This is my set review for Monastery training this is a very small set this set retails for $15 Canadian I love this set a lot even though it is pretty small it has lots of cool training equipment such as a wooden dummy some armor a punching bag and a dummy shaped similar as Master Wu it's a nice set if you have the monastery it's almost like a mini add-on to the monastery overall I really like this set and that's it for my review and I hope this was helpful.

Set #70680 Monastery Training: LEGO Ninjago Legacy includes this small set featured in season 1, Kai and Nya training to become Ninja. Only, they weren’t exactly dressed this way. After taking the time to look up the shorts from this series I now understand why the Ninja look the way they do. LEGO Ninjago Legacy however are meant to re-imagine sets from the past. And that’s a good thing.

Packaging

Packaging for this set is in a tiny box with limited display, you can see the set, the Minifigures and one the back all of the extra accessories in this set. A really great package design and I have to admit it does justice to the Theme’s legacy.

The manual design is equally impressive, though I was surprised to discover that a set in this small size of a box included such a large folded booklet. The manual took up the entire surface area of the interior.

Parts

This set didn’t use any stickers, so that big red banner piece you see on the box is a print. The other elements are fairly common, aside from the new golden arsenal accessories, all of the gold blades and other accessories are new. At least new for me, not sure if they were introduced in an earlier Ninjago Sub-Theme. But I do know they will probably appear quite frequently after this.

Minifigures

Kai: Dressed in his Legacy look, Kai has a Golden Dragon design on his back and on the front it goes from his legs to his torso with a golden dragon design. Everything about this character looks great, he uses the head from the LEGO Ninjago Movie series. His weapons are two golden katanas, these swords are different and new. The handles are shorter, meaning they fit in a Minifigures’ hand quite snugly.

Nya: As noted in Jay’s Storm Fighter, Nya here is pretty much the exact same Minifigure. She’s using a new weapon this time, two golden sickle heads are attached to a graphite black lightsaber hilt. Pretty impressive weapon actually. One thing of note, I kind of wish these sets included the Ninja’s hair pieces so they could be without their masks when not training.

The build

A pretty solid bunch of builds here, not much to discuss about them though. We’ve got a training area with a punching bag, one of those rotating wood block things, a training dummy, a display stand with Samurai X’s armour stored there and a build for a handle device that allows you to simulate ninja battles, all of these builds are pretty impressive and fun, simple, easy to make and pretty uneventful.

The completed model

As I noted in the build section we have five miniature builds in this set and all of the models are pretty solid. The practice wood block thing rotates and can be hit by either Minifigure when standing on the play handle device, which is designed to rotate on a rubbery wheel piece so you can simulate attacks, this is my first time with such a build though I see it appears in other Ninjago sets, this is really quite ingenious. Love the simple design and ease of play, and it really works for attacking things like the training dummy and punching bag.

Speaking of which, the training dummy could almost qualify as a third Minifigure. It’s meant to represent one of the Skeleton enemies I’d wager, using the bone legs in brown and the large rice hat head piece on an ordinary brown cylinder. It looks perfect and clutches two golden daggers in the hands, adding to the fun of the practice.

The punching bag hangs around a corner wall element of the training yard at the Spinjitzu Monastery. This set piece includes the printed tile, which I am uncertain as to what it says, but features some of the Ninjago written language around a large symbol of some kind. Great looking build. The Samurai X armor sits on a pedestal which holds it securely, Nya can switch between both of them. Overall a decent selection of models.

Overall opinion

While this set doesn’t offer anything unique, I still find it to be rather decent for build and play. Nya and Kai are in other, more impressive sets, but this box makes for a great beginning to the LEGO Ninjago Legacy sub-theme. Fondly Recommended. Really nostalgic concerning this set, it’s a blast from the past and any fan of Ninjago is going to love it.

Among the several Ninjago Legacy sets that released earlier this year, the Monastery Training is one that most people seem to overlook and bypass since the minifigures included both come in other sets and the build itself is extremely similar to that of the Spinjitzu Training from the Ninjago Movie wave in 2017. At first, I too wasn't very interested in this set, but after picking it up my opinions have changed.

Building Experience

The set took me around 8-10 minutes to complete, and I was taking my time since I was also watching a movie at the same time. The parts here are all really nice and it definitely gave me deja vu from building Spinjitzu Training back in 2017.

The Minifigures

Kai is the first of the two ninja included in this set, and he sports the new-for-2019 Legacy style hood piece, which is one part once again and replaces the two-piece TLNM hoods we got from 2017-2018. He is included in 4 other sets this wave: Spinjitzu Kai, Kai's Blade Cycle and Zane's Snowmobile, Cole's Earth Driller, and Monastery of Spinjitzu. His face printing is the same we've gotten since the movie, unfortunately, and I really hope LEGO eventually gives us new facial expressions because I'm getting rather bored of these. His torso printing is one of the most simple compared to the other ninja this year, but the way the leg printing ties into it makes it that much better. The gold dragon designs on Kai's simple red gi are really refreshing and prove that a ninja minifigure doesn't have to be crazily detailed to be a great ninja suit. His weapons are two short-blade katanas in gold.

Nya is the other ninja included in this set, and she's a bit less common than Kai. The other three sets she is included in are Spinjitzu Nya and Wu, Jay's Storm Fighter, and Monastery of Spinjitzu. Nya returns to her old maroon and azure color scheme this time around, and has some really great torso printing. Like Kai, she has some really nice gold dragon prints on her torso and legs, and her weapon is a double-sided curve blade.

The Build

Like I said, the actual build of this set is very similar to Spinjitzu Training. The main display piece is almost identical in build structure, but it obviously has a different color scheme and a nice addition of the red punching bag, which can move side to side. There's a nice printed tile in the middle of the wall, and a nice technique using sand plates on bricks with studs on the sides to replicate texture. There are also two gold blades on either side.

The first side build is a small stand to hold an extra set of Samurai X armor, which is identical to the set of armor in the Samurai Mech set, except for the bucket handle piece being replaced by the gold crest piece. The set shows you that you can also put the armor on Nya if you wish.

The next side build is a small wooden dummy wearing a sand colored rice hat like Sensei Wu's. He holds two gold knives and stands on circular flat brick with studs on the top.

The third side build is a spinning punching dummy, and it spins easily by technic rods.

The final side build is a Spinjitzu rod/pole that can be used with your ninja to represent Spinjitzu. These can be found in the Kai's Blade Cycle and Zane's Snowmobile and Monastery of Spinjitzu. It uses a tire on the bottom to spin your figure when you run it against a hard surface.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this set ended up being better than I expected and, in my opinion, better than Spinjitzu Training. You get two ninja in a $10 set, which isn't something we get often, and the parts are really useful, especially the gold weapon pack, much like the silver one we got in the Hunted sets last summer. I'd recommend picking this up if you aren't planning on purchasing many of the bigger sets.