Set #70230 Ice Bear Tribe Pack: A new tribe joins the rank of Chima’s Ice Tribe, the Ice Bears and they just look supremely awesome. These battle packs also let you build up a ton of ice bear warriors for an army for your tribes to fight against. Let’s discuss the set as a whole.

Box/Instructions

Much like the lion tribe pack I love the simple and fun designs of these small boxes. There isn’t much new to say about the design here, however the back showcases another great ‘put these two sets together to form a cohesive battle scene’ image. In this case LEGO is suggesting to combine it with 70224 the mobile command. It’s a nice little image showing the potential of these sets.

Again the instructions work great, just don’t have much to say here, again we have the cross-promotion image in the back and the minifigure checklist, which is neat. The steps are very clear and concise, considering the build is very minimal for this set that isn’t saying much.

Minifigures

Three new characters in this set, the minifigures represent the new Ice Bear tribe and except for one are nameless generics to build an army with.

Icerlot: LEGO has gone all out with these ice tribe minifigures. And it shows, here is a member of the Ice Bear tribe, he’s a solid looking minifig with the standard double-sided torso printing and leg printing, the beauty of the ice tribe however is the use of transparent clear plastics for some of the limbs. His right leg is clear blue with printing on the front and his left arm is clear blue with a solid blue hand instead of the normal grey colour of the right hand.

The headpiece is awesome, it’s a brilliant sculpted new piece that looks like a bear and I’m looking forward to seeing it used for a bear costume minifig in the CMF line. It has some nice printing on the front for his muzzle, the metal armour on his cheeks and the odd tribal tattoo on his forehead. The head underneath has a single sided facial print with back printing showing off more tribal tattoo designs. It’s really impressive.

Accessories include a chi crystal, transparent blue chi armour and a fist hammer made out of a grey Lightsaber hilt, a transparent blue rod (not the Lightsaber blades, this one is longer) and the fist shaped gorilla hammer head.

Ice Bear Warrior: This one is awesome too, he’s got a double-sided torso with printing that shows his ribs through his chest, suitably gruesome looking for a zombie fan. He has a clear right leg and the legs have nice printing, it’s awesome to see printing on clear plastic, it adds such a different aesthetic to the LEGO minifigure design. His face has a double print, but again there is only one facial expression, the back just has some fur detailing. His headpiece has less printing, but includes a tribal tattoo and the muzzle printing for the teeth and nose on the bear face.

His accessory is the stud launcher, with a clear blue tube and a grey ‘gun’ piece that makes it look like a sniper launcher or a big cannon. Honestly I’m still not sure what to make of the stud launchers included with Chima sets, mostly because the Chima universe doesn’t involve shooting things, but fighting with chi powers and medieval weapons. If anything it’s a decent enough play feature.

Ice Bear Warrior: This figure has leg printing, a double-sided torso print, and the double-sided head with the single face and the tribal tattoo on the back. His chest has tattoos as well, the only part of his print that shows the decaying nature is his right eye which shows folds of pink flesh beneath the eye.

He has the big scimitar sword and a trans-clear blue energy shield for accessories. Pretty impressive for a foot solider, nothing too crazy, it might have been nice to see the ice bear tribe symbol printed on the shield to differentiate it from the shields included with the minifigures in the legend beast sets.

The Model

Again the build isn’t much to talk about. It’s a quick and fast little build that doesn’t use many new or unique parts outside of the new disc launcher. It’s designed to be a defense station with the shape of an ice bear in the front, it’s a really interesting little build.

This time the discs for the launcher are printed with a swirling ice crystal design that just looks cool, heh heh, the standard is awesome. A snarling ice bear in a field of ice, these tribe flags are just pure awesome and I kind of wish that LEGO would have included more of them for the other tribes, especially the eagles, ravens and phoenixes.

Overall opinion

I strongly recommend this set because we aren’t getting very many ice bears and this is the only set that includes them on their own, for building your army. The battle packs of Chima should have been included at the start, it would have made for an awesome opportunity to troop build. I do wish that all of them had included female characters though, if only to break up the monotony of having all male tribes fighting against one another without any female characters in site.