18th Boss Fight thread

If anyone missed it - look for Boss Fight Studio on YouTube. They did an almost-hour-long video recapping Power Con/SDCC reveals and answering questions and stuff. There's some wonderful things coming to HACKS this year and next. Still one of the lines I'm consistently most excited about.

Thanks for the heads up. Would have missed the Lord of Asperity pre tomorrow. What did you make of Erik's comment about "Viper 9" at the end? Real hint or was he just having a little fun?

@brucejones65  In case you forgot again - Boss Fight and BBTS have the Lord of Asperity up now. More limited quantities than the usual HACKS figures so if you're interested probably go ahead and grab a pre-order.

As for Erik's comments? I would just suggest you do, as he said, stay tuned.

Mask of Zorro and Gay Blade figures are shipping now. Woot! I'm insanely excited about these ones. Particularly that Antonio Banderas Zorro.

I got my Zorro stuff in the other day and I'm pretty happy, but there's also some negatives here. Everyone on here already knows how hard I am on other companies for QC issues, so I'd be a hypocrite not to point the same out here. But I want to do so bearing in mind that A) these figures look GORGEOUS, and B) it's very rare for me to have QC issues with my Boss Fight figures, so I don't consider these issues as egregious as those from someone like Super7, who has basically the -same- QC issues with every product and just doesn't care.

SO....

The Banderas Zorro masked head doesn't actually fit onto the neck peg at all. Like the head is just hollow inside and falls down over the entire neck. I can tell from other people getting the figure in that this isn't a normal thing, so I wouldn't suggest anyone worry about it. It's actually a pretty bizarre problem. I'm sure BFS will fix me up when I get around to shooting them a message.

Also, I found that Banderas' torso pops apart really easily. I'm thinking maybe there's some flash somewhere in the torso socket or on the peg that I'm not immediately seeing. I haven't taken a really thorough look just yet.

The left ankles on the Gay Blade figures aren't very tight, and in fact Bunny's is pretty loose. Both figures also have a problem with the left thigh swivel wanting to pop apart very easily. On Bunny, again, it's way worse; there's even a noticeable gap at the thigh swivel even when it's seated as tightly together as you can get it.

I'll also add that while not necessarily a 'QC' issue, I'm pretty disappointed with the final color we got on all of the swords (for all four figures). I'm used to HACKS figures having that really nice metallic silver for weapons like these, but these figures are more like.. steel gray, I guess? Very dull looking. Something I love about the paint BFS uses is that you can see the 'flash of swords' on the bookshelf from across the damn room. Not so with these figures.

The good? Everything else. It's BFS so the sculpting is absolutely fantastic. I've never been sold on 'good' face sculpts at 4" because I think that's hard to do, but even with that bias I think these look amazing. Elena probably has the weakest likeness (one of those ones where you can see it from certain angles but not at all from others), but all the guys look pretty bang on. I -think- they've revised the wrist pegs, because the hands seem to swap a bit easier but also more securely than before. Or I'm imagining things. The weapon sculpts are A+ material. I know I said sculpts already, but damn.. these swords look great.

The gold on Bunny is very eye-catching and I'm impressed with how well the color match on the fabric cape looks.

Honestly, if the quality control had been a little tighter, and the swords had been painted a nicer color, I'd be pretty comfortable calling these perfect figures. And, of course, I'm biased here. Not because I love BFS so much, but because I love Zorro so much. I've been watching Zorro films my whole life and I've always wanted toys like these ones. I even once used electrical tape all over a swashbuckling Batman figure to create my own Zorro toy. So two figures from Mask, two figures from Gay Blade, and two figures from the written stories/comic pages is an embarrassment of riches such that it's tough to be overly critical, I guess.

I wish they didn't have the problems they have, but I'm damn thrilled to own these. I hope we get more. And maybe an accessory pack with some nice silvery swords?

oh I always use a chrome pen on most of my bladed weapons!

@goldbug That's definitely an option. The thing is.. I've never had to do anything like that with BFS products. And frankly, I don't really want to. I've got lots of customized BFS stuff. Lots of painted accessories because I buy all the accessory packs and such. But with a packaged, painted figure I feel like the deco on the weapons should be better than this. Probably because it always HAS been better than this for the last 7 years or however long since the first KS shipped. If this were Hasbro I would still be upset, but at least I'd expect it because Hasbro is lazy/cheap as fuck with their accessories.

Obviously I'm reserving judgement on the future of the line. I'm not just assuming this is going to be the new normal. I certainly hope it's not.

They're showing a v2 Eurayle Disciple as an exclusive to the Total HACKS 2 book, and it looks pretty dang good.

@adrienveidt It does look very cool. Although I'm gonna be honest and just say that I'm still unimpressed that the pugio sheath is sculpted on the wrong side of the figure. It feels like a pretty important detail of the costuming to get wrong when you're otherwise pretty directly copying the kit of a specific type of historical soldier.

For those that haven't seen the picture, the new Disciple figure is basically just a repaint of Boss Fight's upcoming Roman Legionnaire. The dagger should be worn on the left hip, not the right hip. Roman soldiers, by and large for most of the period, wore their swords on the right hip.

I feel kind of terrible saying this but it's relevant here and I feel like there's really no nice way to say it but I'll do my best: I'm excited about new Boss Fight figures, but not by a new Total HACKS book. I have the first one, all signed by the BFS team, and I have several issues with it; the first being that mostly it's just the kind of pictures I can see on Facebook and Instagram every day. I'm not sure a book of action photos of toys carries the weight it might have 10 years ago when shots like these weren't commonplace all over the Internet.

The real tough thing to say in a nice way, because I do love the guy, is that I don't think the writing in the little short stories is very good. I've never even finished the stuff in the original book because I just could not get through it. I already have trouble not overly-critiquing the figure bios, and the stories are just more of that, if not a little worse due to trying to work out more dialogue that just doesn't sound right.

It's also a very difficult book, in my experience, to store. You either have to stand it up on its end, or toss it somewhere because it's too deep for most normal bookshelves if you want the spine to face out. And since it's not like.. a legitimately large, hardcover coffee table book, I think the specific dimensions are a bit of a bizarre choice.

And these books, FOR GOOD REASON, are pretty expensive. Especially after conversation rate and shipping to Canada. It's a tough pill to swallow for the above reasons, even if I would otherwise like to have it just to have it. Because I DO like the pictures and just the 'history' of it, if that makes any sense.

That's all to say, I really doubt I'll be getting this one. I've always felt like the first one wasn't my smartest purchase ever and I'm trying not to make those kinds of decisions anymore in my collecting. It would be cool if the exclusive figure is available without the book, but I'm not counting on that (and depending on price + shipping, there's a chance I wouldn't get it by itself anyway). I do wish the team the best, though.

Has anyone heard anything, or seen anything on any BFS social media about if any of the 10th Anniversary figures are on the water, or should be shipping out to customers soon?

There is the King of Asperity, the Knights of Accord and Asperity, Eurayle, the new Spartan warrior etc.

I see a lot of them have December or January arrival dates on BBTS.  But I figured those dates probably wouldn't be met, as I hadn't heard anything about the figures or their production for a while.  So, I didn't know what stage they were in or when to expect them.

@supercamel-1982 Isn't this just another example of BBTS being kind of full of shit with their release dates for things? They almost never seem to have anything right. I'm fairly sure we were told somewhat recently that the 10A HACKS figures aren't expected until like Spring '24 at the earliest. But maybe I'm misremembering. It's been a while since I've seen BFS give any updates about anything.

NJCC 2023 was recently held, and Hisstank posted pics a few days ago from the event.  And BFS was there, and had on display the 10th Anniversary figures, as well as the next wave of Fantasy figures with new looks at the Bard and the Desert Wanderer.

NJCC 2023 Recap - Boss Fight Studio, Marauder Inc and Chicken Fried Toys - HissTank.com

I wish we'd hear something from BFS about when they might be expecting the 10th Ann. figures, or the new Wave of Fantasy.  I'm excited for all of them.

According to BFS's Facebook page, the 10th Anniversary Knights and the King of Asperity are all in their possession, and pre orders will start shipping out soon.  So that's the 10th Ann. Knight of Accord, Knight of Asperity, and Asperity King.

They said the 10th Anniversary figures of the Roman Soldier, Eurayle, and Athena would be in next, but they would arrive at their warehouse a little later than these Knights. 

I've always been one of Boss Fight's biggest cheerleaders, but I'm also the guy that takes companies like S7 to task over issues so I'd be hypocritical not to say that my enthusiasm for the new Boss Fight stuff really took a hit recently with all these new figures coming out with only horizontal wrist hinges.

The pirate Phantom wave that just hit only have horizontal hinges, and early samples for all the new knights show the same thing. I am beyond disappointed about that. I know it's a small thing, but I've been banging the 'vertical hinges for weapon-hands' drum since TOYBIZ was making LORD OF THE RINGS figures, for fuck's sake, and companies are STILL doing it wrong. Boss Fight was one of the few that just came out of the gate doing it right, so this feels like such a massive step backwards to me. Now we have the wrong wrist hinges, figures that don't feel like they've been assembled/fitted together properly, weapons molded in grey instead of painted.... And on the grander scale, makes me really worried about the quality control for all this stuff, as well as maybe Boss Fight using a less capable factory.

I want to see that ridiculously high quality and attention to detail that, perhaps unfairly, I think of as Boss Fight's signature. One of the things that holds them above all other companies in my estimation. And these newest products just don't make me feel that way. And it's probably super unfair of me to think a figure that's only 'very good' is somehow beneath Boss Fight. But I do feel that way.