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Skirmisher Minor

September 30, 2011 | By Errex More

If you ask me, nothing shows off McFarlane Toys’ experstise like the designs of the alien Covenant warriors in their Halo lines. These creatures are a rather diverse-looking bunch and furthermore, each species has very specific roles within their military army branch.

One of the more annoying enemies from the first game, Halo; Combat Evolved, were the Jackals, a reptilian species that uses these large energy shields, which makes them fairly hard to kill. For the Halo: Reach game, their character design was tweaked and use slightly different tactics, but the differences were so substantial that the new models were introduced as a new sub-species, that of the Skirmishers

While the Halo 3 Jackals looked more like mangy, lizard-birds, the Skirmisher Minor released as part of Halo: Reach Series 2 assortment looks much more bird-like. In fact, the head sculpt alone reminds me a lot of Boga, the varactyl mount Obi-Wan uses in Star Wars Episode III and the Skekksi from the Dark Crystal Jim Henson movie..

These Skirmishers wear light body armor and the sculpted detail is simply stunning. The basic morphology is the same as that of the Jackals, which is fairly humanoid from the knees up, but with a digitigrade lower leg configuration. Even though the scale changes between the Halo 3 and the Halo: Reach lines are clearly evident these differences can pass off as a natural variance in the species.

One thing you’ll notice on these McFarlane figures is that the designers love to use plastic barbells, even if the same functionality can be achieved by using more traditional types of joints. The Skirmisher Minor has the following articulation design:

• Barbell mounted head.

• Swivel neck.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Swivel biceps.

• Hinged elbows.

• Forearm swivels.

• Double swivel, hinged wrists.

• Barbell mounted hips.

• Mid-thigh swivel.

• Pegged hinge knees.

• Double-peg, hinged toes.

All of these joints work well, but are a bit too loose at times, which makes it difficult to achieve a lot of stable action poses with the Skirmisher, especially since this is a fairly top-heavy character and the contact surfaces of his feet are ridiculously small.

Unlike the UNSC Spartans, which tend to show more the wear and tear of the battlefield, the paint applications on most of the Covenant warriors is cleanly applied and the Skirmishers are no exception. The texture-heavy pieces, like the head and the forearms have simple wash/drybrush paint applications, but the armored suit looks much more sleeker, with each panel neatly defined by black-lining. There is also a honeycomb paint pattern applied to the more flexible sections of the suit that I mistook for sculpted texture at first. Overall, this is a very impressive paint application.

As far as weaponry, the Skirmisher ships with a needle rifle, a plasma grenade and one black plastic peg that fits both accessories, although the figure itself lacks a port on the armor to attach any of the weapons.

Even though this is a really nice figure, the stability issues can be very frustrating at times, especially with the slightly loose leg joints. I really like this figure, but I would not recommend it as a first purchase into the line.