Pathfinder Battles Preview: A "Huge" Announcement

Wow! I don't know what I was expecting when (a few weeks ago) you "teased" us with "huge" news in the works ... but this evolutions encounter packs (White Dragons) is AWESOME! Like others, I am also hoping for other colors/categories of dragons done in this format. (And yes Matthew Morris, I agree with you, gimme Medium, Large, and Huge Blue Dragons next ... please). :)

Erik Mona wrote:

The Colossal Red was obviously way too big and hugely impractical. I think everyone understands this. :)

Going to have to disagree here. Since there is no upper limit to the Colossal size category in 3.5, way to big can't be a real issue. Impractical, yeah, you got me as He's not one I use often when I am gaming, but I have used him. And when I set him on the battlemat my players just cringed when I said "and, yes folks, he is to scale." He's about 120' tall in scale after all (roughly 14" tall at the top of his crest), which makes him a truly epic for.

Don't get me wrong. The Colossal Red is an awesome sculpture/room decor piece, but in terms of using him as a mini... I think it's kind of a one-shot deal.

There's obviously a lot of love for this big-bigger-biggest format, but to offer a dissenting voice - I'd much prefer a pack themed around the huge figure but not quite so closely. (If thats the word..I'm thinking I'd rather a huge boss and a few of his minions).

It's no doubt a matter of gamestyle/taste but I suspect I'll use medium dragons even less than I'll use my colossal red. I certainly have little enthusiasm for collecting a medium dragon of each color.

Yeah but what a one shot on the Colossal Red.

I tried to scale the Family of Whites to get a size comparison.

The Medium looks to be relatively small. I would have liked a few of these. It is really a nice sculpt.

The Large looks to be definitely large. It looks like it would make for a nice mated pair with the Huge. The Huge has a great head. Look forward to these.

On the Goblin set, we are getting a Goblin Commando on Goblin Dog and a Goblin Dog. Imagine that! ;)

The Large White in this set is definitely on the Large side of Large.

A quick play with the images would suggest the medium is about the size of a typical medium - around the same height as the Grey Maiden from SS.
The large is indeed on the large side, looks about the same sizeas , perhaps a fraction shorter than, the Troll Champion!
The Huge certainly seems a lot larger than the black, about the height of the earth elemental from SS. All in all a good set of sizes. Can't wait for these.

With all due respect to the Chromatics (of which I have great amounts due to them making epic villains), can we also look forward to a huge Silver Dragon? I feel the Metallics (as well as the Primals and Imperials) are missing some much needed love.

Erik Mona wrote:

Drogon wrote:

Make lots of these, Eric. I would point at how fast you sold through the encounters and iconics packs as a metric, and at how rapidly huge dragons rise in price on the secondary market. Don't under-produce these.

Both the Beginner Box Heroes and the Champions of Evil sets are currently available. :)

availible HERE .... allience distributors sold out before they got through preorders (the store I work for preordered 2 and they were sold out before our order was filled)

Yep. Alliance has bee out of stock on the Beginner Box for most of a year, now, and Champions of Evil for at least 6 months.

ACD put out an announcement for the Champions of Evil, recently, but I don't have a lot of trust in the notice, seeing as Alliance still doesn't show them as available, and Alliance has the exclusive right to distribute Wizkids product.

I went through scores of each set, and could go through dozens more, given the chance.

With all due respect to the Chromatics (of which I have great amounts due to them making epic villains), can we also look forward to a huge Silver Dragon? I feel the Metallics (as well as the Primals and Imperials) are missing some much needed love.

+ 10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

And please, Imerpials before Primals before Metallics, before any more Chromatics (short of a Gargantuan Green that is ;-) )

Cpt_kirstov wrote:

Erik Mona wrote:

Drogon wrote:

Make lots of these, Eric. I would point at how fast you sold through the encounters and iconics packs as a metric, and at how rapidly huge dragons rise in price on the secondary market. Don't under-produce these.

Both the Beginner Box Heroes and the Champions of Evil sets are currently available. :)

availible HERE .... allience distributors sold out before they got through preorders (the store I work for preordered 2 and they were sold out before our order was filled)

Yep. Alliance has bee out of stock on the Beginner Box for most of a year, now, and Champions of Evil for at least 6 months.

ACD put out an announcement for the Champions of Evil, recently, but I don't have a lot of trust in the notice, seeing as Alliance still doesn't show them as available, and Alliance has the exclusive right to distribute Wizkids product.

I went through scores of each set, and could go through dozens more, given the chance.

Paizo had some extra stock of Champions of Evil that we have offered to both Alliance and ACD. Alliance had it in their daily email to retailers this past week. They are trying to gauge interest. Let the know!

Lisa

I really like the idea of selling the huge minis in encounter packs. Huge minis have always greatly driven up the costs of large sets and made them very expensive for the "casual collectors".

I also appreciate it when encounter packs have identifiable themes, like these dragon ones. The Champions of Evil just seemed like a mix of random miniatures lacking an overall theme (well other than being "evil", but I rarely think of a zombie as "evil" or a "champion").

I am happy to see sets like the dragon evolution encounter packs and the goblin builder series, and I expect demand will be very large for these. I eagerly await to see what the future holds for these new types of formats.

PathfinderMinis has been updated with this new set:
www.pathfinderminis.com

If we can dream about other huges it would be fun to see, here's a few:

-- An Ulgurstata (if it's not WotC IP, I haven't checked.) Or, if that's not an option, one of your other cool really big undead monstrosities.

-- A really big ooze, like a Huge black pudding. In my fondest dreams, it would be modular, so that it would actually be composed of several pieces that could be disassembled to become split puddings as it took hits. Tricky, I'm sure, but it must be doable, right? And the paint job would be as easy as it comes -- 1 or 2 steps, done.

-- An alternative treant to the ones put out long ago by Wizards.

-- I saw someone mention Huge snakes and scorpions, and think that would be great!

-- A Mammoth. They show up more often than they used to in adventures, it seems, and there doesn't seem to be anything out there for them.

-- An elasmosaur. I found a nice Large-sized one in the Horrorclix line, but a Huge option would be cool. Bring on Golarion's Nessie!

Dragon Turtle

Shoggoth

Huge Water Elemental

second the idea for a Mammoth

And that is just from the first Bestiary of things we have not seen from either Wizkids/Paizo or Wizards of the Coast.

When the actual miniatures are shown in a size comparison can you include a human miniature as well.

A prepainted giant/large crab miniature would be on my list. Theres no prepainted version and i cant even find a good toy version out there for large

Very very happy with this news. Personally, each of the random sets will probably get me to by 1-3 boxes when I visit the FLGS, at most. Encounter Packs are pretty much instant buys in general, but the Evolution packs (or themed encounter packs with other interesting minis) are even better!

(White Dragon) Dragon Disciple checking in here ... THANK YOU!!!

This will be utterly amazing in a few levels. Wow!

Huge encounter packs are perfect! I have been hoping to see something along this line. The Dragons are a no brainer and a perfect choice, hope to see all of them eventually.

Here some other ideas

Kellid War Party
1 War Mammoth (not mounted)(huge)
1 Kellid Spear thower (medium)
1 Kellid Archer (medium)
1 Kellid Swordsman (medium)

Dangers of the Deep
1 Dragon Turtle (huge)
1 Giant Moray Eel (large)
1 Sting Ray (Medium)

Deadly Plants
1 Giant Flytrap (huge)
1 Assassin Vine (large)
2 Vegepygmys (Small)

Dinosuars!
Any (huge)
Any (large)
Any (medium/small)

Megafauna!
Any (huge)
Any (large)
Any (medium/small)

Monsters of Legend
Hydra (huge)
Manticore or Chimera (new sculpt) (large)
Harpy (repaint) (Medium)

Why was the color of the Goblin Dog changed to a lighter color? I liked the brown established in RotRL and also in this set with the goblin sitting on it.

We do not have any current plans to do any Colossal "miniatures". :)

That's really disappointing to hear. Unless you have some hidden meaning with miniatures being in quotes.

Why was the color of the Goblin Dog changed to a lighter color? I liked the brown established in RotRL and also in this set with the goblin sitting on it.

Goblin dogs range in coloration from gross pink to darker brown, as we've shown in our illustrations of them to date. Part of the deal with doing a repaint is, well, it's got to be a different color, so that's why you see some variation.

For that matter, goblins themselves vary a bit in coloration, so future goblin figure repaints may very well look more gray or even lighter-skinned/pale than the mostly green guys we've produced so far.

Oh, right. I had forgotten there was a singular Goblin Dog in RotRL already, I had thought it only had a rider.

As long as there are both colors, I am ok with this.

And the white dragons look great!

@wicked cool, if you're looking for a crab, as a stopgap there's a mini in the Monsterpocalypse line called, I think, the Steel Shell Crab, and it works pretty well as a Medium-sized giant crab.

And +1 to the Dragon Turtle idea; I don't know how I forgot that on my own list!

The dragons look great, and I'm sure they will be quite popular.

However, I'm going to take a minority position and say that I hope that future Huge combo packs do not make dragons a priority.

There are a lot of dragon minis already available, and so many other possibilities in the bestiaries...

I like some of Brinebeast's suggestions (esp the dinosaurs and megafauna), but packs featuring unique bestiary (or previously unreleased in plastic) monsters would appeal to me even more. Like a Jabberwock, or a demon pack with a Nalfeshnee, or a giant pack with a cyclops, or an oni pack, or qlippoth, or...

Hopefully this set does well, so other options are possible.

I've strongly considered all of the things you just mentioned. I think oni is the only one I don't already have written down in my idea notebook. :)

I like the idea of encounter packs a lot, and the idea of dragon packs even more. That is all.

The dragons look great, and I'm sure they will be quite popular.

However, I'm going to take a minority position and say that I hope that future Huge combo packs do not make dragons a priority.

There are a lot of dragon minis already available, and so many other possibilities in the bestiaries...

I like some of Brinebeast's suggestions (esp the dinosaurs and megafauna), but packs featuring unique bestiary (or previously unreleased in plastic) monsters would appeal to me even more. Like a Jabberwock, or a demon pack with a Nalfeshnee, or a giant pack with a cyclops, or an oni pack, or qlippoth, or...

Hopefully this set does well, so other options are possible.

I have to agree. There are an abundance of dragons on the market. I have lots of those in all sizes. Things like dinosaurs though, I have none, even a large portion of the animals common to the game are lacking in my collection. I have wolves, rats, spiders, snakes and bears. But I have decidedly few felines. If a set like this turned up with something like leapard, lion, dire tiger it would probably be on my must buy list.

With respect to Oni, I'm just hopeful in the broader sense that you'll eventually release a set of Jade Regent minis. I read through that AP very recently, and was struck by how hard it would be to field a convincing set of minis for it. There's just not enough oriental-themed prepainted stuff out there to support this kind of campaign at present, whether we're talking PC's, NPC's, monsters, terrain, whatever. (Though things are improving on the terrain front with the Japanese terrain Kickstarter that's presently running.) I can understand why you'd be wary of committing to a whole mini line for it, though; while on the one hand it's a pretty wide-open market, on the other hand it's pretty niche, and I'm sure a lot of PF DMs never run an Asian-themed campaign. I never have. (Though partly that's because there aren't the minis for it....)
If nothing else, I'd be very pleased if some good tengu minis appeared!

Ooo, can we get a Villains Evolution pack? Maybe with Karzoug, Queen Illeosa unleashed, and some more of the various villains from the APs in resplendent style?

Awesome! My group will be purchasing this set.

-Aaron

Erik, I will take a little bit of everything because I only have the dragons that wizkids has made, which is the young red dragon and the gargantuan blue dragon from the shattered star set. I'll also take a little bit of everything everybody else wants as well with a smile.

Some more ideas:

Shores of Madness
1 Aboleth (Huge)
1 Skum Warrior (Medium)
1 Skum Priest (Medium)
1 Skum Guard (Medium

Although no huges included
Ant Colony
1 Giant Ant Queen (Large)
1 Giant Ant Drone (Medium)
3 Giant Ant Warriors (Medium)
3 Giant Ant Workers (Medium)

Garundi Safari (Plains)
1 Elephant (Huge)
1 Rhinoceros (Large)
2 Baboons (Small)

Garundi Safari (Jungle)
1 Mokele-mbembe (Huge)
1 Gorilla (Large)
1 Leopard (Medium)

Garundi War Party
1 Lion (Large)
1 Axe Beak (Large)
2 Garundi Warrior (Medium)
1 Garundi Chieftain (Medium)

Hmm, how about a "Nighttime at the Blakros Museum" pack with demon apes and animated statues?

Summon Monster packs.

Will these sets be just 1 of each size?

Or can we expect say 4 mediums 2 large and 1 huge?

I think that would be nice if it was that way so we can get a small group of smaller dragons in one purchase and not have to get 4 huges to get 4 mediums.

Any thought of adding small to that list?

From the packaging image, it looks like one of each size.

I would personally like to see a spider pack, with small spiders on up to driders and ettercaps, but that is mostly because I have never seen an ettercap mini and would like several.

Ettercaps can be found currently if you're in a hurry.

http://www.trollandtoad.com/p117284.html

I've got a few of this one, it's a decent model.

There is already a huge spider (and a couple of larges now), but I have used the huge many times, so I can see why others would want one. For some reason, all the snakes we get are medium. We could really use both a large and a huge of those. And the set could even include a small or two since we really just don't need yet another medium.

-- A really big ooze, like a Huge black pudding. In my fondest dreams, it would be modular, so that it would actually be composed of several pieces that could be disassembled to become split puddings as it took hits. Tricky, I'm sure, but it must be doable, right? And the paint job would be as easy as it comes -- 1 or 2 steps, done.

When it comes to creatures with amorphous forms, you'd need to be able to ensure they can be split into many 5' squares.

But for giant ooze, wouldn't you be able to use a pot of toy slime?
When it moves, slop some into the empty squares, when it engulfs a PC, slop it on their figure?

Ettercaps can be found currently if you're in a hurry.

http://www.trollandtoad.com/p117284.html

I've got a few of this one, it's a decent model.

Awesome, thanks, will get 1 or 2 of those soon hopefully!

Lorian wrote:

Ettercaps can be found currently if you're in a hurry.

http://www.trollandtoad.com/p117284.html

I've got a few of this one, it's a decent model.

Awesome, thanks, will get 1 or 2 of those soon hopefully!

Glad to help out!

One of the things I'm struggling with a bit is that our Gargantuan dragons are almost always going to be smaller than the WotC ones, because they cheated and put theirs on giant bases with tons of overhang. The Gargantuan Blue looks smallish compared to their Gargantuan Blue, but it's probably the right size for a Pathfinder dragon.

Which is frustrating.

But it is what it is, and I don't have a great "solution" at this point.

On the plus side, smaller makes those of your customers using international shipping happy.

That's the beef I always had with swarms; there were some WotC figures which were on a 2x2 base, that didn't take account of the possibility they could be in a thin corridor.

Future releases did come out on single-square bases, which meant you needed multiples of four to run any encounter as written.
(Yet another reason I think swarms should be statted in the Bestiaries at the default 1-square size, but that's another thread.)

I've always found the "pile of poo" swarms (the 2x2 rat swarm is especially guilty of being a pile of poo) to be infinitely less useful than the later flat 1x1 swarms WoTC came out with.

Sure, you had to have 4 of them, but that's way better than one useless one. I always keep my eye out at the cons for more of the WoTC swarms.

It was especially cool how the WoTC design team made them flat enough so they could be under another mini; it made them especially easy to use in combat. It's too bad the Pathfinder minis have reverted to the conical shape that makes it impossible for them to share spaces. Sure, the swarm of grubs is gross, but it's much harder to use than something like the WoTC rot grub swarm.

I've always found the "pile of poo" swarms (the 2x2 rat swarm is especially guilty of being a pile of poo) to be infinitely less useful than the later flat 1x1 swarms WoTC came out with.

Sure, you had to have 4 of them, but that's way better than one useless one. I always keep my eye out at the cons for more of the WoTC swarms.

It was especially cool how the WoTC design team made them flat enough so they could be under another mini; it made them especially easy to use in combat. It's too bad the Pathfinder minis have reverted to the conical shape that makes it impossible for them to share spaces. Sure, the swarm of grubs is gross, but it's much harder to use than something like the WoTC rot grub swarm.

I hear you. I've struggled with this myself. The PoP swarms have very minimal utility but look good. The 1x1 swarms have almost no utility for a completely different reason: when they're under a mini you can't see them. So... why bother?

I don't have much of an answer. My groups use a box of assorted Lego to enhance/draw scenes on the battlemat. Walls, stairs, trees, everything is Lego. We use thin flat 6 bump x 6 bump squares for swarms. (6 bumps works out to 2" perfectly.) Slide 'em under and done. Because they're still square, they show underneath.

Sometimes I also use some of our Alea magnetic markers. I've got a bunch, including some Large ones. They work good for swarms and similar.

Maybe if Paizo made 2"x2" flat swarms that'd work best. Slide them under and they still show. Especially if they weren't using circular bases. Squares with rounded corners would be awesome.

Just a thought.

I'm going to vote green dragon set to go with the premier of the new module format Dragon's Demand! After that I am happy with any of the above suggestions.