The armies have been mustering since the conclusion of the successful Kickstarter campaign in March of last year. Now, knight, dwarf, orc, barbarian, skeleton and many more have descended on the doorsteps of backers worldwide – the Mythic Legions have arrived and they are going to take over your toy room.
If you have been coming to this site for a while, you know we have been hyped about this new original series from our friends The Four Horsemen. While they have created several other awesome proprietary lines in the past, like Seven Kingdoms and Gothitropolis, Mythic Legions is the one that spoke loudest to me right from the onset, and I was hooked from the first time I saw the prototypes in the basement of Toy Tokyo so many years ago on a cold night in NYC. The diorama presentation with an epic number of figures on display shot the announcement of the line right out of a cannon, and the mythos, characters, and fan base have only been growing ever since.
I love fantasy, I have my entire life, and I can trace that back to the first time The Hobbit was read to me as a young child. So to say that I have wanted a line of fantasy action figures like this for pretty much my entire life is not an understatement. However, I collect a LOT of action figures, so I knew that, unfortunately, I would not be able to commit the capital to go all-in on this line (at least not at the moment), so I would definitely need to prioritize. Thus, I am prioritizing figures in my write-up as well, because if I were to tackle my entire spoil from the Kickstarter, we would be going on for days. So think of this as the first part of (likely) several features coming over the next few weeks.
So how to prioritize? Why, completely selfishly, of course! As I unboxed the Legions, it became quickly apparent that the Bog Goblin, the Blood Armor Knight, and Skapular the Cryptbreaker were my three standout favorites. I was all set to feature those three in the first pass, and the choice was not even difficult to make. Well . . . then I busted out everyone from their plastic prisons and it became obvious to me that, while those parts were still my individual favorites, the whole of my newly assembled skeleton clan bested everything. So, if you were looking to see about some badass skeletons (and nothing else yet), then you have come to the right place.
While I now have awesome barbarians, dwarves, and goblins adorning my shelf, nothing comes close to what is my assembled skeleton legion. I am already at the point of kicking myself that my army is not bigger than it is (more on that in a bit), but my band of Skapular the Cryptbreaker, Malleus, and three skeleton “legion builders” is so awesomely imposing, all the rest of the Mythic Legions guys are teaming up against them. The Horsemen did a great job fleshing-out an entire mythos for Mythic Legions, and everyone has a backstory, but much like I do with Masters of the Universe, I will take things I like about the established canon and add that to my own ideas to create a more personalized story. When a toy line gives you the ability to do that and run, there is not a higher compliment that can be paid – these are already inspiring the imagination.
Now, since Skapular is my favorite figure of the entire line (the Bog Goblin ties him), he leads my undead horde, and his berserker Malleus and soldiers are helping him find more members to join their army. Like all classic armies of the undead, membership is easy – you just have to be dead, so I have them hunting down all of the rest of the armies and species to bolster their ranks. Maybe the Blood Knight can be their ultimate commander? That could be a cool twist to have him be a skeleton underneath all of that armor, and once you die, your blood is added to the armor and your skeletal remains are under his control for all time. That is so high fantasy and so metal all at once; I LOVE it, and that is the kind of thing Mythic Legions can create.
But let’s talk about the end result of the Horsemen’s most successful Kickstarter: the figures. Action figure production is a time-consuming and VERY complicated process. The big manufacturers like Hasbro and Mattel have more than their fair share of challenges when it comes to translating a pristine prototype to a factory-produced action figure, so I think we are all trained to be comfortable with a certain level of degradation when we see hand-made sculptures, and plastic toys. HOWEVER . . . I am going to get a little brave here and say that, when it comes to matching the original prototypes, Mythic Legions is already one of the most successful action figure lines I own. Seriously, these final products are just that good.
This is a Four Horsemen line, so you knew the sculpting would be amazing, and it is. The tooling process to create the molds to make these figures was extremely successful because all of the details appear to have made it through production. Frankly, I am not sure how to ever talk about them because I just keep noticing more and more little things as I continue to enjoy these guys. Sure, I am only talking skeletons here, and by definition they are the foundation of any creature, but even with everything else stripped away, the amount of unique personality instilled in each figure is absolutely amazing.
Skapular and Malleus look completely different from each other — in the best way possible. Sure, there is a lot of part sharing in this line (that is one of the central tenants for customization), but as characters, they are so diversely different. Skapular’s skull sculpt is cold and evil, and the pointed helm and robing are two of the things that initially caught my eye. Meanwhile, Malleus is savage, wild, and completely impassioned, which makes him the perfect “tank” fighter for my skeleton crew; I mean, he wields those twin axes so imposingly and beautifully, he almost scares me. So, while a group of skeletons would be easy to keep fairly uniform, this crew is all over the map, and, again, in the best way possible. If you just look at the pictures, you can see the level of detail included in all of the sculpts, and the jagged armor and skeletal faces are most certainly the highlights for me.
As impressive as the sculpts are, and I was expecting them to be great in the final form, but what is even more impressive to me, and it is the spot where most production figures take the biggest hit, is in the paint applications. I still cannot get over how absolutely amazing the paint turned out for this line, and I stopped making eye test comparisons to pictures of the prototypes because anything worth mentioning is carried over beautifully. I don’t think there is any part of these figures that has not been hit with at least one detailed paint application. Seriously, just look at them and see the subtle details of the washes, airbrushing, and sheen differences each figure has. Not only are the applications many in numbers, they are also so, so, so clean. Again, I cannot find any egregious bleed lines or slop anywhere on these guys, so when you combine the cleanliness with the sheer amount of brush passes, it is a thing of beauty. Paint is EXPENSIVE in terms of production, but the Horsemen, via them, us, definitely got our money’s worth.
Sculpt and paint are certainly essential, but good movement is just as important, so I really put these figures through the paces when it comes to range of movement and posing potential, and, overall, they came out great. I would consider these figures to “super-articulated” since they all feature more than 20 points, and the standard joints are augmented by the swappable joint aspect of many of the joints. This is implemented by a simple peg system, but since the peg size is standardized across the line, it allows for a lot of customization. I would call the hips and rocker ankles the best of the joints as they have by far the best range of motion; meanwhile, I wish the elbows would have been double-jointed rather than the hinge-and-swivel (“elbro”) joint. They could use a bit more range to create more variety for holding the weapons, but I am kind of nitpicking there.
Are you still with me? Good, because I am going wrap this up with talk about the accessories because, well, there are a LOT of them. It is so cool to get so many weapons with these figures, but I am not even sure how I am going to use them all. I have already started mixing and matching the accessories based on what I feel works best for each character, but please know – I have more than enough axes, swords, knives, spears, and shields to outfit and army three times as big as this (at least) using only the weapons included with these few figures.
I am a big fan of the swords and spears, and the daggers are cool too. The axes are neat and are almost as customizable as the figures themselves with the additional blades and swappable spikes and details, but they are probably my least favorite of the weapons. I don’t know why, they are cool, and Malleus looks bad ass with two of them, but the geometric designs seem to really only fit the dwarves, and they are definitely inspired by the Lord of the Rings movie designs. I enjoy the simple designs of the other implements, but these are still really cool.
So yeah, these Mythic Legions Skeletons are absolutely killer — I LOVE them. They go great on their own, but they also display well with Masters of the Universe Classics (if you are wondering), and the thick bones really look like the skeletal frame under those big MOTUC bodies. I have to admit that somehow, some way, I completely forgot to add Tibius and Clavian to my Kickstarter order, so when I go to SDCC, I am going to have to BEG the Horsemen to make them a part of their all-star assortment. They look like such amazing figures, and I am pretty much on a mission to get as many skeletons as I can now. I want to congratulate the Four Horsemen because these figures are amazing, and if you have them, you know that. If you don’t, go find them. Now. Thanks for checking this out, we will be back with more Mythic Legions coverage soon.