Big Guns

Friday, May 20, 2016

Friday brings the smell of fresh plastic wafting on the winds, a sure sign that it's time again to preview some digital sculpts for October's Deadly Foes set of Pathfinder Battles prepainted miniatures! As we prep for PaizoCon next weekend, we're heading into a big week for Paizo, so I wanted to take the time to focus on a couple of "big" miniatures in the set—namely two of my favorites!

Here we have the Ankhrav Drone, a new name for a classic creature found on page 15 of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary. The story behind this burrowing, bug-like monster's origin is quite interesting. The standard version, with a name gate-locked by our inability to include the Open Game License on the bottom of every figure, also was saddled with an illustration that wasn't too inspiring, and that didn't seem to me like it would make a good miniature. Still, it's a very useful creature in general, and eventually I want to make sure we make every creature in the first Bestiary (if not all the others), so I had a lot of impetus to make the figure, but knew we'd need a better illustration (for minis purposes) AND a new name for the creature. Enter the Pathfinder Campaign Setting book Belkzen, Hold of the Orc Lords. That book introduced the Ankhrav, a Huge cousin of the classic Bestiary monster, and positioned it more as a brood queen for the standard Large version of the character. It also had a very cool illustration that, when coupled with the re-do we put into the Pathfinder Pawns Bestiary Box created the new look for this creature. I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out, and look forward to having this guy burrow his way up from under my player characters! The Ankhrav Drone is a Large figure at the uncommon rarity.

The Gynosphinx is a classic dungeon creature that we've somehow not managed to produce in more than 10 Pathfinder Battles sets. I think we've been waiting for the right piece of art, and with this version, we've finally got it. Sure, she's a bit Liz Taylor, but I'd hardly call that a problem. Ahem. Anyway, the Gynosphinx is a Large, rare figure.

And that's all I've got for this week. We will likely NOT have a Publisher Preview next week, as I'll be at PaizoCon with the rest of the Paizo staff. I WILL be revealing some new figures at the Preview Banquet on Saturday night, though, so keep your eyes on the Internet to see if you can't find some camera phone photos before we formally share them here after the convention.

And if you ARE coming to PaizoCon, don't forget the 9th-annual Miniatures Trading Afterparty in the hotel bar immediately after the conclusion of the convention on Monday. I'll have piles of Pathfinder Battles goodies, and it's a great chance to swap doubles with other miniatures fiends in the community. Plastic, metal, painted, unpainted. Bring it all! Dump stuff you don't want anymore for new stuff you never knew you wanted. It's one of my favorite parts of the convention, and I look forward to seeing many of you there!

Until then (and after), I remain...

Erik Mona
Publisher