I may not be a big fan or collector of Marvel, but I know a fun set when I see one. .

Box/Instructions

The set comes in a normal box and has ordinary and easy to follow instructions.

Parts

There are two of the new 2015 stud shooters that attach to bricks. There is also a trans red window and door piece in the set. There are only three stickers in the set but I feel they are good.

Minifigures

As far as I can tell, all the minifigures are new for the year. I absolutely love the new Iron Man figure.

The completed model

The completed model is very nice. I like the sub. It has a prison cell where captain America is trapped. It an be deployed with a chain holding the prison to the submarine. You can shoot at villains with the two shooters.

Overall opinion

This set has a lot of good play features as well as good minifigs. I think this is a decent set.

As a longtime Marvel Comics fan, I never heard of the 'Iron' Red-Skull before. This immediately drew me towards this set (apparently based on the Avengers Assemble cartoon show) and to my surprise I found a submarine seemingly designed by the likes of a Jack Kirby, John Buscema or a dandy Don Heck!

With an nice industrial chunky submarine design, EXCELLENT mini-figs, and lots of playability, The Iron Skull Sub Attack is a great set. Gonna' break it down below...

Box/Instructions:

Front Box Art.

Back Box Art.

Excellent clear illustrations and instructions as usual with Lego but mine came crushed and terribly folded (much more than usual). Also includes a Lego Marvel Superheroes Avengers mini-comic covering the Iron Sub and Avenjet Space Mission.

Minifigures:

-Iron Man Mark 37(Scuba Iron Man), excellent sand green armor with beautiful printed details, bronze printing on body/legs/helmet, excellent sculpted removable body armor, removable helmet with hinged faceplate, dual faced head (one confident Stark, one battle angry), arc reactor printed on clear round flat stud on chest.

-Iron Skull (Red Skull with stolen Stark tech?), excellent printed graphics throughout (especially small red skull arc reactor graphic), nicely designed angry Red Skull face (no dual face).

-Captain America (Scuba Captain America), another excellently printed figure with underwater breathing apparatus, always great shield, flippers, and note back of Cap's head has metallic silver graphic to complete back of the breathing apparatus (nice touch to complete look).

- Hydra Diver with DPV (Diver Propulsion Vehicle), and the great printing continues, with underwater breathing apparatus, flippers, dual harpoon weapons mounted on nicely designed DPV.

The IRON-SUB build:

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This front section (above) is a nice build to sculpt out the menacing face and teeth. Simple but good technique here.

I like the engines here but the back of the island is too flat. Should be built out more.

On these 3 shots (above), you see the Energy Prison Cell which can hold one minifig. It uses stickers for the red beam graphic, an opening front door has a printed keypad tile. The cell is held in place with a hinge (which tilts down and will detach), a chain (proper length but dangles too low), and simple effective locking mechanism (underneath).

Also you'll see a pair of stud shooters on either side of the sub and note a red Hydra graphic on roof of island. There are two more Hydra graphics left and right sides of the ship. They are all stickers.

You see above weapons storage to hold extra studs for stud shooters and repulsor energy for Iron Skull.

Iron Skull in his cockpit. Fits nicely but no details within.

Overall this is a great set for minifig collectors (unique figures here), a sturdy fun model (kids can enjoy this sub which is a strong build and can stand up to rigorous play) with good play features, and of course 'Make Mine Marvel' fans!

At 335+ pieces for $29.99usd, it's a good value as well.

EXCELSIOR!

This is one of the least exciting sets from the more recent Marvel releases. It's 4 nice minifigs with a really odd, not particularly fun black brick that is some sort of submarine.

Parts - a few cool elements mainly the trans red window and door and a bunch of SNOT pieces.

Minifigs - 4 minifigs ranging from pretty nice to AWESOME;

Deep Sea Iron Man - The sea going Iron Man is far and away the best thing in the set. It is single handedly the reason to buy the set. he is AWESOME! he is an overall sand green. His torso has front and back printing. He has leg printing. He has that nice outer chest armor piece in sand green and he has a printed trans clear 1x1 round tile with a distinct sand green Arc Reactor on it. His head has 2 faces (standard Tony Stark) and his helmet is sand green with a distinct and I believe unique Copper faceplate. every single thing about this figure is amazing. It is flawless. A must have for any Marvel or Iron Man collection. (My only complaint is quite frankly absurd and petty. Traditionally in the comics Iron Mans underwater suit has a clear outer dome over the helmet, much like Buzz Lightyear. I wish they could have done that. But that's just me. I'll shut up now this figure is perfect.)

Scuba Suit Captain America - The torso is a fairly common modern Cap with a brown belt and silver side armor markings. Front and back printing. No leg printing. His head is a front back printed piece with goggles and silver markings to indicate it is a scuba suit. He also gets a standard "rebreather" piece and a pair of red fins. No tank on his back. he comes with the standard and common shield. The one where the white seems a little weak over the red plastic. He is the same core minifig as the Space Captain America found in the Avenjet set. As such he is the weakest minifig in the set.

The "Iron Skull" - Basically the red skull in some sort of Iron Man type armor suit. Honestly, it's a Red Skull figure. It has some nice front and back torso printing and leg printing to imply he is wearing some sort of armor, but it isn't that distinct. and he just has the standard Red Skull head with no helmet. he is a great fantastically detailed figure, and probably the better Red Skull variant. But nothing about him really screams 'Iron Skull".

"Scuba" Hydra Bob - It's Scuba Suit Hydra Bob! The generic Hydra henchman! And he is fantastic. I'm a sucker for Henchmen. We get to few of them. I especially love the Hydra goons in classic green comic colors. This guy is great. Front and back torso printing. No leg printing and a nice head with a scuba mask. He gets a rebreather like Cap and lime green flippers. There is also a small build for Bob's "Undersea Scooty Putt" dive scooter. It's pretty cool. He adds points to the set just for rarity of good henchmen.

The Build/Model - The build or rather the model is where this set falls apart. It's kind of a mostly black vaguely brick shaped thing. With a trans red phone booth slung in the middle for reasons that defy common sense. The build is a bit interesting as they do some interesting things with airplane tail pieces and trans orange clip on claws in order to get the skull motif on the front. But after that... bleah. It's a tiny oddly shaped completely not hydrodynamic submarine, with a huge hole in the floor of the cockpit, and as I said a phone booth with trans red windows in the middle, that the Iron Skull is going to trap somebody in, then drop into the sea? Only he has it chained to his sub so when he jettisons it, it gets dragged along behind him like a dog on a leash? Yeah absolutely nothing about this thing makes any sense. Even worse, the middle of the sub has these broad trans red pieces from the phone booth/prisoner cell. But they butt directly against the trans black cockpit canopy and clash horribly with it visually. The cockpit needed to be trans red as well to look right.

The set comes with a sheet of stickers. I normally put stickers on as I like "complete" models as the designers intended, and more often than not they do add a great deal of visual pop. I didn't in this case. They would have done nothing for the model and pretty much ruined the useablity of the only interesting bits in the set. The trans red glass.

Overview - Get this set for the minifgs ONLY. The build is a waste. This would have been an OK $20 set. At $28 it's grossly overpriced for what you get. If you can get it on discount, you win. The set is really all about the Amazing Iron Man fig.

Lego continues to release kits from the Marvel animated shows with the Iron Skull Sub Attack from Avengers Assemble.

Box/Instructions

The standard mid range size rectangular box for a kit in this price range. Price per piece ratio is as expected for a kit of this size.
Iron Man is the figure of choice on the top with a scene of all 4 figures next to him engaged in underwater combat. The front of the box shows Iron Skull having captured Captain America while Iron man does battle with a Hydra soldier. The back shows the escape of Captain America and 5 more panels showing the play features.
There are two almost square instruction manuals inside, the obligatory comic (showcasing this and the Avenjet Space Mission) and a sticker sheet.

Parts

A good number of parts, mainly black and red with elements of grey in the mix. A few new pieces for my own collection which is always nice and some stand out yellow elements built into the underside of the sub.
There are 3 bags in the box.
Bag 1 contains Iron Man, the Hydra Soldier, the Hydra Aquajet and the central hull of iron Skull's sub.
Bag 2 contains Captain America, Iron Skull, the rest of Iron Skull's sub (minus the front) and the prisoner containment module.
Bag 3 contains the forward hull of Iron Skull's sub.

Minifigures

The set comes with 4 minifigures.
Firstly we have Captain America. This is the same as the one in the Avenjet Space Mission and has nice reflective silver detailing and printing on the head and torso. He comes equipped with red flippers, a grey breather unit and his trusty shield.
Secondly we have Iron Man in his Mark 37 Hammerhead armour. Looking good in green and gold, this minifigure is probably one of the most armoured Iron Man suits to date. Like the Silver Centurion, it has a large armour section for the upper body and a small pack attached to his back. The light orange repulsar effects are a nice touch, as is the small tile for the chest RT. Tony has the same two sided head used before with the smiling / angry faces.
Next we have the Hydra Soldier. It's nice to have another one decked out in the old green and yellow outfit. We haven't had one since the Captain America vs. Hydra set of 2014. This soldier has a different head with goggles and covered mouth area. He comes armed with a harpoon gun, grey breather unit and green flippers.
Finally we have Iron Skull. This is a great little figure with some fantastic detailing. For those not familiar with Iron Skull, it's the Red Skull using an experimental suit of armour he stole from Tony Stark. The grey and red detailing against the black body and legs looks really nice and the red repulsar effects add to the look.

The build

Total building time, 20 minutes.
It's a very straightforward build with nothing very complicated in the construction.
The Hydra Aquajet is nice and solid and looks great with the diver attached. The twin harpoon guns add to the playability and there's some nice detailing for such a small model.
The sub's quite a sturdy design and very playable for children. The mechanism to secure the prisoner containment module works very well keeps it in place nicely.
The use of orange, red and grey elements among the primarily black look give a nice overall finish.
There are stickers, 7 in total. Three are just the Hydra emblem for the sides and top. The other 4 represent the 'energy bars' on the prisoner containment module.

The completed models

The Hydra Aquajet is a nice little addition to the set and despite it's small size, the designer has made it quite detailed, added features like lights and twin guns to add playability. A nice solid mini vehicle.
The Aquajet measures 4 cm long. 4 cm wide and 2.5 cm tall.
Iron Skull's sub is a curious looking vehicle with both its charms and its flaws. The view from the fore, with the orange and red amongst the black give the sub the appearance of a sea creature about to attack.
There are 2 stud shooters mounted on each side of the forward hull, opening cockpit canopy, positionable aft stabiliser wings, 2 opening compartments in the upper forward hull (to store the repulsar effects and spare stud shooter ammunition) and the removable prisoner containment module.
The module has an opening door on one side, sealed with a small 1x1 keypad. It can be towed behind the sub on a chain or it can clip into the hull and swing up to occupy the middle section of the sub.
There are a couple of parts of the design that needed a little more thought. The cockpit is open to the ocean and not sealed in any way which seems a little silly, especially when extending the length by 2 studs and adding a baseplate and a couple of bricks would allow this to be rectified.
When the prisoner containment module is not docked with the sub there is just a massive hole in the ship's hull, opening the cockpit even more and looking somewhat unsightly.
The sub measures 21 cm long, 13 cm wide (at aft wing tips) and 9 cm tall.

Overall opinion

Not a bad set but not one of the best in the current Marvel range. However, collector's will want to get this one for the excellent selection of minifigures, especially the awesome Mark 37 Hammerhead Armour.