Imperial Death Trooper — Star Wars The Black Series #25

Overview

Red Line #25 is the Imperial Death Trooper — the elite black-armoured special forces soldiers who serve as Director Krennic’s personal guard detail in Rogue One. The Death Trooper is the Rogue One wave’s army builder, occupying the same role in a Rogue One display that Stormtroopers occupy in an ANH display or First Order Stormtroopers occupy in a TFA display. The fully-armoured all-black design means no portrait quality concerns and a figure that holds up well across production eras. This is the only Black Series Death Trooper ever produced. MSRP $19.99.

The Death Trooper Design

The Death Trooper’s all-black armour is one of Rogue One’s most distinctive visual contributions to the Imperial military aesthetic. Where standard Stormtroopers wear white — readable as either clean efficiency or clean evil depending on your framing — Death Troopers wear black with no surface variation, no white trim, no rank colour. They are completely visually absorbed into darkness, which is the design intent: these are the Imperial forces that operate where no one is supposed to see what’s happening.

The E-11D blaster rifle is the Death Trooper’s specific weapon — an upgraded variant of the standard E-11 with additional configuration options including a folding stock and extended barrel for improved range and accuracy. The weapon’s longer profile distinguishes Death Troopers from standard Stormtroopers even at distance, creating visual variety within the Imperial force that makes a mixed Death Trooper/Stormtrooper display more interesting than all-white or all-black alone.

Death Troopers also have a documented in-universe feature that the figure can’t represent: they speak in a scrambled droid-speak communications cipher that sounds to outside listeners like garbled noise. All inter-unit communication is encrypted at the point of transmission. They don’t want to be understood by anyone outside their operational chain.

Accessories

One accessory: the E-11D blaster rifle. The weapon fits both hands in a natural two-handed firing grip. The longer barrel creates a different silhouette from the standard E-11 and reads clearly as the Death Trooper weapon at display distance.

Articulation: 18 points — standard Red Line scheme. The fully-armoured design presents no portrait quality considerations.

Death Troopers in Rogue One

Death Troopers appear throughout Rogue One as Krennic’s personal escort and the elite force deployed in the film’s most critical Imperial operations — Eadu, Scarif, and the confrontation on Mustafar that concludes with a Darth Vader appearance the audience doesn’t expect. Their deployment alongside Krennic establishes his status within Imperial hierarchy: not a standard Director with standard Stormtrooper support, but someone with access to special forces.

The Scarif sequences are where Death Troopers are most extensively featured in active combat. They’re effective, organised, and defeated in the end not by superior force but by the Rogue One team’s willingness to sacrifice themselves systematically for a goal the Death Troopers are trying to prevent. The contrast is the film’s thesis: the Empire’s forces fight because they’re ordered to; the Rebellion’s people fight because they’ve chosen to.

Army Building for Rogue One Display

The Death Trooper functions as the Rogue One equivalent of the Imperial Stormtrooper for scene displays. Multiple copies alongside Director Krennic (#27) create the specific Director’s guard detail visible throughout the film. For the Scarif beach assault: Death Troopers as the primary Imperial opposition, Jyn Erso (#22) and Cassian (#23) as the Rebel side.

The Death Trooper’s black armour creates strong visual contrast against the white of standard Imperial Stormtroopers — a mixed display of both communicates that not all Imperial troops are interchangeable, and that the Death Troopers represent a specific elevated threat tier.

Secondary Market

The Red Line Death Trooper holds modest above-retail secondary market prices — it’s the only Black Series Death Trooper, army builder demand is sustained, and no replacement has been produced. Loose complete examples are the primary market.

Verdict

The only Black Series Death Trooper. Buy for Rogue One Imperial force displays, army building alongside Director Krennic, or Red Line sequence completion. The all-black fully-armoured design makes this the most display-durable figure in the Red Line wave alongside the equally armoured First Order Stormtrooper — neither has a portrait to date it, and both benefit from multiple copies in a squad arrangement that reads immediately as a specific unit type rather than an anonymous collection of identical figures.

Death Troopers in the Andor Series

The Andor Disney+ series expanded Death Trooper appearances into the pre-Rogue One timeline, showing them in operation as Krennic’s protection detail across several episodes. Their role in Andor is consistent with Rogue One — elite Imperial special forces serving the Director of Advanced Weapons Research — and their appearance in both the series and the film establishes them as a consistent institutional presence rather than a one-film novelty.

No Andor series Death Trooper figure has been produced as of this writing, which means the Red Line #25 remains the only Black Series Death Trooper for all contexts.

The Death Trooper vs Standard Stormtrooper Display

For collectors who want to distinguish between the Empire’s standard ground forces and its elite special operations, the Death Trooper and the Imperial Stormtrooper are the two available army builder options across the films. A display showing Stormtroopers alongside Death Troopers communicates an Imperial force with visible internal hierarchy — the standard soldiers who perform routine security, and the specialised operators who handle sensitive operations. The visual contrast between white and all-black is immediate and requires no labelling to convey the distinction.

The Death Trooper’s scrambled communications cipher is worth noting as a display context detail. In Rogue One, the distinctive static-like communications of Death Troopers in the Jedha and Scarif sequences serve as an audio signal of their presence before they’re fully visible. The figure can’t represent this audio element, but understanding it deepens the display context: these soldiers are communicating constantly in a cipher that excludes everyone outside their chain of command, which is the Death Trooper philosophy embodied in sound.

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Part of Star Wars The Black Series | Red Line. Related: Director Krennic P3-27 | Army Builders | Galactic Empire faction | Rogue One.