Bronze Dwarf Legion Builder

15 months to the day after the Four Horsemen's Mythic Legions Kickstarter ended, the box arrived at my door. Bring on the medieval fantasy style warriors! Most of the figures have a bit of biographical information on the side of the package (in addition to the standard text on the back), but not this one. See, Mythic Legions is not (only) a story about dozens of unique characters, it's a story about armies - and so, the starter figures were "Legion Builders," generic troopers with extra interchangeable parts. There were knights (Silver and Gold), skeletons (Standard and Gold), and dwarves (Silver and Bronze). How do you choose where to start in a set as big as this, when what would be an entire year's worth of quarterly releases in any other line is dumped on you all at once? Well, with 34 different figures available in the Kickstarter, that meant a lot of after-the-fact add-ons (unless you were doing the all-in pledge, which I didn't this time). But you still had to have pledged at least a certain level before you could add other figures, and for me, the figure I started with was the Bronze Dwarf Legion Builder. Since he's the base of my Mythic Legions collection, he's our first review. Bronzey (who, despite his name, is not the sort of reddish brown you might expect, but is instead black with golden accessories) wears the standard dwarven helmet, which displays its racial origins by way of a false beard and mustache being crafted as decorative elements on the face. Nice touch! The antlers actually plug into circles on the sides of the helmet, allowing them to swap out for something different if you don't like them. Since the dwarf is, you know, "a dwarf," he's shorter than the rest of the figures, a scant 5½" (not counting the antlers). That's all accomplished by the limbs, because his torso is shared with many of the other toys. He wears a breastplate with seven inset lines of X's that cascade from the waist, and has a PVC fauld with tassets that hang down over his thighs (as well as over the scale mail loincloth). His pauldrons are layered, but stop short enough that we can see the underlying chainmail between them and the couters. His large gloves have blocky edges - in fact, most of his armor has straight angles, rather than smooth curves. The boots even come to sharp points on the toes. This little dude is dangerous-looking! The Mythic Legions figures are incredibly well-articulated, and also incredibly modular. Bronzey has a balljointed head, swivel neck, swivel/hinge shoulders and elbows, swivel forearms, swivel/hinge wrists, balljointed torso, swivel/hinge hips, swivel thighs, swivel/hinge knees, and swivel/hinge/swivel ankles. Pretty much every one of those joints can be pulled apart with only a modicum of force, which is why, should you chose to buy scads and scads of these figures, you'll be able to swap bits around to create new things as you see fit. Like we said, this figure is an army-builder, and so that your army doesn't all look identical, he comes with a bag of accessories. Well, first there's a sword in the tray next to him (at 5¼" long, it's almost as tall as he is), but then there's a bag of accessories! He has a 6" long poleaxe, with a square shaft and angles just as harsh as his armor. There's a second axehead included in the set - you can pull the fluke off the back of the axe, and plug the second blade in its place. A small brown strap can be slipped around his chest, and there's a loop the sword can slip through. He has a shield with a clip to hold it to his wrist, and two large shoulder pads that can plug into his back. To really add some variety to your army, try putting on only one pauldron. The Bronze Dwarf Legion Builder is a wonderful figure. After we review 33 more of them, someone this plain might feel boring, which is just another reason to look at him first. Mythic Legions is another excellent line from the Four Horsemen. -- 06/19/16

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