I was hoping to save the second LEGO set I got for Christmas, at least for a little while, but to me LEGO sets are like bottles of Jameson, they don’t hang around the house for long before being opened. I had so much fun building the last set I decided to build this one on my very next day off. At 506 pieces, this isn’t exactly a massive set, it only has the last one beat by about 60 pieces, but it’s the largest Galaxy Squad set in my collection and I’m rather excited to get started.

The box sure is big! Open her up and you get four numbered baggies of bricks, two beefy instruction booklets, a sticker sheet, and four loose wheels. There’s a ton of great stuff to build in this set, so let’s get cracking and as always we start with the Minifigs!!!

You get two good guys and one bad guy, and if you’re rooting for the aliens and think that’s unfair, well this clearly isn’t the set for you, but we’ll see more of that in a bit. The two Squaddies consist of your typical guy in a spacesuit and a robot. The robot features the same chest piece we saw on the last robot, but a different head and no wings this time. Oh yeah, one of the benefits of joining Galaxy Squad is obviously that you can wear any color you like, because both of these guys are green and at odds with the blue and orange guys I got in previous sets. I guess when it’s humans versus aliens, your comrades don’t need to identify allies by the color of their uniforms, but rather whether or not they have giant bug heads. Oh yeah, the human Squaddie is the exact same figure that came with the Crater Creeper set that I looked at a while back.

Speaking of the Crater Creeper set, the Swarm alien you get here is the same one that came with that set too. He even has the same gun. I guess some may bitch about the lack of original figures in this box, but hey, they’re all basically army builders, so I’m not complaining.

On the bug side of this horrific battle is this little walking bug chair. I love this thing. It’s a cool and original design, particularly the way the articulated tail curves up to point the gun forward. You also get two flick-fire missiles. I’m hoping this thing can fly. I mean, if this is all the bugs are bringing to this fight, they’re screwed, because…

BEHOLD THE VERMIN VAPORIZER! Awww, yeah! The Galaxy Squad isn’t f’cking around on this day and they rolled out this assault tank to take care of their tiny little bug problem. Sending this behemoth against the bug vehicle in this set is like sending a Sherman tank to take out a cockroach. But hey, you never can be too careful… we’re in this war to win it, people!!!

So, what we have here is a heavily armored assault vehicle that rolls on four gigantic wheels. The design here is really cool. There are some nice curves and contours to the armor, but at the end of the day it’s just a rolling box of death. The front of it is a slab of metal wall designed to smash through anything that comes in contact with it.

There’s an opening canopy for the cockpit where the driver sits and a secondary canopy for the gunner. The squished bug stickers on the front canopy sure are a nice touch! When fully bulked out this thing features four cannon and four flick-fire missiles. The cannon assembly on the back can rotate 360-degrees and each of the weapons are mounted on ball joints for more precise aiming and target tracking. But wait… this thing has a couple of surprises…

For starters, the front can drop down to reveal that the driver seat is actually a little self-contained vehicle. I’m going to call this thing an escape vehicle, because I can’t imagine any scenerio in which you’d want to leave the safety of a giant tank to scoot around on this little puddle-jumper. Maybe it’s for scouting, but it’s clear that once it leaves, the tank isn’t going anywhere. So, the logic behind this feature may be a bit muddled, but I don’t care because it’s a really cool play feature.

Next up, the upper back portion of the tank is actually a mech that can deploy by simply jumping off the back. It’s a lot smaller than the Eradicator Mech we looked at last time, but it still looks like it can stomp a lot of vermin. This guy has rotating joints in the hips, hinges in the ankles, and ball joints at the shoulders, plus it can swivel at the waist. You can also mount the robot’s gun and shield on it.

With the mech deployed you now have access to the inside of the vehicle. There’s a little lab back there where it appears our Squaddies are trying to analyze one of the bug eggs and possibly find a way to get one of their trapped comrades out of it. The set does indeed come with a purple bug egg, which is cool because all the ones I have so far have been yellow-green Mountain Dew colored.

Apart from the lack of original Minifigs, I can’t say enough good things about this set. The vehicle is loads of fun to build and it’s imaginative design and superb playability make it an instant winner. Technically it does fit the whole “battle in a box” mentality, but if you really want to have fun with it, you’ll probably need one of the mid-sized alien sets so you have something beefy enough to give the bugs a fighting chance against the awesome might of the Vermin Vaporizer.