Minecraft

The Training Grounds

A blocky dojo with a trapdoor trick that kids will pull a hundred times.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 21183 · 2022

Pieces534

Minifigs3

Year2022

Set number21183

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The verdict

The Training Grounds is one of those Minecraft sets that photographs plain and then wins you over in the hand.

The two-level split, dojo up top and blacksmith cave below, plus that push-a-block trapdoor, gave my nieces a good hour of play before I even finished sorting my own thoughts on it. It is genuinely fun, but at 79.99 for 534 pieces it was never a value darling, and the cave half never quite decides what it wants to be. Best as a real play set for a Minecraft-mad kid rather than a shelf piece.

Best for: A Minecraft-obsessed 8 to 11 year old who wants to actually play, not display

The full review

What it is

The thing that got me about The Training Grounds is how much it leans on one clever idea and mostly gets away with it. You build a two-story block: a neat little dojo up top where the ninja and rogue live and train, and a rough blacksmith cave underneath with an anvil, an oven and an armor stand. Push a hidden block under the tree and a trapdoor drops a minifig straight down into the cave. It is such a small mechanism, but it is the kind of thing a kid will do over and over, and honestly I caught myself doing it too. The whole model is that pleasing blocky Minecraft shorthand, chunky and instantly readable, and the dojo especially punches above its weight.

The catch

I will be straight with you about where it wobbles. This launched at 79.99 for 534 pieces, and that math never sat right, especially against the many Minecraft sets that give you more brick for the money. The cave is the real soft spot. Where the dojo has a clear purpose and a lovely paneled wall made from white window panes, the cave below is just a directionless open area with a few crafting props scattered around. It works as play space, but it lacks the little touches that make you want to keep looking at it. Three minifigures is a lean roster too, and one of your four advertised characters is the bat, which is a small mob piece rather than a full figure.

Who it's for

So who lands well here. If there is a Minecraft-crazy kid in your life who wants to reenact the game, this is a strong pick, because the trapdoor, the reconfigurable levels and the two distinct zones give real play value. It retired in December 2023, so you are now buying it secondhand, and prices have bounced around, which means patience pays off. If you are an adult builder chasing display presence or clever engineering, though, I would gently steer you elsewhere. This is a play set first, and it is happiest in a kid's hands, mid-battle, with the trapdoor snapping open again.

The parts story

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

Building it takes maybe one to two hours and never gets fiddly, which is exactly right for the recommended age 8 and up. It is classic Minecraft construction, lots of square studded surfaces and modular sub-assemblies, so you get the satisfaction of things clicking into a recognizable shape fast. The two levels build as separate units and then stack, which keeps the pace moving and makes the reconfiguring feel natural rather than bolted on. The trapdoor mechanism is the one moment of real cleverness in the instructions, and watching it come together is the small delight of the build.

This is not a set parts hunters will chase, and I would not pretend otherwise. The star trick is aesthetic rather than a new mold: the dojo wall recreates that shoji panel look using white window panes with solid panes, a genuinely smart bit of parts usage that costs you nothing exotic. You get the usual Minecraft printed faces on the minifigs and mob pieces, plus workable quantities of common tiles, plates and the greens and browns you would raid for other builds. As a value proposition for a parts lot it is unremarkable, so buy this one for what it does assembled, not for the pieces you can strip out of it.

Fun facts

01The set gave Minecraft its ninja and rogue characters in physical form, which raised more than a few eyebrows since ninjas are not exactly canon Minecraft mobs.
02It retired in December 2023 after a run of roughly one year and eleven months on shelves.
03The trapdoor is triggered by pushing a block hidden beneath the tree, dropping a minifig from the dojo straight into the blacksmith cave below.
04Two of its three minifigures were unique to this set at release, making it the only easy way to get them at the time.