I keep mentioning Hasbro’s Marvel Legends as being the front-runner for my 2012 Toy Line of the Year, but its main threat for that title is certainly the Halo Mega Bloks line. Virtually every Halo Mega Bloks set MEGA Brands has put out this year has been pure gold, and the hits just keep coming. Today I’m covering the Halo Mega Bloks Covenant Seraph 97015, a vehicle that I didn’t even know the name of from the games. But despite that, as soon as I saw the Seraph, I knew I wanted it. Obscure as it may be, the Covenant Seraph isn’t just a vehicle to stick at the back of your display–it’s one of my favorite Halo Mega Bloks sets ever…

The Right:

MEGA Brands is releasing the Halo Mega Bloks UNSC Sabre (with gantry!) this summer, which made it pretty imperative to get some Covie ships out for the Sabre to blow out of space. In response to this need, as part of the Summer 2012 Halo Mega Bloks wave, we’re getting the all-new Orbital Banshee Blitz and Covenant Seraph sets. The Covenant Seraph isn’t the most well-known or high-profile spaceship in Halo, but it has appeared in most of the games, as well as the classic Eric Nylund Halo novels. The Seraph-class starfighter is one of the Covenant’s most effective tools in a space battle, as well as being one of the most elegant Covenant ships.

The Halo Mega Bloks Covenant Seraph sounds expensive with its retail price of around 65 dollars, but for a set containing 566 pieces that measures almost 19″ long, it’s not a bad set at all. While the Seraph is a bit obscure, this is a big set! Hell, the instruction booklet for this set alone is larger than my cat.

The Covenant Seraph’s color scheme is totally unlike the past Halo Mega Bloks Covenant vehicles that I have. While all of my other Covenant vehicles are in almost eye-searing bright purple, MEGA Brands have designed the Covenant Seraph in a primarily dark indigo color. The Seraph looks quite sleek and formidable in the darker purple color scheme, and the few maroon and magenta parts on the Covenant Seraph really stand out and look great complementing the dark indigo.

Some of the previous Mega Bloks Halo vehicles have had hatches that would easily fall or snap off when you went to open them, and it was a real pain. That’s not a concern here, as the Covenant Seraph has one of the very best hatches I’ve ever seen on a vehicle. A long and sturdy hinge piece has been included that allows you to slide the hatch open and closed, and it’s strong enough that you can have the hatch sit partially-opened stably. It’s fantastic engineering and an aspect of this set that I really enjoy. I love being able to open the hatch and spy on the Elite Pilot hanging out in the cockpit.

The flight stand that comes with this set is really awesome. The flight stand allows the Halo Mega Bloks Covenant Seraph to hover about 5 inches off the ground, and is It plugs into the bottom of the Seraph, but doesn’t snap in, so you can easily take the Seraph on and off of the flight stand.

Three Mega Bloks Halo figures are included as part of the 97015 Covenant Seraph set: a gold Elite General, a dark blue Elite Pilot, and a dark blue Elite Combat. The Elite General is the big prize here, as he is an all-new mold (whereas we have about a million Elite Pilot and Elite Combat figures). The Elite General features the rhino-like helmet and rectangular shoulder pads characteristic of that rank, and is colored using the shiny gold paint I liked so much on the Elite Combat Drop Pod’s figure. MEGA Brands is really spoiling us this year, as they already debuted the all-new Elite Ascetic and Elite Ultra figure molds during the winter.

The Elite Combat and Elite Pilot figures are pretty standard and exactly what we’ve come to expect from those figures, but I do really like the dark blue paint on them. It’s very stylish and I much prefer it to the “bright blue crayon” Elites we’ve been getting in the Versus: Red vs. Blue sets. Also, the set contains armory “Customize!” pieces to make the Elite General into a gold Elite Ultra. I actually think the gold Elite Ultra looks far cooler than the gold Elite General, so I’ll be using this figure as another Elite Ultra.

In addition to the three figures, three hand-held Covenant weapons are also included with Halo Mega Bloks 97015. The two interesting guns included here are the Plasma Launcher and the Focus Rifle, both of which are newly-released weapons for the summer. The Plasma Launcher is one of my favorite weapons in Halo Reach, so I’m pretty psyched to have one to outfit my Elites with. There’s also a Needler included, though I gather most of us have copious amounts of Needlers by now. All three weapons are molded in purple, so you’ll need to wait for Covenant Drop Pods or deluxe figure sets if you want a painted Focus Rifle or Plasma Launcher.

When I buy a ~$60 construction set, I expect to be able to spend a good number of hours building it, and I wasn’t disappointed here. It took me approximately six hours from start to finish to completely assemble the Halo Mega Bloks Covenant Seraph 97015 set. I was taking photos and taking my time during the build, so I probably could have pushed myself and gone faster, but I tend to enjoy the build and didn’t want to feel rushed. The build itself was pretty standard, although I did misread the diagram and make two stupid mistakes that cost me about half an hour of build-time.

I complain a lot about the sticker sheets, but I completely understand why a set with the sheer mass of decals like the Covenant Seraph has requires one. The sad fact is that the cost of printing all of these designs onto the pieces, rather than just having the detailing be stickers, would raise the cost of the set by likely $5-$10. So in this case, I’m not really upset that MEGA Brands chose to include a sticker sheet (though I do have issues with the stickers themselves I’ll be addressing shortly).

The Wrong:

MEGA Brands made at least three mistakes with the sticker sheet, of which one is annoying and one is really annoying. First off, they misnumbered the stickers that get applied in step 70. They could be stickers 31-34, but they’re labeled in the diagram as 27-30. A smart builder can figure it out, no biggie. The outer shape of stickers 25 and 26 should have been mirrored for one of them, but wasn’t. As a result, you kind of have to cram one of the stickers onto the surface to get it to fit. Not a huge problem, but a surprising and irritating one.

The really problematic issue with the stickers is with stickers 17 and 18. These are meant to go on opposing sides of the Seraph, but still be symmetrical. Unfortunately, one of the stickers needed to be mirrored in order to achieve the desired effect and be applied on the ship as shown in the diagrams. Instead, both stickers are exactly the same and thus cannot be properly applied. Without being mirrored at the factory, the designs on the stickers will always be mismatched and look awkward when viewing the ship from overhead (where you can see both designs at once). This isn’t exactly an earth-shattering oversight that ruins the set, but I hope MEGA Brands has the stickers corrected for later runs of the Covenant Seraph and offers replacement stickers to early consumers. As it is, the asymmetrical stickers on the ship set off my obsessive-compulsive disorder something terrible.

Also, I’m somewhat disappointed in the lack of paint deco on the Elite General. The Elite General armor permutation isn’t the most colorful design to begin with, but there’s really very little detail on this figure–he looks like a big gold lump. He doesn’t look terrible or anything, but as this new figure is one of the big selling-points of a ~$65 set, I really wish more work was put into the paint applications. If it was a choice between having a better-detailed Elite General or including yet another Elite Combat figure, I genuinely would have been happy foregoing the Elite Combat figure.

“Where Can I Buy It?!”

As of writing, your options are limited. I haven’t read any reports of anyone finding the Halo Mega Bloks Covenant Seraph in a physical store yet, and the one I have came from online retailer BigBadToyStore, who has the Covenant Seraph up for order for 64.99 right now.

Other online retailers have had the Seraph in-and-out of stock, so your best bet is to check back frequently.

Overall: I think the Covenant Seraph itself is outstanding, with no real flaws to the build whatsoever. Despite being made of construction blocks, the Covenant Seraph looks sensational and is a phenomenal representation of the vehicle. The flight stand that allows the Seraph to hover works superbly, and I honestly hope we get a redone Phantom with this style of flight stand someday in the future. There were only a few things I disliked about this set, including some goof-ups with the stickers that caused me some frustration, and the Elite General figure being less detailed than I’d like. The Halo Mega Bloks Covenant Seraph 97015 set is fantastic overall and is very highly recommended.

GRADE: A-