MagnaGuard - TCW [B] - Basic (No. 22)

The bodyguard droids for General Grievous are trained by the cyborg general himself. He has had their memories and combat libraries wiped clean so that the droids can learn battle techniques rather than rely on stored programs. This has resulted in more sophisticated – and lethal – droids.

It’s just part of the process. The Clone Wars line showed us almost immediately that we would be seeing a lot of the Star Wars characters we have seen before reinvented in an animated style. What is probably a little more surprising than that however is that many of the characters have been background or tertiary characters in the Star Wars films. Take for instance, the MagnaGuard droid, who was a pretty awesome character in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith. It gets its moment in the basic figure line, but in animated style and with better engineering than his realistic style counterpart. We can conclude right from the get go that this MagnaGuard figure is one of Hasbro’s finer droid designs in The Clone Wars line even though it isn’t perfect yet. And it is our hope that they tool him from the ground up using the similar approach for the movie-based line.

MagnaGuard is an all-new figure that sports plenty of points of articulation. It has rather static legs but you will find a plethora of articulation in the arms. It has an impressive battle stance and it gives it a rather imposing stature, especially since no emotion can be read on its face. The coloring of its body is a work of art. The droid is cast in a nickel gray color and has a very realistic “scratched” looking final wash that give it a beautiful aged look and captures the scars of its many battles very well. The droid has two red photoreceptors as well as a red chest button. It complements the primarily silver body nicely. MagnaGuard has very cool hands. Reminiscent of Grievous’ own, there are six fingers that are separated in half by a space. The shape of its armor is curvy and “futuristic” looking on the arms and legs. And the MagnaGuard has a tiny pea-sized head on top of a “muscular” frame.

There are some unfortunate aspects to this figure besides the poorly articulated legs. The figure has been cast in the rubbery plastic we have quickly grown to despise for our figures. If you pose MagnaGuard for a long period of time, gravity will work against it and bend the legs in terrible angles. It will make the droid fall over. This is obviously very aggravating and if Hasbro chooses to keep making our figures in this poor material, we would ask that they at least increase the density of it somehow. It is a shame because this figure is beautiful. And we still think the MagnaGuard still is a good figure as well despite these setbacks. Armed with a vibrolance (so far the only lightsaber-blocking weapon we have seen in the films), rocket launcher and projectile, the MagnaGuard is very fairly accessorized. Looking great posed next to General Grievous, we hope that Hasbro will release them in multiple colors and also include their soft-good capes next time around. Because that would absolutely complete them perfectly!