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A New Wave of Iconic Heroes Promo Cards!

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Here at PACG Headquarters, we love making promo cards! Sometimes, we get a little... out there. For example, Sweet Dragon Costume is a goblin in a kobold suit who is so completely convinced that he's a dragon that he can scare monsters to death.


Rawr.

But okay, there's one place we take promo cards very seriously. That's in the Pathfinder Battles: Iconic Heroes miniatures boxes, because man, have you seen how cool those minis are? We want to hold up our end of the bargain. Now, you've already seen what we did with sets 1 through 3. So check out some of these swank promo cards in Set #4 and Set #5.

Iconic Heroes Set #4

Here are some cards for three of our most complex characters. Note that all these cards have the Owner trait; that means that the character whose name is on the card can treat it as a Basic card. That's huge.


You'd look grumpy too if Shardra boiled stuff behind your face.

The goal with these promos is to interact well with what the character does naturally. So Jirelle's Bloodcrow Rapier not only scales up with her by adventure deck number, it has a power which enables her to add the Swashbuckling trait to any check to defeat a bane—even if it's not a combat check. For example, the Skull & Shackles villain Caulky Tarroon can be defeated by a Dexterity check, but if you don't add the Swashbuckling trait, she's gonna banish the top card of someone's deck. Bloodcrow Rapier makes that problem go away.

Shoanti Earthbreaker deals with one of the most frustrating types of cards in the game: Constructs. Golems and other Constructs routinely turn off spellcasters' powers, including those of Crowe. The Earthbreaker means he doesn't really worry about that much. He just pummels them into oblivion.

Ritual Censer is one of my favorite cards in this group. Not only does it help Shardra acquire spells, but it feeds off her natural tendency to have characters bunch up around her. While she's helping people with their checks to defeat banes and succeed at Knowledge checks, Ritual Censer helps other characters succeed at checks to close Shardra's location. That's some fine synergy at work.

Iconic Heroes Set #5

By the way, these cards aren't limited to the characters who own them. Take a look at Kess's card. Who wouldn't want to punch their way into better Diplomacy checks? And everyone can, because you don't need to be Kess to play it. And this is good, since we kinda haven't released Kess yet.


Watch out for the spikes.

On the other hand, you want to be Oloch when you play the Orc War Drum. Oloch might be the best character at moving cards around. Displaying weapons and blessings to add to checks, discarding armors and blessings to heal, banishing allies to explore—if it's a card, he can do something cool with it. Orc War Drum lets him get some of those cards back, and enable others to burn allies to boost anybody's check at your location.


Double your pleasure, double your fun! Have two Leryns instead of one!

Hey, it's Leryn! As an ally! When Adowyn uses one of her powers that says "a card that has the Animal trait," Leryn is suddenly available for her—twice. Now it's not such a big deal to shuffle the cohort Leryn into Adowyn's deck, because the ally Leryn is waiting to be played. That's versatility right there.

Pretty cool stuff, says me. Promo-worthy, you might say.

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Lead Designer

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Tags: Iconic Heroes Pathfinder Adventure Card Game
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Hey! We were just talking about Leryn.
Silver Crusade
1 person marked this as a favorite.

The Sweet Dragon Costume is tied with the Paladin's Helm for being the best promo card ever.
Dark Archive
1 person marked this as a favorite.

That is my absolute favorite piece of art from Paizo, I have that goblin tattooed on my leg. And for those who saw the blog a few days ago the stuffed goblin in costume is mine also. So my questions are two fold how do I get this card and two will it work in my Rise of the Runelords set?
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Mine all mine...don't touch wrote:
That is my absolute favorite piece of art from Paizo, I have that goblin tattooed on my leg. And for those who saw the blog a few days ago the stuffed goblin in costume is mine also. So my questions are two fold how do I get this card and two will it work in my Rise of the Runelords set?

You should have this card. I'll send you mine if you want it. It'll work fine as armor in RotR, although only in Wrath can you use it to add to a combat check.

Scarab Sages
Eliandra Giltessan wrote:
The Sweet Dragon Costume is tied with the Paladin's Helm for being the best promo card ever.

Sweet Dragon Costume is cute, but Improvised Dinosaur quite frankly just rocks.

Also, Poog of Zarongel - now THAT was a promo card. I think it came with the base Runelords set when it was released, and that card alone sold me on never, ever letting my subscription lapse.
Silver Crusade
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Sadly I was not around for Runelords subs, but I know enough RPG Chuffy players who hate Poog to suspect that the card is awesome.

Nonetheless, the Sweet Dragon Costume is, to me, evidence that kobolds are superior to goblins, so I, as a kobold fan, have to love it.
Dark Archive

How come the cards have pictures but the Iconic Heroes Set 5 has no images yet?
Wizkids has already released pictures of the actual figures.
I guess the card game has become more popular than the Pathfinder Battles line.
I hope it won't be more popular than the RPG one day.
2 people marked this as a favorite.
Marco Massoudi wrote:

How come the cards have pictures but the Iconic Heroes Set 5 has no images yet?

Wizkids has already released pictures of the actual figures.
I guess the card game has become more popular than the Pathfinder Battles line.
I hope it won't be more popular than the RPG one day.

Probably because the card images start with Paizo, while the figures start with WizKids. So, all Paizo has to due to put an image of the card on their website is take the image they have and put it on the website. While to put an image of a figure on the website, they need to get that image from WizKids.

While I won't say that I hope one day the card game is more popular than the RPG, I will say I hope one day they are equally popular, reigning over the Pathfinder world in glorious unison.
Dark Archive

Elcoderdude while a very generous offer I could not in good conscience take your promo but I would dearly like to acquire one in some fashion. Perhaps the kind Paizo folk would permit me to purchase one?
Mine all mine...don't touch wrote:
Elcoderdude while a very generous offer I could not in good conscience take your promo but I would dearly like to acquire one in some fashion. Perhaps the kind Paizo folk would permit me to purchase one?

I thought you might feel that way. Paizo as a rule doesn't sell promos, other than with the subscription. Miniature market has it for $10.

Dark Archive
elcoderdude wrote:
Mine all mine...don't touch wrote:
Elcoderdude while a very generous offer I could not in good conscience take your promo but I would dearly like to acquire one in some fashion. Perhaps the kind Paizo folk would permit me to purchase one?
I thought you might feel that way. Paizo as a rule doesn't sell promos, other than with the subscription. Miniature market has it for $10.

Thank you for the heads up and I will be placing an order on payday! And let me say again thank you for your offer I do greatly appreciate the gesture.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
Hawkmoon269 wrote:
Marco Massoudi wrote:

How come the cards have pictures but the Iconic Heroes Set 5 has no images yet?

Wizkids has already released pictures of the actual figures.
I guess the card game has become more popular than the Pathfinder Battles line.
I hope it won't be more popular than the RPG one day.
Probably because the card images start with Paizo, while the figures start with WizKids. So, all Paizo has to due to put an image of the card on their website is take the image they have and put it on the website. While to put an image of a figure on the website, they need to get that image from WizKids.

I think we actually finished all the cards before they even finished sculpting the minis—we wrapped sets 4 through 6 in early October.

Just to make sure - does the Censer's "add 1d6 to your checks against a spell" include the checks to recharge a spell you played for its power?
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Maps, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Longshot11 wrote:
Just to make sure - does the Censer's "add 1d6 to your checks against a spell" include the checks to recharge a spell you played for its power?
WotR rulebook, p11 wrote:
If a card refers to a check against another card, that refers to any check required by that card, whether it's a check to defeat, a check to acquire, a check to recharge, or any other check.

So, yes.

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