Name: Dark Legion TroopersTM
Subtitle: lethal machines
Line: KR|Enmity
Item type: multi-pack (2-pack) - Nº 1 in the line.
Character details
Name: Dark Legion Trooper
Real name: Robotically Enhanced Reptonoid TrooperTM
Classification: robot
Home: Tahron
Era: 20 years before Foundation
Affiliation: Dark Legion (originally a Reptonoid project)
Rank: drone; archaeological excavation equipment.
Background
First appearance: KR|Enmity #1 - Flares of enmity
Brief bio: originally intended as cybernetic attack soldiers for boosting Bi-Harr's army lethality, Loghar transformed his Robotically Enhanced Reptonoid Troopers into excavation machines following Duke Wordron's request to be provided with technological support for his archaeological work. Aside from being capable of rolling over rubble and tough terrain, as well as boring through even the hardest rock, these machines could be operated with acute precision thanks to an inbuilt ultrasonic-imaging system located in their drill bits, to ensure that precious buried material was not damaged during the excavation process. After Wordron had succeeded in unearthing King Khon-Uhr's powerful helmet, his right-hand man LabramarTM helped him reverse-engineer the conversion performed by Loghar and upgrade these tunnelling machines to deadly assault tank-drones for the newly formed Dark Legion.
Articulation
Standard from the waist up for both figures and in the lower body for the android form only.
Description
In the comics, the Dark Legion Troopers appear as armoured tunneling machines that can transform into armed robotic drones (similarly to a person's body that changes from a child's pose to a standing position). Despite the two figures represent identical characters, they feature two different stages of this transformation and look very different from the waist down: with caterpillar tracks in one case and with a pair of articulated legs in the other. So, I'm going to describe the upper body and each of the two lower bodies separately.
Upper body
Head: the entirety of each trooper's head consists of a conical steel drill bit (with a blade-like tapered screw thread) pointing upward. Although in the comics the drill bit-head is occasionally shown to lift slightly, in order to reveal two ominous triangular eyes that emit a red glow, this detail is not present in the action figures
Body: each trooper features a pair of black metallic electro-hydraulic arms, which display lots of machinery/circuitry patterns, as well as small areas with scaly (at the triceps) and wrinkled (near the upper side of the forearms) greenish skin, hinting at a semi-organic nature of these machines; the latter feature is never shown in the comics, but the character details and the brief bio strongly suggest that these drones could be the result of Loghar's crazy supersoldier experiments on the Reptonoid Troopers, sort of prototypes of the future Rexodon Troopers. Under the removable armour, the torso is the same tech-mech piece used for the Destructomorph and Rexodon Troopers, with identical dials, sliders, buttons, knobs and rectangular lenticular sticker at the centre of the chest (which gives an illusion of coursing sound waves)
Wearables: each trooper wears a dark-green armour with black details, including a Dark Legion symbol (i.e., a diamond-shaped gemstone, which, when looking deeply into it, shows a subtle discolouration resembling a demonic face) on the chest plate, two dark-green gauntlets and a dark-green belt that shows lots of cyber details. On the back of the armour, each trooper carries a technological backpack, which has a ton of small sculpted details (including a system through which exhaust gases are expelled) and, on the left side, a holster to store a badass black plasma-rifle; this weapon, which is fictionally derived from a suction device, has a silver hose that runs to the backpack, where it is permanently attached. Additionally, a pair of circular silver saws comes out partially from the side of each forearm and each shoulder; in the comics, these toothed discs are shown on both sides of each machine in its full-vehicle mode and enable it to return to the surface once its tunneling mission is completed.
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| Dark Legion Trooper's stylised armour; the circle at the centre of the chest piece represents the Dark Legion symbol. |
Crawler mode's lower body
The half-vehicle configuration has two series of black metallic wheels on either side (the front set has two wheels, the rear set has three), each with a seemingly articulated band of dark-green metal plates passing around. Between the two front wheels and between the two rear ones there are two additional wide wheels with nicely patterned black rubbery studded tyres (these are the only truly working wheels in the figure), while between the middle wheels (which are the front ones of the rear sets) there's a black metallic pivoting piece at a 45-degree incline that derives from the android's thighs and crotch (see below). The continuous tracks and the pivoting part show various techno-embellishments, such as tubes, wires, pistons and hinges.
Android mode's lower body
The black metallic electro-hydraulic thighs (together with a cyber-detailed black crotch piece) are fictionally obtained through the transformation of the above-mentioned pivoting piece, while the lower legs and feet derive from the rear tank treads (against which the front caterpillar tracks swing back) and, as a result, look quite bulky and mostly covered with dark-green metal plates. A detail that I really love is the presence of an embossed Reptonoid emblem (i.e., a reptile eye) on the inner central portions of some of the wheels, just to remind us that these machines actually belong to Bi-Harr's army. The two wide wheels are not present in this configuration... more on this later.
Action feature
The half-vehicle trooper can be positioned in two different rolling battle modes: from low-riding to high-mounted. When in terrain-tracking mode, the pivoting piece leans forward and the trooper's torso lies horizontally, allowing its powerful drill bit-head to blast through barricades. When in ground-patrol mode, the pivoting piece slants backward and the trooper's torso is positioned straight up, ready to battle the Theriom ground forces with its blaster. The swinging component has ratchet joints that are strong enough to hold either position with no problem.
Additionally, there is a black seat that can be attached to the bottom of the trooper's backpack when in low-riding position, allowing another figure to ride it and to be carried into battle... not my cup of tea actually, I'd rather have got the full-vehicle configuration in addition to the two forms included in this pack.
Weapons and accessories
The Dark Legion Troopers come with a great deal of accessories. First up is a pair of translucent blue plasma burst effects that can plug into the muzzles of the rifles.
Furthermore, we get a scythe-like silver blade and a double rotating blade: the former is meant to be held with the sharp inside curve of the blade facing upward by the half-vehicle trooper, the latter is for the legged trooper and is fictionally generated by connecting the two wide wheels from the vehicle configuration side-by-side, imagining that the rims of the wheels retracted and the tyres got taller and narrower, allowing the tread patterns to separate and reveal series of silver blades.
Finally, each figure includes an alternative head and an alternative chest symbol, in order to make the Dark Legion Troopers look like the prototype soldiers created by Loghar before their conversion into excavation tools. Like with previous troopers from the Destructomorph and Rexodon factions, each black metallic head resembles an Ankylosaurus' skull, characterised by a wide and low shape, a few mechanical and electrical components (including new details, such as a number of small silver tubes running from the neck towards the lower jaw) and the front part of the jaws ending in a beak. Each head also wears a horned matte black headgear, whose design kinda recalls a motorcycle helmet equipped with an X-shaped glossy black visor. Two additional horns project backwards and down from the back of the head, right below the helmet's silver horns. The chest symbol is a Reptonoid emblem (i.e., a red reptile eye) that can plug into a hole in the chest armour after removing the Dark Legion symbol. Additionally, there are two small ball-pegs that can be snapped into the detached drill bit-heads, allowing them to plug either into the armours' holes (to obtain a drill-bursting effect from the troopers' chests) or into the muzzles of the rifles (to get an even cooler weapon).
Final thoughts
Character value: ♦♦♦♦ The Dark Legion Troopers hit every right note they could hit in this line
Articulation: ♥♥♥ The movement is as much as I need from this kind of figures
Sculpt and paint: ♣♣♣♣♣ They appear to be a 100% new sculpt and are pretty close to the comic book design
Accessories: ♠♠ I would really have loved to get the full-vehicle version, just to create some more variety on the shelf
Playability: ♪♪♪♪ This ends up being a fun set of toys that look great both alone and in pairs
Overall: ☺☺☺☺ These stormtroopers left me wanting more, more and more, which is all I can ask of great figures.
