New Battle Packs have arrived

I'm not a huge fan of Battle Packs as they tend to be a rehash of figures you already have and the price point is set relatively high by comparison to single carded figures which are generally available on sale. A year ago, and even further back, Battle Packs used to come with 4 figures and maybe an accessory for an average price of $29.99. Most of the time you could get 1 unique figure and 3 repaints within the set. Now the Battle Packs have been trimmed back to 3 figures for the same price tag which is incredibly expensive by my standards. You still get 1 unique figure per pack but the other two in the box are still just repaints. I'm not even going to count the Battle Game cards and accessories as value simply because I think anyone in their right mind would rather have a fourth figure over those pack-in pieces.

The newest waves of Battle Packs include Defend Kamino, Assault on Geonosis, Cad Bane's Escape and The Hunt for Grievous. If the price on these drop under $20 they are certainly worth picking up as the character selections are pretty decent and the modifications to the repacked figures are noticeably different to the originals.

I did pick up Defend Kamino (there's a sale on right now) because it featured ARC Commander Blitz, who is new, and repaints of Clone Troopers Fives and Echo who are fan favourites in the series. The blue on Echo and Fives is a lot lighter than the Rishi Moon armour blue but I don't recall if the Kamino blue was as such or if it is just a paint app screw up. I would need to re-watch the Kamino episode or find my original figures... both of which I am too lazy to do at the moment. I'll revisit this post at a later date.

**Update: So the good news is that, aside from Clone Trooper Echo, the other Rishi Moon rookies (Fives, Hevy, Droidbait and Cutup) have not had a carded release in Clone Trooper armour. Hevy was released in Training Gear and the lone clone released in the 2010 Rishi Outpost Attack Battle Pack is not officially identified. This means Clone Trooper Fives is all new (well the paint app and head sculpt are) and Clone Trooper Echo has a new paint application. The Defend Kamino Battle Pack is based on Season 3: Episode 2 where in the end Fives and Echo are promoted to ARC Troopers. I would expect we will get ARC Trooper versions of both of these characters down the road as they returned in Season 3: Episode 19 in their new ARC Trooper gear.