LEGO Ideas Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale (21348) Review

To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, LEGO Ideas back in 2022 asked designers to submit an idea for a set. Lucas Bolt won the contest and got to see his design turned into a set. This was one that I was looking forward to seeing LEGO turn make, despite having never played Dungeons & Dragons before. The set was released in April of this year and comes with a whopping 3,745 pieces, which makes it the second biggest LEGO Ideas set, behind the Home Alone house by around 200 pieces.

The Build

The first thing I should say is the instructions, which were another competition to choose the design. They look awesome and are easily the best produced in recent years and far superior to get we normally get with the white backgrounds and makes me miss the old designs we used to get.

There are four instructions books that build four unique sections, so you could easily build this with three other people and then are all easily joined at the end. There are stickers but only nine in total which isn’t too bad for a set this size.

The first section built is the Inn which has a great name –“Inn Plain Sight”. The inside is cosy and reminds of the Medieval Town Square Inn. There is a bedroom upstairs that has a nasty surprise for any guests, with the bed and a chest having a couple of mimics inside that open up to have teeth cleverly hidden and creepy printed pieces for the eyes. The outside uses blue and purple bricks for the roof which look good.

After the Inn we move on to the landscape around it. This is where you place the Owlbear and there are Spiders and an Awakened Tree. The rear section had a hidden dungeon area where you place the Gelatinous Cube. Through this section there are various hidden bits that I am assuming would be discovered if you played the campaign.

The Tower is up next and there is a dungeon area where three skeletons are hanging out in various gear, including one wearing a rather nice shiny cape. There are also a few traps that the heroes must watch out for including a door rigged with an axe. The tower has a dilapidated look about it and as our heroes fight their way to the top, they’ll find the evil wizard up there.

In between building the different sections various monsters are built. I have to say that apart from the gelatinous cube, I had no idea what they were but the monsters are all unique are all look awesome. My favourite one is the Beholder which has one large eye and 10 smaller eyes that all printed pieces, which look awesome with the lavender colour. All of the monsters have various eye printing and no stickers need to be applied to them.

The final book is the dragon and there are eight bags that used to build it. The original submission had a green Dragon but I think the red works better here. The Dragon is the trickiest build of the set and uses a range of building techniques to bring it all together. Once finished it brings everything together and is placed on the bridge. Without the Dragon I feel like the set would look empty.

The Minifigures

All of the Minifigures are exclusive to this set. The four main minifigures are a Dwarf Cleric, Gnome Fighter, Orc Rogue and Elf Wizard. There are all excellent and can be adapted defending on the player as they have male/female heads that have reversible printing on them (except the Orc Rogue). On top of this there is an Evil Sorcerer and an Inn Keeper.

The printing on all Minifigures is fantastic with all apart from the Gnome Fighter having torso and leg printing to give them extra details.

There is also the Dungeons and Dragons CMF series which came out earlier on this month and can be used to add extra Minifigures to the set.

The Price

Given the way D2C sets have risen over the past few years, this will be another set that is out of the price range for a lot of people who would love to get this, particularly D&D fans who are not really into LEGO. But what that said £319.99 feels fair given the quality of Minifigures and that you’re getting both a display set and one you can use to play a campaign through if you redeem points on Insiders to get either the digital or printed campaign.

In the UK the set is currently exclusive to Argos and has been reduced to £250 so that is another option to people.

Display

All four sections come together nicely and set looks awesome on display. I love the various colours used for each section and they make section unique. I can see LEGO Castle fans buying this to combine with the Lion Knights Castle and Medieval Town Square, as well as the Bricklink sets.

Overall thoughts

This nudges out Barad-Dûr as my favourite 2024 set (so far) and looking ahead there aren’t too many sets left to be revealed so will probably end up being my favourite set. I am looking forward to getting my hands on the CMF series and adding a few of those to this set . I’ll also be looking to get the campaign instructions to try that out and seeing what the various hidden features are used for.

Overall this is one of those rare sets where I can find nothing to fault about.

• The Build – 10
• The Minifigures – 10
• The Display – 10
• The Price – 10
• The Score – 10