This set, as well as many other similar style Ninjago sets really catches my eye. I must say, I don't follow the Ninjago storyline, please forgive me, so my review will be from the point of view of just a LEGO enthusiast who loves great models.

The minifigures

The set features 6 minifigures and a monkey. As, again, someone who doesn't know the characters, I still love the way they are designed, especially the "bad guys", looking like steampunk pirates. The captain has moustache, and him and his crewman's outfits have a lot of nice small details. Their brown and orange with a touch of green color scheme is well done. The pirates are armed with sabres and guns.

The Jinn figure is absolutely marvelous, the gradient-colored transparent bottom piece is so great. It has one hand replaced with a hook (a true pirate Jinn!) and his upper body part not just have a piece of body armour, but actually is the body piece and the armour at the same time. It has a big sword, which consists of several parts.

The monkey has orange legs, which also indicates that they are part of the pirate crew. Funny, they are armed with a hammer!

The good ninjas also are nicely detailed, one of them has body armour that also allows him to be attached to his fighter airship. All ninjas have katanas for the fight.

From all the minifigs only 1 (a good ninja) has an additional facial expression. On one side he also has an eyepatch, on the other -- no eyepatch.

The parts

The set contains a handful of good and useful parts. The colors of the parts are really great for you to build your own steampunk looking models. There are many wing-type panels, from small to large. As usual, a lot of regular bricks, with addition of Technic parts to build mechanisms. Still, I've found some great and even new to me parts.

The build

I was enjoying the building process, it took me ~3.5 hours. I was taking my time and paying attention. The build is fun, not very complex, and I loved how there was a mix of regular and Technic assembling.

We start with the green fighter airship, then small support airship, finishing with the main Misfortune's Keep. The building of the first two is fine, but I found a few problems with building the main aircraft. There are a few moments where you need to attach something with 3 pins to 3 holes, and for some reason I found it pretty hard to do. Another hard point is when the side main big engines are being connected to the wings. According to the instructions, we should have the engine covers (the Cement mixer half in Dark orange) attached, and then we put the engine to the wing. But it is hard to do so, so I recommend not attaching top engine cover before connecting the whole engine to the wing. It will be really easier.

Overall, as all the airships are symmetrical, and you need to build a lot of parts twice, I didn't feel it's repetitive or tedious.

The completed model & playability

Again, lets start with the green fighter. It has a tiny Technic mechanism for a winch, which is used by rotating the Ninja disc on top of the airship. You can have a lot of fun with the hook, trying to capture a bad guy, or catching the small pirate support ship. Underneath the wings of the green fighter, it has some sort of weapons, which can be moved up and down a little. No any shooting weapons for this one though.

The pilot is attached to the front of the ship, perhaps to allow him to quickly jump on pirates' heads.

This fighter is medium-sized and, in my opinion, doesn't look very impressive. Especially from the top, the wings seem a bit unfinished.

Next we have the small pirate support ship. It's tiny but very nice, surprisingly having a lot of features. It is sleek looking, has opening canopy, a propeller, its rear part can be moved up and down a little, it has folding wings (so it can be stored on the Keep's launch pad) and has 2 stud shooters! Additional studs are put on the sides. This overall is pretty impressive for that small airship.

The main model of the set -- The Misfortune's Keep -- appears exactly as I was thinking. It looks cool from any angle. The overall feel of the flying steampunk fortress is strong and I like how it has a lot of wing parts on the sides to make an impression of rusty metal plates. The Keep is solid and sturdy, except for the big engines, which are really wobbly because of their rotating mechanism. By turning a lever on top of the airship, you can turn these engines up for vertical landing and take off. The small wing parts on the sides of engines can be moved manually to keep them in place.

Under the main body of the aircraft is the launch pad, where you can store the small ship. This area also have opening sides, which reveal two standard cylinder shooting cannons.

It also has another shooting weapon, which you don't see on the pictures -- 2 hidden disc shooters on the wings. They have a mechanism, which should allow you to shoot them by moving a lever behind the canopy, but this thing is the major flaw of this set. The lever itself is very out of place, it moves around shaking, when you move the Keep, and also it doesn't work very well. I found it a bit too hard to push it, to make the disc shooters work. I believe, the axis of the lever is bending. I think this thing could be done better.

At the back we have a boat with an "anti-aircraft" looking guns and a crate. The boat can be detached easily, probably for emergency evacuation, in case something happens above water. We have 2 storage boxes near the boat.

At the front there is an opening canopy and a skeleton figure, and while I do like it, it's attached badly, shaking a lot, ending up misplaced all the time. For some reason, they put 2 different wheels on the sides of the nose... I have no clue what are they for, and I didn't really like how they look, so I think I'm going to remove them completely.

The playability of the set is great, as I've described all the things you can do with the completed model. And I must say again, the Misfortune Keep itself looks awesome, big and armed.

Overall

Overall this is a great set, if you don't mind the flaws it has, and as for me this is not a major issue, I gave it 5 stars. I find the price maybe a little too high. The set plays good, looks great, plus if you do like steampunk it's even better. It has stickers, of course, but it's well-designed and has a lot of nice small details, so it look good even without stickers. I would recommend this set.

Thank you for reading!