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
