Yes, yes, I know. That's not the right version of "horde." But hear me out! No army of undead is complete without a veritable dragon's trove of minion figures to inundate the battlefield with. So while the minis represent a horde of undead, you, dear reader, are going to amass a hoard of these phenomenal figures from the forthcoming Pathfinder Battles: Ruins of Lastwall set from WizKids (now due out in May).
Illustration by Vlada Hladkova
We've already looked at the Skeletal Speaker figure, but it's not the only skeleton in the set. No, there are two more to form the backbone of your undead army. Here we have the Skeletal Samurai and Skeletal Soldier, Medium uncommon and common figures, respectively.
Dry bones, dry bones, so many dry bones. Often missing from the armies of undeath are aquatic creatures, the drowned dead. Well, not anymore! The Draugr, a Medium common figure, can also serve as a blue-skinned zombie or other walking dead, but is particularly useful when you need the living dead to threaten a ship or coastal community.
While all undead threaten to haunt the dreams of the living, only some are native to the Dreamlands themselves. One such example is the Lovecraftian horror known as a Leng Ghoul, represented here as a Medium common figure.
Last week I promised one final deity in the series, and none seemed more fitting for this set than Arazni, whose history is intertwined with the Knights of Ozem and the Whispering Tyrant. It was the dread lich who killed her when she was Aroden's herald, known as the Red Crusader, after all. Now, she rules the undead nation of Geb in the absence of its ghostly namesake. A Medium rare figure, Arazni will be particularly useful to GMs running the Tyrant's Grasp Adventure Path, the first adventure of which should be hitting store shelves before the end of the month.
Among the many artifacts linked to Arazni, none are more infamous than the Bloodstones of Arazni, a set of canopic jars holding her innards. Thus, when deciding on our final piece of set dressing, we used the image of these jars to make a pair of Canopic Jars suitable for any undead tomb. In practice, they came back smaller than I would have preferred, even if they are at the correct scale. In retrospect, we probably should have cheated their size up a bit and grouped them together into a bunch instead of being individual urns.
Reference illustration by Kate Maximovich
Finally, we end our preview series with one of the most requested figures in Pathfinder lore. A figure originally made way back in 2005 in metal form in Compleat Encounter: The Vault of the Whispering Tyrant (the first appearance of the iconic lich, long before Pathfinder or Golarion were even a thing), the Whispering Tyrant has never had a prepainted plastic iteration. That ends now, however, with this Medium rare figure based on the Wayne Reynolds cover of Pathfinder Campaign Setting: The Inner Sea World Guide.
Next week, we'll look at the contents of the set's premium piece, the Cemetery of the Fallen, with pictures of the final pieces on display at New York Toy Fair earlier in the month.
Mark Moreland
Franchise Manager
