KR|Emergence Review #11: Three-Sailed Troopers

Toy prototype details
Name: Three-Sailed Troopers^TM
Subtitle: creeping troopers
Line: KR|Emergence
Item type: multi-pack (2-pack) - Nº 2 in the line.

Character details
Name: Three-Sailed Trooper
Classification: lepidosauromorph reptile
Sex: male or female
Home: Tahron
Era: 3 years before Foundation
Affiliation: Unnamed Clan
Rank: corporal.

Background
First appearance: KR|Emergence #1 - The cradle of evil
Brief bio: once belonging to a tribe of lizard-like warriors who were more savage than intelligent, these cold-blooded assassins were selected and enslaved to mindlessly serve Bi-Harr as foot soldiers in his dreadful reptilian army. With their hideous appearance and deadly thrashing tails, these corporals enforced their evil master's will and stormed the mammalians' homelands with overpowering ferocity. When centuries later Lor-Drek decided to live Bi-Harr's military force and take up the fight for claiming Tahron on his own, several battalions of troopers chose to align with him, becoming devoted members of the Unnamed Clan. Fighting loyally in the armies of Lor-Drek, these fearsome troopers were particularly vicious in battle, devouring warriors they felled in order to absorb their spirits and power, a practice that terrified the heroic Therioms much to the delight of their enemies.

Articulation
Standard, except that the tails are ball jointed. The female figure lacks the hinged abdomen.

Description

Most of these figures' sculpt was reused from the Spektrosaur Troopers, with the addition of a few newly tooled parts, i.e., the forearms, thighs, shins, neural spine sails as well as the male's armour and the female's torso.

Heads: both figures' heads have a similar appearance to a common iguana, characterised by scaly greenish skin and purple eyes, and have their mouths closed. Each of the two troopers wears a red helmet with purple details and has an extra gular fold piece that fits right on top of the body, around the neck (it is glued on). The two heads are identical and look great on both figures

Bodies: both figures show greenish skin, but the body structures are very different. The male trooper shows a scaly texture (except for the smooth abdomen, which is also painted in a more yellowish colour) and large ridges that run down the sides of the limbs. The female trooper has a slenderer frame and displays a wrinkled skin, rather than scaly, with a yellowish paint on the abdomen. Each trooper has three parallel rows of extended brown spines, each supporting a large sail along their back, which are incorporated in a completely separate piece that snaps into a socket on the back. Finally, each figure has clawed hands and feet (reused from the Reptonoid Troopers), and a long, thin greenish tail, which is also a separate piece emerging from under the loincloth and is painted in a yellowish colour on the underside

Wearables: each trooper wears a purple crocodile skin shoulder/chest covering, two metallic purple bracelets (each made of three narrow riveted bands), two studded metallic purple calf protectors with triangular knee guards, a purple leather belt, and a red fabric loincloth resembling a forked tongue. Each armour, whose size and shape are adapted to the type of torso (the female version is not removable), includes a pair of jagged spaulders (each consisting of a scale armour lower layer made of several overlapping bronze plates laced together, and a cracked ochre upper tortoise-shell layer) as well as a set of diagonal straps made of four taxidermied ochre-marked, red rattlesnakes departing from a central bronze plate with sculpted electronic circuitry details (fictionally a device that regulates the trooper's body temperature). Additionally, both figures are equipped with cracked ochre tortoise-shell thigh pads.

Three-Sailed Trooper's stylised helmet.

Three-Sailed Trooper's stylised armour.

Action feature

In the comics, the Three-Sailed Troopers are ferocious hand-to-hand combatants armed with razor-sharp claws and teeth, and are highly resistant to injury thanks to their hardened hide. Furthermore, when attacking their opponents, they reveal an extremely unusual open structure of their jaws. Similarly to a stoplight loosejaw, the connection between their mouth opening and the head is reduced to a hinge, allowing the upper jaw to be tilted back and the lower jaw thrust forward as well as split in the middle for a wider gape. In addition, similarly to a moray eel, a second set of extendable jaws, located farther back in the head and closely resembling the primary jaws (complete with tiny teeth), are brought forward and launched through the mouth cavity. So, each figure comes with an alternative head characterised by the mouth wide open and showing several large, fang-like teeth in the front of the four jaws (followed by many small barbed teeth) and a long, warty forked tongue that has a sharp, curved tooth protruding from each tine.

Moreover, the troopers' powerful whip-like prehensile tails, which can be used to deliver painful strikes, are made of bendable plastic. In the comics, when grabbed by the tail, a trooper can allow it to break, so he/she can escape (while the tail has a life of its own for a while) and eventually regenerate a new one. In fact, each figure's tail is detachable (a little flap on the loincloth was also created to cover the exposed hollow) and can be connected to a sort of handle, which is armoured with a number of spike-like projections that resemble the neural spines, in order to become a whip.

Weapons and accessories
Aside from the two alternate heads and the whip-tail handles, the Three-Sailed Troopers come with two weapons, a few additional pieces of armour and a third alternative head.
Each weapon is a blowgun, which consists of a long narrow reddish wooden tube and a white bony poisonous dart. The tube resembles a snake coiled around a stick, whose head at the end of the barrel propels a curvy, forked tongue-like GITD dart (which is a separate piece not designed to be shot) through the mouth. The extra length of the blowpipe also accommodate a small hanging banner that can be mounted on it. The package includes four different plastic banners, one for each faction you want these troopers to belong to: not only their default affiliation–the Unnamed Clan (a light-green snake emerging from an upright, spirally coiled conic dark-green shell on a dark-red background), but also Reptonoid (a red reptile eye on a dark-green background), Rexodon (a red reptile skull on a dark-green background), and Spektrosaur (a greenish flame on a dark-red background). Additionally, there are two sturdy belts that are also designed for displaying these guys as members of all those different armies. These belts are much larger than the standard non-removable ones and have a purple crocodile skin look. Each one is also decorated with bronze studs and a symbol (four interchangeable emblem pieces are included) at the centre. They have a really neat design and look great on both figures.

This 2-pack also comes with an extra alternative head - while the face is identical to the regular ones, the difference that makes this head unique is one broken horn on the helmet, symbolising a battle damage.

Last but not least, the figures come with an insanely cool accessory - a new 2-piece armour for a Theriom Trooper! The gold&silver chest plate is similar to the TT's standard armour and has an attached "space helmet"-like face shield with sculpted embellishments such as crosshair sighting and a sort of breathing hose running from an electronic device on the chest. The mostly silver back plate (choke-full with sculpted wires, gears and other tech-mech details) features multiple technological capture weapons that are mounted to four mechanical arms (which are slightly articulated at their bases and arranged in an X shape) as well as a flip over net thrower. Two grabbing clamps are attached to the lower mechanical arms; each clamp can extend and grab an opponent by means of two green gripping jaws. These "heat-seeking" clamps can also pop out to mimic their ability to be propelled. To entangle an enemy's body, the armour can fictionally launch a two-headed bola weapon from the two upper mechanical arms - it's necessary to hook the bola string around the target sight on the face shield and snap the two red spheres securely into the ports at the end of the arms. Finally, a pull-and-release spring action triggers a mechanism that catapults a rectangular blue flexible net (equipped with two rods at two opposite sides) to snare enemies. The armour can only be worn by Wrapthur, but it also fits any male Theriom Knight, Soldier or Exo-Guardian figure. A silver smoke/stun grenade launcher with a strange hose running from the magazine to the barrel is also included.

Final thoughts
Overall: although these figures mostly reuse parts from previous Troopers, I’m glad I got these new reptile soldiers. By using my old Spektrosaur/Reptonoid Troopers figures and swapping several body and armour parts, I could easily make a number of unique lizard warriors from these sets; even more if I used some without armours, and twice as much if I used armour pieces from other figures. And I could continue to challenge myself with how large I could build my lizard men armies. I think that's really cool, and it makes me even happier with the old Troopers now than I was when I first got them. That’s the fun of doing these reviews – becoming re-familiarised with figures that I’ve had on my shelf for years and looking at them with an even more refined eye. With great sculpts, cool accessories, and interchangeable heads, the Three-Sailed Troopers are some of the best prototypes of the KR|Emergence line
Rating: ☺☺☺☺ / 5