After the reveal of Saurozoic Wave 3, I knew I was definitely getting them and Wave 2 (which should be out pretty soon). So, I finally bought the rest of Wave 1. Having all 4 figures from the first Wave, this is just such a fun, well-made toy line. I can't say enough good about them.
I will definitely buy these as long as BFS's make them.
I still can't pick a favorite out of that revealed Wave 3. I think it's the Mosasaurus. But if someone asked me again in 20 minutes, it could be the Viking Brontosaurus, the Shaolin Pterodactyl, or the Samurai Raptor.
I got my knights today (Accord and two Asperity) and ooh boy... not super excited here.
I wanna preface this with two points. The first is that from a distance, on a shelf, they look really nice. Colors look good. The burnished silver color REALLY pops. And they hold their poses for the most part. The second point is that in-hand images have popped up of Fantasy Wave 7 and all four figures look GREAT. So I'm hoping the quality of recent figures is a hiccup, not a trend.
That being said... I was less impressed with the new Zorro stuff than I wanted to be. I was even less impressed by the pirate Phantom figures more recently. And I genuinely hate to say that I feel similarly here. There's just a lot of.. not great going on. In some ways these even feel more like knock-offs than legit BFS product. To go over some issues:
Knight of Accord's head doesn't sit far enough down on the neck, so the coif, which is sculpted to look like it's resting on the shoulders and down the chest, is kind of 'floating' there. I don't know if this is typical of the figure, or a problem with mine. It's minor. But it's annoying. One of my Asperity Knights came with a malformed skull head, and the helmet head didn't include the neck post. The paint work on the coifed skull was different between the two figures.
Both figures have that relatively useless in-out wrist articulation for the gripping hands, just like the goddamn Phantom figures. The elbows are kind of weak in the rotational ROM. The ankles on both figures aren't.. great (again, I'm on record that I also just DON'T LIKE the perfect sphere ankle joints, which I find incredibly unsightly and the primary reason I ignored all of McFarlane's DC and Fortnite stuff). Both figures are smaller than the previous knights. Noticeably smaller. One can argue 'people are different sizes' but like.. stfu, honestly. These aren't individuals. They're army builders. They shouldn't look abnormally short next to all your other figures. Also not loving that the two-handed Asperity sword get no paint apps, so the handle is just supposed to be bare metal, I guess? And the weapons in general feel lower quality than previous outings. They seem bendier and weaker than previous figures.
They just don't have the quality of manufacture I expect from Boss Fight.
I also have some specific design choice issues with these that aren't necessarily related to manufacturing but I do want to bring up. It's absolutely bizarre to me that they opted for redesigning the knight secondaries in a way that the scabbard -cannot- be attached to the waist. That's just... why? Why do that?
I do not like the decision to go with a like.. beaten copper texture for some of the Asperity stuff. On the helmet and pauldrons, it just makes them look like they don't belong with the rest of the armor, because the texture doesn't match at all. On the sword it just looks... weird? Like.. sword blades don't look like that. What is going on there?
I'm also not actually a big fan of the new method of attachment for the pauldrons - first seen with the EXCELLENT female knights. I do appreciate that it gets rid of the big hole in the top of the shoulder. On the other hand.. they just warp instead of actually having a joint that allows them to move, like on the original knights. So moving a figure's arm up just bends the plastic. Pros and cons to both approaches for sure, but I'm not fully sold on this way actually being better.
Don't really love that the knights lower arms are now sculpted with the vambraces instead of the vambraces being secondaries.
I also feel like redoing the whole figure made this a great opportunity to add mail texturing to the undearms, elbows, or even the legs. But alas.
There are things I do like, though. I think the new armor sculpting overall looks really nice (not necessarily better than the originals, but on par). I like that the new tassets actually cover at least some of the front of the leg, where they're supposed to be. It's still not RIGHT, from a 'historical' perspective, but it's -more- right than the old ones. I also really like the greaves. In fact, I like these ones better than the originals. The mail coif heads are fantastic, even if I feel like the sculpting turned out really soft in production and could be a lot crisper (and HAS been crisper on previous BFS figures). The new shield design is, in my opinion, better than the original.
There's REALLY good stuff going on here. Great stuff, even. I don't know where or how stuff went wrong but it's made far more disappointing because of how fantastic these figures could be. As is... they're okay. But they don't inspire me to get excited about the line like the originals did. I don't want to buy any more of them. In fact, they don't even inspire me to pre-order the next round of figures. I cancelled all my pre-orders after the Phantom figures because I need these to be better for how much they cost me to get hold of, and these figures do nothing to suggest to me that I was wrong.
But I'm desperately hoping, as I said, that this round of figures is a weird bump in the road and that Fantasy Wave 7 puts us back on track, and we never have to see the likes of 10A Knights, new Phantom, and new Zorro ever again.
Oh, and the 10A packaging is very pretty. I don't keep packaging, but I'm actually going to keep one of these cardbacks because of how nice they look. Reminds me of like.. collecting '90s comics with those shiny foil covers.
another new pre-order
https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/269978?o=4
I do like that elf head
The Wanderer looks like a cool figure, and it definitely has a lot of attire possibilities. Now all we need to go up for pre order is The Bard to complete the Wave.
Yeah, the wanderer looks nice. I'm guessing the many delays have resulted in BFS needing to just put stuff out as it comes in so they can both make some money and make room in the warehouse and keep things moving. That being said, these mini-drops suck for Int. folks and make it basically impossible to buy things from BFS as they come out.
So I'll either wait for the Bard to be in stock, or I'll get them as they come out from BBTS and just keep them in the POL.
The good news is that the new crop of Fantasy figures are largely based on the old HACKS figures so they're... good. Hard to say what that means going forward because I imagine these are being made at different factories or something, but I'm really hoping all future figures turn out like this wave of Fantasy and not like the 10A/Phantom/Zorro figures that recently came out.
The Wanderer looks like a cool figure, and it definitely has a lot of attire possibilities. Now all we need to go up for pre order is The Bard to complete the Wave.
and the Bard pre-order is up!
Nice! definitely want this one. I like there are 2 pretty different looks you can make out of this figure. BFS is good at making that happen. So, I will probably get two of these.
The Wanderer looks like a cool figure, and it definitely has a lot of attire possibilities. Now all we need to go up for pre order is The Bard to complete the Wave.
and the Bard pre-order is up!
Minor clarification; pre-order at BBTS but in stock at BossFightShop.
I really love the Bard, myself. Definitely want to grab him, but I'll be waiting for him to be in stock at BBTS since BFS's store still makes up it's own random prices if you're outside the US, and BFS hasn't seemed too interested in even understanding the problem, let alone fixing it. I will say these tiny figure drops every few weeks make it basically impossible to pre-order from BBTS anymore if you're outside the US, as well. Just between this, Coleop, the Desert Wanderer, and the 10A stuff - you're talking about four different shipping charges in like.. two months?
Whatever. 'I can't order directly from BFS ever again' is probably a minor complaint since they don't really do exclusives for their own store or anything like that. And the new crop of fantasy figures look leaps and bounds better than what I'm assuming is stuff coming from a different factory (10a knights, new-Zorro, new-Phantom, new-CotD).
Still, my enthusiasm has really been worn down by the most recent releases being so disappointing.
I don't follow Boss Fight news super closely, but I saw these listings overseas and the names seem new to me. No pics yet.
@ashtalon There's pics floating around on Facebook and maybe Instagram - but I have no idea how to share them here. It's like a new tabard torso and secondary skirt combined with regular pants, new short-sleeved mail shirt with 'fabric' coming down to the elbow, and the new knight lower arms and lower legs for the main two, and the Bowman replaces the armored lower arms and legs for unarmored. So a heavy mix of re-use and new stuff. They look okay but the lower quality of the new knights has me pretty ambivalent about these guys.
And for those wondering - they are definitely legit. It's already confirmed. Even though these were not officially announced by Boss Fight and it seems a couple of overseas sellers jumped the gun revealing them.
Let's hope they fix that ass-stupid wrist issue before these get made. Even with a bowman you want the grip hand to swing up/down since archers swing their bows downward both the wrist and shoulder after releasing an arrow; neither of those joints go in/out when shooting an arrow except on the left hand nocking the arrow.
And hopefully this doesn't come off racist but I'd really like a pasty-faced never-seen-the-sun Englishman head to go with the bowman figure. Correct me on this one but that does look like an English yew longbow, from the famous Battle of Agincourt that basically ended medieval war tactics forever? Do two series with the other heads as swap-outs so I have a reason to buy 3.
Well, these are fantasy based. Not based on our history. Although, I haven't studied history in a while, and maybe some knights did fight an army of the dead.
Digging these new figures, will pick them up for sure.
I'll echo what adrien said though, need to go back to their original wrists. I would also add that for the price, I really think we should be getting more unique weapon sculpts. Seems weird to me that opposing forces are using the exact same swords. They do look great though, I cant resist cool medieval characters in 1:18 scale.
Those all look great! I'm surprised to see them too, as I had never heard anything about these. I figured the next batch of Fantasy figures we'd see would be the Wave mentioned a year or so ago with all the newer body types like the Dwarf and such.
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