BRIENNE OF TARTH

GAME OF THRONES: LEGACY COLLECTION

Okay, guys, I gotta confess: I’ve been roped in by this whole Game of Thrones thing. Action figures and all. I get one action figure, it’s no big deal. Two? Well, maybe they’re keeping each other company. A third? That’s when I’m in trouble. So far, the two GoT figures I’ve looked at have both been members of House Stark, my personal favorite side in the great game. While today’s figure isn’t strictly from House Stark, Brienne of Tarth has quite a few ties to the Starks, and she’s even currently in the service of Sansa Stark in the show. She’s also genuinely one of the coolest characters on the show, and who can turn down an action figure of a character like that? Not me. Never me. That’s kind of why the site exists….

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Brienne is from the second series of Funko’s Game of Thrones: Legacy Collection, where she’s officially number 8 in the line (which places her second in the second series line-up). The figure stands just over 6 inches tall and she has 26 points of articulation. Or, she’s supposed to have 26 points of articulation, anyway. Yep, though I managed to avoid the notorious stuck joints of the Legacy Collection on my first two GoT figures, I was not quite so lucky with Brienne. Her neck, left shoulder, and waist joints were all totally seized right out of the box. Through use of alternating freezing and heating, I was eventually able to free up the neck and shoulder (the shoulder actually finally freed up while I was writing this review, two weeks after I purchased the figure), but I’ve had no luck with the waist joint, and I don’t want to force it for fear of it snapping. On the plus side, the only joint that is truly stuck isn’t one that ruins the figure’s playability, but it’s still annoying that this was such a common thing with the line. Brienne is based on her early appearance on the show, when she was serving under Renly Baratheon and then when she was tasked with getting Jaime Lannister to King’s Landing. It’s not quite as cool a look as her more recent armor, but it was still current at the time of this figure’s release, and it is admittedly more colorful. The sculpt on this figure is a bit frustrating. While her height is correct for the 6’3” Gwendolin Christie, her build is somewhat off. She’s definitely a bit scrawny for Brienne, but I think the biggest issue is with her shoulders. They’re too narrow (in fact, the torso as a whole seems rather undersized), which creates an optical illusion that makes her head look too big and by extension makes the rest of her body look too small. I genuinely thought she was just too small in general until I stood her next to my Captain Phasma and determined that they were in fact the same height, so I really think it’s those shoulders. So, issues with the proportions aside, how’s the rest of the sculpting? Actually not bad. While I’m not she’s quite on par with Robb, the detailing on her armor is very sharp, and the face bears more than a passing resemblance to Christie as Brienne. The hair’s a little thick, but not too terribly so. Brienne’s paintwork is generally pretty good. The armor in particular gets the best work, with some nice solid colors and some tremendous accent work to offset them. Sadly, some of the areas of her clothing are without any accenting, which looks a little out of place. There are a few spots of slop here and there, most noticeably at the bottom of her jaw, but her paintwork is very clean otherwise. Brienne is armed with a broadsword. Since this is a season 2/season 3 Brienne, it’s just a nameless sword, not Oathkeeper. It’s still a cool sword, even if it doesn’t have some fancy name.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Ever since getting Robb and Arya, I’ve been eyeing up the other figures in the line, with Brienne being right at the top of the list. I ended up finding Brienne at my local MovieStop, which, thanks to Hastings filing for bankruptcy, is currently having a sale to clear out their inventory. This allowed me to get Brienne for a reasonable (if not amazing) price, rather than a slightly marked up price. If I’m honest, Brienne’s the weakest of the GoT figures I’ve picked up. It’s mostly the shoulder thing. However, she’s not a bad figure at all, and the coolness of the character certainly helps to make up for some of the figure’s shortcomings.