Introduction

A while back I did a review of the spiffy action figure line Stikfas and came away very impressed with these stick figure action figures. An of shoot of the Stikfas line is the Hasbro toy Xevoz. Xevoz is also a game, of sorts. But as neat as I thought Stikfas was, how do the slightly more detailed, bigger action figure stack up?

The Toy

Xevoz is a some assembly required ball and joint 7’” action figure line. There are specific reasons for this as the game for this toy proves, but from a playing with or sitting on your desk perspective means you get lots of articulation (14 points or so) and a tremendous amount of variety of accessories or looks. This means all sorts of goofy or cool poses can be made with Xevoz figures…that or simply made to balance well.

Unlike Stikfas the parts are cut off the sprues at the factory and for the most part are separated well enough. The painting and detailing of the figures is not the plain plastic of Stikfas, but also no where near the detail of a standard Star Wars action figure. Xevoz is somewhere in between and for the most part this less detailed approach is appealing to the eye. For example most of the faces and such are simply protrusions for a nose, occasional mouth or facial hair. A very cool aspect of the parts detailing is the use of multi colors for pieces, translucent pieces or a mixture. Xevoz is one of the very few action figure lines that not only does entirely translucent pieces but does them extremely well with the various energy beings called hyperfuries.

The quality of the parts of the kits I have picked up have been generally good. One of the undead unnatural (skulljack) and the human neosapiens (sky grinder) kits I picked up had an early on issue of popping out of joint, which was more of an irritant when posing them for my desktop. But the joints have remained in place. From forum discussions I have had with others a couple of the kits have had slightly more serious connecting issues, but that could be ascribed to user error or simply a batch defect.

Xevoz figures are designed for interchangability. Where figures might look wildly different, in fact all parts are swappable with any other. Prwxtical experience after buying a number of the figures is some of these things will look cool, some will look goofy…but that is in the eye of the beholder. This again ties into the game aspect of the toy where you can take pieces from on Xevoz and use it on another for a better helix to be rolled against your challenger.

Like Xevoz’s cousin Stikfas, the figures come with a huge diverse amount of stuff to attach to them. This includes a numerous weapons, body parts, heads, etc. For example the Skulljack kit could be done as a pirate or a simple skeleton. Some of these are goofy or clearly intended as a joke of sorts, but the variety is refreshing as compared to the mosr static and less diverse action figures out there.

The Game

Xevoz is a game to and that might on the surface have some appeal to the gamers out there. Each kit has about 8 weapons, defenses or sundry bits that have rune pieces. Each piece fits into a helix that when assembled rolls like a VERY clunky die. Each Xevoz has a few special golden pieces that have better attributes, but these have a limit of three when assembling your helix. The fun part of this is all kits are interchangeable and so a figure could be customized to have helix components from six different figures and non helix pieces (e.g. an upper arm or lower leg) for looks from many more. Each helix piece has a number and effect icon in a black side and white side. Each helix piece has three facings: one the higher value is on black, the higher value is on white and lastly the icon of the part in question.

The game it self consists of declaring which side of the helix you want to use (black or white) then roll the helix. The higher value wins, a tie changes control and a loss indicates pieces lost. Each figure fighting should have the same amount of pieces (typically 25 or so) and the last one with pieces remaining is the winner. The helix results are typically a low number does more damage, but is less likely to win a straight up contest. The higher the value the less damage it does. In playing through a number of matches it seems like tilting to one color and high values with one or two decent values in the opposite is the way to go.

The figures represent different factions in a science fiction setting. For what is a toy mainly geared towards kids it is fairly complex and detailed. Each faction is stylized into somewhat standards themes: human (neospaiens), undead (unnatural), energy (hyperfuries), robotic (biomecha), animal/fuzzy/anthropomorphic (meta-beast).

Overall the game aspect of this action figure is appealing to younger gamers who might not be ready for more serious war games. As an adult I found the game play to be just slightly more interesting and complicated as paper-rock-scissors.

A Quick Review of Figures I Own:

• Shadow Blade: My personal favorite, this is a ninja type guy with twin katanas and other melee weapons.
• Skulljack: A pirate themed skeleton! Nuff said!
• Grimskull: Muck like the above Skulljack sans the pirates stuff and red clear parts instead.
• Sky Grinder: A anti-gravity snowboard duuuude. This has a neat combination of parts, but the board is a little clunky and the pieces a little too geared for kids.:)
• Alpha Ranger: Think a Xevoz colonial marine from Aliens, a personal favorite, but it is a little plain.
• Sledge Trooper: My first kit and one of my favorites. This is a big robot guy with lots of accessories, snap on armor and who poses very well.
• Bone Cutter: A kit I hate so much I have left it in the box. It is a green insect and it just does not pose or look very good. I do not care for the bug Xevoz figures, but xenophiles might think they are cool.
• Hemogoblin: A neat figure that can be made to look like a gargoyle or vampire.
• Moonstalker: A anthropomorphic wolf that sort of resembles an avartar from the forgotten realms setting. I am not a big fan of the animal faction in Xevoz, but this figure is pretty cool.

Summary

I sort of fell into collecting this line of toys because I am a big fan of its cousin Stikfas. After a couple of kits on my desk the collection sort of grew and grew as I came to appreciate the toys for their variety, quality and cool looks. They are a well made desktop toy and fun to goof around with when I get a writer’s block, installing an application or while watching TV. There are a diverse number of kits, so there is likely at least one that a gamer, computer geek or kid at heart would like on their desktop.

The game aspect of Xevox is not very fun unless you are about 8 years old. Then the thought of rolling helixs and blasting parts of your opponents figure is probably hella-fun. There would be possibility to rehash the rules for a table top game with more complicated rules using the core pieces…but that might be spendy and require a pretty big table to play on.