Wicked Fun with the Wicked Witch

     She's mean, she's green, and as a minifigure, she's bald. Hailing from the land of Oz, this sinister spellcaster is a powerful addition to anyone's roster. Pretty much everything about this character is certainly part of a witch trope. Pointy hat and broomstick, check, constant cackling about everything and anything, check, partiality to "spooky" things like spiders and ghosts, check. By the pricking of my thumbs, something cliche this way comes. (Not that is necessarily a bad thing :P)

Abilities

     The wicked witch doesn't possess any particularly unique abilities, though she does have quite a few useful ones. She shares most of her abilties with Gandalf. These include the ability to manipulate certain objects with magic, the ability to light up dark areas with illumination, and the often unused magic shield ability.  In addition to these abilities, her projectiles can be cast at about twice the rate of Gandalf and can be used to break silver bricks, she can take control of confused NPCs to solve puzzles, and as the iconic witch from The Wizard of Oz, she is able to fly around on her broomstick. All things considered, the Wicked Witch completely overshadows Gandalf by being everything he is and more. (Oh well, at least Gandalf, doesn't melt in water :P)

 Vehicle

     The Wicked Witch comes with one of her trusty winged monkeys. Nothing in particular really stands out about this build aside from its special weapon, the "hat grenade", which is a blue fez that explodes into a cloud of more blue fezzes after a couple of seconds. Despite having wings, this form is unable to fly.

     The first alternate build of the winged monkey is the Battle Monkey. The build doesn't look too different overall, but does come equipped with some nice new features. The hat grenade is replaced by an explosive bolt launcher, which also grants silver brick blowup, and the wings on this build  actually work for flying.

     The second alternate build of the winged monkey is the Commander Monkey. This final form loses the explosive bolt launcher from the previous and gets a "megaphone" which is used for its sonar smash ability. It once again features "hat grenade" from the first build, but the build, but manages to sneak in the explosive bolts with an upgrade to the standard colored bolt weapon.

Yays and Nays

     This was definitely one of the characters I was absolutely looking forward to playing as after getting LEGO Dimensions, and I wasn't disappointed. Its fun to watch her various animations, such as plotting schemes while idle, or whacking nearby objects and enemies with her broomstick. Obviously though, the biggest highlight for the Wicked Witch is her ability to fly. For some reason, there is just something satisfying about soaring through the skies on a broomstick. It's also worth noting that TT games did an excellent job finding a voice actor to match the voice of the original character.

     Overall, the Wicked Witch is one of my favorite characters in Lego Dimensions. Sure, she melts when she comes into contact with water, but that just adds to the authenticity of the character. Also, it is sometimes funny to spray her with water just to see it happen.

     The only issues I have regarding this pack are all about the vehicle and not the character. The builds of the vehicle have a similar stability issue to that of Unikitty, as the upper and lower body are held together with a single stud or fez, so it has a similar risk of separating to that of Unikitty. The winged monkey is one of two vehicles with landlocked forms that can't jump. Lastly, The flight stability of the flying versions have instability issues when boosting, which cause them to move in two linear bursts before returning to normal.

Completeionist Necessity Level: Must-Have

     The main reason to get The Wicked Witch completion-wise is simply the fact that she is the only Wizard of Oz character in the game. She may also be your go-to Mind-control character, as the only other potential must-have with this ability is Wonder Woman for her dive + grapple abilities, which are now also shared by the PlayStation 4 Starter Pack exclusive character, Supergirl.

Final Words

     The Wicked Witch is one of my favorite Lego Dimensions characters. It's obvious that a lot of attention went into bringing the Wicked Witch of the West into LEGO Dimensions. Her personality is well reflected by her voice and animations, and her abilities make her an incredibly fun character to play as. Her vehicle, the winged monkey, isn't particularly spectacular, but it is pretty fun to mess around with. In conclusion, the Wicked Witch is a character I would strongly recommend.

Princess Unikitty: Pretty Crazy in Pink

One of the very first packs that I got was this adorable chimera. Princess Unikitty, usually referred to as just Unikitty, is half unicorn, half cat and unlike any of the other currently available characters, she's all bricks. I've actually made a few little changes to my own Unikitty using spare LEGO wedges from the Joker & Harley Quinn Team Pack to replace her ears, and have been calling her "Uni-Quinn".

Similar to the animation style in The LEGO Movie, Unikitty's animations include non-animated full-figure motions for simple actions like the initial running animation and jumping animations, and brick morphing for other actions such as full-speed running (all characters speed up after running for a couple seconds), and sitting on vehicles. She has a ranged attack which is fired from her horn, and she can target multiple objects and enemies by holding down the attack button and aiming at them. The last targeted attack will cause her to pounce at the target if it is close enough.

Abilities

Unikitty's is one of two characters with the rainbow bricks ability (the other being Lumpy Space princess, who was recently added with the year two launch), which allows her to build with piles of rainbow-colored LEGO bricks, as well as break pre-built objects made of them.  Like the other LEGO Movie protagonists, Unikitty has the master build ability, which makes her a decent stand-in for Wyldstyle if you aren't in need of acrobatics or the relic scanner. Lastly, Unikitty has a giant transformation, which runs on a rage meter which fills up on its own over time. Holding down the action button will allow her to transform into her enraged form from the LEGO Movie until the rage meter runs out or the button is held down again.

Vehicle

The Coud Cuckoo Car is about as bizarre as its creator. This floating rainbow duck cloud will allow any character to fly about the various dimensions in loony poofy style. It features standard flying vehicle tools; namely, the cargo hook, which enables the vehicle to pick up and move objects in various puzzles, and the flight Dock, which is used to power floating switches.

The X-Stream Soaker (formerly the X-treme Soaker) is the first alternate build for the Cloud Cuckoo Car. The dual faucet-like extensions from the wings on this vehicle constantly emit water, which gives it the Water Spray ability, as well as the inherent abilities that come with it. These include hazard cleaner for eliminating sludge puddles, and growth for watering plants. Despite the odd rainbow-colored tractor-beam that this vehicle emits from the bottom, it doesn't possess the cargo hook or flight-dock abilities.

The Rainbow Cannon is the second alternate build for the Cloud Cuckoo Car. It will rain down a maelstrom of rainbow-colored annihilation upon any world unfortunate enough to even have an inhabitant look at you the wrong way. It features a lethal combination of dual firing and one of if not the highest auto-fire rates of any vehicle in the game. This final build also shares Unikitty's ability to break rainbow brick constructs, so it's a good stand-in for Unikitty if you just need to smash things. If all of that isn't good enough to make this your go-to build of the vehicle, it also regains the standard cargo hook and flight dock abilities, making it an excellent multi-purpose vehicle.

Yays and Nays

If you're into quirky characters, then Unikitty is definitely a character you'll want to get your hands on. As it stands, there just isn't a single character in Lego Dimensions quite like her. She has a playful and unique animation style, her dialogue with some of the other characters and vehicles is priceless (Especially the bit of subtext in her remark to the Wicked Witch of the West), and her vehicle in its final build is an outstanding multi-purpose annihilation machine. Enraged Unikitty is also nice addition, even if just simply to show the amount of detail that was added to each character in the game.

Unfortunately, there are a few things about Unikitty that might bother some people. The figure itself is a little unstable, and if you have the habit of picking up your characters by the head, there's a chance the rest of Unikitty might fall off in the process. Her exclusive ability, rainbow bricks, doesn't seem as thought out as some of the other exclusive abilities are. Due to her wide head she is unable to fit through some smaller passages. Lastly, Unikitty's giant transformation doesn't appear to add much to her capabilities, and unlike any other character in the game, the form isn't maintained when you switch between characters.

An additional "nay" which I will leave separate as it is clearly not intentional, is that Unikitty's vehicle is mostly broken as it is currently. One of the most recent patches seems to have removed the ability for the X-Stream Soaker and Rainbow cannon to use their own default weapons or colored bolts, and it has yet to be addressed.

Completionist Necessity Level: Ability Collector - Option

If you're mainly buying characters for the sake of game completion, you'll only need if your completion goals include collecting abilities and you don't have Lumpy Space Princess already. Hire-a-hero should work reliably for players who want to only use Unikitty for her unique Rainbow Bricks ability, and since Wyldstyle is included in the Starter Pack, Unikitty, doesn't unlock a new adventure world. Aside from rainbow brick blowup from the Rainbow Cannon, the Could Cuckoo Car and its alternate builds do not add any abilities that can't be replaced by another character or Vehicle. The X-Stream Soaker provides the growth ability, but completionists will need to purchase the Scooby Doo Team Pack for the adventure world and underwater tracking, and Aquaman Fun pack for the Atlantis ability, Both of these can provide the water spray ability from their vehicle and character respectively. If for whatever reason you want to collect at least one character of each ability to avoid using HaH altogether, then you may want to Unikitty to add the rainbow bricks ability to your collection.

Planting A Sapling

Hello everyone out there on the internet. As the name of the blog hopefully implied, this is a Lego blog. At this point, I am sure that there are plenty of other Lego related blogs, but I am hoping to be able to provide my own unique views of various Lego products. Most of the posts in the blog will likely be about Lego Dimensions packs, as that is a vast majority of the Lego packs that I currently own, but that is subject to change when I am able to get other Lego packs.

I don't have much experience in writing for a blog, so any feedback is appreciated. Here's hoping this sapling grows into a big healthy tree. :)