Kyra and Seoni face off against this week's featured foes!
We're less than a month from the formal release of the Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniatures! Here in the Paizo offices, things are very, very quiet, as it seems just about everyone but me remembered to take the day off to have a continuous holiday between Christmas and New Year's Day. Well, my mistake is your reward, as all this silence in the office during the "Winter Break" has given me more than enough time to whip up a brand new Pathfinder Battles Preview Blog!
And since it's been a while since I've been able to hit my regularly scheduled deadlines for these mini reveals (and since we're running out of time before you'll have the figures in your hands yourselves), I want to make today's reveal a doozy.
Four figures this week, five if you include the latest repaint reveal for Goblinworks' Pathfinder Online Kickstarter Campaign, but more on that later.
First up this week, we've got a couple of dogs. Not dogs in terms of bad miniatures, of course, but dogs in terms of canine critters for your Pathfinder RPG enjoyment. Now, I've been collecting prepainted plastic miniatures for years, and if there's one thing I feel like I've got a lot of, it's dogs and wolves and various canines of all types and sizes. I don't really need more dogs, so if we wanted to include them (for whatever reason) in Pathfinder Battles, I knew they needed to be really, really special. I think these two figures ably fit the bill.
First up we have the Shadow Hound, a nasty evil outsider who appears in Bestiary 3 under a slightly more specific name. I'm not sure if the photo does full justice to this guy. He's got a base coat of black with some gray highlights that really pull out a lot of details for such a dark miniature. Gray fingernails and bright red eyes sell the ferociousness of this clever canine, and at the common rarity you'll easily be able to assemble a pack of them to threaten your player characters.
Speaking of hounds, what RPG campaign would be complete without a pack of fire-breathing flame dogs from the pits of Hell? Our Hell Hound (also at the common rarity) is a truly remarkable figure, sculpted in clear plastic and painted in tones of red, orange, and yellow that combine with the clear to give a true burning appearance. I absolutely love this sculpt, which is a requirement when dealing with a figure many players already have in one form or the other. At almost as large (or maybe even a bit larger) than a human, this is one unforgettable puppy.
From the unforgettable to the never-made-before in prepainted miniature form, we turn to the Ravenous Ooze, an uncommon slimy gray pseudopod eager to digest your metal bits (including most of your treasure). I love throwing oozes at my players, but the game has relatively few appropriate for lower-level charcters. At CR 4, the Ravenous Ooze is perfect to teach PCs respect at a relatively young age. Players have been asking for this miniature since we announced the launch of Pathfinder Battles, and I am thrilled to finally deliver.
I may be mistaken, but I believe this skulking murderer has likewise never been produced in prepainted plastic. We call him the Pallid Path Cultist, and he and his brethren play an important role in the opening chapters of the Shattered Star Adventure Path. The grayish clear plastic of the Pallid Path Cultist perfectly suggests his chameleon skin ability, which allows him to blend easily into his surroundings. WizKids did a terrific job capturing the dynamic pose we first presented in Bestiary 2, and again miniatures collectors who have been looking for a guy like this for years have much reason to rejoice.
Lastly, I'd like to remind everyone that we've got a fun Pathfinder Battles miniatures component for the Pathfinder Online Kickstarter Campaign from our friends over at GoblinWorks, who are raising money for their upcoming Pathfinder-inspired MMO. Crowdforger backers will receive several special repaint figures as thanks for their support, including the Bloodbriar Goblin Raider, Lava Lurker, Shadowfire Elemental, and Mudlord! And since the campaign just passed $500,000, we've revealed the next figure to be unlocked, the Moon Spider!
Please drop by the Pathfinder Online Kickstarter Campaign project page and consider joining up! If the campaign hits its ambitious $1 Million goal, you'll receive NINE figures (and a whole bunch of other awesome stuff), and if they manage to exceed that goal, there are even cooler Pathfinder Battles rewards in store!
And that's it for this week. I wish you all a fantastic new year filled with gaming and miniature delights. Next week we'll show off even more amazing figures from the Shattered Star set, and a few weeks after that, you'll have them in your own hands!
(And then we'll start previewing images from the NEXT set, which looks INCREDIBLE!)
Erik Mona
Publisher
