This set ties with the Sanctum Sanctorum Showdown for the most minifigures in it, at five compared to the remaining set's four. In terms of variety though? There are only two new figures. You get an Outrider, Black Panther (the same Black Panther from set 76100, Royal Talon Fighter Attack (so many of these sets have "Attack" in them, don't they?) from Black Panther), The Vision (the same figure from 76067, Tanker Truck Takedown from Captain America: Civil War), and the two newcomers, Shuri and the aforementioned Corvus Glaive, the first member of Thanos' Black Order. For my thoughts on the Outrider, you can see my review of the Outrider Dropship set from last week, I won't repeat myself here. Because I haven't reviewed anyone else, its fair game. Unlike his charged counterpart from Rhino Face-off, this Black Panther is far more muted in colour scheme. This is the uncharged suit and while the details are mostly the same, just in silver and not blue, one problem a lot of people have are with the eyes. The eyes are exposed under the helmet print, something that isn't accurate to the Black Panther costume. This was a problem for the Royal Talon, and its a problem here for a lot of people, honestly I count myself in that too, just not a large enough problem to cause a huge fuss about. What is a larger problem is the number of times this character's been used so far this year. It was in both Black Panther Sets, and nowhere. Nothing against Black Panther, I do like Black Panther the character, but with a movie as large as Infinity War, I can't help but feel like it would have been better to have someone else, cause we did get two sets dedicated to his movie. I'd have liked someone like War Machine, Scarlett Witch, or if we had to have a Black Panther, maybe one without the helmet or even in his regular attire. Just some variety to it. I'm not going to complain about the eye holes for a second time in a set because, being realistic, this and the Royal Talon were in development at the same time, any issues were not going to be fixed before release. Hopefully for Black Panther 2 it'll be fixed or, better yet, Avengers 4. Vision's got some solid prints to him as well, though I would have personally preferred a more muted colour scheme, the green feels too bright for this version of Vision. You also get a metallic yellow (not quite gold, too bright) cape for him which uses a more recent fabric that's more free-flowing whereas Corvus Glave's cape's an older, thicker material. I'm more used to the older capes so I lean more towards Corvus' cape, but both materials have their fans and haters. Personal preference!
As for the two new figures, I do like the Shuri minifig that we get, though I'm not a fan of the hair piece. It's close to her warrior style, but personally, I don't think close enough, and since this is meant to be more of a "research costume" based on the trailers, it looks out of place. The piece is a reuse of the hair piece that they used for Patty Tolan in the Ghostbusters 2016 set, and again, its an alright piece, just not suitable for this costume of Shuri's. I do like the fact that she has her gauntlets though, and while these aren't accurate to the movie either, I absolutely love this piece and I'm perfectly fine with having more. I'm not a fan of her angry face behind her hair, but that's because out of the two, I do like the smug face a lot more, I feel like its more accurate to her character (based on what I remember from Black Panther). Corvus also has a bland alternate face, but that's because its evil happy with showing teeth to an "Oh crap I shouldn't have smiled but I shouldn't snap my lips closed yet" face. I could honestly barely tell the difference when I first saw the two prints and thought there was a QC issue (alongside a missing piece in my copy of the set). One thing I'm not a fan of though is his weapon. This thing is over twice his size and there's no real way for him to hold it in a more relaxed position. He has to hold it side on, directly in front of him because it's too tall for him to hold it formally (straight up), and it gets in the way of the cape when he holds it against his waist, making the cape look awkward. He just can't win. Like with the Dropship, you do get another infinity stone here, the Mind Stone, and my only fault with it (cause its the same piece as the Space Stone and all the other Infinity Stones) is that I'm not a fan of the translucent yellow plastic that they used to mold it. When it's with the other stones, it looks yellow, but on its own, it looks a touch too green (at least to me). It's really strange how it works.
Looking at the secondary attraction of the set, the Thresher itself and... it's not a good Thresher. It's fine for display, but the launcher is a bland mess, and what it fires, depending on how you build it, can eat away at its own momentum, or the more likely option if you can get it to fire at all, it'll fall over. The launcher build looks visually interesting, but its hard to get the ammo to actually stay in place inside it. Granted, I will always take more Sawblade and radar pieces, two of the major parts of the ammo, but everything else about this thing feels like an afterthought. Like they had some money left in the budget and thought "hey, why not see what we can do with it?"
Some of you might be asking what the point of the title is, and the answer to that comes from the main attraction, the wall chunk/ Shuri's Lab. The way it's built makes it look like its a part of a larger set, something also seen in two of the sets in the line related to the Guardians of the Galaxy. The only problem is that there isn't a set that directly connects to this other than itself. While I'd be willing to let the idea of forcing people to buy multiples of the same toy slide if there were alternate builds of the set to either expand the wall or Shuri's lab. Granted, there's nothing stopping you from doing that yourself, make a "Vision cloning facility", but if that was the intention, it would have been a better use of the budget to have an alternative build that reflects that "yeah, that was the idea". As a result, though, this feels incomplete, a chunk of a larger set that was not meant to be? Reserved for wave 2 maybe? On a side note, I do believe that there is going to be a wave 2 because I think they'd want more sets for the Marvel Superheroes line, and I doubt Ant-Man and The Wasp need a lot of sets.
The build of the structure though is nice (considering as its a door, a wall with turrets, and some lab equipment), but the functions feel underwhelming. Starting from the front, you have two turrets that use the brick mounted stud launchers, meaning that they can actually be accurate when you consider what they'd be used for! They use a turntable piece on each to allow both to spin 360 degrees with only the barest amount of clash with the railing. These turrets don't work as anti-aircraft turrets though as they can only angle down by default. There's also an elevating door gimmick where pushing down on a technic beam off to the side of the main tower (at least I think this is supposed to be a tower), you can move the door up and down with zero friction impeding the motion. This is either a good thing or a bad thing because you can't lock the door in any positions without modification. Alongside the stud launchers, you have a disk shooter which can be fired with a button near the computer behind the wall. This has a surprising amount of power in it considering as I didn't put a lot of force into it to make it fire. If someone can tell me a way to give this launcher more then one bit of ammo, I could see a lot of uses for this piece. The final, almost useless function of the set is pushing a button on the outside wall causes an operating table to go from a horizontal to vertical position, and launch a minifig on it if you give it enough force. It's about as interesting as you'd think it would be.
In terms of design, the set is fine. There's a lot of brick built detail on display in the set and a lot of tasteful use of stickers. The only thing about it that annoys me is the technic connection ports and the hinging wall. It gives the idea that there should have been more to it, that its a piece of a smaller set, but that set doesn't exist. As it stands now, it looks and feels half finished, and that might not change unless I'm right about there being a wave 2 of Infinity War sets. For now, I'll call it there. Up on the main site, this week was not only a review of Captain America: Civil War but also a review of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. You can check those out on the main site, the next review on the main site is going to be Doctor Strange. The next stone to be revealed in the movies was the Reality Stone, so that means we jump to a Guardians of the Galaxy set, and (what I call), Thanos' jewel-encrusted Rocket fist.
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