A pleasant surprise this Valentine’s Day as Boss Fight Studio has released their hotly anticipated Berzerker Gorgon earlier than anticipated!
The Berzerker Gorgon is their first male Gorgon figure leveraging a brand new lower-midsection piece that is sure to appeal to collectors everywhere. The figure itself is a terrific shade of green and will compliment anyone’s Gorgon Horde nicely.
Seems like perfect timing! With the blockbuster reveal yesterday of the upcoming Vitruvian HACKS Knight of Accord, it seems only appropriate to follow that up with a review of their latest wave of product, the Wave 5.5 series.
Wave 5.5 was conceived of as a way to continue offering a few core characters who had been selling through on the site, so that new fans could continue buying these characters, but also so existing fans and collectors could further supplement their armies. I’m happy to say this series does both exceedingly well.
I think the Amazon Warrior took everyone (myself included) by surprise. In spite of the body style being slimmer, Boss Fight Studio has managed to put a female figure buck together that is exceptionally well constructed, well articulated, and just flat out fun to pose, display and play with. I would argue vigorously that the Amazon Warrior is actually a better and more fun foot soldier than the Spartan Warrior himself.
When I heard Boss Fight Studio was running out of stock on the Amazon Warriors, I made sure to grab a second before they were gone, and I was really wishing I’d grabbed a third (and fourth and fifth), but thankfully they announced the Wave 5.5 update and holy cow. Their Amazon Warrior redeco knocks it out of the park!
Taking some potential cues from both the standard Amazon Warrior and the Elite Amazon, this updated Amazon Warrior has the same skin tone and tattoo design as the original, only with purple tattoos instead of red. As usual with their color choices it isn’t just that the purple trim is purple, it’s that it’s a really terrific shade of purple, an awesome balance to the darkness of the armor that the figure comes with.
Yes, the darkness of the armor… This version of the Amazon Warrior comes with jet black armor on the chest, legs, and arms, and the skirt is mostly black as well with a lightly worn silver badge. The skirt is similar in deco to the exclusive Amazon Elite Warrior but with some slight color tweaks that work really nicely.
I find myself amazed that the black armor works as well as it does, but it truly does, making for a fantastic combination between the light skin and the purple tattoos. I really loved the gold armor and brown skirt deco of the original Amazon Warrior, but heck I love Penthesilea’s deco as well. I think I just need to accept the fact that if Boss Fight Studio designs it, I’m probably going to enjoy it.
Accessories
Like the armor, the Amazon Warrior’s weapons are colored in darker trim on the handles, and a really vibrant purple trim on the Spartan helmet separates this figure really nicely and give it’s some terrific “pop”. She comes with the same accessories as the first release Amazon Warrior, but the different color applications go a long way towards separating this figure from the original, and providing another outlet for human foot soldiers.
Yeah, this figure is terrific. Structurally she’s built just like the other Amazons, which is to say, to near perfection. Awesome range of motion, articulation and quality sculpting has become the norm with Vitruvian HACKS and this version of the Amazon certainly doesn’t let me down. The ankle joints continue to be fantastic and I do hope that maybe for Series 02 we might see a movement towards that for the Fantasy figures. Time will tell.
Excellent. Fantastic. How many different descriptive adjectives can I come up with to commend these latest figures from Boss Fight? Yes, they are mostly minor color variations to existing product, but considering that product is now out of stock, these will make for terrific substitutes for those hard to find items. I’m thrilled that Boss Fight is continuing to move forward with new product, it makes the wait for Series 02 a bit more bearable, and heck with Waves 6 and 7 on the way, we’ll have some really excellent stuff to supplement our HACKS addiction while Series 02 continues trucking forward.
More great stuff from Boss Fight Studio!
Amazon Warrior v2
Character
Sculpt
Articulation
Paint Deco
Accessories
4.1
Summary
The perfectly designed Amazon Warrior gets an excellent update here in Wave 5.5 with some darker armor and different color tattoos. It makes for a really cool darker aesthetic that works well for the character and adds some excellent variety to the growing ranks of elite female soldiers. Love this one.
Unsurprisingly, as the months have gone on, the base Spartan Warrior figure from BossFightShop has dwindled in available stock until it eventually vanished entirely. Considering the backbone of the entire Virtuvian HACKS human forces are made up of the Spartans, this seems like a problem for the human race as the Gorgons press their attack!
Have no fear… Boss Fight Studio went back to the factory and had a fantastic Spartan Warrior update created, with just some minor tweaks.
Keep in mind that there are collectors out there with countless Spartans already, and many of them probably love the consistency in deco with the armor, swords, and shields. For that reason, Boss Fight didn’t tweak the accessory or armor colors at all. What you see with each Spartan Warrior version 2 is essentially the same as what you saw with the first release Spartan, just now, these are actually available for sale! Go figure.
However, in order to add some variety, what the Boss Fight folks did was give the second version Spartan a slightly darker skin tone and a black hair and beard. The result is a figure which blends perfectly with his 299 fellow soldiers on your display shelf, but also adds some uniqueness and difference to the soldiers underneath the armor. It really is the perfect combination.
Because this figure is so similar to the one already released, it’s tough to find new avenues to explore with an additional review. Trust me when I say the sculpting and articulation are just as impeccable now as they were a year ago, and actually I kind of like the darker color of the skin and hair better on this second version than I did the first time around. This Spartan blends really nicely with both the Spartan Warrior and the Ultimate Spartan and I have no doubt that even folks who do not aggressively army build will soon have displays full of Spartan Warriors (as well they should).
Accessories
There isn’t much to talk about here, the accessories are all (mostly) the same. The only real difference is that this Spartan Warrior shield is one of the new shields with a larger hand grip, which allows male hands to hold it more effectively than the previous version. Beyond that, the accessory compliment and paint deco are the same deal.
This figure is pretty much the base figure for the Vitruvian HACKS Series 01 assortment, and it is spectacular. Anyone who needs more Spartan Warriors should not fear in scooping this one up, and anyone who does not need more Spartan Warriors definitely needs new Spartan Warriors, they just haven’t realized it yet. SPAAAARTTAAA!
Spartan Warrior v2
Character
Sculpt
Articulation
Paint Deco
Accessories
3.9
Summary
A nicely balanced update to the original Spartan Warrior, keeping the accessories the same, while slightly tweaking the paint deco for the skin and hair color to add some nice variety to your legions of Spartan Warriors. Exceptional articulation, really great construction, and superb paint applications makes for another great Vitruvian HACKS action figure.
What is about the Vitruvian HACKS figures that just brings a smile to my face every time I get a new one in my hands, even if they are ostensibly, just repaints? There is an ingrained sense of quality and craftsmanship that just doesn’t exist with many other lines out there, where each application of paint deco, each accessory choice, and each design based decision is something actually thought about and executed as a part of an overall design aesthetic, not just stuff thrown at the wall, hoping that some stick.
This repaint of Medusa takes the familiar design cues from the first, but goes in some different directions.
The skin tone here is a pale mixture of green and brown (at least it appears that way my eyes, I’m notoriously color blind) which separates it distinctly from the previous version. Offsetting the skin tone is a dark snake hair application which adds some great deco variety.
Along the surface of the tail, the scales and pattern continue to stand out very nicely, adding awesome detail to the rough texture of the sculpt there, and no matter how many of these Gorgons I get in hand, I continue to be utterly blown away by the engineering involved to make one of these figures. They are truly and utterly spectacular. The articulation is smooth and flawless, the joints stay together for play and display, yet are also fairly easily removable for customization.
This version of Medusa has some starkly different armor than the previous version. It’s still a very metallic shade of silver, but where the previous armor was worn down by some spectacular paint applications providing an awesome sense of battle worn metal, this armor is clean and unmarred. The effect is the opposite of the previous armor, but no less impressive. One of the many things that Boss Fight Studio does right is the various shades of these colors. This armor isn’t just “silver” it’s a fantastic, resonant SHADE of silver, and picking that exact right color is an art and a science. Anyone who looks at the various accessory packs or figures can tell that the people designing these things are doing so with meticulous care and attention to detail.
Accessories
Along with the armor paint changes, Medusa version 2 also comes with the same snake knife and snake whip as the original, but also with some minor tweaks. On the cosmetic side, the wraps are black here instead of the green/brown of the original version. On the structural side, the weapons are firmer material, which is especially cool for the snake knife, which was a little soft and floppy the first time around.
At first blush the weapons look nearly identical, but there are some critical changes that help.
This figure is fantastic. I own three of the original Medusa (cannibalized to make one longer tail) and countless Gorgons at this point, yet I am still immersed and captivated by the quality of this update. I think ultimately, just from an aesthetic perspective, I do enjoy the vibrant green of the original Medusa a little more, but there are certainly qualities to this one that are great, too.
And for those of you folks who don’t feel like you need another Medusa, I assume you’ve grabbed some Grab Bags along the way… grab one of those spare Gorgon heads and make this one another soldier. It’s worth considering!
Medusa v2
Character
Sculpt
Articulation
Paint Deco
Accessories
4.2
Summary
If you’d asked me if I thought we needed a second version of Medusa, I would have certainly said no, but considering the first deco sold through, I’m thrilled that Boss Fight Studio continues to make the character available in a good paint deco. Ultimately I prefer the deco of version 1, but version 2 has some great elements as well, with the clean silver armor, the adjusted green/brown skin color, and the somewhat more rigid material of the snake knife. It all adds up to a figure that might look like just a repaint, but has enough new twists and turns to make it desirable even to folks who already have 1 Medusa (or 3…)
