We’re jumping to the NEXO level of Knightly armaments with Clay Moorington’s personal vehicle, the Rumble Blade!

The box does a fantastic job of showing the finished toy in it’s full glory as well as a cross-sell for the Merlok 2.0 app I gave my thoughts on last time. The contents includes three bags of assorted parts — around 367 in total — a sticker sheet and an instruction booklet.

The set includes a nice assortment of 5 minifigures, though technically I guess three aren’t truly minifigs but their own unique little pieces but for the sake of ease, let’s just refer to them as minifigs.

Ash Attacker and Scurrier are two little army builders, devoid real personality and just generic cannon fodder. They share the red and black colour scheme of all the lava monsters and while the Ash Attacker looks like a more colourful orc from Lord of the Rings, the Scurrier’s unique three-piece body makes him stand out a fair bit.

The Claybots are an adorable double act of little robots who seemingly act as squires for the knights, providing support as needed. They share the same double-printed face so you can distinguish them if you wish.

Clay is the leader of the NEXO Knights; A humble farm boy who proved his valor and earned his NEXO Powers when Jestro and his lava monster army attacked. He’s rendered pretty well in plastic form, looking super heroic and even with the limited minifigure articulation, he can pull off some cool poses.

In addition to his broadsword, Clay can be equipped with any of the three include NEXO Powers, which include Backlash Lightning, Phoenix Blaze and Slime Blast. While I haven’t had the chance to scan any into the app yet, I can imagine they’re your typical chain lightning, fire AOE and poison projectile attacks in-game.

The first bag contains all the parts you need to build the Sword Speeder. It’s rather a simple build, with the cockpit providing most of the focus until you expand into the ‘blade’ of the flying vehicle and the wings. Once built, it’s a sleek little number and fits with the blade-wielding Clay’s aesthetic. I especially dig the forward-swept wings that give the look of a hilt and ties the whole sword-plane idea together nicely. There is room for Clay to pilot the vehicle as well as some neat weapon storage.

    The second bag features the two vehicles for the Claybots; the Sword Break Bikes. Each is built identically, with the huge wheels being the central components that keep the vehicles together. Again, fairly simple build but you have to build everything twice with some mirrored components. The finished bikes make a nice little duo and also include storage for their weapons.

The third bag builds the… I don’t think this thing has a name but it’s the central body for the Rumble Blade and acts as both a launching platform for the Sword Speeder and as a mobile artillery station. It’s a fairly uninteresting, bare-bones build but is an ultimately vital component to the end result. Still, look at those big chunky wheels!

The completed Rumble Blade is a thing of beauty. The colours and silhouette remind me of some the colour toys of my youth. It’s got shades of the Thunder Tank from Thundercats and it’s action features really remind of the Buzzard vehicle from M.A.S.K. It’s a robust design and all it’s base components hold together in the combined form pretty solidly. While the Sword Break Bikes can be launched in tandem thanks to the sled that runs through the core of the base vehicle, the Sword Speeder has to be manually unhooked but that’s a minor nitpick on my part.

All in all, for an RRP of £29.99, I can highly recommend Clay’s Rumble Blade because I had an absolute blast with it. The build is simple and fun and results in one of the most bad-ass LEGO vehicles I’ve interacted with in recent years. There’s a lot of playability in the set itself and the NEXO Powers add more play value for the game too.

The NEXO Knights, as well as having rocking sets revolving around typical knightly themes of jousting, castles and bashing in monsters with a techno-magic twist, also have these entry level sets with ‘Ultimate’ versions of the NEXO Knights characters. We’ll be taking a look at two of those today so let’s armour up!

The Ultimate booster sets are £6.99 each and feature one NEXO Knight character, three NEXO Power shields and assortment of related armour and weapons designed to augment the playability of the other sets. I like to think of them as the Minifigure-scale equivalent of the Bionicle character releases and definitely a cheaper alternative to buying full sets if you just want the NEXO Knights characters.

Beast Master, judging by the media, is a pretty low-ranking goon whose only defining feature is that he wrangles the Globlins. This Ultimate set contains 65 pieces and one instruction booklet.

Once built, Beast Master and his armour pieces are all contained on his own little themed stand which I really dig. It’s a neat storage solution and having multiple character will make a nice little display.

Beast Master’s default loadout has a Globlin-swinging backpack, a drill weapon and the Globlin Attack NEXO Power. I found the swinging mechanism to be a bit stiff and would always catch too easily which probably wasn’t the intended effect. Alternatively, I found you can clip the chained Globlins to the back of BM’s shield.

The second power is the Spirit Vortex, which includes a shield-like piece made to look like swirling mystical energy which looks pretty cool.

The third and final NEXO Power is Dynamighty which… conjures dynamite? Maybe it does, I don’t know, I’ve only managed to scan a couple powers into the free app (which we’ll talk about later) so I’m unsure what all these do in-universe.

Aaron is the NEXO Knights team jokester and resident nightmare fetishist sharpshooter. He’s the laid-back gamer of the group and even uses his shield as a flying hoverboard! His Ultimate set contains 82 pieces and one instruction booklet.

Again, Ultimate Aaron comes with a neat little display for himself and, living up to the ultimate moniker, Aaron looks like he’s rocking a powered up version of his original form with translucent green armour pieces.

Aaron’s default loadout includes an upgraded version of his trademark crossbow, a green energy stud blaster backpack and the Arrow Strike NEXO Power. That is a lot of green… This form is really quite cumbersome and I find it difficult to pose him but he’s got a ton o’ guns so that’s cool.

The Target Blaster NEXO Power seems to revolve around marksmanship and includes a more traditional bow and a night-vison helmet. I imagine this would be for quick, precision strikes against the evil lava monster army.

Finally, Aaron’s last NEXO Power is quite possibly my favourite because it both matches his personality and is utterly ludicrous. The Banana Bombs NEXO Power combines with Aaron’s Ultimate armour and grants him a couple banana blasters on his back with plenty of extra ammunition. Combine that with his cheeky alternate face and Aaron definitely becomes more endearing for me.

All in all, the Ultimate sets I’ve reviewed here are a good representation of the line and I really dig them. They’re nice entry-level sets for the NEXO Knights line and all the characters are present between the two waves (wave 2 coming later in the summer) plus you get 3 NEXO Powers per set which will make strides towards you completing the set of 108 that will be available, which can be used in the free app I mentioned earlier. Speaking of…

I apologise for the poor quality screenshots (this is a really cheap tablet and cannot take screenshots) but I actually took a dive into the LEGO NEXO Knights: Merlok 2.0 game that’s available through the Apple app store and Google play store for free. It’s a pretty decent adventure game and every NEXO Power included in the NEXO Knights sets can be scanned into the game for additional powers, which I did. It’s simple, intuitive and is perfect for any young NEXO Knights fan looking for more playability.