G.I. Joe Convention 2013 - Nocturnal Fire Night Force Repeater

This is going to be a theme throughout these reviews, but never was the theme more accurate than it is with Repeater here. This Convention Set is somewhat littered with characters I never really cared a whole lot about. Charbroil, Psyche Out, Spearhead, Frag Viper, Mortal... and the Collectors' Club has done a great job making me fans of not just the figure, but the character itself.

Because of what the Club did with Repeater, he has migrated from a has-been Heavy Weapons Specialist, to a full time member of my G.I. Joe roster, because this figure is just that cool. I cannot properly express how happy I am that the Collectors' Club has gained access to recent tooling from the Pursuit of Cobra, 30th Anniversary, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation figures, and are no longer hogtied by 25th Anniversary era parts and pieces. If Repeater is any indication, regardless of what Hasbro might be doing for the next 12 - 18 months, G.I. Joe fans have a TON of great stuff to potentially look forward to.

As many have guessed, Repeater's base figure is from the G.I. Joe: Retaliation Wave 2 "Battle Kata" Roadblock, only with the two obnoxious blocky holsters removed. That does leave a little notch in each leg, but that little notch is really not that visible and having it there does not detract from the figure in the least. In fact, I'm strongly considering removing it from my Roadblock figure, just because they are eye sores.

Repeater's head is a totally new sculpt just plain oozing with character. I love his Army Ranger hat as a terrific call back to the cover of Marvel's G.I. Joe #82.

The end result of using this tooling is that Repeater is a hulking beast, which makes sense based on the size of the stedi-cam machine gun he carries around on a regular basis. It totally fits Repeater's persona and I love that the added size and bulk adds a character dimension to him that he has not had before. The fact that the Retaliation tooling is able to make this figure so large and imposing, but also so flawlessly articulated is testament to Hasbro's evolution in sculpting and design over the past few years.

Repeater uses the color scheme of the classic version as a template for this version, and this particular figure is closer in color to the vintage one than many of the others in this set. For Repeater it works very well. The vintage color scheme was much darker than some of the others, so this works nicely for Repeater, where some of the others needed to be toned down a bit. The Club tries to continue their tradition of bringing all of the characters together into a more unified color scheme, so by doing some color alterations throughout the set, they connect all of the various characters, and still make them at least somewhat vintage accurate.

ACCESSORIES

The Collectors' Club actually went a bit overboard with Repeater's accessories, in my opinion... he has the flak vest from Resolute Roadblock, which is a great tribute to the original. He also comes with a standard ammunition backpack with a slot for the machine gun belt, which can also hook to the stedi-cam style machine gun initially shipped with City Strike Destro. But along with that, he also comes with the backpack with straps from the Rise of Cobra Heavy Duty. This is a terrific backpack, and I love the straps, though they don't come close to closing around the torso with the vest.

I've seen many folks questioning the robotic arm as well...from what I can tell, one end connects to the strap of the backpack, while the other claw hooks onto the round secondary handle on the weapon itself.

It's a neat addition to the weapon, and the hand can still hold the upper handle with it attached, but I'm not sure it was truly necessary.

Speaking of the Heavy Duty backpack, the slot in that pack isn't quite large enough to accomodate the machine gun belt, so not all of these accessories really work flawlessly together, but they offer a lot of different configurations, depending on what you want to do. Can't complain about that.

This figure is pretty amazing. I'm a huge fan of the Battle Kata Roadblock and those parts are used to perfection here. I can't say enough great things about this Repeater figure. Along with Muskrat, he is the shining star of the Nocturnal Fire boxed set, and I love that the Collectors' Club has successfully made him a focal character, simply by doing such a fantastic job with this figure.

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