There are quite a few troop variations in Rogue One and many already have figures from Hasbro and Bandai. Hasbro released a tank driver on Force Friday, but it doesn’t have the extra paint stripes that denote the rank of commander, so I was very interested in getting this Bandai version. Let’s take a look at the Bandai Combat Assault Tank Commander!
The sculpt on this figure is really nice with lots of sharp detail on the armor pieces and some realistic cloth folds around the pants.
The scale is pretty close to the Black Series, just slightly shorter. The only issue I have is that the shoulders stick out a little more than I would like, and while they have great range of motion, they don’t ever really look natural to me.
The figure comes with three sets of hands (pointing/trigger, fists and grip) and a blaster. The blaster is the one that the Death Troopers usually use, which surprised me because I assumed the trooper used a regular Stormtrooper blaster. I don’t think we saw the Tank Commander brandish a weapon in Rogue One, so there really isn’t much basis for my assumption. At any rate, the sculpt is sharp, though it seems a little small and they left the trigger section filled in.
The hands are pretty basic, but like I said with the Shoretrooper Captain, I love that I can have my commander pointing if I want.
The Commander has the following articulation:
- Ball-jointed head, neck, upper torso and lower torso
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, ankles and hips
- Drop hinge hips
- Swivel biceps and forearm armor
- Double-hinged elbows
- Single-hinged knee and ammo boxes
- Rocker ankles
- Double-hinged shoulder pads
The articulation works really well for the most part, and the only hindered point of articulation is the ankles. They don’t have a lot of forward or backward movement.
The paint is excellent with shiny white armor and very solid panel lining details. It’s not quite as dirty as seen in the film, but pretty good.
Overall, this is really nice figure. It fits in okay with the Black Series figures and my only real issue with the figure is that the shoulders can look awkward. I wish they sunk into the body a bit more. The other problem I have is now I really want a tank for this guy to command.
