A few weeks back, I started to check out the first wave of Boss Fight Studios Vitruvian HACKS Series 2 and after having just spent half my weekend at the local Medieval Faire, I felt inspired to come back and open up another of these fantasy-based 4-inch figures. So let’s have a look at Laguna, the Cavern Fairie!

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I really dig this packaging. It manages to offer the classic feel of a card-and-bubble, while still being totally collector friendly. Just bend the edges of the plastic on the side and slide the card out to get at the goodies. The landscape-style card features some nice character artwork on the front, and on the back there’s a couple of paragraphs about Laguna and how she and her kind fit into this original fantasy world. You also get a “Collect Them All” shot of all the figures in this wave and the second one, which is going to be shipping out any day now, so I really need to get caught up!

And wow, what a great and unique looking figure this is! While the Knight of Accord was built off a largely newly sculpted buck, Laguna appears to feature the same generic female buck used in the initial series of HACKS, with her outfit sculpted separately and actually worn on the body. As a result, this figure feels like it preserves the heritage of the original HACKS series a lot more closely. It’s also a pretty remarkable achievement for a figure in this scale to actually be wearing a tiny sculpted plastic outfit. The outfit consists of two pieces and fits the figure extremely well. It sports plenty of great sculpted detail and it doesn’t feel like it’s at all over-sized, which has been a common issue with outfits on figures even bigger than this one. The paintwork on the outfit is precise and exact, right down to the little blue baubles that dot the edges of her “skirt.”

The body is cast in an ashen-purple skin color and is characterized by wings, which connect to her back on hinged pegs. BFS did an amazing job with the sculping on both sets of wings. They have beautiful texturing and tiny bone tips. The combination of skin color and wings give her a very gargoyle-like appearance, which also feels very appropriate for a race of cavern-dwelling fairies. Laguna also includes a second pair of open wings to offer a couple of different display options. One unfortunate issue I have with my figure is that the hinge on her left closed up wing is frozen. I’ve tried boiling it, I’ve tried razoring the seams, but nothing will get it loose. It’s a bummer.

The head is gorgeous! While I was a little cool on two of the three heads included with the Knight, this one really shines on every level. She’s pretty, has some sharply defined facial features, and near perfect paint for her eyes, eyebrows, and lips. The hair sculpt is also sharp and very intricate, although it does look like it’s defying gravity. I would have liked it more if it wasn’t so high, but when the rest is so good, I’m not going to nitpick. Laguna also has a pair of sculpted gnomish goggles worn up on her head. She uses these when she ventures out of her cavern habitat into the brightly lit surface world.

Because Laguna uses the standard HACKS buck, she has some great articulation. The only thing lacking would be swivel cuts in the biceps and shoulders. Her legs feature ball jointed hips, double hinged knees, and the ankles have both hinges and lateral rockers. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulder and elbows, and the wrists are hinged pegs. The hinged pegs allow you to easily swap out her hands with the extra pair that’s included. She has a ball joint in her chest and a double ball joint in her neck. As already mentioned, the wings connect to the body with hinged pegs.

Laguna comes with two magical weapons. The first is this wand, which has a sculpted rod and a cluster of crystals at the head.

The other weapon looks like some kind of enchanted hatchet, with a crystal in place of a regular axe head. I’m not sure if this thing shoots magic blasts, or if she just buries that crystal into her enemies, but it’s a pretty cool and imaginative piece. The handle is sculpted to look like ancient and gnarled wood, and the red and blue crystals illuminate nicely under the right lighting.

Laguna is an excellent figure, and she may be my favorite of the pair I opened. That’s saying something, because she’s also a lot simpler than the Knight of Accord, which came with a whole bunch of extras to customize him into different looks. You don’t get any of that with Laguna, instead she’s intended to be a very specific character. And that’s cool. But I do hope that later on down the road, BFS releases some kind of generic Cavern Fairie with a couple extra heads.