REVIEW: 70200 CHI Laval

[Brickthing]

Set name: CHI Laval

Set Number: 70200

Price: $15USD , 15 Euro

Pieces: 55

Year of release: 2013

Peeron

Bricklink

Brickset

CHI-up and take on the rival tribes with CHI Laval with poseable and durable design, double sword, shield, lion head, paws, claws and more!

This summer’s new wave of Chima CHI figures marks the start of LEGO’s second original IP sets/ultrabuilds using the Constraction figure building system. Laval is the prince of the Lion Tribe, appearing here in his Chi enhanced form.

The Packaging

Front

Laval comes packaged in a large Hero Factory packet, which is the same size as other large villains/heroes. It’s easy to tell these sets apart from the HF packets though, because of the bright blue and gold colours, rippling with vibrant Chi energy arcs. Laval himself jumps heroically forwards, while his minifig form looks from above with his Chi-induced heterochromia. I like the lightning energy effect used around Laval, because it conveys the power of these Chi figures without misrepresenting the actual set too badly. The shield and upper leg shells seem to be in strange positions, but for the most part the pose looks pretty feasible for the actual set.

Back

There’s a plethora of nice graphic son the back of these bags, with a life-size scale head, a combiner advertisement and a small comic explaining how this Chi figure fits within the minifig-scale story. Cunningly, both sides of the bag demonstrate the multiple positions for Laval’s shield, without using an extra dedicated graphic.

The packet is of course very shiny and resealable, which no doubt are part of the reasons this method of packaging has worked so well.

Contents

Pieces

Laval comes with less pieces than most of his fellow Chi figures, primarily because he has no extra appendages or Technic-heavy weapons, but he makes up for this with a large selection of Gold shells, exo-force arms and a Shield. As with most of the other gold sets this year, if you’ve already bought some of the Rocka sets, you might not be enticed by this selection, but if you haven’t, Laval is a great set to jumpstart your Gold supply.

Laval also includes 2 5M Trans-Blue shells, 2 Blue swords and 2 new fur pieces in Dark Red. All of the Chi figures have 2 reinforced bone cups, and Laval has another 3 Beam w/ Ball joint, which is always useful for your collection.

Head

Laval’s Lion head is probably the most interesting part, since its custom designed for this set, either as a Laval head or a generic Lion head.

The piece is more complicated than previous Ultrabuild heads, using a combination of printing and multiple pieces fixed together, resulting in a very well designed and styled face with several distinct colours.

Back

The socket is still affixed to the back with a screw, in the same manner as the Ben 10 and Superhero sets. It’s great to see how the quality of this style of head can improve and develop alongside the developments made to the Hero Factory head type, which stays truer to the robot/Bionicle head type.

Another view of the Front

It’s a shame that the central teeth aren’t white, although this does cause his fangs to be more distinct. It will be interesting to see if this head is reused in the future for making other Lion tribe members in CHI form.

Build

Laval’s build is a very standard experience, but it takes a little bit of extra time to put together all of the claws, and it’s satisfying to have the simple but effective extra step of adding back armour to the torso.

One of the most interesting and ingenious tricks used in this set is the shield construction, which uses a flick-fire missile to great effect, allowing the shield to easily be added to Laval’s back or hand, or indeed most of the other shell pieces with ease. If the missile piece hadn’t existed for 5 years prior serving a completely different purpose, you’d think this was what the piece was made for.

Finished Set

Greetings Laval, Prince of the Lion Tribe!

Laval is ultimately quite a generic set in terms of part selection and build process, but he serves to show just how powerful the Constraction system is, because the final set looks fantastic. Laval has a heroic posture and appearance, and pulls together many colours (white, tan, dark red, trans-blue, pearl gold, gunmetal, light blue) into a single effective lion-based colour scheme.

Back

Laval’s bone selection is very uninteresting, but you can see here how it was chosen to blend with the gunmetal shells and dark grey reinforced sockets. Laval has a simple back armour solution, which serves well to bulk his torso up and provide an easy attachment point for his shield. The back of Laval’s head is admittedly a hollow shell, but there are no distracting exposed brains unlike Bionicle and Hero Factory sets often have.

Crocodile spotted!

Perhaps the only significant flaw of Laval is that he has diminished arms, because his oversized paws are attached to the lower arm armour ball rather than the wrist ball. The alternative would have been comically oversized arms, whereas this solution looks quite good if you don’t think about it directly, since he has no wrist articulation but is able to rotate his sword independently of his hand and fingers…

Back foul beast!

He also isn’t holding his shield; rather the shield is impaled through his paws via the flick-fire missile rod. His weapon setup seems quite painful, but as the following action poses demonstrate, the end result still looks fantastic.

I see someone, something else...

Unidentified possibly hostile alien life-form detected!

To be honest, Laval is the mystical organic interpretation of Rocka, from the storyline similarities to the colour schemes and Lion-based inspirations.

Combo Set

Front

I really like the direction that the Constraction designers have taken for this wave’s combiners – rather than buying two sets to form a new model/character, each set has its own unique combiner, where it uses another set as a booster pack of pieces to upgrade the primary set into a larger more powerful form. The formula is the same for each combiner, but it’s interesting to see how each set will use the weapons, shells and Technic parts available to create a more interesting upgraded form.

Back

Laval uses 70201 Eris to gain wings, a tail and powerful new Chi weapons. I suppose it’s fitting that if the already powerful Chi forms of Chima characters were to combine together, the end result would look like something straight out of a myth itself.

Action

Because of the double set of reinforced joints in Laval’s new legs, Super Laval has no difficulty standing or posing, despite the extra weight.

(The instructions for this combiner can be found here)

Final Thoughts

Colour Scheme - 10/10 – Inspired by his minifigure form, Laval’s colour scheme includes a white assortment of colours from Gold and Gunmetal to Trans-blue and Tan, but they all combine effectively to create exactly what I’d imagine a cartoon energy enriched Lion warrior to look like. I particularly enjoy the use of Dark Red, because you need to need to compare it with another Dark Red part to assure yourself that it isn’t Brown.

Parts - 8/10 – If you’re looking for Gold pieces, Laval provides an excellent range that isn’t found in an single existing Gold set. Due to his standard humanoid build though, Laval doesn’t have any special bone pieces that can’t be found in the other Chima sets, so if you buy sets for parts, it would be better to go for one of the other sets, such as Cragger or Gorzan.

Design - 9/10 – Aside from the shield innovation, Laval and Worriz are very generic figures, but they demonstrate how good generic figures can be. It could have been interesting if Laval had digigrade legs (at one point in development Laval used HF paws for his feet as well), but the HF feet don’t detract from Laval’s design or (more importantly) playability in any way.

Articulation - 8/10 – Laval has 13 points of articulation, plus finger movement, but lacks wrist articulation and needs the double jointed neck in order to prevent his jaw from catching on his raised chest plate. The rest of his joints perform well though, and with his reinforced waist he’s able to pull off a wide variety of cool poses.

Quality - 10/10 – The quality of Laval’s pieces, printing and new parts is excellent, particularly his head design, which matches the HF shell aesthetic and the fur parts. I suspect that the sword pieces could easily bend slightly to be noticeably out of alignment, although I didn’t have any problems with my particular swords.

Overall - 45/50 – Laval is an excellent figure, and is definitely the best Lion warrior set that LEGO has made so far. If Lions or any of Laval’s pieces appeal to you, you should definitely get this set, since the only reason that I wouldn’t recommend him straight away is that he’s overshadowed by some of the other Chima figures, which are equally well designed but include a wider variety of pieces and in greater quantities.

[Aethersprite]

Thanks for the review! For me, Laval's a weaker set compared to his clone, Worriz. I wish they'd have stuck with the original head we saw in the prelims, it looked much more menacing.

[Aanchir]

Good review. I can't say CHI Laval's color scheme is as well-organized as that of CHI Worriz, but then again Laval's primary color isn't a neutral color. I love all the gold parts in this set. One thing I've loved about CHI Laval since we first saw him is the fact that he has both two fully-articulated hands and armaments for each hand, something no Hero Factory set has ever been able to boast (think about it; in Hero Factory an articulated claw has always been presented as an alternative to a weapon). The inclusion of sturdy back armor also sets him above many Hero Factory sets. Of course, the Chima constraction sets pay for this well-roundedness with a higher price point than a small or medium-sized Hero Factory hero.

Laval's combi model isn't as strong as some of the others, with asymmetrical shoulders that just feel disorganized and color blocking that is a bit suspect. Interestingly, combining this set with CHI Eris doesn't actually add any colors to CHI Laval's color scheme (transparent blue, warm gold, and white are all already present in the set's color scheme). So it really shows how important the organization of a color scheme is to a model's aesthetic.

[catman45]

I liked this review, however, I think that this set is a bit over priced.

[oxbow829]

I like this set , the colors are done well to form the character that we know as Laval.