Battle Of Metru Nui is pretty much the largest of the BIONICLE® playsets LEGO® has released. This set once built can be separated into seven individual “towers”:

*Front gate
*Left catapult tower
*Right catapult tower
*Left breakaway wall
*Right breakaway wall
*left wall towr
*Right wall tower

Keep in mind that the wall towers that sit on top of the breakaway walls are identical, while the catapult towers and breakaway walls are just mirrored replicas (If you had one, you could look at it’s refection in a mirror to see what the other side looks like.) So I will review the set in these segments: Front gate, Catapults, Breakaway walls, and Wall towers. For some of the pictures I just used the double to get both a front and back shot in the same picture, or to compare when something is opened or closed.

The Front gate probably stands out the most, as it is a gigantic red version of a Great Hau mask, unless I’m mistaken anyway. The mouth of the mask is a very nice arc shape in which the Toa and other creatures may pass through quite easily. It is much more easy to handle something through this gate than the Kiril mask that makes up the TOWER OF TOA’s entrance. At the top of the mask you will find a hole in which the zip cord enters to access the spinner’s slot. A big drawback, while the rhotuka in the mask is a cool feature, you cant aim it to hit anything unless you move something rather too tall for the playset right in front of it. If you look at the three holes at the “nose” right above the arc, a small construction with clips to hold the bars of the gate in place plugs into the three holes. A great plus about the gate design, is that the rhotucka zip cord can remain in place without getting in the way of the bars, which are spaced so that lifting the gate all the way up means the rip cord will go easily between the bars.

On the front gate you will also notice two older toa heads, I imagine this is a great spot to display a rare or favorite mask, if you don’t mind it being where dust may reach it. The two wall towers also have a toa head, meaning you have four mask spots in all, so maybe you could coordinate the design and add four hau masks to accompany the gigantic one on the gate? The draw bridge on the front gate is easily one of my favorite features. Built properly it easily slides in and out when you turn the gear at the right front side of the Hau mask. The front ramp gives access to the drawbridge, and of particular interest is that I’ve noticed the ramp can be detached and moved closer in to the front gate, making the drawbridge shorter if you prefer that. Since the ramp attaches to the front gate by a studded plate you can lock it in at the preferred distance.

Another thing of interest is that a small piece, easily removed, prevents the drawbridge from sliding back in too far, and after removing that you can use parts from your own collection to make the drawbridge longer (but the extra long bridge might stick out the back). I would like to see someone make a bridge extension that connected two distantly placed playests.

Last of all on the main gate, there are two projectile slots intended to fire the ends of a Kurahk staff. The staff ends are fired by spinning a gear on the backside of BOMN’s gate that pushes a sort of hammer to shoot it out of the slot. A major downfall is that the ramp tends to get in the way of the projectiles, which makes me think maybe they chose Kurahk’s staff because the angles can make it ricochet off the ramp instead of stopping on it?

The catapult towers in BOMN are far better in design to the one included with TOWER OF TOA. Once built the catapults are a very nice addition to the set. My only complaint is that the catapults throw the multicolored rocks against the ground, as versus arcing through the air. However they are designed to mow down VISORAK minifigures along the ground anyway. Ittcertainlylooks interesting the way the TAKANUVA scythes pivot with the bucket that throws the rock. Sometimes the catapults did get stuck facing forward, but they easily could just be poked right back over. The diagonal gray parts that you push down upon to make the catapult throw are very nicely positioned, and make throwing the rocks easy.

The breakaway walls as I call them, are a great design! While they are actually a mechanism to drop rocks onto an enemy nearby the wall, they double as a trapdoor for minifigures standing on the trapdoors at the top of the wall. Since the breakaway walls are activated by pushing the top of the panel in, you can have some great fun using the VISORAK BATTERING RAM to smack open panels and make toa fall through and slide out on the ramp the wall section becomes when knocked open.

The design of the trapdoors are ingeniously done, there is no need to reset a pin like most trapdoors in LEGO sets require. The front panels open and close on a hinge towards the bottom of the panel. When opened and closed, the panel slides up against a smooth bump attached to the trapdoor’s underside. When it is moved into place closing the hidden feature, the top of the panel moves and locks at one end of the bump. When pushed open, the panel slides past the bump and falls down onto a sort of guardrail part, keeping it at a slant stuff can fall down it.

Going into the Wall towers which sit on top of the breakaway walls, there are some smooth plates and a couple studded plates for the towers to attach to. The smooth plates keep the tower from completely plugging into the wall, making it easily detached, while the rest of the set connects to it’s neighboring modules by a couple non friction clips. The wall towers have three floors, the first of which is more of a hole that lets whatever it’s sitting on be the first floor. It’s also intended to let something sitting on that floor still be able to fall through the trapdoor it sits upon. As a bonus to the tower’s first floor, it’s construction makes it easy for you to line up a boulder correctly so it doesn’t end up plugging the hole instead of falling through it. The second floor of the towers is pretty much empty space, where I expect people who don’t mind altering the set will add something like a bucket to drop rocks down on foes, or perhaps a missile launcher from another site. The top floor does give you some more room to set your minifigures and such but the terrace style wall limits the space somewhat, meaning you’d likely just place your minifigs there. The towers were probably placed there so you can have a high up spot to attach the VISORAK vines, so if the vines had never been in the set I imagine the towers would have been replaced by another sort of feature.

Last of all there is the Kahgarak variation. It is pretty much your average VISORAK except that it has been modified to shoot VISORAK miniatures. I found this feature difficult to use because you have to pull back the pin in it’s back and then tilt the visorak so the mini vissie would slide into place for the rubber band powered hammer to hit. And even then some miniatures just don’t slide easily down the rail. If you can find one that easily slides into place, you just might get a good distance firing it, but then again maybe not. All VISORAK miniatures have notches in their undersides that allow them to slide across a technic bar, as well as a slot in their mouths to let you attach them to the green web rope included with this playset.. As I mentioned in another article you can flip them through the air pressing on their back ends.

Overall I think the set is a great addition to the BIONICLE series, as well as the themed playsets in general. The set is VERY wide compared to most sets I’ve seen, and I am very surprised LEGO only charges $80.00 for it. I’ve seen a $100.00 price tag on sets half as large. Considering how wide it is, I think it is better to play with it using two people, one to control the VISORAK swarms, the other the toa forces as the defenders. Combine the set with the VISORAK BATTERING RAM and you’ve got a perfect way to play out a siege attack on this BIONICLE stronghold. A great advantage, like TOWER OF TOA this set is separated in modules that can easily be unclipped and re-arranged to your desires, this includes attaching BATTLE OF METRU NUI to TOWER OF TOA and turning it into a much larger stronghold. With the right parts you could arrange them to encircle a courtyard and have it be a square shaped stronghold, and just as easily separate them and put them back the way they were.