13th Battalion Trooper - TBS [P4] - Six Inch Figures (GG12)

The 13th Battalion is an infantry unit of the Republic's Grand Army that earned the nickname "Iron Battalion" for their resilience in battle. They were led by Jedi Commander Jaro Tapal and his Padawan Cal Kestis.

The Gaming Greats line can become overwhelming because the releases are fast and furious. Also, the prices are exorbitant, and the action figures are uninspiring. How often does a collector need to look at the same overpriced clone buck for the umpteenth time before nausea begins to set in the stomach? But that’s where The Black Series 6-inch line is at these days. There are so few all-new figures, and Hasbro has gone into overdrive to release repacks and repaints until their collector base is seasick. The GameStop exclusive 13th Battalion Trooper is quite a nice figure if you can get over the boredom it brings to the line. The character is from the Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order video game and comes with mustard-yellow color flashes that make it feel like a distant cousin of the 327th Star Corps troopers. Hasbro only included one accessory with this figure, but it is part of the Gaming Greats sub-line, which means it comes poorly accessorized and very expensive. The 13th Battalion Trooper is a rework of 2020’s TBS [P4] Clone Trooper (Kamino) (TCW01) figure. But this time, Hasbro repainted it with the color flashes of the 13th Battalion. Correctly scaled to fit the figure’s body, the new helmet shows that Hasbro paid close attention to what they screwed up on older Phase II Clone Trooper models. Interestingly, there is an unpainted “clone head” underneath the helmet. Hasbro has plans to make the most of this sculpt with future releases. But adding a ball-socket head with a reverse ball-socket neck gives the figure an impressive range of movement in the head. New to this Phase II Clone Trooper tooling, incorporating “butterfly” sliding joints with ball-jointed shoulders gives the figure optimal movement. The shoulders don’t roll back as far as we’d hoped, but you get additional movement thanks to the complex articulation in the shoulders. The angle you can pose the arms at the elbows is also mind-blowing. Hasbro developed ball-jointed articulation that attains sharp angles we’ve never seen possible until now. We don’t think we exaggerate when we say that the elbows achieve 45 degrees. The knee armor is attached to the thigh armor, but the knee armor is detached from the ball-jointed knees. This articulation approach allows you to spin the knee as you need for action poses while the knee armor plating stays in place to help with the figure’s aesthetics. Again, this is a nice-looking clone trooper. But it’s too expensive, and we need better variety in the 6-inch action figure line.