Star Wars The Black Series Phase II Clone Trooper and Battle Droid review
The Phase II Clone Trooper and Battle Droid is like a dream come true for a Star Wars prequel army builder like me. This is perfect setup allowing for rapid army building for both the Clone and Separatists armies. And we really need a slew of these now that Hasbro has begun cranking out prequel Jedis in earnest in 2024 and 2025.
I’ve been excited about this set since it was announced and immediately grabbed a pair. Let’s see if this will be the first of many more of these sets or if my Phase II Clone Trooper and Battle Droid armies will have minimal reinforcements.
Packaging: As an army builder pack, Hasbro used the same setup they did for the Marvel Legends army builders. It’s a closed box with a nice Black Series style portrait of the two faction representatives squaring off. The Clone Wars has a gold accent color for the stripe and text. Thanks to the slender nature of the packaging, the sides don’t have a full portrait or a mural image. The front and back are basically the same save the boring package text.
Unfortunately, there’s no bio, which is something the Black Series team has excelled at even with smaller packaging. And like the old two-packs, there’s not much flash in the presentation. Both figures and their accessories come in paper wrapped bags/sleeves.
Likeness: The Phase II Clone Trooper uses the newer clone/Stormtrooper body, which maximizes the articulation with a fantastic sculpt that’s very true to the source material.
I dig this body since the kneepads are a separate floating piece that you raise or lower depending on the pose. The elbow pads are just as fluid and easy to maneuver around as well.
As a cool bonus, the Phase II Clone Trooper does have a removable helmet. This one has some scarring along the forehead with an overall focused expression and a solid likeness to actor Temuera Morrison.
Hasbro has been cranking out Battle Droids for a while. I haven’t gotten them due to the Vintage Collection Battle Droids that I own started warping.
And there weren’t many basic droids getting released without some fancy paint job. This BD looks good with that signature bird shaped head sculpt and that frail looking physique with the spindly arms the open torso area and toothpick size legs.
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Paint: Both The Phase II Clone Trooper and Battle Droid are intentionally basic. These are the standard, no frills edition of the armies. That’s very helpful for fleshing out backgrounds without having various colored troops/droids.
Of note with the Clone Trooper the black slots on the right mid-section of the armor are painted this time. The helmet accent points and grill is also painted.
The Battle Droid’s paint job is limited to its eye slots and some silver accents in the joints.
Scale: The Battle Droid is taller than most characters, but their frail structure doesn’t make them look particularly intimidating.
The Clone Trooper is an average height with the helmet providing an appropriate additional bit of height.
Articulation: The Phase II Clone Trooper has excellent. There are no reasonable Clone poses you won’t be able to accomplish with this articulation scheme.
The clone can easily kneel, run, aim, duck and get blasted away in the middle of a battlefield. This clone body is really fun to pose.
Ditto for the Battle Droid, which has more articulation than I expected. The shoulders have ball joints allowing for more expressive poses.
The head is on a ball joint, which really helps in giving the droid some personality. Its neck also is on a ball joint, so you fully rotate it. There is some back/forth and side to side movement from the torso joint. I really appreciate being able to fold the BD into its base, default position.
As far as range goes, the elbow has excellent movement with a near full back and forth. It also has forearm articulation with a swivel. That’s the kind of articulation you can get away with for droids. Its hip joints just go back and forth. Not a bad thing since the slight frame could impact its stability. The knees and ankles are strong enough and should be able to keep dynamic poses without too much trouble.
The Phase II Clone Trooper and Battle Droid have:
- neck
- shoulders
- elbow (double jointed*)
- wrist
- wrist hinge
- torso
- hips
- thighs*
- knees (double jointed*)
- ankles
*Clone Trooper only
Accessories: Both get an impressive number of accessories. The Phase II Trooper has the removable helmet as well as the clone’s standard weapons rollout. He’s got the smaller DC-15S Blaster Carbine as well as the larger DC-15A blaster rifle.
The Battle Droid has some welcome options for mixing up your army. It’s got the basic antenna backpack as well as the larger backpack to help vary them up.
The Droid also has its standard E-5 blaster, which scales nicely and fits snugly in its hand.
Worth it? This set was a perfectly reasonable price point over at Hasbro Pulse at $44.99, which is much better than paying $50 for two standard Black Series figures. That’s a very welcome bonus and certainly incentivizes army building. During the holidays, various retailers had the set for a cheaper price around $36, which definitely helped me out.
Rating: 10 out of 10
Unless you’re really trying to find something wrong, the Clone Trooper and Battle Droid set is an easy recommendation with a pair of essential figures for any solid Clone Wars/prequel display.
Where to get it? The Phase II Clone Trooper and Battle Droid set is still available on Hasbro Pulse and you can also try Amazon.
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