I’m still working my way through Funko’s MTG Legacy Collection figures and today I’m opening up the second to the last in this series, Jace Beleren. As usual, I know absolutely nothing about this character, so I’m off to consult the Wisdom of the Internets to find out a little about him. Jace is a human Planeswalker with an affinity for blue magic, more specifically telepathy and has what is referred to as a “reserved and decadent” nature. This dude’s actually got a pretty interesting back story, which I enjoyed reading. Y’all can check it out at The Magic The Gathering Salvation Wiki.

I don’t have anything new to say about the packaging, as we’ve seen it five times now. It’s a simple and clean design with a window that shows off the figure pretty well. You get the character’s name and portrait on the side panel, but no blurb describing who he is. Funko might want to consider doing that for future figures. Then again, maybe I’m the only one who buys figures of characters they don’t know. Anyway, the packaging is totally collector friendly and it is designed to hang on a peg or sit on a shelf. You’ll note from the box that Jace is actually the first figure in the wave, but I’m sure glad I didn’t buy these things in order, because I sure as hell would have stopped at Number One!

With Jace out of the box, I’m going to go on record by saying this is not one of my favorite character designs from this series. I mean, yeah, he’s kind of got the whole exotic wizard-drifter look going for him… I guess. Beleren wears a soft, rubbery plastic cloak over an outfit that appears to be made of sculpted belts, straps, and sashes. Aside from the cloak, I can’t really figure out what look they were going for here. And apart from the painted white deco and a little black and red trim, the figure is mostly cast in this blue-green color, which isn’t terribly appealing to me. What’s more, the white paint used for the deco could have been cleaner and more evenly applied. I will say that I rather like the way the cloak is executed, particularly the way it hangs low over the figure’s head giving him a mysterious air. It’s also good because…

Holy shit, this figure’s head is terrible!!! Besides the ridiculous mop of brown hair slathered across the left half of his face, the paint for the eyes is just atrocious. I can’t figure out if they were supposed to be painted entirely blue or if they’re just pupils, but either way it’s a real slop job. Hey, it’s not uncommon to get a little lazy-eye or something like that going on with an action figure, but this is something totally different and far worse. I think these may be some of the worst painted eyes I’ve ever seen on an action figure. Taking off the cloak also reveals some more sloppy paint on the piping of his shirt, so the lesson learned here… just leave the damn cloak on him!

Jace features a lot of useful points of articulation, but I did have some stuck joints on my figure. Luckily I didn’t have to start boiling water or plug in the hair dryer, because the problem joints eventually gave in with a little coaxing. Let’s run through those points… The arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, have swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinges at the elbows. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have double hinges in the knees, and swivels in the thighs. I can’t tell if there’s anything in the ankles, as the pants are sculpted to hang down over his shoes, but it doesn’t feel like there’s any movement there. Lastly, he has a ball joint in his torso and another in the neck. The figure has a good range of movement, and luckily he is capable of shielding his horribly painted face with his hands. But ultimately, who cares about articulation when the figure looks like trash?

In the accessories department, Jace comes up with a big goose egg. Zilch! Nada! That’s disappointing, because he isn’t a terribly big figure and he could have definitely used something else in there to justify the original MSRP of about twenty bucks. Hell, at least if he came with something I could give to another figure, that might have justified the purchase. I couldn’t even come up with anything interesting to do with him in my studio. I just wanted to shoot him real fast and be done with it.

Well, I’ve had a lot of good things to say about this line up until now, but Jace is the first figure in this series that I’d rather I hadn’t picked up. Actually, that’s not true. I got him for under ten bucks, and my OCD would have kept me up at night if I had all but one figure in this line. This figure is a nasty piece of work on just about every level, but hey at least none of his joints broke. It’s rather shocking when you consider that the portraits on the three ladies of this line were all clean and sharp. Maybe I just got a bad one, but either way, Jace is the first figure in the line that I honestly couldn’t recommend, unless maybe to a customizer. I’m guessing someone with some serious painting chops could probably turn this figure into something special. Or maybe not.