick highs) which probably make the set more sturdy but also tend to limit the number of variations when you're making your own structures. The next comment isn't as much a complaint as a question. This year we have the wonderful Wild West sets coming out with those neat molded sections of wall that look like standing logs. Why couldn't the designers also mold/texture the brown corner sections of the trees to look a little more like wood? As they are, they just look like brown walls.
Overall, I'm guessing that forestmen really don't have too much to work with in the first place (hiding in trees and such), but some of those earlier sets were really cool (like the 6077 - Forestmen's River Fortress or 6071 - Forestmen's Crossing) whereas this set is just lame. When I put $50 out for a Lego set, I want something of substance, not the feeling that I just bought four little mini sets, or one big set where the high point is a small vehicle!