Pathfinder Battles Preview: Spidery Secrets!

Friday, November 17, 2011

With the very first Pathfinder prepainted miniatures, Pathfinder Beginner Box Heroes, in stores now, interest in the Pathfinder Battles miniatures line has really heated up. Now that many of you have our first four miniatures in hand, it should be clear that WizKids is shooting for very high quality sculpts and paint jobs on all of the Pathfinder Battles miniatures. I think Heroes & Monsters keeps up (and in some cases exceeds) the high quality standards set by Beginner Box Heroes, and in a few short weeks, you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about with your own eyes.

Until then, we’ve got more previews to reveal! The early January release date for Pathfinder Battles Heroes & Monsters is fast approaching, and I find that we’ve pretty much announced all of the 40 miniatures in the set. I wanted to include at least one complete surprise this week, and this penultimate look brings us a single miniature away from a complete set reveal. We’ll get to that last one next week or beyond, but for now, let’s look at some creepy critters from Heroes & Monsters!

First up we have the Giant Spider, a nasty, poisonous fellow who clocks in at the common rarity. Bright red coloration is nature’s way of saying “I’m going to kill you,” and in this regard the Giant Spider is just as deadly as the bright red Venomous Snake we showed off a couple of weeks ago. Don’t forget your antivenom!

This Skeleton makes a good buddy for the Giant Spider, in that they’d both probably feel at home in the same sort of desolate dungeon environments. They also both make excellent adversaries for low-level adventurers. Both of them are commons. Many of the folks here in the office who see the Skeleton say, “wow, he looks just like he stepped out of a Ray Harryhausen movie!” Which is nice to hear, as it’s exactly what we were going for. If you look closely you can see a nice inking effect that WizKids added to the Skeleton’s shield to better sell the wood grain. It looks wonderful in person.

Sure, a Medium Giant Spider is cool, but take it from me. A Large Giant Caveweaver Spider is much, much cooler. This guy absolutely towers over lesser spiders, and he’s even been useful in scaring a few of our “adult” employees who have a very childish reaction to spiders (I’m looking at you, Bulmahn). Heh, heh, heh. Though you can’t quite see it in these photographs, the Giant Caveweaver Spider has a really cool red design on its back that is sure to have your player characters (and Jason Bulmahn) scampering for the exit. Everyone will be glad to hear that this is a rare miniature, so it’ll thankfully be a long time before these guys overrun the Earth.

Lastly, I wanted to provide a group photo of this week’s previews, so you can get a sense of just how huge that Giant Caveweaver Spider really is. Imagine that the Skeleton is the same height as a normal man, and you’ll get a strong idea that messing around with the Giant Caveweaver is a really, really bad idea!

Ok, ok, ok. I hear the skeptics already. There’s nothing terribly revolutionary about spiders and skeletons, no matter how cool they might look.

To which I say, fair enough. So next week, I’m going to show you a Heroes & Monsters figure with a feature unlike anything you’ve seen before in a prepainted miniature! I still can’t believe how awesome and innovative it is, and it’s been sitting on my desk for a month!

As usual, I’ll try to monitor the discussion thread here on the blog. Let me know if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see from the set, and I will make sure we cover it shortly!

Erik Mona
Publisher