You may not believe this, but I've never played World of Warcraft. Not that I'm opposed to the idea or anything, I just don't have a PC that can run it (I'm still on Windows 98. No, really). But you can't help but notice a game with eight million players and its own South Park episode, so even though Azeroth or whatever it's called has remained terra incognita to me since I gave up playing Warcraft II way back when, I was keen to have my own little piece of 'WoW' in the form of an action figure. Valeera Sanguinar here is from the first wave of WoW figures produced by DC Unlimited (which is basically DC Direct, I gather) to accompany DC's upcoming World of Warcraft comic - and the push to get the WoW market is a big one for DC, so my expectations for this figure were high. Did she meet them? Well... no. In terms of sculpt, she's a matter of good execution, bad idea. Her pose has her looking down at a very severe angle, which unless you put her on the very edge of a shelf means she's looking at the ground - it looks silly. I'm guessing she's meant to be on uneven terrain, up on top of a boulder or something and facing an opponent on lower ground, but seeing as she doesn't come with a boulder to stand on, she just looks like she's taken a sudden fascination to the wood grain of the shelf she's on. To make matters worse she's sculpted in a very dynamic, motion-packed pose, but none of her body parts seem to agree on how she's moving. Her hair is streaming off to her right, suggesting high wind (she's certainly not moving forward), but her cape is hanging flatly down her back, until it reaches her waist where it curls between her legs and to the left, as if she's spinning to defend against an attack, except her hair doesnt match that. Meanwhile she's got two ribbons attach to her armour below her waistline which just curl aimlessly around her hips - I have no idea what combination of wind or body motion is supposed to be causing either of those. At the end of the day, what dynamism she has is wasted because I can't figure out how she's moving. Her paint job is the reverse - good idea, bad execution. The various layers of her costume are differentiated by different paint jobs: crimson and shiny for metal, crimson and matte for leather, darker red and matte for the clothing underneath - all well and good, except the paint just isn't applied very well. There's a very heavy wash of ink over the metal sections, and while it looks good in all the sculpted crevices, there's so much ink that it's settled on the flat areas too - an amateur mistake. The leather and cloth areas are okay, but her skin is painted too heavily, interfering with the sculpted detail, and the fine details are a bit of a mess - the green gems are completely flat, with no attempt to make them look even vaguely like jewels, and her hair is an utter disaster, with a highlight so overapplied that it's just slopped all over the place. I picked the best of three available Valeeras in the shop, and it's still pretty bad. So far as articulation goes, there pretty much isn't any. She's got swivel biceps and wrists, but the only thing they're good for is fine-tuning the position of her arms - she's got one pose, and she's stuck with it. She doesn't really have a base - she remains standing by way of two clear plastic discs glued to her feet. They, at least, work well, and have the advantage that they let her remain upright even though her left foot isn't flat on the ground. Her sword can't be removed from her hand, so doesn't count as an accessory - the blade and guard and cast in clear gold plastic, and painted with gold and green to match the painted hilt cast as part of the hand. So what have we got? Sculpted in an action pose, high in fine detail, essentially no articulation - DC Unlimited have tried to make a McFarlane figure. The problem is they're not good enough at it - McFarlane get by because their 'plastic statues' have really outstanding visual design, and their paint jobs are well above average. Between her confused dynamism and poor paint, Valeera just doesn't look anywhere near as good as a McStatue. If she had articulation, even just neck/shoulders/waist ball joints, there'd be options to improve her pose and make her look better... but she doesn't. All in all, it's a poor showing from DC.