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CC Set Review: 9476 - Orc Forge

Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 1:15 pm
by Bruce N H
Join the Classic Castle set review discussion. Please post your opinions on the set play ability, piece selection, design, etc. Which sets stand up to our catapult of critique and which ones crumble in shame!

This week’s set is 9476 - Orc Forge:

Image

This 2012 set was an exclusive, only available at Target. It included four orcs (two from Mordor, and two, including Lurtz, from Orthanc). The forge suggests that this is meant to represent the arming of Orthanc, though the mixing of orc kindreds really fits better the race of the mingled group of orcs across the northern frontiers of Rohan with captives Merry and Pippin in tow.

Bruce

Re: CC Set Review: 9476 - Orc Forge

Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 1:44 pm
by rogue27
I liked this quite a bit. Lots of cool figures and parts. It contained my first 1x1 round tiles, dark tan plates, olive green cheese wedges, a light element, and it has a lot of functions that remind me of the Dwarven Mine set from the late 00s.

Only thing I never liked is how the light bleeds out through the cracks between the bricks.

Re: CC Set Review: 9476 - Orc Forge

Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2014 7:43 pm
by Sir Erathor
I really liked this set. My brother got it for Christmas a couple of years ago, and it's full of good features. The winch and the 'metal slide' are both quite fun, though they lose their appeal quite quickly. Obviously, the light brick effect is the best part, and though it does show through the rocks, it looks rather realistic. The figures are cool - Lurtz is especially nice - and it's great to get some more White Hand of Saruman-printed shields and breastplates. There are actually some spare ones that could be worn by other Uruk-Hai or Lurtz himself.

Re: CC Set Review: 9476 - Orc Forge

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 3:16 pm
by Justin M
I picked up a few copies of this set when it came out-well worth it!

Re: CC Set Review: 9476 - Orc Forge

Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2014 7:32 pm
by Elephant Knight
Quite an excellent set. Four orcs of various kinds is nice, but a fifth would have been even better. Lots of good lovely parts, too.

Overall I give this set an 8.1

On a side not, when I got this, I got a Jedi Starfighter as well, and had lots of fun with Lurtz stealing said starfighter.

EKnight

Re: CC Set Review: 9476 - Orc Forge

Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2014 1:48 pm
by Bruce N H
I didn't get this set, so these are only my impressions from seeing pictures. I thought this set was missing one thing - Saruman (who had not yet appeared in any set at the time this was released). I suppose my other two thoughts are first that if this is a forge, there should be more weapons. Also, the mixing of orc tribes is nice from the standpoint of collecting the figs, but odd from the standpoint of this being set in Saruman's fortress. Mordor orcs were never there, so it would have made more sense to have just Uruk Hai. That said, it was pretty easy to accumulate Uruk Hai given set 9471, Uruk Hai Army, which was a better army builder set, so I can appreciate the inclusion of the rarer Mordor orcs.

Bruce

Re: CC Set Review: 9476 - Orc Forge

Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2014 2:14 pm
by mpoh98
My brother has this set, and I agree that it is a fantastic set. The minifigs are great, fantastic part pieces, the only downside is that it was a hard to find, and it was a little pricey. Other than that, I quite like this set. :)

Re: CC Set Review: 9476 - Orc Forge

Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2014 10:55 pm
by Athos
I don't know what to say about this set. There is a lot of earth tones and a lot of figures. I'd like it a lot more if the orcs all came with the ear/hair pieces.

Steve

Re: CC Set Review: 9476 - Orc Forge

Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2014 12:22 am
by Formendacil
The odd thing about this set, good or bad, seems to me to be the *diversity* of the Orcs. The Moria/Uruk-hai divide has been noted already, but even beyond that the Uruk-hai are sub-divided between a fully-uniformed Uruk and a freshly-born, loincloth-clad, Uruk. The reason this strikes me as odd is because, although it is not a traditional army-builder set as such (heavy on the minifigs with some tacked-on build in the $12-$20 range), this does seem like the sort of set, at least on the minifig front, intended to induce people to buy multiple copies, and I think that that would have been better telescoped by having solely Uruk-hai in the set--especially if they were going to leave off including Saruman!

That said, the inclusion of the Moria Orcs, though not especially true to the Books, *does* jive with my memories of the movie. In that narrative, Saruman's timespan of modifying orkish genetics from your garden-variety Ork (of which the Moria Orcs are typical) to sun-resistant Uruk-hai seems to take place in the span of the time Gandalf is imprisoned in Orthanc--and I believe we *do* see some of these garden variety Orcs in the process, though they are shunted offscreen once Saruman has sufficient Uruk-hai to do his bidding.

As play-sets go, this actually strikes me as one of the better ones out there. The multi-level structure is fun and the glowing fire makes the whole raised structure evocative of an island--perhaps in an underground lake of lava (as unrealistic as that might be). And more Orcs are always nice.