GOLEMANIA!

Friday, April 17, 2015

This week I'm revealing two amazing figures from June's Dungeons Deep set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted plastic figures. The idea behind this set is to present high-utility figures based around a rough "dungeon" theme. This allows us to include whatever figures we want to, rather than attempting to adapt a specific adventure or Adventure Path. That's resulted in a few "dealer's choice" selections, letting us pick whatever we want for no reason other than "we think it looks cool."

Up until about a two years ago, "we think it looks cool" really meant "Erik Mona thinks it looks cool," as before that point I was more or less solely responsible for the selections in each set. That all changed when we added our Licensing Coordinator Michael Kenway to our team to help me out with the miniatures and other projects that involve working with teams outside the Paizo office to create cool Pathfinder-related content. Mike has been an invaluable assistant to me as he ushers sculpts, paint plans, comic sketches, soundsets, and scripts through the approval process.

But Mike Kenway is much more than just a paper-pusher. He got his start here at Paizo as an editorial intern, and has always had a keen interest in the Pathfinder RPG. In fact, every day at noon you can find Mike in our employee break room, running or playing in a daily Pathfinder campaign with several members of the Paizo staff. He knows his stuff, and his attention to detail is absolutely amazing.

So, a few sets back, I decided to reward Mike's excellent work by giving him an opportunity to choose a miniature of his own to include in a set—I think it was Legends of Golarion. Unfortunately, that set was the first to see a scale-back in the number of figures per set from 55 to 45, and Mike's enthusiastic selection didn't make the original cut for a variety of reasons. But it's been waiting silently in the shadows since then, eager for a chance to spread carnage when a slot became available.

Mike's first choice was this horrific Bone Golem:

The Bone Golem appears on page 133 of Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 3, where it clocks in at CR 8 and includes a creeptastic power known as "Bone Prison," in which it tosses some of its constituent bones at you to form a cage of bones that crushes you. A great guy to have at a party, or to protect the evil lair of a necromancer. In the image above we see the Bone Golem from the front, a jumble of skulls, ribcages, and muscle tissue just waiting to give a great big bear hug to your deserving player characters. The detail on this figure is insane. Take a look at his back:

More skulls. Maybe one day he'll add yours to his collection? The Bone Golem is a Large, rare creature. Way to go, Mike!

While we're on the subject of golems, let's check out the set's other major construct:

Here we have the Clockwork Golem, from page 137 of Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 2. If you're familiar with that book, you'll note that the design here is quite different. While the original version has a cool illustration, it didn't really sell the "clockwork" element as much as we would have liked, and its unusual limbs seemed ill-suited for a 3D miniature. So we had the creature re-illustrated for the Pathfinder Pawns Bestiary 2 Box, and that's the version we used as the basis for this miniature. The Clockwork Golem is a Large, rare figure.

And that's it for this week! To make sure you don't miss either of these two cool figures, please consider setting up a Pathfinder Battles Ongoing Case Subscription!

I'll be back next week (unfortunately one year older, as my birthday is Tuesday) with a special birthday treat—my personal favorite figures from the Dungeons Deep set!

Until then, I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher