It’s Week Three of Mythic Legions Wednesdays‘ return and I couldn’t be more excited! I’m not following any particular order in which I open and review these figures, but I’m not going totally random either. Since I already looked at two of the regular figures, I thought this week I’d check out one of the Legion Builders. And since the Elves are introduced in the Advent of Decay series, let’s have a look at the Elf Legion Builder!

I’ll go ahead and show a packaged shot here, because unlike the named characters, the Legion Builders don’t actually have bios, because they’re just nameless soldiers. But you can name if you want to! Oh, go on… name them! The Legion Builders are cheaper than the regular figures because they involve less paint operations, usually on both the figure and the accessories, but as we’ll soon see, that doesn’t make them any less spectacular! And in fact, this Elf in particular doesn’t feel like your typical Legion Builder at all.

Behold the Elven armor of golden splendor! Yes, let’s remind ourselves that this is what the rank-and-file Elf Warriors are wearing and it’s pretty fabulous. In case you didn’t already know, Mythic Legions is all about mixing and matching parts, and here we get a great example of that in Advent of Decay. The torso here is new, but the arms and legs are lifted straight from the armored bucks we saw on Gwendolyn and Lucretia. It works well for the diminutive Elven build as well as the female knights, and even though we already saw those parts in gold on Gwen, I think this combination still makes for a pretty unique look.

And the sculpt here is absolutely beautiful. As always, it’s brimming with detail from the overlapping plates to the tiny rivets and sculpted buckles and straps. I particularly like the discs on the chest and belt. When combined with the coloring and the rather thin armored build, it gives me a little bit of a C-3PO vibe. And the armor sculpt that does just fine showing off its details with nothing but a sumptuous golden finish. And while we’re on the subject of paint, it’s worth noting that the past Knight Legion Builders featured only one color on their armor and no additional paint apps at all, except maybe on a helmet plume. The Elf breaks that trend by adding the green scaled armor below his belt with the individually painted gold rivets. It’s a great touch that breaks up all that gold just enough to make him feel more like one of the regular figures. Of course, the figure also comes with the ubiquitous sword belt and removable shoulder armor. And yup, those are the same shoulders we saw on both Gwen and Lucretia.

The Elf Legion Builder comes with no less than three different heads. He comes out of the package with dark skin, green eyes, and an open faced helmet, complete with nasal guard and a wonderfully organic sculpt to the helmet. The ears are quite prominent, but they stay close to the head, giving him more of a Tolkein-esque Western interpretation, as opposed to the ones we usually see in anime or mangas. There isn’t a lot of sharp detail in the face, but I still like it a lot and he has a bit of a dour but noble expression.

The other option is the lighter skinned head, again with green eyes, and the exact same helmet. Actually, it looks like the whole head sculpt here is identical, with just the lighter skin distinguishing it.

The final option is a completely enclosed helmet, but with green skin showing on the exposed ears. I think it’s likely that this is intended to be the open helmet with a mask on it, but I could be wrong about that. Either way, it’s a real sexy piece of design. I love the organic curves and the darkened visor. All three heads are great choices and they make me wish I had picked up at least one more of these guys to display them on. But we’ve also got a lot of accessories to talk about, so let’s move on to the weapons.

The Elf comes with a pretty standard sword and dagger, which can be worn on the belt. Well, there’s one loop so either the sword or dagger can be fitted through the loop and the other just has to be thrust through the belt. Either way it works just fine. We’ve seen both of these weapon molds before many times, but I really dig them a lot. The sword is a pretty no-nonsense weapon with a broad blade and a cruciform hilt and the dagger has a stout blade and a slightly down-turning crossguard. The hilts aren’t matched perfectly, but they’re close enough so that they look good together. Both blades are painted silver and the hilts are painted gold, which is notable because most of my previous Legion Builder Knights did not have any paint apps on their weapons.

Next up is the bow and quiver of arrows, both of which are accessories that are introduced in Advent of Decay. The bow has some really beautiful contours, is painted all in silver, and includes a string. The quiver is painted gold and the arrows have silver shafts and gold fletching. The quiver has a clip that can hook onto the belt, just like we saw on the dagger’s sheath that came with Lucretia. There’s also an attachment that can be used to put it on his back, but it sticks out too far and I don’t like it. The arrows in the quiver are all part of the sculpt, but you do get a single loose arrow.

The loose arrow is pretty thin and frail and he can’t really hold it, at least not without the help of a little blue-tack inside his hand. There are, however, two little nubs on the bow that the arrow can sort of clip into. With a little determination and trickery, I was able to get him to actually knock the arrow and draw the bow. It would have been cool if T4H created a hand for these guys with a slit between two of the fingers. I suppose it would be easy to customize with a good razor blade, but he only comes with the two hands and I don’t want to risk messing him up.

Finally, the Elf Legion Builder comes with a spear and this accessory is as old as Mythic Legions itself. It was a popular pack in accessory with a lot of figures from the first Kickstarter, and I’m not surprised to see it continuing to see service in Advent of Decay. It’s a very simple accessory, all molded from one piece of plastic and painted entirely in silver. The spear is also the thing the only accessory that feels like the weapons included with previous Legion Builders. I’m not going to gripe about it, because quite frankly this figure comes with enough goodies that the spear just feels like a gratuitous extra.

As I mentioned in the beginning, the Legion Builders are the  in this line, and that’s part of what makes this Elf Soldier so impressive to me. Sure he doesn’t have as many paint operations as the regular figures, but he still looks great. And with three different heads and a whole passel of weapons, he feels like anything but a budget figure. Alas, the secondary market prices on these figures preclude me from doing any kind of troop building when it comes to Mythic Legions, I just might pony up for one more of these Elves to make one an archer and the other a regular knight.