Ninjago

Skull Sorcerer's Dragon

A rotting skeletal dragon with cloth wings full of holes, and it works.

Brick Rated Score

4.0/5

Set 71721 · 2020

Pieces1,017

Minifigs6

Year2020

Set number71721

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The verdict

This is one of those Ninjago dragons that looks properly menacing on a shelf, all bare ribs and hollow eye sockets instead of the usual sleek scales.

At just over 1,000 pieces for its original 80 dollars, it gave you real bulk and six minifigs, so the value was honest. The wings are the sticking point, they only move up and down and the whole thing likes to tip forward. If you love a monster with actual attitude, you'll forgive it that in a heartbeat.

Best for: Ninjago fans who want a big display-worthy creature over a play-perfect one

The full review

What it is

Most LEGO® dragons go for graceful. This one goes for gross, and I mean that as the highest compliment. The Skull Sorcerer's Dragon is a skeleton in the air, a bleering skull for a head, an open ribcage where a chest should be, and two big tattered wings hanging off the sides like something dragged out of a crypt. It came out in 2020 as the centrepiece of the Master of the Mountain wave, the Ninjago season set in the Dungeons of Shintaro, and it looms over pretty much everything else in that lineup. At 1,017 pieces it actually out-parts the old Ultra Dragon, which tells you how much presence this thing has once it's built.

The catch

The honest caveats are all about those wings. They're gorgeous, printed cloth riddled with holes so the membrane looks half-rotted, and I'd take fabric over stiff plastic sheets every day of the week. But the movement is a real letdown. You can only tilt them up and down, you can't fold them in or sweep them back, and you have to reposition each one by hand every time. Worse, all that wing weight sits high and forward, so the dragon has a habit of nose-diving off its own legs unless you get the stance exactly right. It's the kind of thing you notice the second you try to pose it for a photo. The other knock is simply time. This set retired, and secondhand prices have climbed comfortably past the 80 dollar launch tag, so the great value it once offered has a catch now.

Who it's for

So who's this really for. If you're a Ninjago fan who wants a big, weird, characterful creature standing guard on a shelf, grab it and don't look back, because nothing else in the theme has this ghoulish personality. Younger builders get a genuine bonus too, since the base doubles as a little board game with a dice-spinner, health counters, and the Ivory Blade of Deliverance to fight over. If you're the sort who needs every joint to swoosh and pose perfectly, though, the wings will nag at you. I landed on loving it despite its flaws, which honestly feels right for a dragon that's supposed to be falling apart.

The parts story

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

The build moves through numbered bags and paces itself nicely, starting with the legs and the spine before you get to the good stuff. The head and ribcage are where it earns its keep, both built with techniques that feel fresh rather than recycled from earlier dragons, so even if you've made a few Ninjago beasts you won't be on autopilot. The full instruction book runs 334 steps across nearly 200 pages, and it's laid out clearly the whole way. Bag seven is the moment everyone waits for, because that's when the cloth wings go on and the pile of parts suddenly reads as a dragon.

Piece-wise, the highlight is that printed fabric. The wing membranes are soft cloth deliberately dotted with holes for the decayed look, a lovely touch you don't see on the Fire or Water dragons. You get a good haul of bones, teeth, and skeletal elements in the right off-white, plus useful curved slopes and a spread of dark and bone-coloured parts across 26 colours and over 300 unique part-and-colour combos. Add six minifigs (Hero Jay, Kai and Nya, the Skull Sorcerer himself, and two Re-Awakened skeleton warriors) and roughly 1,000 bricks for the old 80 dollar price, and the part-count value was one of the strongest in the whole 2020 Ninjago run.

Fun facts

01At 1,017 pieces this dragon out-parts LEGO's older 70679 Ultra Dragon, making it one of the biggest Ninjago dragons of its era.
02It was designed by Michael Svane Knap and tied into Master of the Mountain, the Ninjago season set deep in the Dungeons of Shintaro.
03The wing membranes are printed cloth deliberately full of holes, chosen over plastic so the dragon reads as half-rotted rather than sleek.
04The base doubles as a playable board game, complete with a ninja dice-spinner, health counters, and the Ivory Blade of Deliverance as the prize.