We've finally revealed all 55 figures in the Skull & Shackles set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic miniatures. It seems like only a few short months ago that we raised the sails on the first reveal and set out upon the open seas, and yet here we are at our final destination, with the set's formal release at Gen Con Indy less than two weeks away. Time really does fly when you're keelhauling scallywags!
Before we move on to showing off figures from our exciting NEXT set, Legends of Golarion, I want to take one more quick tour of some of cool bits from Skull & Shackles to put it all into perspective.
First up, let's take a closer look at the Gargantuan Skeletal Dragon limited-edition case incentive figure. Customers who subscribe or preorder a case get the right to purchase this very rare sculpture at a rate of one per case ordered. Here he is in all his treacherous glory.
The Gargantuan Skeletal Dragon cuts an imposing figure on the tabletop. Here's a close-up to get a nice view of some of the sculpt's details.
And for size comparison purposes, I decided to pit the Gargantuan Skeletal Dragon against our iconic heroes Valeros, Seoni, and Kyra. I'm glad they brought the cleric along, because they could use a good prayer right now.
One of my favorite things about building the set lists for Pathfinder Battles is when I get a chance to do affiliated sculpts in batches. Above we see the set's three grindylow figures. From left to right they are the Brinebrood Queen, the Whale, and the standard Grindylow. The first two are rare, and the last is common, meaning that folks who pick up a case should get one of each rare and a small handful of Grindylows to bulk up their undersea encounters.
Speaking of bulk, get a load of The Matron, the rare leader of the Sea Devil “faction” in the Skull & Shackles set. As both the Sea Devil and Sea Devil Champion are commons, case buyers can expect to get a good number of each. I think they look great together, and are a good starting point for any Sea Devil-themed encounter or adventure.
I've said it before in this space, but getting the scaling right on these creatures is probably the most difficult aspect of producing miniatures, especially when like creatures are spread out over several sets. Nowhere has this been more apparent than with trolls. Our very first Troll, from the Heroes & Monsters set, came out quite small, and didn't quite cut the imposing figure we were hoping for. With the Shattered Star set, we swung the pendulum far in the other direction with the incredibly imposing Troll Champion, who towers over most of the true giants we've released in the line so far. That's all well and good for a champion, after all, but it didn't really solve the sweet spot of the average height of the average troll. For that, we've got the Skull & Shackles set's Sea Troll, pictured in the middle here, which is a good representation of an “average sized” troll. Expect future rank-and-file trolls in upcoming sets to fall closer to the Sea Troll in size than the other two, who are outliers.
That's it for the Skull & Shackles set! Looking over the full set here on my desk, I'm enormously proud of the work we and our partners at WizKids put into these wonderful figures. The set gave us a chance to fill in some gaps that have never been produced in prepainted plastic, which is something we will continue as the line moves forward. I'd also like to thank YOU, the Pathfinder Battles faithful. Your suggestions, criticisms, and requests help to guide the decisions we make on these figures every day. If you think our miniatures are cool, there's a good chance you or a gamer just like you is responsible for their awesomeness just as much as those of us who work on them every day. We couldn't do it without you!
There's still time to set up an Ongoing Case Subscription to make sure you don't miss a single figure! Make sure to put your name on the crew list for Skull & Shackles before we unfurl the sails and leave port, potentially never to return!
See you next week for some brand new Legends of Golarion reveals!
Erik Mona
Publisher
