[Review] Skull Warrior / Skull Slicer / Skull Basher combiner model

[Leewan]

Now that all the Skull gang has been reviewed by VBBN, it's time to take a closer look at the combiner models. The first one is made of three of the four medium sets : Skull Warrior, Skull Slicer and Skull Basher.

The build :

The instructions for these combiners aren't available (yet), so I had to guess the build from the (tiny) pictures at the end of the instructions of each set.

We start with the torso and the gearbox, then we add the legs, the arms, the spikes on the back, the armours and the head.

The complete model :

His huge body and his wide shoulders make him really imposing, and he's rather properly armoured, especially for a skeleton. The main issue to me is the colour scheme (two metallic colours and four transparent colours), but it was hard to do better : it's possible to replace most of the blue parts by green ones (except the #4 armours on the arms and the horns, of course), but it makes the model look too much like Slicer, which I think the designers wanted to avoid (which is understandable, especially since he already has four arms). So... we have a rainbow warrior instead. Well.

A blue crossaxle / pin is used to give some friction to the mechanism, but it's useless : as soon as you release the yellow knob, the arms "fall". Speaking of the arms, since they're all aligned, the "inner" arms almost can't move on the sides, only frontwards and backwards.

What I like, and despite what the official description says, it's that this combiner has only one head. Sure, they could have given him three heads, but it would have been useless and ridiculous, so I'm glad they chose to stick to only one head. I also like the claws on his feet, especially the fact that they used a Skull Spider leg for the middle claw. It's a small detail, but I like it.

It's an interesting build, and an imposing model, but it really suffers from the colour scheme.

[Lyichir]

I built this guy the other day, and was really happy with him. His color scheme, as far as I'm concerned, is flawless—he's an amazing jellybean soldier and looks good enough to eat. And he's a lot better at supporting the weight of his own arms and weapons than the Scorpio/Grinder combi model (despite not even using all six of the available friction joints). His build is wonderfully complex, he's got an impressive amount of bulk... I really can't complain.

[One Very Agile Cat]

That's a legit combo model right there. Badass.

[MakutaOfWar]

Oooooh if only combos like this were in the story. This might actually be the very first combo I get duplicates for the purpose of combining.

Edited July 17, 2015 by MakutaOfWar