Phil's Combiner Wars Rook, Swindle & Hound Review

[Philip Ayres]

Generations Combiner Wars Rook

Rook is the new member of the Protectobots. So how does he measure up?

Like most modern deluxe Transformers he comes in robot mode. To transform into vehicle mode start by pulling his backpack out so it points away from the robot. Straighten both legs and fold the lower leg up round the upper leg: the knee has a Generations Trailcutter style link with the inside of the ankle. Straighten the arms to the sides and rotate each lower arm out 90 degrees at the bicep so the larger blue panel on the forearm face forward. Fold the arms back onto the robot's back, pegging the slots on the inside of the shoulder onto pegs on the back. Rotate the head 180 degrees and fold back between the shoulders. Fold the feet down under the legs to form the lower front of the vehicle. Fold the backpack down onto the back of the legs to form the upper front of the vehicle. We've got as far as seen in the promo picture but that really isn't the complete vehicle mode: take the hand/foot/vehicle weapon and push the extra peg hole in it's underside onto the black peg to form a turret. Peg the "jaws of life" hand weapon into one of the holes on the rear of the vehicle.

Rook's vehicle mode is a police swat vehicle judging by it markings but looks like a sort of armoured personnel carrier of the sort we've seen before with Movie Wreckage or Anti-Blaze. He's mainly white, with blue highlights on his lower half and six wheel. The turret looks a bit out of place in black but the vehicle really needs it to look right. There's three 5mm holes on the top of the vehicle to place the weapon in, two at the back, one at the front, but the one at the front is partially obscured by the turret. There's an additional hole on the front of the vehicle for an extra weapon.

Remove the weapons to start the transformation back to robot mode. Pull the front of the vehicle up so it points straight up in the middle of the vehicle mode. Pop the shoulders off their posts and fold the rear of the vehicle out to the sides to form the arms. Separate the front of the vehicle in half down the middle and pull out to the sides, forward, and then in to form the legs. Fold the lower front of the vehicle down under the legs to form the feet. Fold the head forward and turn 180 degrees. Fold the front of the vehicle onto the robot's back. Turn each arm in 90 degrees at the bicep.

Rook's robot mode is nice and imposing with a mainly black body and white limbs, with blue elbows and upper legs. His head sculpt I'm told resembles a rook in Chess but I can't really see it. The silver face is covered in an American football style helmet.

Probably one of the most interesting features on this figure is the hands. Instead of having the traditional 5mm peg hole between the fingers the hands are moulded into closed fists. The peg holes are found on the outer side of the fists, at the end of the arms, in effect turning them into gun barrels. I've heard a few people say the don't like them but I think they're great. His own weapon has a 5mm peg at the rear that will fit in there but raid your weapons box for other weapons like sword blades which can be plugged in there. I'd quite like to find a couple of missiles to try there but can't find anything suitable! Suggestions?

Articulation is great: Ball jointed head, shoulders which swing back at the body and have a ball joint connection to the arm. He also has bicep swivels, bending elbows, a rotating Waist, ball jointed hips, Thigh swivels and bending knees. The most interesting piece of articulation involves pivots at the inner side of each leg to allow the feet to remain flat as the legs are spread.

To form the arm mode start from robot mode and fold the backpack out. Bring the legs together and fold the feet back, Fold the arms onto the robot's back as per the vehicle mode. Fold the backpack back onto the arms locking the tabs on it into the tab holes on the lower half of the shoulder. Fold the head back between the arms. Transform the weapon into a hand and peg into the bottom of the arm. Fold the connector out of the chest and use it to slot into the shoulder of Defensor or any other combiner.

You've probably got a good idea what to expect from a Combiner Wars arm: it turns at the shoulder and can be raised out to the side. The robot waist becomes a bicep swivel while the legs give it a double elbow and the peg for the hand wrist rotation. The hand has the peg hole between thumb and fingers to enable the arm to hold 5mm weapons but the 5mm peg hole in the palm, used to mount he weapon in vehicle mode, allows Rook's arm mode to have a weapon plugged into his palm: the jaws of life with him are perfectly suitable.

The legs is best formed by starting from vehicle mode: fold the front top of the vehicle over the rear top. Actually this action alone give you quite an interesting alternate vehicle mode with the hand holes visible under what was the front of the vehicle mode. Anyway, back to the leg. Bend the lower front of the vehicle down and under then pegs the front of the vehicle into the foot. Fold the connector up to form the knee joint.

The leg mode looks odd with a bulging top and less build up lower half. The rear of the leg looks more built up than the front but there's no way to rotate the waist and get both sets of bulk on the same side of the leg: I tried, going as far as transforming the lower leg into the robot legs and turning the waist then before transforming back but the pieces wouldn't fit round the waist that way round. The connector form the thigh swivel and bending knee for the combined robot while the ankle turns from side to side.

I like Rook a lot: I feel he brings something new to the complete combiner with the palm hole, the vehicle is good and solid and the robot, with it's differently positioned fist holes and ankle tilts has something most of the rest of the Combiner Wars deluxes don't. He's the only new mould Protectobot limb so I'm tempted to say if you only get one Protectobot get him but that's be doing down some of the work done to First Aid & Streetwise. But it's a solid top toy, well worth having.

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Future Repaints

A fairly easy straight repaint would be as Cybertron Defence Hotshot .

My suspicion is the next time we see Rook he'll be extensively remoulded as Brawn: replace the wheels with tank treads. The vehicle weapon becomes the tank turret with a 5mm peg hole in the front that lets you peg his hand gun in to form the tank's gun barrel.

From there a remould of the front, together with a plug in drill would make a decent Nosecone.

[Philip Ayres]

Was hoping to do Swindle tonight but the Rook update involves FIVE toys ad my cold is really dragging me down no so that'll probably have to wait for tomorrow.

[Philip Ayres]

Swindle

Rook redone as Swindle? Would NEVER have guessed that in a million years!

Here's how I suspected Bruticus would go down. Alpha Bravo would be Vortex, Blast Off would be an Aerialbot Jet or a new space shuttle, Rook would be extensively remoulded as Brawn replacing the wheels with tank treads with the HFG becoming the tank turret with a 5mm peg hole in the front that lets you peg his hand gun in to form the tank's gun barrel. Off Road would then be Swindle and that would explain where that peg hole on the original Off Road's flatbed came into play. Combiner Wars Combaticons were found in computer listings in April 2015 but we were somewhat surprised at Botcon 2015 when Swindle was revealed to be an extensive remould of Rook with Brawl getting the new mould but at least I got the hand gun becoming his tank barrel bit right!

As ever with these massively remoulded toys it's interesting to try to spot what's the same. All of Rook's blue parts are still there unaltered: the connecting bars inside the lower legs, the upper legs, the elbows and the plate that forms the neck. These are all now cast in black. Rook's grey parts are all unchanged too: the rear of the feet, combiner connector and shoulder joints. They're now cast in the same sandy colour as the rest of Swindle's body. The waist is the same, which was black and now is grey. The only other grey part on the toy is a panel on the back of the head which makes me think they were thinking of lightpiping him at some point: it'll be interesting to see the Unite Warriors version. Four of Rook's two wheels are inherited. The rest is new.

Articulation is identical to Rook's.

The toy looks very Swindle in his robot mode: Square head like the original, enlarged and modified to take in details from the animated version. The chest retains the purple from the original which actually hides some really nice moulding: the chest is actually the front of a jeep, albeit with a combiner connector through the middle. This will get useful when they get round to repainting Swindle as we'll see. He's got a new triple barrelled hand gun to hold as well as a dual barrelled cannon modified from Rook's HandFootGun. Indeed I think this is the first remould to feature a remoulded HFG. The extra hole underneath is still there but it's overall appearance looks different. You can hold it in his hand, peg it into his shoulders which retain Rook's 5mm peg holes or, similar to the combining feature on the original Swindle's weapons, plug it into the hand gun.

Transformation to vehicle mode is all but identical with the large roof piece on Rook's back being replaced by the roll cage on Swindle's jeep. The only slightly tricky bit is, as per Rook, lining the arms up right on the tabs and getting a pair of tiny pegs on the front of the roll cage into the front of the vehicle. It's a struggle but when they go in they're in.

Where Scramble City/Special team Swindle was an open top jeep Combiner Wars Swindle is more like a bulked up version of GI Joe's VAMP, not too dissimilar to Desert Striker. The only real problem here is that the top rear of the vehicle is made from the arms and the hands are VERY visible through the roll cage. However the jeep's got a 5mm peg on the middle of the top and a pair of 5mm peg holes near the back allowing you, with the assistance of the connections between them, to position the weapons in a number of different ways.

Arm mode: All but identical to Rook in transformation and function. The only difference is the roll cage front has two slots which match tabs on the top of the arms.

Leg mode: Fold the front of the vehicle, the robot's feet, under the jeep and back into their robot mode position. Plug the HFG into the holes on the front of the vehicle and fold out the combiner tab. Solid as a rock, a decent leg.

I liked Rook, I liked Swindle. Really nice toy. Which is good because he's back in the next wave ......

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Hound

I'd also thought that if you're trying to do the original 18 Diaclone Autobots in Combiner Wars then recolouring the Swindle version of the toy as Hound is a possibility. Well I got it right that Swindle became Hound, even if I'd been thinking Swindle, and thus Hound, would be Off Road.

As expected Hound is Swindle in green with the black of Swindle, which was Rook's blue, swapped for grey. He's got a new Hound head and it's here the jeep front chest helps reinforce that this is Hound, though some silver or grey paint on the upper half of the combiner connector as a radiator might have helped.

Looks nice, looking forward to it.

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Generations 2 Swindle

Take Combiner Wars Swindle, repaint him in orange and slap some purple camouflage on him. Job done, G2 Swindle is reborn.

Oddly it's this version is the one I can see the jeep front in the most!

Swindle comes in the G2 Bruticus Combiner Wars giftset.

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Unite Warriors Roller

Roller is the latest Rook repaint to be announced but in all likelihood will be released first on April 30, 2016 according to the TakaraTomyMall page for Unite Galvatronus which he's a part of.

Google Translate describes the toy thus:

WANDERING ROLLER

And separated from one's fellow during the battle, the original Autobot warrior who was wandering Between dimension.

The deformation to Roku-rin armored vehicles. I continued to wait for the relief of alone fellow he was torn absolute lonely soul. He was considered to be abandoned to the trust to have the fellow is dominated by despair and guilt, leading to soon have a strong grudge energy. It has been summoned to this world sensed the energy to Unicron. It had lost some of the stored by long wandering, we are holding a particularly strong hatred against the convoy commander is a symbol of Cybertron.

This sounds very similar to the version of Roller seen in IDW's More Than Meets The Eye.

Roller takes Rooks white and swaps it for silver, his blue for grey and his grey for red. The resulting toy looks very nice and I can't wait to own it.

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TFSS 5.0 Impactor

There's been ONE toy version of the Wrecker's leader Impactor %28G1%29 and that was in the Fall of Cybertron line where Impactor %28Prime%29 was a repaint of Fall of Cybertron Onslaught and, in all honesty, had his colours swapped in proportion to what they usually are.

The TFSS version does much better: white is swapped for purple and blue becomes white. He gets a new head and gains some extra weapons: recolours of Generations Arcee.

I've never bought a Transformers Subscription Service toy before. This year I'm having all of them.

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Botcon 2016 Tarantulas

As repaints go I've had difficulty seeing the point of using Rook as a new version of Tarantulas. The colours are inspired by the Transmetal version and I've just seen the light! Tarantulas transforms into a motorcycle, like Groove so using Unite Groove would have been sensible. But Groove only exists in Combiner wars as a Legend: his replacement as a limb is Rook!

Tarantulas swaps blue & grey for black and white for a bluey green matching the Transmetal version quite well.

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Future Repaints

A fairly easy straight repaint would be as Cybertron Defence Hotshot . Movie toys Wreckage & his repaint Bludgeon are good candidates except that Bludgeon is being done by the TFSS as a repaint of Combiner Wars Onslaught.

Swindle has a good few repaint options: Operation Combination Leland who is cherry red with a grey chest, Car Robots Grejebar/Robots in Disguise Rollbar green with orange chest, Wal*Mart Rollbar, grey with a white & black urban camo and Universe Rollbar, a sandy colour with a desert camo. This last option is very close to Hound's only repaint E-Hobby Detritus. Beyond that most Transformers jeeps are a variation on the green theme.

I had thought that a remould of the front of Rook, together with a plug in drill would make a decent Nosecone but it looks like Nosecone will be a remould of Brawl.

[Philip Ayres]

Swindle has a hidden feature: his gun can attach to him as a shoulder cannon!

Look where the frame that forms the roll cage in vehicle mode is attached to the bar that joins it to his back. Either side of where the bar meets the frame is a slot with a tiny peg hole drilled through each side. These match small studs on the side of the back of Swindle's gun allowing the gun to be pegged in and act as a shoulder cannon on either side. There's a small range of up down movement here on the gun. Nice little undocumented extra!

[The Doctor]

How...how many millimetres are involved?

-Ralph

[Philip Ayres]

Botcon 2016 Tarantulas

There's two points that need to be made about this toy before we look at it. The first concerns the choice of character: expanding the three member Tripredicus was always going to require adding two new members and since both Tarantulas and Ravage are shown to be agents of the Tripredicus council in the Beast Wars cartoon series they are the obvious choices. Tarantulas also fits nicely into the "reminiscing about the TFCC/Botcon" theme that runs through the club's toys in their last year, 2016: The club did a Tarantulas as part of it's third subscription series.

The second concerns the choice of toy to turn into Tranatulas: As repaints go I've had difficulty seeing the point of using Rook as a new version of Tarantulas. The colours are inspired by the Transmetal version and I've just seen the light! Tarantulas transforms into a motorcycle, like Groove so using Unite Groove would have been sensible. But Groove only exists in Combiner wars as a Legend: his replacement as a limb is Rook! So Tarantulas becomes a Rook repaint.

Tarantulas swaps blue & grey for black and white for a bluey green matching the Transmetal version quite well. The dark rook vehicle looks great but the robot is simply stunning nailing the Transmetal version to a tee!

I'd like to use the Ida Arms Micron, that came with Airachnid with him but sadly the peg on the rear of Ida doesn't project back far enough to lock tightly in the fist hole on Tarantulas. The peg under Ida does but that results in a right angled claw hand.

Other than that it's a fabulous toy and the real highlight of the Botcon 2016 Predacus set.

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Unite Warriors Roller

Roller is the latest Rook repaint to be announced but the first time this toy mould has been used in Japan when he was released on April 30, 2016.

Google Translate describes the toy thus, from the TakaraTomyMall page for Unite Galvatronus which he's a part of:

WANDERING ROLLER

And separated from one's fellow during the battle, the original Autobot warrior who was wandering Between dimension.

The deformation to Roku-rin armoured vehicles. I continued to wait for the relief of alone fellow he was torn absolute lonely soul. He was considered to be abandoned to the trust to have the fellow is dominated by despair and guilt, leading to soon have a strong grudge energy. It has been summoned to this world sensed the energy to Unicron. It had lost some of the stored by long wandering, we are holding a particularly strong hatred against the convoy commander is a symbol of Cybertron.

This sounds very similar to the version of Roller seen in IDW's More Than Meets The Eye and indeed the cartoon in the Grand Galvatron boxset shows him consuming an Energon drink through a straw just like in the MTMTE Comic.

In vehicle mode Roller takes Rooks white and swaps it for silver, mostly by virtue of painting over green and dark grey plastic, giving a vehicle mode that's the same colour as a variation on the Roller packed with the original Prime. Meanwhile in robot mode Rook's blue is swapped for grey and his grey for red with the non painted parts that were white now appearing to be green.

The resulting toy looked very nice in pictures, as you can see in this gallery but in hand the red is very VERY bright red/orange and your eye is drawn to them. MTMTE Roller is a shade more muted. I'm not sure about the green parts either, the illustrations I see make me think these might be better in pale blue.

The amount of silver paint scares me, I'm worried this will get scratched something chronic in years to come. It's a nice deco, but I worry about it's durability. And, for a toy that excited everyone when they saw it, I think it's probably the weakest of the Galvaron limbs deco wise in hand.

[Bogatan]

Tarantulas, my favourite of the boxset, maybe the full set too. Though I would be surprised if the mould choice was based on your Groove theory, as much as I like it.

[Toph]

I think Afterburner would have been a better choice than Groove. And given we got the Nosecone remold used here before the technobots were known about, I now don't feel Afterburner would have been unreasonable.

Though I still feel there's no bettermold for tarantulas than Gen Crosscut. Wouldn't even need a new head.

All that said, I do think rook is just so bonkers it actually works. He's the only one out of the set that actually makes any measure of sense.

[Philip Ayres]

Unite Warriors Nosecone

I had thought that a remould of the front of Rook, together with a plug in drill would make a decent Nosecone but was slightly disappointed when Combiner Wars Nosecone was revealed to be a remould of Brawl. Takara however thought the same as me but too the concept a few stages further....

At it's heart Unite Warriors Nosecone is Rook. He's lost all six of his wheels which have been replaced by moulded track sections, with small wheels built into them. Gone too is the large piece that forms the top of the vehicle front, replaced by a series of panels down the spine of the toy which are shaped to resemble Nosecone's cockpit. Onto the front of this is pegged a MASSIVE DRILL. The drill, painted silver for most of it's length, does spin but the motion is a very stiff one. The pointed end is spring loaded and retracts. The drill is moulded to fit over the front of Rook's vehicle and, if you fold up the 5mm peg it's attached to the spine by it will fit onto the original Rook courtesy of a raised ring surrounding a 5mm peg hole at the rear.

There is a large number of 5mm holes on the toy, 1 on each track, one on the rear of each side, one on the front of each fist and one on top of the cockpit, plus a concealed one behind the drill. This is a good thing because Nosecone is significantly tooled up: a pair of gun barrels/missiles fit into the front of of his exposed fists, plus a yellow handgun which need mounting on the toy. All three parts are moulded in the same caramel plastic used for the tracks, spine, drill and Lightspeed's guns.

Nosecone is illustrated with the HandFootGun which is co-moulded with Afterburner. The HFG that is used with the Rook mould is packed with Strafe. I've swapped them all round so everyone has the HFG their mould is associated with because Lightspeed, Strafe and, to a lesser extent, Nosecone need their usually associated weapons at some point. To symmetrically mount Nosecone's weapons the HFG needs to be plugged into the cockpit and the handgun into the HFG. The Strafe/Blast Off gun will let you do this as it too has a 5mm hole in the palm but since Strafe wants to pull the same trick, he should have his original weapon and thus so should Nosecone.

There's a lot of things done right with the vehicle mode, the drill and the tracks especially. I can see what they're getting at with the robot arms representing the large raised area towards the rear of the vehicles but they're a bit flat for that and not yellow. The cockpit too feels a bit flat not projecting up terribly much from the new spine piece. The front of the spine looks like a big silver splodge at the front. But the worst problem is the massive space between the spine and the majority of the deck of the toy formed by the existing Rook legs.

The Transformation is essentially the same as Rook's: start by folding the head back and the arms out to the sides then transform the legs as per Rook.

The problem is with the robot mode is it's essentially a repainted Rook. Yes it's got a new head and track replace the wheels at the side of the chest but it's still just Rook repainted. Most of the colours are vaguely the right place, thought the arms could do with being darker. In fact the whole toy could do with having the predominantly caramel colour a lot darker brown, it's just not right for either toy or cartoon. Looking at it front on it's a big solid lump of white on the chest, which indicates that Takara is aiming for the cartoon like they usually do, but I do think he would have been helped if the Combiner Connector could have coloured yellow to match the original toy and break up the solid white of the chest, which also could have down with some silver painted detail. The missile/gun barrel weapons are usually shown on the shoulders but I think they make better sense mounted on the sides of the legs. The hand gun, as well as the 5mm peg handle which Nosecone/Rook can't use, has a 5mm peg on the back of it, which he can. In fact of all the weapons in the Computron set only Afterburner's don't have 5mm pegs in the rear. The Drill can be held by him, but won't attach centrally on his arm without the aid of a 5mm peg adaptor which is a bit of a shame. I wonder why they didn't put a peg there as it fits over a peg hole in vehicle mode?

I love Rook, I think he's the best Combiner Wars limb. But somehow this version just doesn't quite capture Nosecone right. The colours are off, for either toy or cartoon version. I've seen a digibash in both sets of colours and both look better than what we got.

He might not have such a large drill but, for me, I think it's a narrow win for Hasbro's Nosecone here!

The one thing this toy does so is prove the concept of a tracked Rook. I saw Brawl originally as a Rook remould and, with a new front top of vehicle, I could still see that working.

[Bogatan]

Its kind of getting weird now. The line starts off with a small number of moulds that a repainted to death and now at the end we get massive remoulds of Blast Off, which ever aerialbot and Rook in to moulds that even if the line wasn't over would seem unlikey to be used again, at least in the two Strafe moulds. Nosecone makes some sense if Takra have Liokaiser plans.

Then theres Hasbro introducing new feet and hands for two of the last sets. But dont bother using them in their Liokaiser even though its released after them, but do include brand new heads for every single toy. Which is the exact opposite of Computron which got no new heads, well except Scrounge, but did get the hands and feet.

Meanwhile Takara hve so far not touched the hands and feet depsite the new ones being more G1 accurate which is usually there thing.

Its almost like both companies are trying to avoid making the perfect toy.

[Philip Ayres]

Sept 3, 2016 21:25:32 GMT Bogatan said:

Which is the exact opposite of Computron which got no new heads, well except Scrounge

And Strafe. Well Afterburner did too but it's the same head on the Takara version.

[Toph]

And then Takara getting everything right on a toy, except going completely off the rails in the color department and ends up not matching any version of said character (Nosecone, Blastoff, Vortex)
Meanwhile Hasbro choosing a completely wrong mold, but getting the colors spot on (blastoff, nosecone). Or some detail that juuuust keeps it from hitting that perfect mark (G1 symbols on G2 Bruticus).

You're absolutely right, with these, and all the above examples, it *is* like they're intentionally trying to get things wrong.

[Philip Ayres]

Unite Warriors Hound

Like the other three toys in the UW-EX Lynxmaster boxset that also appeared in Combiner Wars, Hound is very similar to his Combiner Wars version. However he's the only one which is definitely a clear win over the Combiner Wars version! This Tweet from Alfes shows the two together but unfortunately hides one of the cleverest changes to the toy: the hinge on the Combiner Wars connector is now grey giving Hound a better defined radiator chest in robot mode. I like it. In addition there's a few new paint applications, including some yellow on his arms. For some reason he's pictured with an Off Road axe, presumably the one moulded with Unite Warriors Ratchet. Since the axe is positioned next to Hound in the tray I assume it is actually meant to be with him. He's still got a his original gun and Hand Foot Gun too which makes him fairly heavily armed.

Subtle update, but better than the Combiner Wars version.

[Philip Ayres]

Transformers Subscription Service 4.0 Impactor

There's been ONE toy version of the Wrecker's leader Impactor and that was in the Fall of Cybertron line where Impactor was a repaint of Fall of Cybertron Onslaught and, in all honesty, had his colours swapped in proportion to what they usually are.

The TFSS version of Impactor, announced in July 2015, does much better: Rook's white is swapped for purple and blue becomes white. He gets a new head and gains some extra weapons: recolours of Generations Arcee.

I've never bought a Transformers Subscription Service toy before. This year I'm having all of them due to them being Combiner Wars and Impactor was the one I was looking forward to the most.

Unfortunately when you get the toy in hand it's not so good. The fist holes are a bit too wide to hold Arcee's blades and worse the head has lost a level of definition since the earlier images and looks a bit like a not terribly good custom. It's not terribly well painted either.

A big shame. The rest, bar the hands, is great but in the plastic the head really spoils the toy.

[Philip Ayres]

Unite Warriors Greejeeber

I'm finding it rather hard to get excited about Greejeeber. As it's a Japanese toy they've used the original darker Greejeeber colours, as opposed to Rollbar's more olive green: TFU has a good comparison between the two. The shade coupled with the US army star on the bonnet makes him a dead ringer for Combiner Wars Hound in vehicle mode. The robot mode is slightly better but still looks like a slightly darker Hound with a Swindle head and an orange chest.

All the deluxe toys in the Unite Warriors Baldigus Boxset have lost their Hand/Foot/Gun and in it's place Greejeeber gains Long Haul's gun from the Unite Warriors Devastator Boxset. This improves both modes considerably closer emulating the big and small guns the original Swindle and Greejeeber toys had.

This toy was always going to struggle alongside Hound and they've done the best they could but it's easily the least exciting thing in the Baldigus boxset.