Pathfinder Battles Preview: The Gang's (Almost) All Here!

Friday, January 25, 2013

The brand-new Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic figures officially released on Wednesday of this week, and reactions from those lucky enough to have received them already have been very positive!

Speaking personally for a moment, I always love that tipping point where all of the hard work we've put into a Pathfinder Battles set finally gets shared for real with you guys, so that you can see exactly what we've been so excited about week after week here at Paizo, as we work with WizKids to make Pathfinder Battles the coolest line of prepainted plastic gaming figures available. Hearing your comments (and your criticisms, too!) makes us feel like all that hard work was really worth it, and the back-and-forth definitely makes each Pathfinder Battles release even stronger than its predecessors. I can't thank you enough for the interest and support you've shown our line since the very first day we announced it.

You guys are awesome!

Here at Paizo HQ, we've been crazy busy finishing up Ultimate Campaign so it can go to the printer in a couple of weeks, launching the Reign of Winter Adventure Path, finalizing Visions of WAR: The Art of Wayne Reynolds, designing and finalizing the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, and hatching schemes for 2014 and beyond.

All of that effort has put a huge burden on our art department, who are trying like mad to stay on top of all of our projects as we catch up from the holiday break and ramp up to make sure all of our big summer releases come out on schedule.

That means that while I'd intended to celebrate the release of the hattered Star set with a complete reveal of high-quality photos of every figure that previously had to settle for iPhone shots taken at my desk, in fact it's taking the art team longer than anticipated to clean up all of the images, and I won't be able to show off all of them just yet.

I think we'll simply plug the photos missing after this blog into each figure's individual product page, rather than making a big to-do out of it here in the Friday preview. This space is better used for revealing cool, exciting figures you don't already own, after all, so I only want to stretch this out as long as necessary.

(At this point I should also add that the art team is ALSO cleaning up and finalizing photos of some brand new figures from an upcoming release we have not yet announced, so next week we're ready for some awesome new reveals anyway.)

But before that happens, let's take a final look at some of the Shattered Star figures you've probably only seen sitting on my desk, in early computer render form, or under some other less-than-optimal condition. (Assuming you're not currently holding them in your hand, of course.)

Here we have Koriah Azmeren, complete with a cool glowing sword just like in the Wayne Reynolds image that inspired her. Koriah has been around Pathfinder for a long time, first appearing as an author of the Pathfinder Chronicles in Into the Darklands, an early Pathfinder product written by our own James Jacobs. She's an amazing figure, from the sculpt to the paint details, and we absolutely love her. Koriah is rare figure.

Next up is Xin, the legendary founder of Thassilon, precursor to the dreaded Runelords! This guy has been lurking around Varisia for more than 10,000 years, and when the PCs finally catch up with him I think it's fair to say he probably looks rather different than this, his "original" appearance (for how he looks today, see another figure in this set, though spoilers prevent me from saying which one!). This is one of those figures that works great as a specific NPC as well as a stand-in for just about any kind of diabolical high-level wizard you need to throw at your player characters. Xin is a rare figure.

Speaking of the insidious Runelords, up next we have Runelord Sorshen, who makes a surprising appearance in the Shattered Star Adventure Path. When combined with Runelord Karzoug, we've now released two of the seven Runelords, covering the sins of greed and lust. Perhaps future Pathfinder Battles releases will allow you to complete the set! Runelord Sorshen is a rare figure.

Most of you likely recognize our next figure, the lovable Lem, Halfling Bard! Lem is our "iconic" bard, and has appeared in Pathfinder products ever since he graced the covers of Curse of the Crimson Throne, our second-ever Pathfinder Adventure Path! (As a bit of trivia, Lem gets his name from Lemmy, the lead singer of the heavy metal band Motörhead, on account of their similar sideburns.) Lem is a rare figure.

Here's another figure with roots that go back to Curse of the Crimson Throne. That campaign introduced the Gray Maidens, an all-female order of knights from the city of Korvosa. Eva Widerman's original armor concept for these warriors was so cool we put it on the back cover of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. When it came time to revisit certain Varisian themes in the Shattered Star Adventure Path, we knew we wanted to revisit this iconic group. Here we have Oriana, a Gray Maiden Commander, with Eva's original costume design filtered through Wayne Reynolds. We think this rare figure looks awesome!

Let's move on to some monsters, shall we? Here we have the Medium Air Elemental, a common figure cast in clear plastic and touched up with some white highlights. Getting the colors right on this guy took several rounds of approvals, but I'm pleased with how he finally turned out. It's always been a major goal of mine to produce elementals at all the sizes in the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, and the Shattered Star set covers us for Medium and Large versions of the core four elemental types.

Speaking of which, the set also includes this Large Air Elemental, who frankly pushes the boundaries of a Large figure and starts hedging into quasi-Huge territory. An actual Huge will have to wait for a future set (as will the Smalls), but as I said above, Shattered Star certainly sets us off on a great start.

Last up this week we've got the enormous Troll Champion, which is one of my favorite figures in the entire set. This guy REALLY pushes the limit of a Large figure, and he absolutely is as large as we envision trolls ever getting. Yes, he towers over even some giants we've already released, but this guy is a CHAMPION. An upcoming set will feature another type of troll that's more in line with what we consider a "regular" troll to be, size-wise. Our original Troll, in Heroes & Monsters, was a bit too small. This guy is a bit too large (on purpose, because he's so awesome). More trolls soon!

And that's it! By my count that leaves four figures remaining for high-quality photos (the Grub Swarm, Glass Golem, Natalya Vancaskerkin, and Sheila Heidmarch). We'll sneak them onto their respective singles pages later this week, clearing the docket for something genuinely new next week.

Until then, I hope you enjoy opening and admiring your new Shattered Star figures as much as we've enjoyed creating them for you!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Rounding Third, Heading for Home

Friday, January 18, 2013

We’re less than a week away from the January 23rd official release date for the Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted fantasy figures! But with all the crazy Kickstarter stuff going on over the last month, we’ve still got a few figures left to reveal from the set.

So without further ado, let’s jump right into it!

Here we have Portioque, a wily subterranean wizard who likes to hang out with his buddy, Caedimus. Like that erstwhile companion, Portioque is a common figure.

The ancient Runelords of Thassilon often employed clockwork servants, and this Clockwork Soldier, culled straight from the pages of Bestiary 3 makes a compelling member of an ancient Thassilonian fighting force. He’s also at the common rarity, so you can work up a whole party of them to menace your player characters.

And here we have the Tower Girl, a cunning rogue from an all-girl gang that plays an important role in the first adventure of the Shattered Star Adventure Path, Shards of Sin. She’s common as well, and also makes a nice double for a player character rogue.

Here’s another ancient underground dweller we like to call a Xulgath. This guy is also common, which would be a problem if he smelled as bad as his Pathfinder RPG counterpart, but which is awesome for building whole hordes of anthropomorphic subterranean lizard people. Wait until you see the paint detail on this guy’s scales. You won’t believe he’s a common, but he is!

Here we have a Cleric of Zon-Kuthon, who appears in the Adventure Path as a not-altogether-unfriendly evil cleric named Gein Kafog. We knew we wanted to depict this cleric with a chain weapon, which can be very difficult with plastic miniatures. Our compromise was to wrap much of the chain around his body, which certainly fits in well with a follower of a god dedicated to pain. The Cleric of Zon-Kuthon is at the uncommon rarity.

This slavering spiderlike critter is a Shriezyx, a horrific aberration cooked up by the ancient Runelords. A bunch of them still dwell in the city of Magnimar (and their stats appear in Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Magnimar, City of Monuments). It’s probably difficult to tell from this photo, but I assure you that the face on this little bugger is GROSS. This Medium figure is at the uncommon rarity.

Believe it or not, there’s an old elf under this evil-looking armor. I’d tell you whether your Shattered Star players will consider him a friend or foe, but that’s spoiler territory. Suffice it to say that Ardathanatus, a rare figure, works great as any kind of black-armored figure you might need in any campaign. And he’s got a huge axe, too!

Last up this week we’ve got Sheila Heidmarch, the Venture-Captain of the Pathfinder Society’s lodge in the city of Magnimar and a patron to the player characters throughout the Shattered Star Adventure Path. With a design based on a cover illustration by Wayne Reynolds and a history that goes deep into the history of Pathfinder products, this is a fun figure I’m happy to include in the set not only because it’s beautiful, but because it will work great for just about any female spellcaster you might need. Sheila is a rare figure.

That’s it for this week. Next week the set will actually be out and you’ll be able to view the figures yourselves. I’ll do one more Shattered Star blog with high-quality images a few more figures that changed paint schemes late in the set (and hence still need to be photographed here at Paizo HQ), as well as quality images of a few figures from much earlier that had to make do with my shoddy iPhone camera shots for one reason or another.

And then it’s time to start talking about the NEXT set. And the one after that. And the one after that, and the one after that, and the one…

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Elementally, My Dear Watson

Friday, January 4, 2013

We're now less than three weeks from the January 23rd release date for the new Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted fantasy miniatures! So far we've revealed nearly 40 of the set's 55 figures, but a little math will tell you that from now until the release date, we've got to reveal a decent number of figures to show them all off before you can buy them yourselves in the store.

So let's go off to the races!

We've previously revealed the Medium and Large Fire Elementals, and the Medium and Large Water Elementals. This week, it's time to reveal two more elementals, leaving only two more for future previews.

First up we have the Medium Earth Elemental, a rocky bruiser erupting from the ground to smash some hurt onto the heads of your player characters. Painted in dark browns and grays and with glowing red eyes, this figure is a pretty typical example of its kind. Cool green crystal formations along his arms give the Medium Earth Elemental a distinctive look. The whole figure is sculpted in clear plastic because we originally wanted to leave the crystals completely clear, or slightly greenish tinted to match the colors on the original art for this creature, which first appeared in the Bestiary Box. Much to our surprise, versions of the figure featuring a pearlescent coat of green paint over the crystals actually looked much better than the clear plastic, so as in the case with some of the other elementals, we decided to go with paint over clear plastic. This surprised me (I thought we'd prefer clear), but in this case a huge consensus of Paizonians agreed that the painted crystals simply looked better.

But all was not lost for lovers of clear plastic! We used the mold for the Medium Earth Elemental as the basis for the Lava Lurker figure that's part of the ongoing Pathfinder Online Kickstarter Campaign. That figure is very much clear, with red tints that make him look like, well, he lurks in lava.

Bigger is often better, and that adage is certainly true when it comes to earth elementals! Behold the Large Earth Elemental, a dude you definitely don't want pounding you into the dirt (but whom you may wish to summon to pound someone else!). The coloration on this figure is very similar to his Medium counterpart, only at a size pushing the very top of Large, he's significantly more intimidating. I love this figure's wide jaw and expressive face. You can almost hear him shouting "IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!"

The Medium elementals in this set are at the common rarity, while the Larges are rares.

I'm going to hold on to the Large and Medium Air Elementals until a future preview. They are also awesome, but I don't want to over-elementalize you guys in one sitting. I'll leave that for when you open your own boxes of the Shattered Star set and start assembling your own elemental armies!

Instead, let's take a look at two more Large figures from the Shattered Star set!

Up next we have the Glass Golem, a figure with such a complex paint scheme that it was one of the very last to be completed (and thus my cruddy iPhone photo will have to suffice for the moment). As the Shining Child from the Rise of the Runelords set and this set's elementals have taught us, "clear" figures are among the trickiest to get right in the painting stage.

Simply casting the figures in clear plastic never works, as important sculpt details vanish without proper shading. Painting over the clear plastic completely has proven to be the correct option in a few cases, but it always seems like a bit of a disappointment and a copout. The best solution, as Goldilocks certainly knew, was to get the paint balance JUUUUUST RIGHT. In the case of the Glass Golem, we wanted not just a neat clear effect, but something that actually looks like glass. After several tries, we finally got the balance right.

Last up this week is the cantankerous Fire Giant, a mean old brute ready to hack you apart with his crude sword. Thanks to drybrushing (and a little bit of clear plastic peeking through here and there), this guy looks like he burns with an inner fire. His face and fiery beard are very expressive, and will make him stand out among his other giant kin.

That's it for this week! Next week we'll take a look at some more key NPCs from the Shattered Star Adventure Path!

Also next week, we'll reveal additional details about a special convention-season promotional repaint goblin figure that we'll be distributing throughout 2013! Backers of the Pathfinder Online Kickstarter Campaign at the Goblin Squad level and above will get a certificate to receive this figure FREE at Gen Con. So come on back and check it out, this is definitely a figure you will not want to miss!

See you in seven days!

Erik Mona
Publisher

So You've Survived the End of the World

Thursday, January 3, 2013

So, the end of the world—as supposedly predicted by the Mayans—came and went, and we're all still here. Well, by "here" I mean alive, and by "we" I mean humanity. The more specific statement "we're all still here" meaning "Paizo employees are in the office" is less true. But that doesn't mean you don't get cool holiday season blogs from us.

In the spirit of the end times, I thought it would be fitting to provide a glimpse at what's coming at the start of the new year—a supporting article in Pathfinder Adventure Path #66: The Dead Heart of Xin detailing all seven of the infamous runelords of ancient Thassilon. Because their potential return to the modern world of Golarion could very well usher in a catastrophe even the biggest Mayan prophecy conspiracy theorist couldn't dream up, here are the headshots of all seven. So while you're out enjoying time off work for the holiday season, keep your eyes peeled for Varisia's Most Wanted.

Illustrations by Miguel Regodón

Can you identify all seven?

Mark Moreland
Developer

Pathfinder Battles Preview: The Dog Days of Winter

Friday, December 21, 2012

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

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Do Clockwork Kings Dream of Electric Golems?

Friday, December 21, 2012

"Loooviiing yoooouuu...is easy 'cause you're beauuuuutiful. Doo dooo doodoo. Aaaaaaiiiiiiii"

Ahem. It isn't always this easy.

The height of a freelancer's satisfaction on any given project is often mute and unheralded. When a project is finally turned over, dutifully and painstakingly crafted over the course of months, only your developer, and perhaps your long-suffering spouse, are the ones who even know. In other words, the echo of popping champagne corks isn't commonly experienced by your typical RPG designer. Since you can't say anything, by the time a project does reach the public eye, from the initial murmurs of messageboard excitement to the dramatic unveiling of the finished product, you've usually moved well beyond the groundswell, that special creative place in your brain long-since vacated and re-inhabited with new assignments. And since words are cheap and art isn't, you're often surprised to find things have changed significantly since you last saw them, adapted to fit the artist depictions that aren't always what you remember describing. So when the gaming world starts to get excited, you often have to flip through along with everyone else, read what's become of your orphaned ideas, and figure it out all over again.

But then there's that rare time in a freelancer's life, particularly when you've cultivated a great relationship with your publisher and regularly attend the same conventions, when your excitement never quite gets a chance to quell, because they keep stoking those fires that got you so excited to work on a project in the first place. Most recently, Paizo has facilitated this with a growing list of awesome tie-in products unveiled at various stages of development, most of which stand a good chance of possessing snippets of your game design. With the introduction of the Wizkids' partnership with Paizo, this opens up intriguing new possibilities to see fantastic 3-dimensional depictions of your work, something I've always wanted to experience. Which is how I remember so vividly the first time I saw the Clockwork Reliquary.

Concept artwork for the Clockwork Reliquary.

The chance to revisit Azlanti technology was the reason I immediately jumped when I saw the outline for The Dead Heart of Xin. I had set myself up for this chance years earlier in some of my first works for Paizo: From Shore to Sea, and later the Sun Temple colony in Lost Cities of Golarion. But nearly all the Azlanti devices PCs experienced in those products were dormant or malfunctioning, only providing the merest hint of the incredible power wielded by Golarion's first advanced civilization. Given the chance to see some of that stuff working as it should, all set in the hallowed halls of the palace stronghold of Rune Magic's inventor and a true master of those arcane arts? Well... I could barely contain myself.

It wasn't long after I finished crafting the adventure (and turned over a month early, at that!) that I flew to Seattle for PaizoCon 2012, and visited a recently-transplanted Daigle and the rest of the crew at the offices. As usual for a working freelancer, most talk is on upcoming projects, but James and Erik called me over for a special little surprise: the initial sketches for the Clockwork Reliquary. I had worked hard to realize James' outline notes into a terrifying mechanical monstrosity that was at once ancient and advanced. As you'll see when the adventure arrives next month, I had settled on a technological design aesthetic inspired by the skeksis architecture and weaponry from The Dark Crystal. As a result, I remember having the most trouble with headless design and top-mounted arms the outline tentatively described, as I desperately wanted to avoid a "helicopter-head" creature. I even sketched it out myself as part of my turnover in a bid to prevent that depiction, in an almost-embarrassing drawing with more spidery legs that turned out surprisingly close to the finished rendition (admittedly done well before I knew who the cover artist would be, but shown here for your snickering amusement). I was really concerned with having the BBEG of the AP invoke the same kind of mind-numbing fear when you see a really good human-versus-dragon illustration. You look at it and and wonder "how in the world could a real person even survive for a second against that thing?" Not that my sketch depicts that, but I'm not an artist, and I was trying.

Of course, it doesn't hurt when you've got the master himself—Wayne Reynolds—working toward the same goal. When I'd heard Wayne was the cover artist, I was immediately embarrassed for my presumptions to do my own sketches, and I remember sheepishly asking Wayne at PaizoCon if he'd seen that terrible thing (mercifully he had not). But even without the visual reference, words and art connected perfectly through the descriptions he'd been provided, because his pencils sent shivers up my spine in a way I'd never experienced in seeing my work realized in two-dimensions—and I've seen a lot. The gangly arms were spot-on. The stilted legs. The clawed hands. The skymetal construction. The crystal coffin. (Fun Fact: 4 arms + 3 legs=7 limbs corresponding with Seven Virtues of Rule!) Most of all I appreciated the noticeable lack of too many gears. Despite my early enthusiasm for the steampunk genre and the creature's name, I never wanted this adventure to delve into that aesthetic, and, in fact, I had tried to skip gears entirely in my early designs which called for the various joints to be bonded not quite by clockwork, but by mini-miasmas of arcane energy. You can still see a hint of that attempt in my sketch, which would allow its individual limbs to orbit its body in weird magic ball-and-socket joints and prevent my "helicopter-head" dread, and it kept with my established Azlanti-stuff-always-orbits themes. Sure, I would liked to have seen a burnt-black skeleton and a transparent-green noqual crystal as originally designed, but those concerns vanished with the way Wayne conveyed the maliciousness of a partial skeleton without eyes or flesh to work with was just perfect, and the sloping, arched-back shoulders of its four clawed arms just conveyed the terrifying power of this mechanical horror. It was so... antediluvian... so... perfect. Truly an imperial monstrosity capable of leading a clockwork army to world domination!

But there was more! I think while James and I just sort of oo-ed and ah-ed and nodded in wide-eyed unison over just how perfect the depiction was, Erik tugged on my sleeve and led me—stunned and glassy-eyed—to his office, where he revealed that not only would Wizkids and Paizo be producing an accompanying miniature line for Shattered Star, but production was well underway... AND the Clockwork Reliquary would be one of them AND... well, he showed me the initial sculpt.

Like many Paizo fans, I grew up surrounded by action figures. Now as then, I've always been fascinated by a world in miniature. Star Wars was, of course, my first introduction, but I recall my first RPG purchase was a Ral Partha beholder mini when I was only 7 or 8 years old. Hundreds more followed. Scaled down, I could lord over these tiny figures like some deranged deity, a habit I'm afraid has never subsided in adulthood, as I still have an unhealthy habit for minis. And as I'd grown up chopping up and rearranging figures into variations that matched my imagination's own ideas—I remember a Ithorian head superglued to Obi-Wan's body as a "Hammerhead-Jedi-Knight-Bounty-Hunter" being a particular favorite—seeing something I'd imagined brought into the world in 3-dimensions was always some secret passion of mine. So imagine the thrill of seeing one of your creations actualized in the real world! Here we had a hunch nestled in James' head for years, entrusted to me to flesh out and build in imaginative words, descriptions, and statistics, then passed on the an incredible artist to realize in two-dimensions, and, finally, passed on to another artist—this time a sculptor—to realize in a third. I was speechless. Just as Wayne Reynolds had realized nearly every nuance of my Clockwork Reliquary designs, so, too, did the sculptor at WizKids realize every nuance of his concept drawing. The gangly-yet-powerful skymetal frame. Those oddly hunched shoulders that reminded me of the cocked hammer of a gun ready to fire. The howling skeleton encased in super-cool transparent epoxy. Those misleadingly dainty legs. The great details of Azlanti glyphs and Thassilonian runes and the ribcage-like reservoir and the scrolls flapping in the breeze and... *gasp.* I marveled, as your PCs soon will, at the sheer power of a reborn tyrant hellbent on reclaiming a kingdom lost 100 centuries before.

Just as I'd struggled in design with the Clockwork Reliquary's size before striking the right balance, so, too, does this mini take advantage of the best of both worlds. On paper, Large didn't seem quite imposing enough, and Huge didn't seem to fit the dimensions of a cradled skeleton and the gangly, whirling-dervish agility I wanted to convey for Xin's penultimate creation. As a result of those design assumptions, this mini is by far one of the largest Larges I've ever handled, suitably imposing and towering over PCs at just under 4-inches. Since the reliquary's longer arms are about 3 inches from shoulder to claw-tip, and bent at that, I'd say this mini gets the "gangly" theme I so wanted to convey down! The internal skeleton is fairly big in relative scale, but since The Dead Heart of Xin allows you to actually witness Xin's final moments, it isn't hard to assume that maybe the old emperor was maybe under the influence of enlarge person or other arcane augmentation, or we're simply seeing the distortion of the eldritch-warped crystal coffin. This was one bad dude, so anything's possible!

So here it is, Paizo fans! The Clockwork Reliquary, finally unveiled after 10,000 years of slumber, risen from the waves and ruins of Thassilon to claim the lives of your PCs before moving onward to world domination at the head of its clockwork army! Can they stop it, or will all of Golarion once again kneel before the skymetal tyrant? Erik was right last week when he called this figure "the coolest mini in the whole set, possibly the most complex and awesome-est prepainted plastic mini ever made for any set." I couldn't agree more, and I know your wait was worth it.

The Clockwork Reliquary is the primary villain of the Shattered Star Adventure Path's final chapter, The Dead Heart of Xin, on sale next month here at Paizo.com.

Brandon Hodge
Freelancer

Pathfinder Battles Preview: OMG, It's the Wyvern

Friday, November 16, 2012

Work has been so busy lately I can hardly think straight. So here I am at 4:00 on a Friday afternoon, and I only now realized that I forgot to put together a preview blog for January's upcoming Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted fantasy miniatures!

I want to keep this week's preview short and sweet, and honestly the best way to do that is to focus on one of the set's sweetest miniatures: the Wyvern.

Check out this masterful miniature!

This figure is amazing. I'd place it among the 10 most impressive figures in the Shattered Star set (yes, that means there are still plenty of jaw-droppers we haven't revealed yet). Best of all, this guy is an UNCOMMON.

Watch out, horses!

And here's a nice little size comparison to show what the Wyvern looks like next to a Medium-sized figure, in this case our iconic cleric Kyra!

So yeah, there's that. This Large figure is super-cool, but there are even cooler figures coming!

And there's also big movement behind the scenes on the Pathfinder Battles front. One of the reasons I'm so tired this week is that I've spent most of my waking hours deciding on the contents of the next TWO SETS worth of miniatures for our friends at WizKids, along with more than 100 images for their sculptors to get to work on immediately.

2013 is going to be an absolutely Gargantuan year for Pathfinder Battles!

No preview blog next week, as yours truly will be enjoying turkey with family for Thanksgiving. After that, though, I promise something extra-delicious in Pathfinder Battles Preview Land!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Water, Water, Everywhere

Friday, November 9, 2012

In what seems like a first for these late fall Pathfinder Battles preview blogs, it's actually not raining outside our Washington State offices as I write this. But don't worry, I'm sure it soon will be. These last few weeks have shown us all the devastating power of nature, so I thought it might make a good occasion to show you two water-themed creatures from January's Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted fantasy miniatures.

I'm speaking, of course, of water elementals.

This set (and the Shattered Star Adventure Path that inspired it) features two different sizes of water elementals, the Medium Water Elemental and the Large Water Elemental. As with the Fire Elementals we've already previewed, water elementals are a staple of Pathfinder RPG play. Making miniatures of our elementals is somewhat problematic, however, as the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary features images that are not really suitable for turning into 3D figurines, and not all sizes are covered by those illustrations, anyway.

In this case, we already faced a similar problem when we put together our Pathfinder Pawns Bestiary Box collection of cardboard pawns. For that set, we enlisted one of our favorite artists, Tyler Walpole, to create brand new images for Small, Medium, and Large elementals of the four common types. I happened to be building the Pathfinder Battles Shattered Star list at the same time, so we asked Tyler to pull double duty on his assignment, creating images that would work for both Pathfinder Pawns and Pathfinder Battles figures.

While the Shattered Star set does not contain Small elementals of any type, it's probably not too big a spoiler to reveal that it does contain Medium and Large elementals of the four main types: air, earth, fire, and water.

WizKids did a great job sculpting Tyler's images into three dimensions. Here we have the Medium Water Elemental, a common figure:

As with all the elementals in this set, this guy is sculpted in clear plastic, so it looks really cool when held up to the light. The Medium Water Elemental looms over other Medium creatures, casting an imposing shadow upon his enemies.

Speaking of imposing, it's pretty hard to imagine a cooler Large Water Elemental than this:

The clear effects are more pronounced on this Large figure, which really pushes the envelope on what can be considered Large in the Pathfinder game. Even action figures would have reason to fear a drowning at this "miniature's" hands.

Don't believe me? Check out what both of these figures look like on my desk facing of against our Medium iconic fighter, Valeros. I hope he brought his swimming trunks!

That's it for this week. See you here in seven days for more cool reveals from the upcoming Shattered Star set!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: It's Raining Cats and Frogs

Friday, November 2, 2012

It’s been raining cats and dogs here in Seattle lately, so I decided to take that as inspiration for this week’s preview. And since I don’t have a great photo of the set’s two awesome canine figures yet, I’m substituting a frog-like thing instead to preserve the delicate rhyme structure of my pun.

I speak, of course, of the Boggard!

Boggards have been with Pathfinder for a long time, and finally get their due in a major way as antagonists in the second and third volumes of the Shattered Star Adventure Path. Because we put this set together well before the Shattered Star campaign was written, we actually used a piece of art from an early boggard appearance in the Kingmaker Adventure Path, but we liked him so much we figured he could play double duty for the Shattered Star miniatures set. He’s a common, so you’ll soon have plenty of Boggards in your collection to menace the swamps of your campaign world.

And since no frog is complete without its cat (did I just make that up?), here’s a look at the next cool miniature in the set, the Catfolk Rogue!

This lithe cat-burglar feautres in The Asylum Stone, by Paizo’s own James L. Sutter. The adventure takes place in Kaer Maga, Varisia’s very own wretched hive of scum and villainy, where weird creatures rub shoulders with elves, humans, and worse. Catfolk, which we first introduced in Bestiary 2 to much popular acclaim, seemed like a natural fit for that environment, and here she is, ready to pounce into your miniatures collection. The Catfolk Rogue is an uncommon figure.

Both of these animalistic figures have amazing paint details for their rarities. The Boggard is easily among the very best commons we’ve yet produced (if not the very best common) in both sculpting detail and paint application, and the Catfolk Rogue features tons of paint steps like fur stripes, skin gradient, and amazing eyes that elevate her to more than just a cat-headed lady.

We’ve now approved every figure in the set, and we’re well on our way to the Shattered Star set’s scheduled January release!

See you next week!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Cosmic Horror Halloween!

Friday, October 26, 2012

Halloween is less than a week away, so it's finally time to deliver on the cosmic horror I've been teasing for the last several weeks.

You've already seen the enormous Gug, which I've included again below since it is so awesome and fits the theme so well.

But the Gug is only one of THREE "mythos" monsters included in January's Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted fantasy miniatures. He happens to be the largest (by far), but he has plenty of company when it comes to monsters inspired by the writings of legendary horror author H.P. Lovecraft and his circle of author friends from the early 20th Century. Lovecraft is a bit of a patron saint as we approach Halloween (and just about every day of the year around Paizo, truth be told), and we've been incorporating creatures he imagined in the 20s and 30s into Pathfinder from the very start.

The Shattered Star set is no exception! Behold, the insidious Nightgaunt, terror of the darkened skies!

This horrifying creature came straight from Lovecraft's mind, making its most notable appearance in his epic "Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," one of the great author's more fantastical yarns.

In the words of the master:

"Suddenly, without a warning sound in the dark, Carter felt his curved scimitar drawn stealthily out of his belt by some unseen hand. Then he heard it clatter down over the rocks below. And between him and the Milky Way he thought he saw a very terrible outline of something noxiously thin and horned and tailed and bat-winged. Other things, too, had begun to blot out patches of stars west of him, as if a flock of vague entities were flapping thickly and silently out of that inaccessible cave in the face of the precipice. Then a sort of cold rubbery arm seized his neck and something else seized his feet, and he was lifted inconsiderately up and swung about in space. Another minute and the stars were gone, and Carter knew that the night-gaunts had got him."

WizKids did a marvelous job on this figure. The sheen on its very dark blue hide looks rubbery and cold. They captured the nightgaunt's bat-wings and noxious thinness very, very well. You definitely don't want to get scooped up by these guys on some moonless Golarion night.

The nightgaunts appear in the fifth installment of the Shattered Star Adventure Path, "Into the Nightmare Rift." And I'm happy to say that they don't invade Golarion in this one, mostly because the player characters instead have to go to their vile home dimension of Leng!

Next up this week, we round out our cosmic horror with a creature created by one of Lovecraft's friends and collaborators, Frank Belknap Long. I speak of course of the legendary Hounds of Tindalos, from Long's 1931 story of the same name. The Hounds also appear in Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness," published the same year.

Belknap Long's terrifying Hounds of Tindalos dwell in the very distant past, and access the present through the angles of time to menace folk with their canine bodies and evil, hollow tongues designed for draining bodily fluids. They secrete a strange blue ichor from their hides. From the story:

"They are lean and athirst!" he shrieked... "All the evil in the universe was concentrated in their lean, hungry bodies. Or had they bodies? I saw them only for a moment, I cannot be certain." — Frank Belknap Long, "The Hounds of Tindalos"

Well, Frank, they have bodies, complete with gross backwards-bending legs and nasty claws. And they're coming your way in the Shattered Star Adventure Path!

So that's it for this week! Two terrible cosmic horrors from the depths of the mythos come to menace your campaigns.

I'd say that their incursion into your games counts as both a trick and a treat!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Gray Days

Friday, October 19, 2012

The Halloween season is about more than just scares. Here in Seattle, the approach of Halloween means the end of nice weather and a months-long descent into "the gray," a series of cloudy, rainy, dreary days often strung together 40 or 50 at a time. It's not the dreariness that gets you, or the dampness. It's the monotony of it all. The same day, every day, for days and days and days and days (can you tell I just got back from a vacation?). But Halloween is around the corner to break up the gloom, and it does so with both tricks AND treats.

This week, I'm focusing on a couple of the "treats" in the upcoming Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniatures due to hit stores and subscribers in January. And since it's gray outside, I thought I'd stick to a "gray" theme.

Specifically, I'm talking about the Gray Maidens.

The Gray Maidens first appeared during the Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path, our second-ever Pathfinder campaign. Stationed in the Varisian city of Korvosa, the Gray Maidens were the personal bodyguard of Queen Ileosa, and became heavily embroiled in the chaos and machinations that fueled that campaign.

When the Shattered Star Adventure Path set out to revisit Varisia, we knew we wanted to include the Gray Maidens from the start. We liked their design enough that we put it on the back cover of the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, after all, so it was only a matter of time before we'd revisit them in an Adventure Path.

And make prepainted miniatures of them, of course.

The figure pictured above is the rank-and-file Gray Maiden. She works perfectly in concert with the Shattered Star or Curse of the Crimson Throne campaigns, and we've put her at the uncommon rarity so it's relatively easy to build up a bunch of them. Not playing either of those Pathfinder Adventure Paths? Not to worry, this figure is cool enough to work for any female warrior in full plate, including a player character.

Speaking of character, we've had good luck so far including multiple types of the same "troop" in previous Pathfinder Battles sets, and the Shattered Star set is no exception. A squad of Gray Maidens needs leadership, so the set also includes the Gray Maiden Commander.

Pictured above is Oriana, leader of the Gray Maiden contingent encountered in the second Shattered Star adventure, "Curse of the Lady's Light". She's got some nasty scars on her face and a real chip on her shoulder, and your player characters are going to love hating her.

And what better way to focus that hate than a gorgeous prepainted figure placed right in the middle of your gaming table?

The Gray Maidens are coming your way in January, complete with the rest of the Shattered Star set. We're thrilled with the way these figures came out, and I continue to be extremely excited about the level of quality WizKids has put into this set.

But I've got days and days of gray Seattle skies ahead of me, and things are bound to get a bit gloomier between now and Halloween.

In fact, I think the horror around here is about to get downright cosmic.

Return here in seven days for unknowable horrors from the edge of the cosmos that man was never meant to experience (but which will look GREAT on your gaming table!).

Trick or treat!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Scary Monsters

Friday, October 12, 2012

It's October, and as Halloween approaches it seems appropriate to focus on some of the scarier creatures in the upcoming Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted fantasy miniatures!

I'm technically on vacation this week, but hey, no rest for the wicked. I can't let my personal need for a couple of days off get in the way of your personal need for more cool Pathfinder Battles previews. As a wise man once said, "the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few."

So, on to the spoooooooookiness!

First up this week we have an absolutely disgusting menace culled from the mind of Paizo's own James L. Sutter. A while back, when James was writing the brilliant City of Strangers: A Guide to Kaer Maga, James invented an ancient subterranean race of outsiders known as the caulborn who dwell below Varisia's most unusual city. These telepathic prophets and historians feed on the psychic energy and memories of victims, which they keep in their grossly distended heads.

The third adventure of the Shattered Star Adventure Path, The Asylum Stone, written by Mr. Sutter himself, returns to Kaer Maga, so of course the caulborn make a return appearance. And in my endless quest to ply my editorial staff with 3D representations of the fruit of their own diseased minds (and 'cause you fight 'em in the adventure), I just had to add one of them to the Shattered Star set.

Here he is, a gross miniature in this grossest of months: The Caulborn!

Next up we have an oldie but a goodie, a gruesome undead mastermind even TOUGHER than a regular lich! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the dread Mesmalatu, an undead lord so powerful that even his floating skull packs a deadly punch! And watch out for those gems in his head, or your soul might end up living in one for eternity!

Sculpted in clear plastic, from the jet of ectoplasm holding up his head to the multicolored gems encrusting it, this guy is one of the major villains of the campaign, and one your player characters won't soon forget. Mesmalatu is among the smallest miniatures in the Shattered Star set, but he's also no doubt one of the most powerful enemies we've sculpted in plastic to date.

And that's it for today! Here's hoping I scared the socks off of you (or at least impressed you a bit with two awesome miniatures).

And with that, I slip cannily back to my vacation, to return with a big pile of treats for next Friday's blog!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: The Big Blue

Friday, October 5, 2012

I'd planned to spend the next few weeks leading up to Halloween on some of the spookier figures in the upcoming Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniatures, but this week our doorbell rang here at Paizo, and our partners at WizKids delivered one of the greatest pre-Halloween treats of all in the form of the final paint master of the Gargantuan Blue Dragon, the special "case incentive" promotional figure for the set.

Here she is, in all her magic-item-bedecked glory, shown here with regular-sized Seoni the sorceress for size-comparison purposes:

What you see before you is the mighty Cadrilkasta, a wyrm blue dragon that serves as the primary nemesis of the campaign's fifth installment, "Into the Nightmare Rift".

Cadrilkasta has long haunted the skies of Varisia, scanning the countryside for signs of ancient Thassilonian ruins. So obsessed with the Runelords is Cadrilkasta that she has carved their runes into her chest, as shown in this close-up image.

In the Shattered Star Adventure Path, Cadrilkasta is encountered digging up an ancient Thassilonian ruin looking for a powerful magical artifact. Since the PCs will likely have several shards of the potent artifact that serves as the basis of the campaign by the time they meet her, it's probably safe to say that she will be just as interested in them as they are in her.

When you plop this giant figure down on the table, it'll make an encounter your player characters won't soon forget! We're still trying to straighten out Seoni, and she only just met the dragon yesterday!

As a case incentive, the Gargantuan Blue Dragon is available for purchase only to customers who preorder a Shattered Star Standard Booster Case and to ongoing Pathfinder Battles case subscribers. The figure has been produced in extremely limited quantities, so order soon to make sure that you do not miss out!

Before I go, I wanted to take a moment to talk about dragons in general, and the philosophy of how we decide which figures to include in Pathfinder Battles sets. The Gargantuan Blue is our first Gargantuan dragon, but it definitely won't be our last. When news about this figure first leaked on the internet earlier this week, some long-time miniatures collectors expressed a bit of disappointment, because they've long wanted a Gargantuan Green Dragon, which has not been produced to date by any prepainted miniature company. As a longtime collector of prepainted miniatures, I assure you that I also want a Gargantuan Green Dragon, and am working hard to include one in an upcoming set.

Cadrilkasta is an important dragon in the Shattered Star Adventure Path. Since this set is designed to support that campaign, the blue dragon made for a logical choice as the case incentive miniature. Based on an incredible Wayne Reynolds painting and sculpted with amazing detail by WizKids, we're confident that this is a super-cool dragon that you will be glad to have in your collection, even if you've already got a giant blue dragon in it from a few years back.

It's our intention to do every "true" dragon in every size category, Small, Medium, Large, Huge, and Gargantuan. We plan to be producing prepainted miniatures for years and years, and I'm confident that we'll get to all of them eventually (some, like the green, probably sooner than later). But when a set is made to support an existing Adventure Path, as many of our sets will be, it's going to provide the dragons appropriate for that campaign.

For Shattered Star, that means a Gargantuan Blue. But I assure you, the rest of them are coming!

That's it for this week (and what a week it's been!). Check back next week for a return to the originally intended spooooooky theme. I've got some stuff that will scare you out of your socks!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: The Living Dead

Friday, September 28, 2012

Last night we finished up session 35 of James Jacobs's office campaign, which has morphed into an adaptation of Gary Gygax's classic fantasy Egyptian superdungeon, Necropolis. James has done a lot to make the adventure his own, including transporting it to the nation of Osirion in the Pathfinder world, and adding several devious traps and monsters not in the original adventure.

But we're still in ancient tombs and pyramids and stuff, though, so if one thing has changed, it's that we're running into a LOT more undead these days.

Which brings me to today's preview of upcoming figures from the Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures! The set supports the brand-new Shattered Star Adventure Path, which sets the players on a quest around Varisia to reunite an ancient artifact created by the progenitor of the Runelords. It's a sort of sequel to other Varisia-based Adventure Paths, including Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and Second Darkness, but the campaign also stands alone as a self-contained Adventure Path.

And, truth be told, it's got a fair number of undead.

Here are two of them, both ready to menace your player characters and both slated at the uncommon rarity.

Up first is the Skeletal Champion, a figure I've wanted to create since I first saw his illustration in the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. We later used the same illustration in the Pathfinder RPG Beginner Box, where the Skeletal Champion is one of the major antagonists provided in the set. I've long had a goal to create miniatures of every monster in that set, so when it came time to plan the Shattered Star miniatures set (and the Shattered Star Adventure Path itself), I asked James Jacobs to make sure to include a skeletal champion somewhere in the campaign. He obliged, and I finally got my miniature.

The Mummy Cleric is a similar story. Back when we were doing the Rise of the Runelords set, we almost slipped in a "Thassilonian Mummy" figure, partly because a few appeared in the Adventure Path, and partly because the Mummy in Heroes & Monsters, our first Pathfinder Battles set, looked a lot more like a rank-and-file bruiser from a Scooby Doo episode than a chilling, memorable villain.

The Thassilonian Mummy didn't make the final cut for Runelords, so when it came time to create the Shattered Star outline, I asked James if he might include more Thassilonian Mummies in the new campaign (which was, after all, set in the ruins of Thassilon). We then asked artist Tyler Walpole to draw what one of these guys might look like, and he came up with a skull-faced menace that blew our socks off.

Accordingly, this figure is now one of the tougher opponents PCs will face in the campaign. He's still Thassilonian, but he's his own villain, a nasty undead cleric of Groetus, God of the End Times. We call him (appropriately enough) the Mummy Cleric.

Good luck with this one, player characters!

That's it for this week. I have other undead I could show you, but we have a few more weeks to go before things get really spoooooky for Halloween.

I have tricks, and I have treats.

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: The Golems' Got It!

Friday, September 21, 2012

Earlier this week WizKids brought by the case incentive miniature for the upcoming Shattered Star set of prepainted Pathfinder Battles miniatures. In the previous set, Rise of the Runelords, the incentive miniature was the enormous Rune Giant, which lorded over the rest of the set and looked absolutely amazing doing it.

I can't say what the case incentive figure will be for Shattered Star yet (because I want to show you a painted sculpture for extra jaw-droppage, and we're not quite there yet), but when we got a look at it, our excitement for this set exploded to the next level, which is something I didn't even think possible (we like the Shattered Star set an awful lot).

So I can't show off that incredible miniature just yet. But I do have a couple of other incredible figures this week to make up for it!

Up first this week is the Iron Golem. This Large figure is based on a great illustration by Tyler Walpole that I think captures a classic look for this iconic dungeon monster. The paint job on this guy is relatively simple, but WizKids has made subtle choices that make the simplicity work for it. The color of the creature's “iron” skin has a sheen to it that really sells the metal effect, similar to the way the Karzoug Statue in Rise of the Runelords really looked like it could have been made of stone. Even better, the Iron Golem's eyes and mouth are painted in a sort of pearlescent orange, giving the effect of smoldering fire within the sockets. WizKids brought by a production sample of this figure at this week's meeting, and everyone commented on how much they liked it. I think you'll like it too.

The Alchemical Golem from Bestiary 2 is one of my favorite golems in the game, so it's fitting that the Alchemical Golem from the Shattered Star set is one of my favorite prepainted plastic miniatures in any set. This Large miniature is SERIOUSLY cool.

I count FIVE different colors of clear plastic on this figure, from the green goo that fuels its body to the varicolored potions in its syringe fingers. Best of all (and not really visible in this preview photo, alas), the clear dome of the Alchemical Golem's head actually contains a little brain! Gross!

Expect preorder pages for the Shattered Star set to appear very shortly here on paizo.com, and it's not too early to ask your local retailer to make sure they order enough copies of this set from their distributor.

It's going to be a great one!

More next week.

Erik Mona
Publisher

Illustration by
Dmitry Burmak

Week of Free!*

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Earlier this week we gave you the Pathfinder RPG: Beginner Box Transitions download and now we present you with something else with a "free" price tag.

For those of you who have Curse of the Lady's Light (either in your paws or downloaded onto the digital perusal device of your choice) you might have read James's foreword where he mentions something about a free web enhancement. In that foreword, he explains how a chunk of Mike Shel's adventure needed to get scrapped to fit the deity article on Torag (which we missed putting in the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path). This isn't something we normally do, but we had the art and James really liked the extra social interaction encounters. This is GM-focused bonus material that provides a few more encounters and helps move the story from Magnimar to the Lady's Light—so stay out players!

But for everyone else, enjoy your time with the new characters you'll meet in this free supplement and use it to bring more fun to your Shattered Star campaign!

Download the Web Enhancement! - (1.9MB zip/PDF)

Adam Daigle
Developer

* Blog title restricted to reference two days only.

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Feel the Burn!

Friday, September 14, 2012

We've just finished laying out the packaging for the upcoming Shattered Star set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic fantasy gaming miniatures, which means we'll very shortly have the product up for pre-order! These figures support the new Shattered Star Adventure Path, but are of course usable in any fantasy campaign.

At this point, all of the sculpts have been approved, and the only figure still in painting is the enormous Gargantuan "case incentive" miniature, whose big reveal is still probably a few weeks away.

While we wait for these important milestones, let's take a look at more figures from the set. Come along, won't you?

Here we have the Medium Fire Elemental in all his burning glory! Emerging from a pillar of flame, this guy stands about a foot taller than your average adventurer, which I think qualifies as "fiery death from above." He's sculpted in clear plastic, and should look extra-flamey when light shines through his clear bits.

Why call this guy a "medium" fire elemental, you might ask? Well, because there is another fire elemental at a different size coming in a future preview.

Just kidding. Here he is. This beast is the Large Fire Elemental.

This guy is WAAAAAAY bigger than a normal adventurer. Heck, he's bigger than the biggest ogre we've produced to date. He is SO BIG that it almost seems like he should fit on a Huge base. But no, he is in fact Large. We just love putting as much value into a miniature as possible, and the Large Fire Elemental is a good example of that principle in action. It's also a suggestion that if we ever do a truly Huge fire elemental in the future, it's going to be absolutely astoundingly enormous. Again, the Large Fire Elemental is sculpted in clear plastic for extra fiery effect.

And because we're about to reveal packaging that has this next guy on it anyway, I've decided to include a bonus figure in this week's preview. The Guiltspur Naga!

This creature is one of many of its kind that traveled up through the Darklands and into the ancient Thassilonian ruin of Guiltspur, site of the Shattered Star's fifth adventure, "Into the Nightmare Rift". This creature is Large and in charge. And in the office next to mine, our Creative Director James Jacobs is working on this creature's encounter RIGHT NOW!

Because production on the set is still in swing, we have not yet assigned solid rarities to any of the figures in the set, including these. Keep your eyes on this space in the next couple of weeks for specific details on the set's configuration, price, and release date.

There's a lot more where these came from!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: That's a big sword!

Friday, September 7, 2012

Last Friday, the poor Paizo Blog was bereft of a Pathfinder Battles preview on account of yours truly running the Pathfinder demo room at PAX Prime. PAX is an enormous Seattle-based convention with a primary focus on computer games, which means that the 70,000+ attendees are all decked out with the latest trends in wireless gaming and handheld mobile devices. This has the side effect of train-wrecking internet access from virtually anywhere in the convention, which means no blogging from the show floor.

Thanks for your patience, and I hope you minis fiends out there were able to make it through the weekend without a major bout of the DTs.

Anyway, because you got no previews last week, I wanted to make sure you got something big this week. And when I think big, one of the first things that comes to mind is the massive sword wielded by our iconic barbarian, Amiri, who just happens to star in the new Shattered Star Pathfinder Battles set!

WizKids really outdid themselves with this figure, as they have with all of our iconic characters so far. I originally tried to get the company to include Amiri in our first Pathfinder Battles set, Heroes & Monsters, but WizKids politely declined, saying that the overwhelming detail and pointy bits of Wayne Reynolds's original illustration would make it impractical to sculpt in plastic. (Incidentally, that's why H&M only has one iconic character, whereas all following sets have two).

By the time Shattered Star came around and WizKids had already proven themselves more than capable of handing challenging subject matter, I quietly added Amiri back to a set list, and this time they didn't even flinch. Instead they came back with what I consider one of the most beautiful figures they've produced to date.

Looking at the figure in hand brings out a lot of awesome details that you can't quite make out from the photograph. Amiri's slight sneer, the cracks in her armor plates, and the scars on her belly really jump off the figure in an awesome way.

And yes, she's holding an enormous sword. Don't blame us! She stole it from a frost giant, and it's served her very well to date, especially when she's raging.

I think you guys are going to love her.

But since I said "big" in the title of the blog post, it only seems fair that I include an actual "big" miniature in addition to a regular-sized miniature holding a big sword. For that purpose, I've decided to also reveal the Hill Giant!

This sculpt perfectly captures the slack-jawed glory of the original hill giant illustration in the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, and continues to round out our offerings of "core" giants in prepainted plastic.

Although the Shattered Star Pathfinder Battles set includes lots of specific NPCs born out of the Adventure Path itself, it's also a chance for us to include plenty of rank-and-file monsters that just happen to be encountered in the course of the campaign. This rock-throwing simpleton is just one of the many yet to come.

But they will, alas, have to wait for future Fridays, as I am all out of time!

See you next week,

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: A Very Important Column

Friday, August 24, 2012

We’re back from Gen Con, and holy cow things went great for Paizo at this year’s show! I was very pleased at the reception of our new Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic fantasy miniatures, as con-goers surrounded our display of all the unboxed figures throughout the exhibit hall hours, and I kept seeing the figures (along with our new Bestiary Box Pawns) all over the 95 tables of Pathfinder Society games that ran every slot of the convention.

I was especially pleased to accept the gold Gen Con/ENnie award for Best Miniatures Product for our very first Pathfinder Battles set, Heroes & Monsters. As proud as I am of that initial offering, from my perspective the Pathfinder Battles sets just keep getting better and better, so I’m eager to see what next year’s judges and voters think of Rise of the Runelords and the upcoming Shattered Star minis set!

We ended up selling out of all the Rise of the Runelords minis by Sunday, and I was pleased to see several gamers getting in line two or three times with piles of boosters in hand as they hunted down that one specific figure or simply augmented their growing collection of Pathfinder Battles miniatures. Reaction to the new four-figure standard booster format was very positive, and it was really cool to see people so excited about a product line I’ve personally poured a ton of attention and sweat into over the last year. I was pleased to see that our partners at WizKids felt similarly, and your support made both of our conventions among the best ever.

Of course, as much as I love the Rise of the Runelords figures, these days I’ve been spending an awful lot of time with that set’s younger, hotter cousin, the Shattered Star! This set of 55 miniatures is currently slated for a January 2013 release, coinciding with the publication of the final volume of the Shattered Star Adventure Path!

Shattered Star was our first opportunity to develop a set of miniatures to support an Adventure Path at the same time that that Adventure Path was being outlined. I’ve spoken before in earlier columns about the difficulties associated with such a plan (we have to make LOTS of decisions MUCH sooner than we’re used to in order to pull it off given the extremely long lead-time involved with miniatures production), but one of the great things about this approach is that I got to sneak a few miniatures into the set (and hence into the Adventure Path outline) that have never before been released as prepainted plastic miniatures.

Which leads us to today’s figure: The Caryatid Column!

This creature has a long history in fantasy gaming, but its inspiration has an even longer history in, well, history. Caryatids—which is to say columns in the form of maidens—have been a part of architecture since the ancient Greeks. Their use dates back to at least the 6th century BC. I was able to see one of the famous caryatids at the British Museum while visiting London after Gen Con UK a few years back, and the sculpting was so realistic that the stone dresses worn by the figure looked soft to the touch, almost like it was real cloth on a real woman.

Happily, in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Caryatid Columns actually DO come alive, making them near-perfect low(ish)-level constructs. Plus, hitting them has a way of breaking the PCs’ weapons, which is always fun for the GM.

When I decided to include a Caryatid Column in the Shattered Star set, I took a look at the drawing included in the Pathfinder Bestiary 3. a neat enough illustration, but it lacks the sort of clothing effects I expect to see on a Caryatid Column inspired by the genuine articles. Instead I asked WizKids’ artists to base their sculpt upon an actual, real-life Caryatid Column from the ancient world. I think the resulting figure looks a lot better than a straight translation of the art from the Bestiary.

By sculpting our Caryatid Column figure in “column form,” the miniature doubles as any sort of pillar you might want to throw on your game table. I’m eager to set up whole rows of these guys (or gals, as the case may be) in my dungeons. Maybe some of them are ordinary pillars, while others are monsters waiting patiently for the arrival of the heroes. Who knows? Well, I know, of course, which is one of the reasons I prefer to be the GM.

Lastly, because I’m a nice guy and because I’m sure a few of you out there are wrongly clicking your tongues and thinking “big deal, so it’s a column,” I’m going to drop ONE MORE preview on you.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Night Hag!

So until next week... pleasant dreams!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Opening Big

Friday, August 10, 2012

We're tying up all the final loose ends before heading to Indianapolis for Gen Con next week, so because I'm so busy, I'm going to let my favorite freelancer write a fun description of the creature depicted in today's blog:

"It was a paw, fully two feet and a half across, and equipped with formidable talons. After it came another paw, and after that a great black-furred arm to which both of the paws were attached by short forearms. Then two pink eyes shone, and the head of the awakened gug sentry, large as a barrel, wabbled into view. The eyes jutted two inches from each side, shaded by bony protuberances overgrown with coarse hairs. But the head was chiefly terrible because of the mouth. That mouth had great yellow fangs and ran from the top to the bottom of the head, opening vertically instead of horizontally.
"
    —H. P. Lovecraft, "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"

Yes, today's featured miniature is the Gug, subterranean terror of Lovecraft's Dreamlands. This horrific monstrosity is the centerpiece of an epic encounter in the Shattered Star Adventure Path. That campaign kicks off this month, with the new Shattered Star Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniatures set currently slated for January.

That's a pretty sweet looking monster, eh? It has cleaner teeth than Lovecraft's version, and yellower eyes, but this miniature captures the essence of the description that inspired it, and it's sure to strike terror into the hearts of your player characters. The quality of the sculpt and paint job have a lot to do with that, but to me the most impressive thing about this figure is its size.

This guy TOWERS over player characters, pushing the very limits of the Large size category.

And the blood in his mouth is shiny.

He's great, and I can't wait to build a little shrine in my office with like eight of this guy.

Next week we're at Gen Con for the official release of the Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder Battles set, as well as a sweet new booth display of every Pathfinder Battles miniature released to date.

Stop by the Paizo booth to claim your very own limited edition Festering Spirit figure (free with $50 purchase), and don't forget to seek me out and say hi. I'd love to hear what you think about the Pathfinder Battles line (or any of Paizo's products), and what you'd like to see us do in the future.

Regular Shattered Star Pathfinder Battles preview blogs will continue in two weeks. Until then, see you at Gen Con!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Pathfinder Battles Preview: Starting Small with the Shattered Star

Friday, August 3, 2012

August is upon us, and we've finally reached the release month for the Rise of the Runelords set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniatures! We'll debut the set at Gen Con Indy, which means that the complete shipment is currently sitting in our warehouse, which has picked up a distinctive smell of fresh plastic. I love the smell of fresh plastic in the morning. It smells like... Victory.

Anyway, you guys are going to explode with delight when you get the Rise of the Runelords figures in your hands. They are absolutely amazing, and set a new standard for prepainted plastic miniatures.

A standard we're set to exceed with the very NEXT set, the Shattered Star! This third official set of Pathfinder Battles miniatures (produced in cooperation with our friends at WizKids) contains 55 figures, and is currently slated for a January 2013 release. We're still working on some of the final details on price and packaging, so it'll be several more weeks before we have the product pages for this set up and running here on paizo.com, but we don't want to let pesky details like that get in the way of revealing some of the amazing figures we've been working on over the last few months.

Even though we haven't yet revealed a single Shattered Star mini, we're actually much farther ahead in the production process with this set than we've been at a similar period with other sets. We've approved about 90% of the paint masters so far, and are only waiting on a couple of figures. Preview images from the set should be landing here every Friday until I run out of them, and believe me when I say you're in store for some absolutely astounding miniatures.

Before I get to today's initial reveals, I want to talk briefly about spoilers and the nature of previewing a set of miniatures for an adventure campaign that hasn't been published yet—it's going to be a bit difficult, and you probably ARE going to have a few minor details and surprises spoiled by reading these weekly blogs.

I'll take care to hide truly egregious spoilers (“this guy is the arch villain of adventure three, but he's the PCs' best friend for the first two adventures, LOL”) behind spoiler tags, but as the entire point of showing off these miniatures is to, well, SHOW OFF THESE MINIATURES, I'm not going to hide every image behind a spoiler tag. If you're the type of player or GM who gets bent out of shape knowing that certain monsters are scheduled to appear in an adventure you haven't played yet, it may be a good idea to keep your eyes away from this space for the foreseeable future.

‘Cause I'm going to spill some secrets.

Let's start with some small ones, from the very first volume of the Shattered Star Adventure Path, Shards of Sin.

Up first is the lowly Mite, a rank-and-file monster from the pages of the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. This standard Small fey creature plays an important role in the opening adventure (and this isn't the only mite in the set, either). I love how gross WizKids' master painter made this little bugger, and I can't wait to get a whole pile of them to add to my personal collection.

Speaking of giant piles of monsters I'd quite like to add to my collection, allow me to introduce you to a derro known as Caedimus!

Good Caedimus is a rank-and-file derro. We've given him a specific name to differentiate him from the other derro in the set (which we'll show off soon), but like the Mite, Caedimus is currently slated at the common rarity.

I'm hoping to get a bunch of him.

That's it for this week. Although both of these critters are Small, they're a good intro to the set, which in future weeks will include lots of much, much, much larger figures.

We're on the hunt for the Shattered Star! Come back to this space next Friday for a look at some more awesome minis coming your way in January!

Erik Mona
Publisher

Shattered Star Player's Guide

Thursday, August 2, 2012

About a month ago, someone in our messageboard community started a thread asking when the Shattered Star Player's Guide was going to be released. Our answer at the time was "before the release of the Shattered Star Adventure Path." Well, that time is now!

In this Player's Guide you'll find tips for making a character that fits well in the campaign. This lets players make some crucial early decisions without fear of wasting feats or making bad choices when it comes to certain class features. We also present a bunch of campaign traits and traits suitable for characters that are closely tied with the Pathfinder Society. Speaking of the Pathfinders, in this Player's Guide we give readers a rundown on the organization, since the campaign assumes the PCs will either be members of the Pathfinder Society or at least closely tied to them. Seeing as the Shattered Star Adventure Path starts in Magnimar, the Player's Guide gives a spoiler-free introduction to the city, and shows a map of Heidmarch Manor—a place that can serve as a base of operations when the PCs aren't waist deep in some dank dungeon. Finally, the Shattered Star Player's Guide provides the rules for using Fame and Prestige Points in your Shattered Star campaign. You can even get your own scribe to record your glory for future posterity!

So don't hesitate! Download the free Shattered Star Player's Guide now!

Adam Daigle
Developer