REVIEW: 75171 Battle on Scarif

[WhiteFang]

Hello everyone,

I am back to share my fifth LEGO Star Wars Rogue One review. The earlier LEGO Rogue One reviews which I reviewed were the 75152 Imperial Assault Hovertank, 75153 AT-ST Walker, 75154 TIE Striker and 75155 Rebel U-wing Fighter. I had great enjoyment playing and building these recent sets. I hope I can bring my enjoyment by showing in my review. Please note there might not be any major movie spoilers but there is bound to contain some minor movie spoilers. Henceforth if you have not watched this movie and is spoilers-sensitive, then please do not proceed any further. In addition, I am also integrating many references and facts which can be found in the informative DK Star Wars Rogue One (Ultimate Visual Guide). Without further ado, let me bring all of you to the Planet Scarif.  

Movie spoilers ahead (potential), read at your own risk.  

Name: 75171 Battle on Scarif
Theme: LEGO System / Licensed / Star Wars / Rogue One
Year: 2017
Pieces: 419
Minifigs: 4
Price: USD $49.99, GBP 54.99, EURO 59.99, SGD $119.90
Resources: Brickset, BrickLink


An original box image of the 75171 Battle on Scarif



Back view of the original box image of the 75171 Battle on Scarif



The latest new LEGO Star Wars Rogue One minifigures addition

The tropical nice battle scene on the Planet Scarif

This is the only play scene in the LEGO Star Wars Rogue One compilation for the past two releases in 2016 and 2017. Although this is not a mega play set accompanied with some flaws, but I am still pleased with the overall playability and built as it helped to put many things altogether for a bigger battle scene with this heavily fortified bunker as the central focus. The Planet Scarif, located in the Outer Rim Territories, is an Imperial military complex which houses the deepest technological secrets of the Empire at the very core of the Citadel complex. Scarif is a small world of tropical island rising from clear, shallow oceans similar like those beach resorts. The key imperial operations is to enable kyber crystal delivery through a wide range of bunker network which is secured by shore defenses with the command tower overseeing the planet operations. 


The content of the sealed box

The sealed box comes with three numbered mint packs. The instruction manual are part of the content and as you flip to the front page, it show the overview of the building stages. This set also contained the dreaded sticker sheet which is mainly used to outline the base and the bunker doors. I am not a huge fan of stickers and did not apply in my built. After the set is completed, these are the remaining spare parts which are spread across the packs. You can view the spare parts for packet 1, packet 2 and packet 3.  


Some nice LEGO Rogue One minifigures addition

These are the newest addition from the 2017 Rogue One set releases. From left to right, we have two Scarif Stormtroopers, Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor.  Upon removing their helmets and hairpieces, you can see back view of the minifigures with their alternate facial expression. All of the minifigures are featured with impressive back printing. All of these minifigures are unique to this set and I could suppose getting this set is more for the Scarif Stormtroopers even though Jyn and Cassian are newer variants in their finale scene in the insertion of Scarif. These characters had also appeared in other sets. You can take a look and see which variant of Jyn and Cassian could you prefer. It's nice to see Jyn in a Imperial Ground Crew disguise and can be easily put her as a generic Imperial minifigure by placing the helmet on. Not quite the same for Cassian in his other outfit, since he suppose to be an Imperial Officer in disguise for this scene.     

The two Scarif Stormtroopers are part of the planet shoreline defence to ensure the beaches are adequately protected against any trespassers. It's quite a pity that these minifigures are not widely available in the traditional battle packs and it make no sense to buy quite an expensive set like these to army build these minifigures. You may note that this minifigure design is not exactly the same like this Shoretrooper found in the 75154 TIE Striker.  Thus, I had made that minifigure in command of this patrol squadron. You can view both of these minifigures' facial expression without their helmets on. I am glad to have these specialised troopers to make up of Scarif defenses, but their numbers are truly limited against the rebels and the large need of numbers could need to pump through the stormtroopers instead. 


The entire building content for Packet 1



The completed built for Packet 1

The completed built for the first packet is to form the front of the sliding bunker doors. The built also include Cassian Andor minifigure and some useful printed tiles and parts including the 2x2 printed Death Star overview.  


The entire building content for Packet 2

 

The completed built for Packet 2

The completed built of packet 2 is focused mainly on the landing platform of the bunker entrance. This packet also include Jyn Erso in disguise accompanied with an useful printed control panel tile and highly explosives thermal detonators. 
 

The entire building content for Packet 3

The completed built of Battle on Scarif

This is the completed built for the Battle on Scarif, the single play scene among the Rogue One set releases so far. The last packet also include two Scarif Stormtroopers to ensure the perimeter defenses for the safe shipment of the striking orange container storing kyber crystals. This Imperial Bunker or Landing Pad on Scarif measures over 10cm high, 22cm long and 25cm wide. We had seen 'Rogue One' or otherwise known as Imperial Shuttle SW-0608 landing safely for her infiltration mission before the imperial ground inspection. It is not a huge base of operations and undermine the greatness of Scarif structure. However, this set managed to captured the surroundings of Scarif pretty well by utilising a good mix of tan bricks, leaves, tree palms among the grey looking structure. This set is considered as a medium built and is similar to the 75139 Battle on Takodana in terms of piece counts and price range. However, the 75139 Battle on Takodana set is much value for money due to the inclusion of five minifigures and an unique SW character known as Maz Kanata instead of seeing just four minifigures with nil special characters. It could have been better if this set contain an Imperial Officer or even K-2SO which is quite vital for this scene. Otherwise, a rebel trooper accompanied Jyn and Cassian would also serve well. 

Despite of the flaws which I had mentioned, I still equally enjoyed this built and play scene because it can integrate all of my other Rogue One sets together to form a nice decent battle scene without MOCing it. If I have a few more of these sets, I could actually expand it to a larger base of operations and it could certainly be quite nice to have a bigger landing pad. 

There are several playing mechanisms which can be seen from here, there and here. The playing features are largely focusing on the mission for the Rebels to steal the Death Star plans. Jyn and Cassian could need to first bypass the secured sliding bunker doors by blowing the communication tower which will cause a large amount of unneeded attention. Well, that's not exactly the case in the movie and I won't elaborate further on that, other than thinking the designer of this set might have wanted high explosive entry to increase the level of excitement. One thing I think this set could have been better is allowing a turning mechanism for the sliding doors to be opened and closed from the side or through a knob. This built can only allow manual sliding which I am not very fond of. In this playset, one of them had to operate from the control panel, while the other is retrieving the files from the other computer terminal.  This is how it looked like when Jyn and Cassian are in position with regards to this play scene and please do not take this play scene as movie accurate. It's nowhere near there in terms of the plot flow. To be fair, there are some abstract points which I could think is fairly captured. The other rebels could be planting explosives by placing beneath the floor panel and also hiding large amount of weapons near the base perimeter. The radio control terminal was vital to hook up by the rebels to secure the radio transmission to upload the Death Star plans. 

These are the images of the completed built of Battle on Scarif which can be viewed from the front, left side view, right side view, bottom view and back view. The overall built is very sturdy and well integrated. It can be easily stored away without breaking the bits and pieces. Below are some of the fun battle scenes which I had managed to put it together. 


Wait for my signal, 3.. 2.. 1.. Attack!



Raging battle scene on Scarif

 

Forward charge

 

Take them down! Take them down!

 

Let's take down the bunker with our reinforcements



We will not let these troopers to sabotage our plan of action

To conclude, this set is an average LEGO playset and I wanted to rate it above average, but the high SRP versus price per part ratio and having it ideally as five minifigures could have rack the score higher. I won't think this is a good set to buy at SRP and it's actually a decent playset to get during sales, namely when you need a base of operations to play all of the other Rogue One sets altogether. So far, there are not many Star Wars play scenes and having TLG doing this scene for us is actually very good. Most of the time, we are getting either spacecrafts or vehicles and little on scenes. The setting of Scarif was captured fairly well despite of the flaws in terms of movie accurate. The set did well in terms of the playability and overall built integrity which was very well put together. I could highly recommend buying this set when is on sales and not at full price. This set is certainly not to be missed. Despite of my average rating, I still enjoyed this set as I had bought this in the US earlier at a slightly discounted price. Well, it's way better to buy at overseas than to buy in Singapore anymore. 

Summary review
Playability: 8/10 (Fun playability on the integration of battle scenes with other playing features and Rogue One sets.)
Design: 6/10 (Good scene playing design but require improvement in some aspects such as sliding doors)
Price: 4/10 (Price is on the high side when taken into consideration price per parts ratio and minifigure counts.)
Overall: 6/10 (Do get this set and add into your Rogue One collection since this is the only playset with Scarif Stormtroopers for the time being. Best to get this set when is on sales.)

I gave it a "3" based on my Review Score Card.  What about you?

I hope every one of you enjoyed reading this simple review of mine. Comments and Criticisms are welcomed.
Pictures can be found in My Flickr.

[WhiteFang]

Dear Eurobricks Community, 

Allow me to present my fifth reviewing attempt on the LEGO Rogue One sets.  

Hope you enjoy reading it. 

WhiteFang

[Brickdad]

Nice review and agree on the price. Will wait to see this one dropped or look on Evilbay.

[VaderFan2187]

Thank you for this review. Enjoyed it 

[Lyonel McBaseplate]

 Hello WhiteFang.

 Thank you for another great review! You help the community in a very important way by telling us all about the new sets, and when I read all the details you provide and see all the nice pictures you add in your reviews, I almost feel like I have the set in front of me!

 I'll be waiting for the next review! You are awesome!

[naugem]

Nice review, agree that it seems expensive for what you get.

[WhiteFang]

Thank you everyone for your comments and thoughts. This is really a good set to pick up if you can find it at a very reasonable discounted price. I hope we will see this set discounted at a later period of the year. 

[Lobot]

Thanks for the great review @Whitefang

I totally agree about the high RRP - it's £54.99 in the UK which is totally ridiculous considering the size of it.  However, I managed to grab a couple recently at 50% which was a genuine bargain!  It's been one of those sets that's been on a seemingly permanent 30% discount, and I guess that's a decent indicator of the what we're willing to pay for it.

[faire]

I fully intended to buy the set, the price put me off. But yes, I probably wouldn't be able to resist a 50% reduction.

[Starflight]

I might buy it when it goes on sale.

But good review!! 

[Quothcorvus]

HI guys, I picked one of these up in Billund earlier this year, and another a couple of days ago, Disney Store had them reduced by 50% in the UK.

[KevinYoung]

Outstanding set price is high though but at 30  percent not bad 50 percent grab it!!!!

[rollermonkey]

Broken poll is still broken?

I think it's just an average set, and frankly I got it for two reasons:

1. I'm a completist.

2. I wanted the orange crate so that my hover tank has two.