Ninjago

Micro NINJAGO City Gardens

A tiny tribute to the biggest NINJAGO set LEGO ever built.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 40705 · 2024

Pieces376

Minifigsn/a

Year2024

Set number40705

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The verdict

This is a gift with purchase set, so you cannot just add it to a cart, and that changes how I judge it.

As a shrunk down homage to the enormous 71741 NINJAGO City Gardens, it packs stacked pagoda roofs, a market street, and a slice of the koi pond canal into a footprint you could hold in one hand. I like it best as a bonus that made a very expensive purchase feel a little sweeter, not as a build I would have sought out on its own. If you already own or want the big City Gardens set, tracking this one down to sit next to it on a shelf is a genuinely nice bit of closure.

Best for: NINJAGO City collectors who already own or are chasing 71741 NINJAGO City Gardens

The full review

What it is

I will admit my first reaction to 40705 was affection rather than excitement. It is a micro scale nod to 71741 NINJAGO City Gardens, one of the biggest and most beloved NINJAGO sets LEGO has ever released, and you can feel the designers having fun cramming the pagoda roofline, a market strip, and hints of the canal into a model that fits on a shelf edge. The tiered roofs stack up in that satisfying way micro builds do when someone has clearly thought hard about how to fake detail with a handful of plates and slopes.

The catch

Where I have to be honest with you is on availability and depth. This was a gift with purchase set tied to buying the big NINJAGO City Gardens set, which means most people reading this cannot simply order it new, only chase it secondhand or through a future promotion. And because it is micro scale, you lose almost everything that made the full size set a showpiece, the printed tiles, the little vignettes, the sense of walking through a real street. At 376 pieces it is a decent chunk of plastic for a bonus item, but it is still a bonus item, not a main event.

Who it's for

Get this one if you already own or are actively hunting the full 71741 NINJAGO City Gardens and want the little companion piece to go with it, or if you collect the Micro NINJAGO City series and like seeing the skyline grow one small building at a time. Skip it if you are coming to NINJAGO fresh and hoping for minifigures, action features, or a set you can just buy off a shelf, because that is not what this one is for.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building 40705 is a quick, fiddly little session rather than an evening project. Most of the fun is in the stacking, layering small plates and slopes to fake the pagoda's tiered roof and getting the proportions of the market street to read correctly at a scale where a single stud has to stand in for a whole shopfront. It rewards the kind of builder who enjoys puzzle-like micro construction more than one who wants a long, immersive build.

There are no headline exclusive pieces here, this is very much a set built from LEGO's common micro scale toolkit of small plates, tiles, and slopes rather than new molds or rare prints. The value is in the concept and the piece count for a promotional item, not in any single standout part. If you are chasing rare NINJAGO elements, this is not the set to look at, but if you appreciate clever use of ordinary bricks to imply a much bigger building, there is real craft in how compact it manages to look right.

Fun facts

0140705 Micro NINJAGO City Gardens is a scaled down companion to 71741 NINJAGO City Gardens, one of the largest and most celebrated sets in the NINJAGO theme.
02It was distributed as a gift with purchase rather than sold as a standalone retail set, which is common practice for LEGO's Micro NINJAGO City series.
03The Micro NINJAGO City sets form an ongoing mini series that lets collectors build out a shrunk down version of the sprawling NINJAGO City skyline piece by piece.