This set is the largest yet in the Minecraft Theme and is the centerpiece of any Minecraft collection. For those not familiar with Minecraft, I think its important to know how this fits in and what its supposed to represent.

Villages are randomly generated structures composed of a variety of buildings (houses, shops etc), farms and roads that contain AI controlled villagers that you can trade with to buy rare items. The villages are also good sources of food from their fields. The villagers use emeralds as currency for buying and selling and the village can be attacked by AI control monsters that may wipe them out. Finding a village and protecting its villagers to allow you to trade is an important part of the game. The Iron Golem is a common creation to help protect it, and villagers can be "infected" and turned into special zombie villagers that you can try to save by turning them back with potions.

One interesting decision they designer made with this set was to represent sections of various biomes throughout the village. This set includes slices of snow, jungle, desert and the normal grass sections. This allows you to connect other minecraft sets to this central one and build out to other biomes. The entire set is modular and can be rearranged in an endless variety of ways.

Box/Instructions

This is a standard large box with the usual Minecraft box art, it shows the main layout for the modules on the front and an alternate on the back along with various details. The front art also shows you each of the minifigs and brickbuilt figures. Inside you will find two instruction manuals, the much thicker one has all the instructions for the main build and layout while the second instruction book gives you some fun alternate build ideas including a nicely done village wall. The parts come in 11 numbered bags and one unmarked bag with plates. Of note, most of the bags used a newer number system with a white band across the bag with a black number, but a couple of the bags used the more traditional number system of just a large black number with white outline. There are no stickers in this set.

Parts

I know the Minecraft sets get a bit of heat for using so many very boring old school 2x2 and 2x4 blocks, but this set does include a healthy amount of nougat colored blocks including a very large number of smooth 1x4 and 1x6 smooth tiles, 1x2 and 1x4 textured (brick profile) pieces, 2x2 jumper plates and very long 1x12 bricks along with assorted other pieces in this great color. Otherwise you get the usual Minecraft specialty pieces, printed furnaces, printed crafting boxes and the various brick built figure specialty components. There is also a treasure chest.

Minifigures

To start off with, the set comes with a lot of minifigures and mob builds, covering a very large variety. You get a Steve, Alex, two villagers in different prints, a zombie village (zombie with green villager mold head), regular zombie, enderman, creeper, brickbuilt iron golem, and a brick built pig and piglet. Its a nice mix, but its a huge miss to only include two actual villagers. The set really could have benefited from one to two more actual villagers, even if they were repeat prints to the existing ones. I certainly appreciate the addition of multiple monsters to represent attacks on the village that Steve and Alex (assisted by the iron golem) have to defend the villagers against, but considering there is currently no other way to get villagers, the town is simple too thinly populated for proper play or display. I hope that they release a set in the next wave that adds a building for the village and at least one or two more villagers. The rest of the figures are all standard and identical to those found in previous sets. Steve gets an iron sword and Alex a diamond pick-axe, there are no armor pieces or other weapons/tools which I also felt was a miss.

The build/completed model

The set is broken up into modules, each representing a part of the village that can be re-arranged and attached to each other via 2x4 jumpers that get built in step one. The modules include:

A market hut with red and white roof along with a jungle tree, chest for emeralds (currency to buy stuff from the villagers) a table with an eye of ender, cake, apple and iron ingot and the first villager.

A blacksmith with two printed furnaces, a table, benches and a forge. This building has a gravel road space along two sides, a flat roof and an open are along parts of two sides. It also includes a really well designed hidden hinge system that allows the entire roof and front to hinge up out of the way to access the inside. It also includes Steve with his iron sword and a red flower.

Next is the library building, this is a nice peaked roof building with one brick built door, a printed crafting box, benches, table, three removable bookshelf blocks and an attic with a cobweb. The building opens on hinges to access the inside. It uses the wood panel side of nougat profile bricks to add texture around the windows. It also includes some mushrooms for the outside along with an Enderman. My only complaints about this building are lack of torches and two 2x4 bright green plates that are used to hold the hinges to the building, but show through to the inside, this could be easily fixed by subbing them out for a 1x2 dark grey plate and a 2x3 bright green plate to make the interior look better. This same issue occurs in the similar butchers shop.

Next you end up with snow themed stone and gravel hill with a small house/guard tower on top. The hill serves as a stair case to get to the opening (no door) for the house which is a very simple design including three windows and an open to access the roof with a nice railing. The entire structure is on jumpers to easily remove it and access the space underneath which has two brick built emerald blocks to mine. It also includes two torches, a small waterfall, red mushrooms, ice and some snow. This section also has the build for the Iron Golem (very similar to the earlier set "Iron Golem"). This area gives you the source to mine for emeralds to pay the villagers with at the market.

The next section has four modules giving you various resource collection options. It includes a nicely built farm with irrigation, carrots, wheat and potatoes in various states of growth. It also has a street lamp with four torches, the other villager in a brown print, the build for the pig and a red flower. It also has a corral full fenced in with a double gate for the pig, a patch of grass with a red flower and last of all a small section of water with sugar cane growing on sand in the middle.

Moving on, we have a desert themed area with a nice well, cactus, street lamp, road, pail, Alex with her diamond pick-axe, the piglet and a creeper. The well has a smooth roof, trans blue brick in the middle to represent water, four pillars and a pail with water. This area also has three brown grass sections and four torches that are used on the street lamp.

Last of all is the butchers shop which is similar to the library but has two doors and a small fenced enclosure for live stock. The interior is very plain with just benches and a table.

Once finished, you can use the various 2x4 jumper bricks to hold the modules together in the default layout or any other combo you want. The library and butchers shop hinge open in place to all access and to change up the look and feel of the layout, making it appear larger. There are also grey sections to the bases of most modules that can form gravel roads similar to what is seen in game. The build is not particularly challenging at all but does have it satisfying moments. There is a clear effort to create a more finished/polished look to the set than the normal Minecraft sets.

Overall opinion

I personally like the set. Having said that, I am a big Minecraft fan and I understand that if your not, this set probably does not resonate with you at all. As a licensed theme, it is a big more expensive, but I felt like it was still in the realm of reason IF your a fan of Minecraft. I always liked the Minecraft themes because the blocky look and feel harkened back to my younger days building early Lego sets, while still letting me create custom sets that, while not highly detailed or realistic by our normal standard, are very much so when compared to thier source material in game. This makes me very happy with all the Minecraft sets, but again, I cant stress enough, if you are not familiar with and passionate about the source material, these sets probably seem very odd and pointless. I like the quantity and diversity of buildings and other structures, it gives plenty of play options and lots of space to re-enact elements of the game or display figures.

There were a few misses in the set though. The biggest was the lack of more villager minifigs. Again, I very much hope they fix this by releasing a set next wave that has more villagers and some additional structure for the village. Next, I felt the butchers shop had too plain of an interior. I also thought there was a distinct lack of torches to light all the various buildings and most of the main structures do not have clips to add torches (or to use the torches from the two street lamps). I also would have liked to see some more tools/weapons/armor options. Last of all, the bright green plates that show through to the inside of the two biggest buildings annoys me quite a bit, especially since it could have been mostly fixed with little effort.

I have more information and pictures at: http://thoughtsonblocks.blogspot.com/