Bugbear Brigade

Friday, September 11, 2015

I can't believe it's already Friday, which means it's time for another installment of the Friday Publisher Preview! I'm still a bit giddy from our recent in-office review of the paint masters for November's The Rusty Dragon Inn set of prepainted plastic Pathfinder Battles miniatures. The set looks absolutely fantastic, and I couldn't be happier with the communications and production standards WizKids and Paizo have been able to achieve with this set. It really feels like we are firing on all cylinders at the moment, and I'm thrilled to think of what the future has in store.

We've spent some time recently focusing on the NPCs, townfolk, and bar denizens of the set, so this time around I wanted to get back to the monsters. In this case—bugbears!

Since the very start, I've had a personal goal to have at least one kind of "focus creature" per set. My experience shows that if you can get multiple figures of one type (say, orcs, goblins, and the like) in the same set, paint application and sculpt details tend to be more consistent. For this set, my focus creatures are ghouls (most of which we've previewed already) and bugbears (most of which we haven't).

I previewed the Bugbear Tyrant back in June. This week, I'd like to show some of his companion bugbears. A tyrant isn't a tyrant without someone to boss around, after all.

Up first this week is the brutish Bugbear Lurker, whose image comes from the opening illustration of the bugbear section of the Pathfinder RPG Monster Codex. His statistics appear on page 25 of that volume. Bugbear Lurkers double as any kind of nasty bugbear menace, so I decided to slot this guy into the common rarity to help you build up a small gang of them. The Bugbear Lurker is a Medium figure.

Next is the Bugbear Mystic, our take on the bugbear bloodmage from page 26 of the Monster Codex. It's also a goal of mine to create both male and female figures for all the major humanoid races, and in this case the Monster Codex has been something of a godsend in terms of art reference. The Bugbear Mystic is also a Medium common, all the better for building a little bestial cult of your very own.

Perhaps my favorite bugbear in The Rusty Dragon Inn is the Bugbear Flesh Glutton, from page 22 of the Monster Codex. These unruly beasts so love the taste of intelligent creatures that they have grown to a disgustingly large size. The Bugbear Flesh Glutton is a Large, uncommon figure, perfect for peppering your growing bugbear brood with a few loutish brutes.

These three bugbears add to the Bugbear Tyrant to flesh out the Pathfinder bugbear ranks (which also includes a base common Bugbear Warrior from Legends of Golarion and the bow-wielding Bugbear Hero from way back in the Rise of the Runelords set.

What other humanoid "focus creatures" would you like to see in future sets? Drop some suggestions in the comments and we'll chat about it until next week, when I return with another batch of previews from The Rusty Dragon Inn!

Erik Mona
Publisher