Friday Publisher Preview: Catching Up

Friday, September 26, 2014

I was out sick last Friday, so we’ve fallen a bit behind on our scheduled previews of new figures from The Lost Coast set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures, which is set for a November release. I’ve got six figures to show off today, so let’s not waste time!

All of these figures (and any that are left after this) were the victims of bad photographs way back in the paint master stage. In the meantime, WizKids sent us actual production run figures, so everything you see from The Lost Coast from this point forward are actual production figures, not paint masters.

Here we have the Goblin Druid, who is based off the much-hated druid Gogmurt from the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path Anniversary Edition hardcover. He easily doubles as any goblin spellcaster. If you want, you can pair him up with the Firepelt Cougar we previewed a few weeks back to complete the official Gogmurt encounter. The Goblin Druid is a Small, common figure.

And this is the Green Hag, your basic hag from page 167 of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary. She’s an effective but pretty simple figure in terms of sculpt and paint scheme, so we slated her at the common rarity. The Green Hag is a Medium figure.

This is the Shifty Noble, which we drew from page 56 of Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Magnimar, City of Monuments. I’m not certain the picture does this figure justice. With one hand held forward in a come-hither pose and the other behind her back clutching a deadly dagger, this is one untrustworthy scion you do not want to cross. The Shifty Noble is a Medium, uncommon figure with a great sense of “three dimensionality” to her.

Look out, it’s the Sinspawn Champion! We pulled this nasty critter off the cover of Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Dungeons of Golarion. He makes a great boss for the two Sinspawn already in the Rise of the Runelords set, or you can put a bunch of him with a bunch of them to fill out the ranks of a Sinspawn horde. The Sinspawn Champion is a (fairly tall) Medium, uncommon figure.

We already produced a Boggard back in Shattered Star, but he was more of a chieftain/mystic sort of guy. This Boggard Warrior is your run-of-the-mill amphibious humanoid fighter type. He’s a Medium, uncommon figure.

And this guy is the Leaping Boggard, his jumpy companion! You might not understand why until you’re holding him in your own hands, but I think this guy may be my favorite in the entire set. I love his tongue, his weird eyes, and especially his pose. Looking at him just makes me laugh, a quality I’ve always liked in my frog-people. The Leaping Boggard is a Medium, uncommon figure.

And Now, the Bad News

Last time we met with WizKids, they brought in samples of the repainted Feiya and King Irovetti, two figures from previous sets that did not get the paint application they deserved and hence resulted in a lot of justified complaints. I’m happy to say that King Irovetti looked fantastic. Amazing, even.

I’m unhappy to say that Feiya still looked pretty bad, especially in the face department. WizKids was very up front about this before we ever saw the figure, but the end result is that after testing several different repainting options, WizKids has come to the conclusion that the problem with the Feiya miniature is in fact the sculpt, in particular the lack of deep detail on the face that leads to the paint obscuring most of what detail is actually there.

That means that the existing Feiya sculpt is not going to work for the proposed replacement figures that were set to be inserted into The Lost Coast. WizKids is going back to sculpt on the figure. They’ll now create a new Feiya sculpt with their current digital sculpting tools, with a pose that attempts to match as closely as possible the original figure, but with a better face sculpt.

That means that the Feiya and King Irovetti replacement figures will not appear in The Lost Coast, and will instead be inserted into the next set we do after that. We apologize for the delay, but I for one am impressed with WizKids taking the initiative to fix the problem. None of us needs more bad Feiya figures.

So, yeah, mild disappointment there, but they are still committed to creating replacement figures, and I’m confident that the new sculpt will be amazing.

Why am I so confident in the quality of WizKids’s new digital sculpts? Why, because they also brought in the paint masters for the first Iconic Heroes set (January 2015), and they are by far the best-looking Medium-sized figures I’ve seen from them to date.

But you’re going to have to take my word for it for now, as I am holding those photos for next week’s preview!

See you then!

Erik Mona
Publisher