It's time to return to the realm of Spinjitzu, as we continue to explore the neon streets with LEGO Ninjago City Gardens, just in time for the 10 year anniversary of the Ninjago theme!
The biggest NINJAGO set so far, beating out the original 2017 release by a whopping 818 pieces and measuring a massive 73cm tall, 44cm long and 33cm wide.
We're all enormous NINJAGO fans here at Light My Bricks, so we were absolutely thrilled to hear of the sets announcement at the start of the year. We logged on and made our VIP purchase, clicking add to cart like mad. The wait was excruciating as we hounded our local post man each day with the question - "any large ones delivered today?!"
Finally, it arrived and what a time the team had building this one. The details in this set are too many to name, but we sat there with the tiny arcade machine playing Street Fighter for about an hour!
Once the build was complete it was time to move onto the daunting task of lighting this epic cityscape! Having already lit both the City and City Docks, we had a blueprint of where we wanted to head with this kit, however we knew just how tricky certain aspects of this challenge would be.
The NINJAGO theme as a whole is one where we can really let loose with our lighting skills, where other lighting kit designs require us to be more restrained, in order to do the display justice - NINJAGO as a theme is drenched in a rainbow of color and light, the perfect excuse for us to really turn things up.
Overall the lighting strategy employed with the City Gardens set was ‘highlight’. There’s so much incredible detail, narrative and fun packed into this kit that while we’ve tried to match the set in terms of color and energy that it brings, we also wanted to make sure our lights brought attention to all the aforementioned detail, rather than over power it! This speaks once again to the constantly improving and evolving strategy of our growing design team, who’s main goal is always to enhance and improve the enjoyment of a LEGO set in the best way possible.
While the set has the multi-level design similar to many modular buildings, the City Gardens is actually far more complex in design and layout than any from the popular LEGO building series. While our first instinct was to employ Wireless Connectors in order to enhance the playability of the set, the design team quickly found this to be a problem. So many pairs of our trusty twin components would have been needed, it would have sent the overall cost of the kit through the roof (in this case the Spire!) not to mention it would have ended up making the assembly of this kit too difficult, even for the most experienced LMB fan!
Speaking of complexity, in terms of wiring design, the NINJAGO City Gardens pushed our team to it's limits. The massive surface area combined with incredible detail meant some serious work was requied to efficiently lay all the wires needed for this set! Our designers arranged, rearranged, twisted, turned, threaded and clicked until each light was placed correctly and each wire was neatly concealed in the most cost effective way possible. A new personal best for the Light My Bricks design team, the best in the business!
The spire really makes this set stand out in terms of it's color and stand up as the tallest of all NINJAGO sets! We wanted to make sure we did it justice and let it speak for itself.
There we have it! We truely love the cyberpunk world of NINJAGO, these sets really let us flex our lighting muscles and colorful minds run wild! It's a close call, but the NINJAGO City Gardens might be the best NINJAGO set so far! We'll have to connect all of our City sets together and see the results.
What about you? Will you add the NINJAGO City Gardens to your collection? Let us know on social media. The realm of Spinjitzu awaits!