Pathfinder Battles Preview: Arise, Agents of Evil!

Very happy that the Will-O'-Wisp showed up! I have been needing a few of these for a campaign I have been writing! Personally I am hoping for more good guys to show up, but otherwise all of these are fantastic minis!

There are still some good guys yet to come.

While the wisp and bo..err, lost soul have been done before in plastic, they pale in comparison to these ones. The demoniac is a simply great. I think this set must have the best range of commons I've seen in prepaints to date, the variety and complexity is remarkable.

I can not tell you how happy I am to see the mongel huntress - I hopes from the moment the first appeared and you vaguely hinted at its presence.

And now sqweee time - a dominion invader, and such a brilliant sculpt. I have waited a long time for this and I can tell you it appears to have been worth it. My only problem - she's rare :( Understandable for that sculpt of course. 42 down, 12 to go, plus Deskari.

Wish list for remainders:

Sweet! Another monster that I can correctly represent for Savage Tide!

The wisp looks sweet. I look forward to this more and more everyday.

These five all look great, in my opinion.

I love that you have included another Mongrel. It gives me hope that you'll consider one or two variants of other such beasts in the future. Also, it is a bit tough to see from this photo, but it appears the sculpt of this particular Mongrel is based on the one from the AP. Considering that is one of my favorite illustrations in the Wrath of the Righteous books I have right now, I'm pumped.

I've been putting together a campaign for after the holidays, and just yesterday I was deciding on whether or not to include B..um, the Lost Souls into it. I love the sculpts here and hopefully they'll be here in time for me to include the miniatures.

That Demoniac looks great. I'll have to fit him in to this campaign somehow.

That N, err...Dominion Invader looks spectacular. I had a feeling it would show up after I saw the illustration in the third installment of Wrath of the Righteous.

I love Will-O'-Wisps, and I'm glad to see it made it to your pre-painted line. I made a quick list of my guesses for the Reign of Winter preprinted line, and I was trying to decide if they'd show up in that one or if you'd bring them out for this one. I guessed correctly, and left them off my guess list for ROW.

Speaking of guess lists, have you ever considered running a competition for each Pathfinder Battles line that you put out? For example you'd give a week or two between the official release of one line and the first previews for the next line. You could release a list of all possible sources that the miniatures you picked for the forthcoming line might appear in: Adventure Paths, relevant Campaign Settings, Bestiaries, etc. During those two weeks members could browse through the provided material and try to guess as accurately as possible the miniature lineup for that next set. The member who guessed most accurately would win something cool, perhaps a free booster case of the Battles line he or she correctly guessed.

I feel as though it could be a fun little competition to have, and it could drive continued excitement even higher for all forthcoming Pathfinder Battles lines. Because you wouldn't likely need to announce a winner until the week of the official release of the miniature line, the fun of each Friday miniature reveal here on the Paizo Blog would still remain intact.

I think that's a great idea, except for the waiting a week or two between set previews :)

@Cat-thulhu,

I'm not exactly sure how the reveals are structured now. I only started paying attention on the blog with the Legends of Golarian line. I saw that some people were upset that one of the lines didn't even finish reveals before the reveals for the next line started up. I gathered from other posters that this was not the norm, and that one usually begins right after the next.

I figured if Paizo initiated a contest like this, there would need to be that one week break in between so that people could come up with their guess lists and submit them by the deadline. I know it would be a bummer to miss a week of reveal, but at the same time the incentive to perhaps win a free case (or whatever the prize) might be enough to make up for it.

I was originally going to suggest that Paizo just include a list of all the creatures that could be in the set, and people could form their guesses off that list. But I like the idea of Paizo board members actually having to bust out their books to go through them; It also helps to serve as refreshers as to what is actually in them. And while I realize that most people likely don't have all (or even most) of the source material on their bookshelf, I'm guessing that some people at least have some of it. Besides, with many of the different creatures having different names in the set than they do in their source material, it just makes sense to name the source material.

With all the Reign of Winter Adventure Path books being released already, along with the other material for that campaign, it is easy to come up with a list of characters that might appear in the preprinted line. While I'm not sure what Paizo has in store for after the Reign of Winter set, there will likely be situations where not all the Adventure Paths for a particular line have been released by the time the weekly reveals are set to begin. (Wrath of Righteousness is a great example of this). But that doesn't mean that Erik can't provide a list of the source material for us to at least guess from.

So for example, if the next Pathfinder Battles line were to be The Mummy's Mask, we would
only be 3 books in by the time the weekly reveals were to begin here on the blog. That means we wouldn't have any clue about what monsters were potentially in chapters four through six of that Adventure Path when it was time to make our guesses. But if we knew that the entire line would have creatures found only in the Bestiaries 1-4, NPC Codex, Inner Sea Bestiary and Lost Cities of Golarian, for example, then we would at least have a chance at getting it right.

There would have to be exceptions of course. Each Adventure Path has at least four new creature entries in the Bestiary, along with a couple new NPC's that have a chance of finding plastic likenesses. So by the time reveals were to start, there would likely be a minimum of twelve new creatures and six or more new NPC's that could appear in the line but that we wouldn't even know existed. I'm not sure how that could be handled; perhaps just remove X amount of spots we had to guess, I don't know.

Anyways, I apologize for such a long message; I'm mainly just trying to flesh out the ideas in my head.

We really need a 360 spin on the Invader to fully appreciate it don't we? It's simply awesome in the front only shot.

Yeah that was one thing I liked about wizards early previews. The other great thing they did was the sillouhetes for the set, with the gradual reveal. But then I also like my Friday previews and the excitement they build for the set.

Now by my calculations and based on the last three sets, we have 12 to go. Only 1 common, 4 uncommon (which should be large) and 7 rare (all medium or smaller). Sadly that means my guesses are going to be way out unless the distribution changes for this set.

This really looks to be a fantastic set.

Cat: Some of your guesses are right, some of them are wrong. Does that help to build anticipation? :)

Surely Arueshalae made the set right?

Cat: Some of your guesses are right, some of them are wrong. Does that help to build anticipation? :)

Ah Erik that is perfect :P Now I can spend some free time second guessing myself and hoping my outside guesses pay off, I'm like a kid in a candy shop with this stuff.

Just as an aside Erik I think the way you reveal is perfect, others have done it differently for sure, but what I really look forward to is the combination of new mini and your little big of insight behind each mini and the design rationale/process. IF anything, I wish you had more time to write about the process behind the minis, like the reason for 12 goes at the wisp but then I realise your time is somewhat constrained by your myriad other responsibilities.

I'll say it again, even at the fear of sounding fanboy, this set is looking to be the best to date. The commons alone are just way above what I was expecting in scope and quality. I'm not sure how you'll top it but then isn't that what reign of winter is for (that and a gas mask wearing Russian soldier who could be my future alchemist)

Surely Arueshalae made the set right?

Erik Mona: Wait till you see the prepainted miniature...

Wayne Reynolds Artworks: Erik Mona Oh my word! I eagerly anticipate seeing the mini. There's something thrilling about seeing 2D artwork transformed into 3 dimensions that is so appealing
4 octobre, 16:50

from Wayne Reynolds facebook on Arushalae comment!!

How on earth can the Bodak be copyrighted? That name comes from mythology...

Probably because the Bodak as it stands in pathfinder is very different to the mythological creature, the Bodach, where the name probably comes from. The actual Bodach which is a little more than an old man, is very different to the undead eyeless, creature of the abyss. They really only share their name, if that.

Yeah, there are several creatures with mythological origins, whose specific D&D images are Wizard's IP. Tiamat & Orcus jump to mind.

That and, while the name may be open content, the mini isn't. I believe that's also why we have mini's of the "Treachery Demon," "Wrath Demon," "Death Demon," "Greater Death Demon," "Fire Demon," "Blood Demon," and "Snake Demon."