Rhode Island ComicCon kicks off today in Providence, Rhode Island, and Boss Fight Studio is there already breaking some news.
Over on the Boss Fighters Facebook Group, Troy Osgood shared some images from the Boss Fight booth featuring artwork for an upcoming Kickstarter for a Vitruvian HACKS Horse! We first saw some rough test shots for this horse at New Jersey Collectors Con, but things seem to have come a very long way since then. According to the display at the booth, there is a Kickstarter planned for March.
The horse will apparently have Pegasus wings, a unicorn and dark unicorn head, various saddles, and will even be HACKS blank compatible to make freaking centaurs.
A ton of great work behind the scenes has been going on for a while, and I’m thrilled to announce that the Kickstarter for the Marauder Task Force RPG is officially LIVE.
Tapping into resources from very talented industry professionals, a really unique gaming system has been built around the Marauder Task Force formula and it promises to be a LOT of fun for folks who love military action figures and military stories.
If enough support is put towards the project, there are even some exclusive Marauder Task Force figures that can be unlocked!
If you’re a fan of Marauder Task Force, or even other 1:18 military action figure lines, this RPG is right up your alley. Check it out at Kickstarter and help support us. I’m beyond thrilled to be involved in writing for this project and greatly look forward to bringing it to fans everywhere upon Kickstarter funding.
At New Jersey Collectors Con this year we got a little peek at the upcoming Wave 3 Lord Vehemous from the Vitruvian HACKS fantasy collection. Now, we have a little more (awesome) backstory courtesy of Infinite Earths, who Boss Fight allowed to reveal the package art and temporal log.
The package art is by James Griffiths and looks absolutely amazing. I love the influence of the purple energy throughout, signs of some disturbance of the timeline by the looks of it.
Even cooler is his backstory:
Lord Vehemous
Dragon Cult War Priest Self-proclaimed leader of a sect which worships dragons as avatars of the gods. Vehemous found a tome that grants him the ability to control these mighty beasts. Using this power, he has amassed a substantial number of followers, each of whom have been granted supernatural powers by the liberal imbibing of dragon blood. The blood has addictive properties and causes physical deformities but dragon cult members do not care. The telepathic powers, immunity to disease and tolerance to pain they gain are worth it.
Temporal Log: Vehemous has lately begun to preach that a magical item exists in the blasted lands that will allow his followers to take the next step and become dragons themselves. It appears legends of Stheno’s staff have reached his ears. Will he do the unthinkable and resurrect the long absent Gorgon horde if he finds it?
Definitely take a run over to Infinite Earths to see the full reveal and this looks like another awesome Vitruvian HACKS character I’ll want to get my hands on.
Over on the Animal Warriors of the Kingdom Facebook page, several updates have been posted on pre-production samples of their upcoming action figure line, and I gotta tell you, things are looking really good.!
Recently another exclusive character, Scraps has been unlocked, and pre-orders are open via BackerKit until November 1st, so you still have a chance to pre-order some of these great looking figures on the pre-order page now.
Even with some not-so-fun retail issues with 1:18 scale figures at the moment, it’s really awesome to see such ingenuity and creativity from these up and coming toy folks, and I’m wishing the Spero Studios guys all the success in the world. It’s looking like a fantastic product line coming together.
Make sure you hit up BackerKit to get your pre-orders in.
Right alongside the release of Wave 1 of the Fantasy series we already have our first convention exclusive, this one for the New Jersey Collectors Convention which occurred the weekend of August 11th – 12th in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Branded as a Boss Fight weekend celebration of sorts (also celebrating the release of Series 2), this year’s fall NJCC was a great time and offered a fantastic addition to the Fantasy series.
The Orc Conqueror is already a great figure, and this NJCC exclusive adds some intriguing twists. With a very deep red skin, darker brown secondaries and a bronze/gold trim instead of silver/gray. The result is a figure that is considerably different in appearance, yet maintaining all the cool features of the standard Orc Conqueror.
Inhabiting the “blasted land” this variation of Orcs are even meaner and less hospitable than their more standard green-skinned cousins. Just in their darker paint scheme, these figures look more sinister, and I really love the deep color of their skin complimented by the gold trim of the armor and other additions.
The Blasted Land Orc has the two different heads, two different helmets, and two different face plates just like the conqueror, plus all of the fantastic accessories that the standard release comes equipped with as well.
Accessories
But wait there’s more! In addition to the standard hammer head that comes with the Orc Conqueror, we get a look into the customizing possibilities of these weapons with a spiked mace end that can replace the hammer and create a whole different weapon. I’d have to think there is more where this came from down the line, but it’s great to get an early introduction to it here.
Along with the spiked made, the Blasted Land Orc has a gorgeous sword, a dark blade carved from volcanic rock that is shined to a nice polish more resembling pure obsidian. The look of the dark gleam of the blade is really unique and really awesome.
All of the same great gear as the Orc Conqueror, but in a deeper color scheme with some really awesome complimenting of the dark red skin of the Orc. This is one heck of a great addition to your already growing Orc army and with an intriguing backstory makes for a fantastic NJCC exclusive. Here’s hoping there are more surprise exclusives in store down the road.
Blasted Land Orc
Character
Sculpt
Articulation
Paint Deco
Accessories
4.5
Summary
While overall I probably prefer the color scheme of the standard Orc Conqueror, this figure is still a fantastic compliment to that one in pretty much every way. All of the same accessories and gear (with bonus spiked ball) and a really appealing darkened color pallet gives the Blasted Land Orc some nice variation and a nice evolution on the Orc theme. A great addition to the evil ranks of the Orcs in the HACKS fantasy universe.
This is one bad ass looking fairy. Though it looks like the proper terminology here is faerie. I’m not sure of the difference from my perspective (to be honest, when I started GeneralsJoes.com I don’t think I ever envisioned myself reviewing an action figure of a fairy or faerie or anything in between) but I know a great action figure when I see it.
As a Cavern Faerie, Lacuna’s obvious trademark are her wings, looking much more bat-like than the insect wings what I’m familiar with when it comes to faeries, but honestly, that’s totally cool with me. It makes perfect sense as well, with Lacuna being a “cavern” faerie that her wings should be more adaptable to creatures who live in caves.
Lacuna is the first figure to feature this new rear torso piece for the HACKS line which has twin ports for her wings (and additional arms!). That’s right, the plugs for the wings are the same as the plugs for the female arms, so not only can you tweak Lacuna to have four arms, but you can also make her more like a “harpy” by giving her wings instead of arms. As one would expect with the HACKS line, they are always pushing their limits.
The majority of the figure uses the familiar female blank template (except for the back of to the torso) and that suits me just fine. In all of our experience with female figures throughout Series 1, it’s certainly clear that the base figure there is pretty great and can be used for countless different figures, apparently even including cavern faeries.
Lacuna’s head sculpt is pretty fascinating, with a huge, meandering hair style and a pair of goggles (apparently developed by dwarves to help filter her vision in sunlight). Apparently driven from her caves by a mysterious skeleton attack, Lacuna now finds herself up among the other denizens of this fantasy world, and she doesn’t seem especially pleased about that fact.
As I mentioned, she has ports in her back for wings, and she comes with two different sets of wings, one closed and one open, which is a nice touch. Each wing has a nice multi-joint peg as well, so they can be posed in either formation, making for a wealth of opportunities for cool displays. Lacuna’s skin color is a nice gray/blue which seems to fit with her cavern lifestyle in great ways. She is an intriguing looking figure and even as a faerie doesn’t follow many of the traditional call outs, definitely going her own way as so many Boss Fight designs tend to do.
Accessories
The first thing you’ll notice about both Lacuna and Aiyana is that neither of them come with as many accessories as the Knight or Orc, but honestly, I don’t feel like they have to. Lacuna’s wings are large enough to make up for it, and as a faerie she travels pretty light anyway. Along with the wings, she comes with a fantastic looking scythe made from what looks like a tree branch and some kind of cave grown crystals that are cast in translucent colors that look spectacular. Her other weapon is a scepter, a magic device that enables her to be a “lightcaster” which is a really awesome story element added to the character. She can hold the weapons very well and their designs are exceptional.
Lacuna is a great figure built around an increasingly interesting character. I don’t know a whole lot about the whole faerie race from fantasy stories, but Lacuna seems like an interesting evolution to the typical narrative and fits the concept perfectly.
Lacuna
Character
Sculpt
Articulation
Paint Deco
Accessories
4.7
Summary
Gray skinned and bat winged, Lacuna immediately brings up some awesome imagery and story ideas for the fantasy series, taking the concept of faeries and adding some really awesome twists to it. Boss Fight continues to do a great job taking existing tooling and evolving it with torso pieces supporting wings, and many other great additions to their already excellent core concept.
