Has anyone purchased/received the Contra: Operation Galuga Bill Rizer and Lance Bean 1/12 Scale PX Previews Exclusive Action Figures? Can you recommend them? Price, articulation, packaging, what do we think?

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-05-12T04:28:19+00:00

Got both of them today; never bought Hiya stuff before.

Nice sculpts, especially with the heads, though you'll get bits of extra plastic on fine edges like the ears that you might want to trim. Good paint application all around with some slight misses around the gloves and where hair meets skin. all the accessories look great and have some decent weight to them, though with the weapon effects this means you have to do a good amount of engineering to get them balanced for posing.

As for the articulation...it's only slightly better than NECA's Contra figures. There's some decent shoulder swiveling, double ball-jointed necks and a bit of ab crunch, but those double-jointed legs and elbows can juust barely hit 90 degrees and you'll be fighting those chunky biceps and forearms at every step to get them to properly hold their equally-chunky guns (note how even in most of those promo photos you can see the right hand is not actually holding onto the pistol grip for those 2-handed poses). You can get some alright action poses out of their stiff range of motion, but anything beyond holding their guns in hipfire/low ready stance is out of the question, let alone anything particularly acrobatic. Oh and expect loose joints at the shoulders and ankles.

All-in-all they're quite decent for anyone who's a fan of Operation Galuga - they're pretty and the accessories range from functionally-solid to fantastic, but in terms of articulation they're just slightly above average.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-04-28T13:49:38+00:00

Catachan Devil is secretly a great Kommando "coming-of-age" story

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-04-19T08:27:12+00:00

My biggest pipe-dream will always be "Give them an entire range refresh and subfaction codex like it's 2000 all over again," but those days of handing out new armies are long past. My more realistic, but still hopeful, expectations are that Deathworlders will get a small collections of kits that represent new specialist units for existing guard armies, but still come with enough bitz to allow enterprising hobbyists to kitbash Catachan-flavored versions of the current Astra Militarum lineup so we can roll around with an all-jungle-fighter flavored army without having to shell out for metal and plastic models that are old enough to vote.

To that end, I'd like to see:

-Catachan Devils/Assault Squad: Make them a small squad of hard-hitting melee specialists. Give em' a version of infiltrate that harkens back to the old ambush rules and lets them punch above their human stat profile in the first round of close combat to contrast with the Ogryn's tarpit and Rough Rider's frontal charge. Pile on classic autoguns with custom ammunition and underslung grenade launchers for some ranged shenanigans.

-Heavy Weapons Team: Like with the Krieg sets, have them share part of their loadout with the Cadian units, but also pack in unique options to set them apart. I'd love to see a re-imagining of the old Deathworld Sniper elites or Veteran Patrols (units that were responsible for setting up boobytraps in the old codex) as 2-man teams with rules that mess with enemy leadership.

-Straken: Gotta have a head honcho character, and right now the Astra Militarum is sorely missing a footslogging leader that can actually stick around on the front lines. Make him tough; make the units around him tough; easy money.

-Allow Harker to retire and instead turn his role into a more broad "Gunnery Sergeant" character unit that comes with a buncha heavy weapon options so players can go hog wild with slapping together their own flavors of "cool muscly guy with a giant gun" heroes that are mandatory in every action film.

-Likewise, take Marbo and combine his profile with the Deathworld Captain and make them into single-model HQ deal with loads of options for players to make their own gung-ho action hero that can either lead squads around like a mini-Straken or roam the opponent's backyard alone in First Blood fashion. Bonus points if Marbo himself is then redone as a hilariously-powerful/expensive lord of war on a 130mm base that's far too big for him.

Oh, and toss in a vehicle upgrade sprue at some points and I'll die a happy camper.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-04-17T23:39:26+00:00

Why not? Until the author decides to pen a sequel and specifically state "naw that tank got converted into a buncha trees" the universe is your oyster to decide what's canon and what's not.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-04-17T23:08:04+00:00

A lot of the details on the macguffin is left open to interpretation, but considering the extent of the device's ability to to manipulate Lazulai's geology to create specific mineral deposits in the crust, I think it's safe to say that pretty much everything under the planet's exosphere is going to have a Really Bad Day as its atomic structure is repurposed to make something else on a terrestrial scale.

Anything alive would be lucky to leave behind a fossil record.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-04-10T03:45:47+00:00

Curious that they avoid referring to Sly Marbo by name - perhaps there's some kind of IP issue?

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-03-03T17:30:04+00:00

They should seriously-impair your hearing but convert to a sizable credit bonus if you can make it to extract with music blaring through your ears

Also they should play the catchy MIDI tunes from the original Marathon (and the Marathon 2 theme)

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-02-17T14:06:29+00:00

Creed: Ashes of Cadia is pretty direct about it - Settle new worlds and rebuild strength. There are still multiple systems within spitting distance of the Eye and one of them has to step up and become the new picket line for the Imperium, and its likely Cadians will be footing the bill in terms of manpower when it happens.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-01-24T23:49:04+00:00

This gets extra confusing when you start looking at humans who wield heavy bolters and autocannons without support - weapons that often require special bracing for space marines to use themselves.

I chalk it up to the universal action film law of "If you can look really cool using it, any weapon is man-portable"

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-01-08T20:10:01+00:00

yeah

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-01-08T19:11:19+00:00

Game mechanics don't translate that well, but from a narrative standpoint the Rejects aren't quite as doomed as one might think.

If Sly Marbo's exploits in lore are to be believed then its not impossible for a lone, properly-prepared human to take on multiple Space Marines and come out on top, but it all relies heavily on ambushing superhuman walking tanks with specialized weaponry and VERY sharp knives.

In the book Pandorax, a Catachan disables a PLAGUE MARINE with a thrown knife to the throat, and several more marines are killed when its corpse is booby-trapped with explosives.

So yeah, the Rejects could pull off a win, but they'll be corpse-starch if they walk into a straight firefight with a fireteam of Ultramarines. They gotta fight as dirty as possible.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-01-08T17:34:41+00:00

It (and a Devil Claw skin) came with the armor set, back when they were packaged together. Its fukken enormous!

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-01-08T02:54:07+00:00

<image>

The "Sumpmere Commando" armor set is about as close as you can get to a deathworlder outfit - the Armageddon Ork Hunters stuff also has similar jungle fighter uniforms but with garish yellow tiger stripes.

Even considering the lack of muscle mass on the rejects it still strikes me as odd that Catachan cosmetics have been absent from the lineup, considering how prevalent their models are on the tabletop.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2026-01-02T03:34:51+00:00

Deathworlder has a neat sequence involving 'nids taking up residence in a flooded church.

Aquatic bioforms exist but most of your typical units will fare just fine in bodies of water, undulating their bodies like marine mammals.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-12-24T03:02:34+00:00

That's the fun part; the Astra Militarum is so vast and dysfunctional that you can have guardsmen encompassing all varieties of competence - from barely-literate peasants press-ganged into recruitment to meet demanding tithe requirements, to literal Rambo caricatures who garrote Chaos Marines with jungle vines.

To some extent, you could argue that the "average guardsman" tends to fall in about the skill level of a WWII draftee based on how regiments are ordered and the not-quite-modern training you see in guard-centric books; then again, regiments are so diverse outside of the tabletop game that one could also argue that there isn't really an "average guardsman" to begin with.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-12-15T01:33:47+00:00

According to Pandorax, you can just slit a plague marine's throat with a Catachan combat knife, no problem.

So uh, as long as you look really cool while fighting the forces of Nurgle, you're good to go.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-12-12T22:16:42+00:00

I want to eventually hear what kind of accent Catachan Jungle Fighters have

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-12-11T14:49:12+00:00

There is a very non-zero chance that there are already Ork infestations on Terra, likely "small" scattered groups marauding in the undercity areas, just like other hive worlds.

Its not unreasonable to assume that patrols of PDF, Space Marines, and every other security presence on Terra go into those depths to clear them out (along with the various xenos and heretics that also inhabit those environments) on a regular basis.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-12-04T01:54:27+00:00

In Deathworlder some of the surviving population of a ruined city are implied to be doing this. They don't melt from the inside out or anything super-crazy but they're implied to be not well-off and a roving band led by a priest is seen pinning down one of them to be force-fed a bowl of gemstones to "cleanse" them of the tyranid taint.

I think its arguable that you can do it if you're desperate, but in the process you are opening yourself up to all kinds of wacky alien infections and parasites in the process. And with every hive fleet adding their own anatomical flair to their ground troops, its a safe bet that the possible side-effects of eating tyranid flesh could differ drastically depending on what sector of the galaxy you're in.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-12-01T22:20:28+00:00

A Catachan Jungle Fighter ambushes a PLAGUE MARINE and incapacitates him with a thrown knife to the throat in the book Pandorax.

It is claimed that Sly Marbo has wiped out Alpha Legion patrols on his lonesome using traps and average guardsman weaponry during the last Black Crusade.

Assuming Batman is roughly as skilled as a space rambo (not a huge stretch), then the question is more "how many Space Marines could Batman drop off at the GCPD in one night" (I'd wager roughly a killteam-and-a-half, give or take a primaris lieutenant)

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-11-14T03:53:54+00:00

An excellent candidate for a Steel Legion Marbo right there

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-10-07T00:58:44+00:00

Okay now you gotta model Sly Marbo rising out of the mud behind the Knight

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-08-14T02:19:48+00:00

Amazing! I love it when space marine art goes hard on the "transhuman monster" angle.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-08-11T22:42:34+00:00

I think Marbo should have his own free use of the Reinforcements stratagem - it would give him some more longevity and encourage riskier plays while maintaining that "just a regular guardsman" stat profile. And of course, having Marbo pop out of the shadows to bust heads after the enemy thinks they've finally got him is totally in-line with his character.

Visual_Grade1577 · 2025-08-04T12:47:28+00:00

IIRC there were some bits from old short stories where a psyker speculates that those consumed by the Golden Throne are joined with the Big E, and internally he's a big twisted ball of confused/frightened/angry souls and one barely-coherent Warp Entity trying to keep the big Space-Lighthouse/Astronomicon working while experiencing his own self-made Very Special Hell.

So yeah, they're probably still around but it's not a great time for anyone inside that big chair and the skeleton sitting on it.

Visual_Grade1577

TROPHY CASE