Review of 79018 The Lonely Mountain

'Come now, don't be shy, step into the light!'

By looking at this line, I think it is clear that I have Smaug the stupendous in this amazing set. He appeared in the movie The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in 2013. I bought it in Hong Kong while I was traveling with my wife for honeymoon. Lets get started.

Overview

Name: The Lonely Mountain.
Theme: The Hobbit
Year: 2014
Pieces: 866 pieces
Minifigures: 5 and a dragon
Price: £99.99 / $129.99 / 129.99€


Introduction
Durin's day is ending and they still can't find the keyhole of the secret door. But Bilbo isn't giving up hope after the sun went down. Knocking and gnawing at the grey stone wall while the dwarves leave the mountain, he finally found the key hole when the moon light shines onto the door. The 'last light' meant the moon light! He yells at the company and Thorin picked up the key left to him by his father Thrain, opens up the secret door and found this treasure in it, 79018.

The Box


As usual the box art is amazing. The dark green background is very nicely matched with this sand green LEGO set. At the front of the box you can see the battle between the dwarves and Smaug is going on and quite a lot of gold is used in this set. At the back, the dwarves are busy preparing while Smaug sneaks around to find them. Lots of play features in this set and the minifgures are very nice showing at the side of the box.

The Instruction


This book is thick, with hard binding at the side. There is love and hate to this kind of booklet. The love is there is only one book to keep and the hate of course is that it is hard to stay in place when you are building unless you really fold it at the page turner which is quite damaging to the bindings. In the list, you can only find six dwarves in the whole series unlike the thirteen ones at the previous sets. Maybe the other dwarves were less seen in the movie.

The Minifigures

In this set, you get five exclusive minifigures and one exclusive Dragon, The Smaug. Before this set was launched, we all thought that LEGO would be lazy enough to use the old castle dragon as Smaug but it turns out that this new mold of dragon is very awesome! In this picture, the head sculpture of Smaug captured all the details very accurately. 'My teeth are sword' and the burning eyes are nicely carved out. These four dwarves and Bilbo gets new armors and new weapons. Dwalin is holding a pearl gold axe with trans green axe, Kili with a 'Morgul Blade', Fili gets back his old double sword and Balin has his dark red club. I suppose the Lonely Mountain really housed loads of treasure for them.



All of them has alternate face except Dwalin as he is bald. All the dwarves are angry, Bilbo is truly scared of meeting Smaug.



Under the beard. Both of them have nicely printed torso under their bulky beard. The belts are amazingly designed and you can see wrinkles and battle damaged faces of Balin and Dwalin. The arms are also using very nice metalic color to assimilate the armor they are wearing.



The comparison between casual wear dwarves and working attired dwarves. Same as Bilbo with three different outfit. The designs are totally different and all of them are from different sets. By looking at them you can appreciate the financial condition of them before and after claiming Erebor. Again, Santa is here and he is very different from Balin.

The Dragon, Smaug!


'Take your cover!'



Now you can see the full picture of this ferocious beast. The wings are made of silicone (I think) to make the flaps fold. It has two legs with the claws at the wings as his hands just like the movie. I think this is the largest dragon LEGO has ever produced. He stood up to 24 cm tall, 47.5 cm long and 42.5 cm wide. You can see when the wings are closed, he still can stand properly and the claws can be bent to make him more stable on the floor. The body part printing is so detailed that you can see what Girion did back in the years with his black arrow.



The wings are attached to his body with a three holed ball joint. This makes him very widely pose-able. You can turn the wings 180 degree each side. He cannot be ride as there are no seat given at the back of the spiky body. However please be careful as the center black spike on a jumper is quite loose and you might lost it. The tail is also exclusive to him and its quite long if you look at it sideway.



Lets have some dental check up for this yellow teeth fella. There are a few degree of mouth opening for him and if you look at the picture you can imagine Benedict Cumberbatch's voice talking. All of them represents different expressions I think. First degree- talking, Second degree- yelling, and when the fire attached, you know what he means. haha. Look into the throat, you can see a stud hole for fire attachment which is much nicer compare to old dragons.



For comparison, you can see Smaug is much more larger in size compare to the dragon from the castle set 70403. Old dragon has two hands, with a pair of stiff and smaller wings. Tail design is different too and I think Smaug is much more superior than this old dragon of LEGO.



Lets look at the mouth. Fire from chin is so much old school but it had its place back then.



This is an old picture taken before real Smaug was introduced. Quite decent at that time for a dragon.

The Build



The gold 'mountain'. This is a three layered build which you can store treasures inside. At the bottom layer, you get a pearl black long sword and a trans green goblet which is very nice, and second layer with three different colored gems. The lid with gold cup makes the third layer. I liked all these gold pieces stacking around each other.



There are plenty of nice small builds in this set as in the picture.



Thorin's chair was decorated with stickers and a trans clear printed round tile representing the Arkenstone. As comparison, Theoden looks much poorer with a small throne. haha.



The second build is the chain pulley pulling a bucket. It was attached loosely to the railway so that it can slide along it. Lots of technic pieces in this build and I like the chain. The brown knob is to turn the wheel and raise or release the bucket of gold.



This build is a furnace filled with dome shaped gold and a long pole to be attached into the pin hole. Its a quite large furnace designed to launch piles of molten gold to attack the dragon. As you can see, the furnace can be turned 360 degree to aim.



Firstly you load the bucket with gold.



Then you raise the bucket.



Pour it into the furnace.



Then launch the gold! To my pocket please. haha



After a few hours of building, this is the full build of The Lonely Mountain. The use of sand green pieces are very nice matched with some grey and brown. This dwarvish mine is very nicely designed and its large enough for Smaug to play around and smacking the pillars. Quite some annoying stickers to be applied but with Smaug and Arkenstone I don't complain much.



One more play feature at the front of the build. Stay tuned, the back is also interesting!



The black round knob is to push the ladder under the throne. The secret door with a key hole, and a pile of gems with the Arkenstone on top of it. If you notice, on top of the Arkenstone there is a BURP piece to make the bulk of the stone at the front.



"Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin's Day will shine upon the key-hole"



I am FIRE.

Conclusion
The Smaug made up the whole value to this set. I bought this because of the dragon and others are a bonus to the set. Smaug is very pose able but need great skill to take good shot of him. Most of the angle makes him look ugly. The build is adequate to the size of the dragon and of course you can buy a few more sets to enlarge it. The minifigures are all exclusive to the set and makes this set much more worthy to get.

Review Summary
Playability: 9/10 - The mechanisms are great to be play with like the actions in the movie while they are fighting the dragon!
Design / Building Experience: 9/10 - The GOLD pieces and the sand green pillars are so nicely used in the set instead of all grey like in the movie.
Minifigures: 9/10 - Great minifigures! All the printings and the details exceeds all expectations.
Price / Value for money: 9/10 - I think the value of the money spent for this set goes to the Serpent from the North.
Overall: 9/10 - I bought it in 2014, and after three years, I still bring out Smaug and play with him.





Run Bilbo!



'Don't be shy...'

Hope you enjoy the review. Thank you.