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Pathfinder Battles Preview: Crazy-Good Commons

Friday, November 4, 2011

Just yesterday, the fine folks from WizKids stopped by the Paizo offices to drop off the final batch of Pathfinder Battles Heroes & Monsters miniatures. I now have, sitting on my desk, actual production-run copies of all 41 miniatures in the set, from the lowly Goblin Warrior to the mighty Huge Black Dragon. Looking at them all lined up on my desk, I’m very impressed with the quality WizKids brought to bear on this set, and I think players are going to be absolutely thrilled with them. As much as I like sharing these images with you every Friday, there’s just something special about holding these miniatures in your hand that can never come through on a photograph.

I’ll begin revealing images of these final miniatures starting next week. This week’s batch is the last of the pre-production samples. Generally speaking, these look identical to the final versions except they haven’t yet been attached to the bases. I’ll see about showing off the bottoms of the bases next week, too, as they look a little different from prepainted plastic miniatures you’ve probably seen from other companies, in that you can actually read the name of the monster and other helpful information. More on that soon.

Today I want to focus on some of the common miniatures in the Heroes & Monsters set. When I first came into the prepainted miniature business, my understanding was that common miniatures often had very few paint steps, and were basically created as “cheaply” as possible as a way of subsidizing the more complicated miniatures pegged to the more scarce rarities. While there is some element of that in the Pathfinder Battles line (very complex minis are indeed more likely to be rarer), I was very pleasantly surprised to see the amount of quality and detail WizKids put into even the common miniatures in the set.

When I’ve showed the production samples around the office, it’s often been commons like the Orc Warrior or Lizardfolk Champion that folks identify as their favorites. With Pathfinder Battles, we let game utility dictate rarity more than things like sculpt complexity or paint steps. If you might want a ton of a certain creature in your game, we did everything we could to put that creature at the common rarity. If you only needed one, we made it a rare, and so on.

Here are preview images of three such common creatures, starting with the friendly (or not-so-friendly) fellows who tend to show up every time your player characters get into trouble in a town or city: the watch!

Here we have the lowly Watch Guard, the rank-and-file police or guard who peers through the darkness with his lantern and impales criminals with his simple spear. You can almost hear him say, “Wot’s all this, then?” as he advances toward your criminal player characters, with very little sense that they might have six or seven levels on him and weapons that cost more than he will earn in a year of cleaning up the city.

Every good gaggle of guards needs a leader, so when we were first planning this set, I asked WizKids to add a Watch Captain to the list. The guy they came back with looked pretty cool, but I thought he was a bit too regular-looking to fully pull off the “captain” rank, so I busted him down. He’s now the Watch Officer, nervously looking over his shoulder for a future set that might include his direct superior.

Or perhaps he’s nervous about an attack from this next common, the mighty Orc Brute! WizKids did an awesome job with the set’s two orcs (the Orc Warrior, taken directly from the Pathfinder Bestiary illustration, is even better than this one). This guy is ready to knock your head off with a nasty club capped with a bunch of nails. If it came down to the fight between the Orc Brute and both of the Watch figures put together, my vote goes to the orc. As Wesley Snipes once famously said: “Always bet on green.”

That’s it for this week. With a full set of finished minis to show off, next week’s preview will be the cream of the crop. Let me know what you’d like to see, and I’ll be sure to add it to the list!

Erik Mona
Publisher

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Tags: Miniatures Orcs Pathfinder Battles Pathfinder Roleplaying Game
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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I love that the guard has a lantern. I can't remember the last time I encountered or really ran a guard in a town that wasn't at night when they needed it the most. Nice touch.

The orc brute is badass. Good job!
Dark Archive

I really like the watchguard and the watch officer although the watch officers pose seems to be slightly skewed. Great job overall and I'm really impressed with what I've seen so far. Could we get a preview next week of the ogre and the gargoyle?
Scarab Sages

"I'll save you Kimi!"
-The Guard
Paizo Employee Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
3 people marked this as a favorite.

Ogre and gargoyle. Check. Coming soon.
Grand Lodge

I'll be echoing THJ wanting to see the gargoyle myself.

EDIT:
Yay, Erik said yes before my post even went though ... also this was my 1000th post

*dances like Snoopy*
Dark Archive
Erik Mona wrote:

Ogre and gargoyle. Check. Coming soon.

Awesome!! Looking foward to the preview, thank you Erik for considering my request. Christmas is shaping up to be so sweet!!

Congratulations Andrew on your 1000th post!!
Dark Archive

I cannot wait to see the rest of the line. This set is going to be amazing.
Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16

Everything continues to look great! I'd like to see the chimera (with wings!) and maybe another large that we haven't heard about yet.

In general, I like having "mooks" -- generic figures I can throw down to represent either troops, guards, bandits or whatever. I like that you have these two watch figures and I also look forward to the release of the Watch Captain to complete this "set".

Watch Guard:
When I looked at this figure in the small image, it looked like he was carrying a basket. Although I'm not a fan of lantern carrying mini's, that's just a personal preference critique. I really wish the boots could have been included in the "brown" paint step as there just seems to be too much yellow on this mini? But he is a mook afterall, so how pretty does he need to be?

Watch Officer:
Good call in demoting this guy. Something about the pose does strike me as odd.. almost as if he is falling backwards? Like the guard though I would have liked to have seen the boots get painted. Otherwise, he is a good generic sword & board mook.

Orc Brute
Nooo..... not the goblin green. *sighs*

The mini is good, but I was hoping for a little bit of a darker green for the orcs. The bright green makes them look like they just stepped out of a comic book. *sighs*

I guess its still better that painting them purple like WotC was doing... but if there's any chance at all to darken the green color... please... I beg you... on behalf of orcs everwhere...
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Given that they're all finalized, does this mean we can count on a firm delivery date in early to mid December? (I realize there is still some amount of prognostication here--but I'm planning on my case+Dragon being a Christmas gift to myself).

Also, do orcs *have* to be green? I like my Orcs gray and my goblins tan (or yellow even). I guess I can blame it on my early exposure to those Rankin & Bass versions of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings...
Paizo Employee Chief Creative Officer, Publisher

The orcs are very definitely green, but I think the lights we use for these photos make it look a little brighter than it actually is. I'm looking at the minis on my desk, and they don't look very "comic booky" to me.
Erik Mona wrote:

The orcs are very definitely green, but I think the lights we use for these photos make it look a little brighter than it actually is. I'm looking at the minis on my desk, and they don't look very "comic booky" to me.

In a feeble attempt to raise support for the orcs, I present another mini poll (open only for 3 days):

http://www.d20.ca/poll/index.html

Personally (in my own jaded opinion) orcs look so much meaner and fiercer when they are darker in color (like a dark green or dark grayish-green).
Paizo Employee Chief Creative Officer, Publisher

Looking at the Orc Brute standing right next to the Ranger, the ranger's cloak is one shade darker than the orc's skin. The ranger's cloak _does_ have an ink wash, and the orc doesn't, but they look pretty similar to the human eye.

I also find that the boots of the guards would be much better in brown. There that seems to me too yellow, the boots of the color of their uniform.

Otherwise these minis are really good, I appreciate particularly the lantern for the guard.
Liberty's Edge

I love the new minis but:

I think you guys need a better camera set up to take pictures of them. The one you are using is turning them yellowish and loosing a lot of the detail...
Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
Kelvar Silvermace wrote:
Given that they're all finalized, does this mean we can count on a firm delivery date in early to mid December? (I realize there is still some amount of prognostication here--but I'm planning on my case+Dragon being a Christmas gift to myself).

Delivery dates aren't fixed yet—and won't be 100% until things clear customs—but I'd put the odds of an early December release as extremely low. I strongly suspect that it'll be tough to get these out even in the last week of December.

Erik Mona wrote:

Looking at the Orc Brute standing right next to the Ranger, the ranger's cloak is one shade darker than the orc's skin. The ranger's cloak _does_ have an ink wash, and the orc doesn't, but they look pretty similar to the human eye.

Hrmm... that sounds a little better. Give the orc an ink wash as well, and I'll recall the message I sent to the Red Mantis.

Sczarni RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Very nice! I'm looking forward to these!

Any chance we might be able to see the Minotaur soon? I'm hoping that one will be really cool!
Paizo Employee Chief Creative Officer, Publisher

The Minotaur will definitely make his debut some time in the next two weeks. I think he's one of the cooler minis in the set!

Guy reminds me of Dirk the Daring. :)
Grand Lodge

Thank you for having the watch guards actually look like they belong together. This alone is an improvement over DDMs.

The detail on the Orc is amazing for a common.

It is too bad that we will likely not get these by Christmas. :(

But everything else is great, so I will get over it.

Later,

Mazr
Mazra wrote:
Thank you for having the watch guards actually look like they belong together. This alone is an improvement over DDMs.

Absolutely agreed. With any luck this habit will continue into the future, with minis that look like they belong together when put together. There's a time and a place for a random motley assortment of fighter guys but there's also a time and a place for a collection of thematically linked minis.

Having two different molds that are similar is really, really cool.
Paizo Employee Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
2 people marked this as a favorite.

We are absolutely going to make sure that "like" creatures look "of a kind". If we do Watch guys again (and I _do_ want that captain), they'll have blue capes and will look like these guys.

I am on that like a hawk, and I'm the guy who is basically making all of the Paizo-based decisions on our miniatures.

So no worries there.
Kor - Orc Scrollkeeper wrote:

Watch Officer:
Good call in demoting this guy. Something about the pose does strike me as odd.. almost as if he is falling backwards? Like the guard though I would have liked to have seen the boots get painted. Otherwise, he is a good generic sword & board mook.

I think it's a profile view: The officer is engaging an enemy with his shield (either bashing or blocking) and leaning into the blow while preparing to strike with his sword. If he doesn't take the hit that he is bracing for, he might very well fall over.

I have made a personal vow to make great gnome heroes. = have only played gnomes since 2003. I have always had to have halflings represent my gnomes cause there are just not enough great gnome minis out there. PLEASE SHOW ME GNOMES!
Silver Crusade

Green on the orc reminds me of GW goblin green & that's a bad thing....

Granted as posted before the lights may play a part in that. Hoping they aren't that green. Great sculpt thou.

The Watch figures look like they just walked in from the streets of Ankh-Morpork.

"Mind how you go"
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Vic Wertz wrote:
Kelvar Silvermace wrote:
Given that they're all finalized, does this mean we can count on a firm delivery date in early to mid December? (I realize there is still some amount of prognostication here--but I'm planning on my case+Dragon being a Christmas gift to myself).
Delivery dates aren't fixed yet—and won't be 100% until things clear customs—but I'd put the odds of an early December release as extremely low. I strongly suspect that it'll be tough to get these out even in the last week of December.

The Emperor does not share your optimistic appraisal of the situation.

What if I told you he was coming to personally oversee your operation?

;-)

Sorry, but that green reminds me more of Shrek than anything else.
Vanulf Wulfson wrote:
Sorry, but that green reminds me more of Shrek than anything else.

Oh great. Now that you have said that, I do indeed see Shrek when I look at the mini.

Dark Archive

Will there be another blog today given that it is a holiday??? I would hate to wait another week...
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