Ninjago

Monastery of Spinjitzu

Eight minifigs, golden weapons, and the best Ninjago value you'll find.

Brick Rated Score

4.4/5

Set 70670 · 2019

Pieces1,080

Minifigs8

Year2019

Set number70670

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The verdict

This one had me at the eight minifigures, and then the build kept giving.

It's the Ninjago show's home base done properly, all curved rooflines and a courtyard packed with play features, and the price-per-piece is genuinely hard to argue with. The back is plain and the little training fruits fall off if you breathe on them, but for a fan of the theme this is about as good as Ninjago sets get.

Best for: Ninjago fans who want the whole team plus a real playset

The full review

What it is

The Monastery of Spinjitzu is the home base from the Ninjago show, rebuilt at a size that actually does the place justice, and it's the kind of LEGO® set that makes you grin before you've even opened a bag. It's a Legacy release, meaning LEGO went back and gave one of its early locations the full modern treatment, and the difference is night and day. You get sweeping upturned rooflines, a walled courtyard, a tower, a little tea room, and a whole wall of mural work telling the Ninjago backstory. It opens out flat for play, so nothing is trapped behind walls where a kid can't reach it. And then there's the cast. Eight minifigures is a genuinely generous number at this size, and it's not filler either. You get Master Wu, Nya, Zane, Cole, Jay, Kai and Lloyd, so the entire core team is here in one box, plus the skeleton general Wyplash to give them someone to fight.

The catch

Now for the honest bits, because there are a few. The back of the main building is flat and open, the way a lot of these opening playsets are, so it looks fantastic from the front and three-quarter angles but wants to live against a wall or on a shelf where you'll never see its plain side. The little fruits on the training station, the ones you're meant to slice, sit loose and drop off if you so much as move the set across a table, which gets old fast. The murals are stickers rather than printed tiles, so you'll want a steady hand and some patience applying them. And while eight figures sounds like a party, seven of them are on the same side. One lone villain against the whole ninja team makes the battle play feel a touch one-sided, and a couple more baddies would have balanced it beautifully. None of these are dealbreakers, but they're the things builders bring up again and again, and you should know them going in.

Who it's for

So who should grab this one. If you love Ninjago, or someone in your house does, this is close to a must-own. The value is excellent, the whole gang is present, and it hits that sweet spot where it displays nicely on a shelf and still survives being played with hard. It scored well across the community for good reason. If you're strictly a display collector chasing architectural realism and clean printed detail, the sticker murals and the bare back might nag at you, and you might be happier elsewhere. But for its theme, its price, and the sheer amount of minifigure and play packed into the box, the Monastery is an easy set to recommend and an easier one to love. It's retired now, so if it's calling to you, don't wait around too long.

The parts story

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

The build breaks into clear chunks and it never drags, which is part of why it's such a friendly one to sit down with. You start on the courtyard floor and the training features, the spinning post and the fruit-slicing station, then move up into the tea room where a hidden lever drops a knife trap. From there you build outward into the walls, the opening gate and the tower, and the rooflines are where it gets satisfying, all those angled slopes clicking together into that distinctive curved Ninjago silhouette. There's a buildable bonsai tree tucked in too, and a chicken trap function for good measure. At just over a thousand pieces it's meaty without ever feeling like a slog, and the play functions keep surprising you as you go.

On the parts front the real headline is that fig count. Eight minifigures, the full core team plus Wyplash, is a lot of printed character content for the price, and Wyplash is the only one exclusive to the box which makes the set a smart pickup for anyone building a Ninjago collection. Beyond the figures you get all four classic Golden Weapons (Kai's Sword of Fire, Jay's Nunchucks of Lightning, Cole's Scythe of Quakes and Zane's Shurikens of Ice), plenty of useful tan and dark-red roof slopes, and a good haul of gold accent pieces for the trims. At roughly seven cents a piece at its original price, the part-count value here is about as good as the theme offers.

Fun facts

01This set is a full-size reimagining of 2011's much smaller 2504 Spinjitzu Dojo, rebuilt for the Legacy line to look far closer to the monastery as it appears in the show.
02Wyplash, the skeleton general from the original Skulkin army, is the only minifigure unique to this set, so the whole box is essentially the core ninja team plus one exclusive villain.
03The interior walls carry mural artwork depicting Ninjago's history, a nod packed in to celebrate the theme's legacy rather than just a single episode.
04It includes all four original Golden Weapons in one box, the Sword of Fire, Nunchucks of Lightning, Scythe of Quakes and Shurikens of Ice that kicked off the entire Ninjago story.