Let’s face it: I’m pretty much a Halo Mega Bloks groupie at this point. I didn’t start out that way and I certainly never intended it, but one thing led to another, and Halo Mega Bloks is my clear frontrunner for toy line of the year for 2012. From the Covenant Seraph to the Warthog Resistance to the Brute Chieftain Chopper, it’s almost like MEGA Brands can do no wrong this year. But every once in a while a set will pop up that’s not especially bad, per se, but certainly not especially good either. The Halo Mega Bloks Covenant Armory II 96997 is just such a set…

 The Right:

The best feature of this set is that it features a very rare Sangheili armor permutation: the Elite Commando. We get countless Halo Mega Bloks Elite Combat figures released every year, but relatively few of the other classes of Elite. A Sangheili has more fingers than there are Elite Commandos being released in 2012, so it’s very nice to be guaranteed an Elite Commando is a small, relatively cheap Armory Pack like this one.

One of the high points of the set is, as is usually the case with the small figure-centered sets, all of the Covenant weapons are fully-painted. Larger sets contain more pieces and figures, but it’s only in these small sets that we get highly-detailed weapons with paint deco on them. In this particular set there are a trio of fully-painted guns included: a Needler, a Needle Rifle, and a Plasma Rifle. I’ll talk about how I feel about the selection in a bit, but it’s a definite pro that we get three fully-painted weapons in a $6-$7 set at all.

The actual construction of this set is fast and easy squared. No, really–you can build the entire Halo Mega Bloks Covenant Armory II in less than a minute. I did, and that was while stopping to take photos–and I’m a slow builder. If you want a quick army-builder to bolster your Covenant ranks and go into battle almost immediately, then this is a great set to buy.

As with most sets this year, there’s an extra “Customize!” piece included with the set. In this case, it’s a gold yellow Elite Combat head so you can mod your Elite Commando figure into an Elite Combat figure if you really want. I complain an awful lot about the sheer number of Elite Combat figures MEGA Brands releases each year, but at least this a new color for the figure. And to be genuinely honest, I think the Elite Combat figure actually looks more detailed and interesting on this figure than the Elite Commando head (unfortunately).

The Wrong:

There are three main components to this set (the figure, the armory, and the weapons), and I’m not entirely happy about any of them.

I think it’s cool to get an uncommon colored figure in this Armory set, but the yellow Elite Commando just does not look good. Whereas the white Spartan Air Assault Mega Bloks figure shipping with this set looks exquisitely detailed and full of great paint apps, this yellow Elite looks almost devoid of any kind of detailing. The figures in these figure-centric packs are usually very nicely-detailed, but this “gold” Elite Commando has next to no paint applications on him at all. When you compare him to something like the World of Warcraft Mega Bloks Light Hoof the Tauren Paladin, this yellow Elite looks downright horrible. Maybe I’m getting spoiled by the work being done in the Mega Bloks World of Warcraft line, but this yellow Elite Mega Bloks figure just looks plain and unimpressive.

As for the “Armory”, well… this set really doesn’t come with much of one. There are a couple purple bricks that build a lump on the base plate, and some grasping pieces you can plug the guns into. There’s no real armory here to speak of this time. The armory portion of this “Covenant Armory Pack II” is underwhelming to say the least.

Finally, I think that the good folks at MEGA Brands really need to think harder about what painted weapons to include in these sets. I feel like just in the past half-year I’ve accumulated a small army of painted Needle Rifles and Needlers. I love painted Halo weapons, but I need more diversity in my collection. I think this set would have been a great place to include a painted Plasma Launcher or Plasma Repeater or any number of weapons that haven’t been getting the same ubiquitous treatment as the Needle Rifle has this year. Will I take another painted Needle Rifle and Needler? Yeah. But would I prefer something else be included in these sets? Definitely.

“Where Can I Buy It?!”
I’ve never seen the Halo Mega Bloks Covenant Armory Pack II 96997 in stores. At all. I bought mine off of Amazon, who have it in-stock with free shipping right now. At this point, I’m not really sure if this set is going to be widely-distributed, so that may be your best bet.

Overall: For a 2012 Halo Mega Bloks product, this set is simply below the average quality we’ve come to know and expect. While this set isn’t a terrible product, there’s nothing terribly compelling here either. It’s great to get a cheap Mega Bloks Elite Commando figure, but the “gold” paint is terribly ugly and the figure is virtually devoid of any kind of paint deco whatsoever. If you look at the packaging photos and the instructions, there are lots of paint apps on this figure that simply aren’t present on the final figure, and the whole set suffers for it. The “Armory” part of the set is just a base plate and some guns on a rack that looks like a purple rock, and the painted weapons chosen for this set are uninspired and nothing at all special. I like getting another Elite Commando and I like painted weapons, but this set just fails

GRADE: C-