The red bumper on MS Prime isn't standard, just for the record.

 

Magic Square looks more “War for Cybertron” (that’s not a diss), with more of a hard angle, “realistic” look. NA’s Magnus looks like it has softer lines and is more of a cartoon, come to life. I probably prefer the NA aesthetic more from from the front and I don’t mind the upside down arms in the back, but I agree that the lack of some sort of cover in the back is a bit of an omission. Gun to my head, I’d choose the NA one, but I think I just prefer the paint and transformations of NA more than MS (and this is from a guy who owns MS’ metallic Light of Justice and loves the toy). I want to see transformation videos on YouTube. That will ultimately make my decision. I watched the videos for the two brands’ Megatron and thought that the NA Meg’s’ transformation was complex, but much more intuitive. I felt the transformation for MS Megs was too complex and didn’t follow as much of a pattern for me to follow. To each his own though, right?

Question: which Magnus trailer will carry more cars? That’s important to me (one reason why I only like, but don’t love, the Kingdom Magnus is because it sucks as a car carrier). The alt mode is just as important as the bot mode to me personally.

 

I'd love to see this in Powered Convoy colors.

 

Man, I must be more detached from the 3P community than I thought, because I saw this and thought “damn, that’s incredible.” Resculpted matrix chamber to be accessed in armoured form? Genius. Arms on top of the torso? Really creative way to fold up the cab for better proportions. 70% new mould inner robot? That’s commitment, they didn’t cheap out and just use an all white Prime. Back is a little unsightly? I don’t think it’s that bad. It’s not like he’s got a huge backpack, it’s just covered in hinges and stuff from transformation, but it’s all neatly packed up.

Seeing the complaints against this guy is kind of funny to me. Not even saying they’re invalid, just that I never even processed those as negatives due to everything else about this guy being flawless, like the proportions, style, and head sculpt. IMO this is easily the superior Legends scale Magnus.

 

This beats Magic Square for no other reason than there is no extra giant cannon I have to find space for in my storage bin.

 

TFW a Legends Class toy outclasses an official Leader Class toy in terms of looks and parts count. ...and quality.

 

I think he looks great. I’ll be picking him up. I just don’t expect this to be cheap.

 

Yeah I'm totally with you on this. The only two other things that really jump out at me as "issues" are the proportions of the vehicle mode and the weird construction of the feet. I'd say this toy comes closer to capturing cartoon Magnus than the MP.

I mean, it's also much smaller and will definitely be far more expensive, so it's not exactly a fair comparison.

 

Though to be entirely fair, Kingdom Magnus doesn't even stack up to the quality of other Leaders, like Galvatron. Sure the robot mode is great, but the alt mode is a disaster of exposed robot junk and gaps all over. Newage at least made sure all the retooled parts made for a consistent, flattering alt mode.

 

BINGO!  

 

What makes you think NA, king of the hundred repaints, won't release their Prime, without the chest cut, in white? Pretty good bet they will.

 

The exposed white Magnus arm is a let down, too bad they couldn't add one extra foldable panel to rectify it. On the hand, I can forgive the windshield breaker due to the Matrix gimmick compromise. If this gimmick is a must stay for them, I would've preferred they break it in-line with the blue rectangle area:

Me too.

Agreed, that face sculpt looks really good.

You can try with the obvious one, the G1 toy, lol. Speaking of the Studio OX UM design, every time I see that back shot I kept on asking myself how does the armor UM bent his leg at the pelvis since robot cab hip is sit at a higher up? I hope DX9 releases Studo OX UM one day to go with their Carry.

MS vs NA:
Base on that photos comparison side by side, there is no question that MS Armor UM is far superior in term of giving us a clean and good looking robot and alt.mode. But then you can't disregard the fact only 20-30% of the trailer form the Armor of UM. MS partformers is taking to the extreme almost like a 3D Puzzle TF in a way make it unfair to compare the two. I think both are great which will end up in my UM collection.

Back to NA UM:
First impression from these newly photos, NA UM actually look better than I anticipated. Love that TFTM poster posture mimic and the running with the gun, lol. Even the alt.mode impresses me too, I was down earlier.
The Pros for me:
-As I stated since the 1st photo revealed, I love the profile/proportion of this guy. An armor UM that doesn't look bulky/fat is a win-win in my book.
-Very nice face/head sculpt
-I appreciate the Matrix chamber gimmick despite could be better like MF UM2.0/MP22.
-I'm a huge armor UM fan, so having the robot cab gimmick will always take priority over the all-in-one/MP22 style. Despite the double chest and windshield break, I still think the robot cab looks great in both mode.
-Red bumper  
-The Accessories looks great from the photo especially the toon/MP22 gun. Really appreciate that it comes with 2 guns for each robot mode.

The Cons for me:
-Obvious the expose robot cab arm at the torso.
-White crotch below the belt. That big white + at the pelvis bother me more than the exposed arm, lol.
-Nitpicky, I don't like the 3 boxes/lines below the T chestplate on each side. Give me one big square box on each side or give the prefer glass chest like their rendering.

 

From some angles it looks great, but in the end they compromised too much for me. The back doesn’t bother me so much and I give them points on stacking the inner bot parts the way they did. But the chopped up chest and the exposed hands up top just leave me cold on this one. Pity with all the engineering to make the core bot work with the armor they didn’t figure out some other way to deal with that. I remember seeing those hands in the early design shots and thinking surely they’d design a flap somewhere to flip up and cover at least the hands… guess not…

I liked the idea of having a G1 toy style Magnus but neither this nor MST do it for me. It’s great that we have so many choices tho. Pick the one that bothers you least. For me it’s the MFT KO. Well and the IF figures but those aren’t G1 style.

 

…. Did a case of head lice break out here? Because I’ve never seen so many fucking nitpickers in one place!

Seriously though - I think this looks great! And yeah, I’m more biased towards NewAge than most, but I can give MS props when they outdo NewAge (some of the constructicons for example, along with potentially their 2.0 prime) I just can’t believe someone can look at those pictures and then turn around and say shit like “broken windows? Hands on top? Exposed back? Put it in the fucking bin!” When I look at that and go “that looks great!” And when I looked at the comparison someone did (writing this post on mobile, so I can’t check - but you did a great job!) I go “wow - both look amazing! I feel like everyone wins here!”

I will say, I’m posting this because I think I said at least a couple entertaining things, but I also may have read posts negatively, when they aren’t intended as such. And I don’t mean to disregard those opinions, and just hope you all find what you’re looking for collection wise!

 

PLus
New Age's head sculpt looks better
It doesn't appear to have a lot of leftover parts like MS
You don't have to buy two figures to get everything
More diecast parts than MS

Cons
Arms on shoulders
Weird chest open small robot mode.
Open back

 

Nice!

 

It seems like NA's design direction for this is an amalgamation of inspiration from the G1 toy and Studio Ox lineart.

 

I love this model, I hope in many recolor (above all Delta Magnus) ^^

 

Its pretty amazing

 

perhaps, but so what? i'm not one to double dip and get two white primes. to me that would be silly and a waste of my money. if i were to get this UM and it need a white prime, it would only be the one.  

i agree it would have been better to make the cut less obvious and hidden within existing panel lines. but i don't think that would work with the way the matrix is currently positioned in the chest, and possibly too big to be seen and/or taken out in a smaller cut out like you have.