The extraterrestrial menaces of Starfinder Alien Archive come alive on your tabletop with this box-busting collection of more than 300 creature pawns for use with the Starfinder Roleplaying Game or any tabletop science fantasy RPG! Printed on sturdy cardstock, each pawn features a beautiful, full-color image of an alien from the Starfinder RPG's first collection of interplanetary threats and unique player-character races. These cardboard pawns slot into size-appropriate plastic bases, making it easy to mix them with traditional metal or plastic miniatures. With multiple pawns for commonly encountered creatures and a handful of new foes to fight in starship combat, the Starfinder Alien Archive Pawn Box is the best way to ensure you've got the perfect characters to bring your Starfinder campaign to life!
Hundreds of aliens invade your tabletop! While creature pawns are broken out by base size, all starship pawns use medium bases. The Starfinder Alien Archive Pawn Box includes the following:
Small (and Smaller) Creatures
Anacite Wingbot (4)
Apari Constituent (4)
Electrovore (4)
Elemental, Air (4)
Elemental, Earth (4)
Elemental, Fire (4)
Elemental, Water (4)
Formian Worker (6)
Goblin, Space (6)
Gray (4)
Ikeshti Brood-Minder (4)
Robot, Observer-Class Security (4)
Skittermander (6)
Skittermander Whelp (4)
Symbiend I (2)
Symbiend II (2)
Medium Creatures
Aeon Guard (6)
Anacite Laborer (2)
Assembly Ooze (4)
Asteray (4)
Barathu, Early Stage (4)
Bryrvath (2)
Contemplative (4)
Contemplative Mentor (2)
Cybernetic Zombie (6)
Damoritosh's Arm Host (2)
Draelik (4)
Drow Enforcer (4)
Drow Noble Arms Dealer (2)
Elemental, Air (4)
Elemental, Earth (4)
Elemental, Fire (4)
Elemental, Water (4)
Formian Warrior (4)
Hesper (2)
Inevitable, Anhamut (2)
Kalo Deepspeaker (4)
Kalo Sharkhunter (4)
Maraquoi Hunter (4)
Maraquoi Shaman (4)
Marooned One (3)
Necrovite (2)
Nihili (3)
Nuar (4)
Occult Zombie (6)
Orocoran (2)
Orocoran Ichor Lord (2)
Reptoid (4)
Reptoid Master (2)
Robot, Patrol-Class Security (4)
Ryphorian Skyfire Pilot (2)
Ryphorian Technician (4)
Skeletal Undead (6)
Swarm Corrovox (4)
Verthani Aether Pilot (4)
Verthani Pure One (4)
Void Hag (2)
Witchwyrd (2)
Wrikreechee I (2)
Wrikreechee II (2)
Large Creatures
Angel, Barachius (2)
Apari (2)
Barathu (2)
Caypin (2)
Crest-Eater (2)
Deh-Nolo (2)
Dragonkin (4)
Elemental, Air (4)
Elemental, Earth (4)
Elemental, Fire (4)
Elemental, Water (4)
Frujai Soldier (4)
Haan (4)
Haan Combat Pilot (2)
Hallajin (2)
Ikeshti Rivener (2)
Ksarik (2)
Sarcesian (4)
Scavenger Slime (4)
Sharpwing (4)
Shobhad (4)
Shobhad Warleader (2)
Surnoch (2)
Swarm Thresher Lord (4)
Urog (4)
Huge Creatures
AHAV (4)
Bloodbrother (4)
Dragon, Young Adult Blue (2)
Elemental, Air (4)
Elemental, Earth (4)
Elemental, Fire (4)
Elemental, Water (4)
Mountain Eel (4)
Starships
Devil, Endbringer (2)
Novaspawn (2)
Tetrad Caravel (2)
Includes 20 medium bases, 10 large bases, and 5 huge bases.
The Starfinder Alien Archive Pawn Box is a shoebox-sized box of strong cardboard containing more than 300 pawns (thick cardboard cut-outs of creatures that fit into plastic bases, included in the set, for tactical combat on a grid). All of the creatures (and most of the artwork) come from the first Alien Archive book for the game, and because that book is about half the size of a Pathfinder Bestiary, there's not as many different creatures included as there would be in a similar set for Starfinder's cousin. However, the total number of pawns hasn't decreased, and this is reflected in the high number of multiples for most creatures: pawns come in either groups of six (space goblins, aeon guards, etc.), four (security robots, barathu, etc.), or two (necrovites, hespers, etc.). This means it's easy to have large battles without having to scramble for stand-in pawns. A little symbol in different colours on each duplicate makes it easy to tell duplicates on the battlefield apart--at least if you're not partially colour-blind like me.
Two positive things that stuck out to me about the set were that there's a *lot* of Huge-sized creatures included (always impressive to plink down on the table) and there is full coverage of core elementals, including four each for small/medium/large/huge elementals of the air/fire/water/earth varieties. This is *really* useful for Pathfinder as well.
My major critique of the set is that, unlike the Pathfinder pawn sets, the pawns in the Starfinder Alien Archive Pawn Box are not numbered and (a greater sin in my book) there's no set indicator. This makes clean-up a chore and mis-filing them a greater possibility, especially as more of these sets are released.
A couple of miscellaneous notes:
* If you're new to Starfinder, this isn't the box you want for PCs (unless you're playing something from the Alien Archive)
* This box is almost all creatures, but there are a few starship pawns.
Overall, I think it's a good set--the artwork is attractive and colorful, and the multiples of every pawn are really handy. But it does have flaws, and I hope those are addressed by Paizo in future sets.
I'm a fan of pawn sets. They're size-efficient and cost-effective. Who has enough money and room in their house to store 500 new 3D minis per year? And their flatness makes them very convenient when packing luggage.
In this pawn box Paizo succeeded quite well at keeping the whole image on the pawn (something which they haven't always done well). Maybe because Alien Archive is noticeably thinner than the Bestiaries, you get fewer different critters but a lot more of each (4-6 of things where a Bestiary box might give you 2-4).
I particularly like the elementals. This one has Huge elementals, which the Pathfinder Bestiary doesn't have. Each size of elemental has new artwork, and the bigger they get the angrier they look. Wouldn't want to run into the huge earth elemental in a dark alleyway :P
The big, BIG PROBLEM though is that the name of the pawn set isn't printed on the pawns, nor do they have numbers. That sounds trivial but it isn't. I store my pawns in the original cardboard in their boxes - easiest way to keep them sorted. If I need a monster from Bestiary 17 starting with Q, I pop open box 17 and flip cardboard until I come to monsters starting with a Q. After I'm done playing, I have a hand of pawns from five boxes, but each pawn has a box name printed on it so I now where to put it back. It's very easy and efficient.
Bestiary boxes, as well as Pathfinder AP pawn collections, the Villain Codex, NPC Codes all have this handy system. But the Starfinder sets don't. Neither Alien Archive, nor Pact Worlds, nor Core Rulebook. So if I've used pawns from all three in an adventure (which is really not that unlikely) I have to do a lot of looking up to see where to put them back. And Alien Archive 2 is going to hit the shelves in a couple of months. This problem could get bigger and bigger.
PLEASE PAIZO PUT THE NAME OF THE PAWN SET ON THE PAWNS. Also please the number in that set. You've done this for years and it's really useful. Why did you stop?
Overall a great set, but I was disappointed that there wasn't new Skittermanders or any of the other new races.
With future sets it would be super cool for more variations of the playable races, like Skitttermander mechanics or Barathu Technomancers.
But, I'm not going to let my personal preferences drag down the star rating of a very good set, so good job Paizo, give yourselves a round of applause!
Excellent cardstock. Beautiful artwork. Works well for adventures in Iron Gods, Star Wars, Shadowrun and of course Starfinder. Don't listen to nonsense reviews when you could take your game to the next level and make your players beg for more!
The person responsible for choosing the numbers provided for every creature has done a good job.
Almost every creature is there in the required amount.
There are a few exceptions:
-"Apari" have organization: solitary, but two are in the set.
-"Deh-Nolo" is the same.
-"Dragon, Young Adult Blue" is the same.
-"Gray" are encountered solo, paired or as invasion (6-12), but 4 are included.
-"Haan Combat Pilot" are encountered solitary, but 2 are included.
-"Hallajin" is the same.
-"Ikeshti Rivener" is the same.
-"Inevitable, Anhamut" is the same.
-"Kalo Deepspeaker" is encountered solitary, but 4 are included.
-"Maraquoi Shaman" is the same.
-"Necrovite" is solitary, but two are included.
-"Novaspawn" is the same.
-"Orocoran Ichor Lord" is the same.
-"Reptoid Master" is the same.
-"Skittermander Whelps" are encountered solitary or as a nest (5-25), yet only 4 are included.
-"Swarm Thresher Lords" are encountered up to 2 at a time, yet 4 are included.
There could have been more "Drow Enforcers", "Space Goblins", "Hesper" or "Ikeshti" instead, but that´s a minor concern remedied with buying a second box.
OMISSIONS:
-"Elicoth", one of the coolest creatures imo, is missing because it´s gargantuan.
-"Frujai Colony" - colossal.
-"Kyokor" - colossal.
-"Oma", which is colossal as a creature, but medium as a starship.
This could and should have been included.
ERRORS:
-The "Cybernetic Zombie" pawn is medium, but being based on an Ysoki base creature, it should be small instead.
-"Void Hag": 2 are included, but for a coven 3 are needed.
Mostly a very good selection. Having more pawns than needed is better than the alternative.
If 3-5 medium Oma and one more medium Void Hag would be included and the "Cybernetic Zombie" (assuming it is based on the Ysoki art from page 114 of the Alien Archive) would be small, it would be nearly perfect.
I´ll put up a proper review once i have the physical product in hand.
Does the PDF version contain top-down views for VTT? Since that is the only real reason to have the PDF and the only real way to use the pawns since the oh so intelligent people at Piazo decided that it was a good idea to release the adventure path but wait for a year or more depending on when they do make it to market to publish the maps for those adventure paths. That takes some serious intellect.
Does the PDF version contain top-down views for VTT?
There are no top-down views of pawns, since they would be more or less unrecognizable that way.
Quote:
Since that is the only real reason to have the PDF
Untrue, lots of people use PDFs to have facing views of pawns on VTT or to print out pawns.
Quote:
and the only real way to use the pawns
Untrue, lots of people use pawns outside VTT.
Quote:
since the oh so intelligent people at Piazo
If you didn't intend that to sound like a sarcastic insult at Paizo's intelligence, you might want to reconsider your phrasing. Also, it's funny when somebody insults someone's intelligence but misspells their name in the process.
Quote:
decided that it was a good idea to release the adventure path but wait for a year or more depending on when they do make it to market to publish the maps for those adventure paths.
Untrue, the maps are released together with the AP installments. Even if you're talking about the Campaign Setting Map Folios (which have like three maps that are generally overland scale and not useful for VTT play anyway), I don't think those have ever taken a year (let alone "more").
...since the oh so intelligent people at Piazo decided that it was a good idea to release the adventure path but wait for a year or more depending on when they do make it to market to publish the maps for those adventure paths. That takes some serious intellect.
Appreciating the necessity for that takes some understanding of the production process and the timelines involved in ordering art - most of the art and maps hasn't yet been produced until after the AP is halfway done, so even if they pull the trigger immediately on pawns/map packs/ancillary products they are rarely ready before the AP is completed. They need to wait for this since things can change substantially from outline to author turnover - significant NPCs can take on different relevance and I presume the author is also largely responsible for the maps as well.
Also, I'm not sure what you're waiting for in terms of maps. They don't generally 'publish the maps for adventure paths' separately (they used to provide such a product but there were a lot of people who objected to it and the format of the map folios was changed, to generally positive response). Just a heads up, in case you're waiting for a "Distant Suns Map Collection" PDF or something..
That said, I would always recommend waiting until after an AP is completely released before running it anyway. There is usually nuance and context for the early installments that don't really come together until you've read books five and six. Many of the problems people report when running the early/mid-range AP issues stem from a failure to fully appreciate the overall arc, in my opinion.
...since the oh so intelligent people at Piazo decided that it was a good idea to release the adventure path but wait for a year or more depending on when they do make it to market to publish the maps for those adventure paths. That takes some serious intellect.
Appreciating the necessity for that takes some understanding of the production process and the timelines involved in ordering art - most of the art and maps hasn't yet been produced until after the AP is halfway done, so even if they pull the trigger immediately on pawns/map packs/ancillary products they are rarely ready before the AP is completed. They need to wait for this since things can change substantially from outline to author turnover - significant NPCs can take on different relevance and I presume the author is also largely responsible for the maps as well.
Also, I'm not sure what you're waiting for in terms of maps. They don't generally 'publish the maps for adventure paths' separately (they used to provide such a product but there were a lot of people who objected to it and the format of the map folios was changed, to generally positive response). Just a heads up, in case you're waiting for a "Distant Suns Map Collection" PDF or something..
That said, I would always recommend waiting until after an AP is completely released before running it anyway. There is usually nuance and context for the early installments that don't really come together until you've read books five and six. Many of the problems people report when running the early/mid-range AP issues stem from a failure to fully appreciate the overall arc, in my opinion.
I prefer to not use VTT but since there are no maps for Incident at Absalom Station (Dead Suns 1 of 6). The Docking bay is scheduled for a March/April release. Sunrise Maiden has a May/June tenative release date. I have not seen a release date for the Fusion Queen, Acreon, or Drift Rock, indicating they are likely going to be a year or more after the module has been released even though the maps are don as a scaled down version appear in the module but you are not going to be fitting any pawns on those.
I guess I can understand the non-overhead view on the tokens. For using a VTT I'd still prefer a 3/4 isometric view.
I've not played pathfinder so I don't know how adventure paths were done in the past but I would think the best way would be to release the maps for each module with the modules. I don't mind the extra cost as that makes sense to me and one of the main reasons I wanted to move to Starfinder over Star Wars was that these maps were going to be available to play on. Buying a module and having to wait a year for the maps to be available or be force to use a VTT is just sad though. I would feel a bit different probably if other maps were not coming out before the ones needed for the module.
Bryan, apologies for my earlier answer which may have been snippy in tone. I didn't realize you weren't previously familiar with Paizo's business model from Pathfinder. Allow me to clarify, perhaps this will be of some help to you, at least to manage your expectations.
Adventure Paths do not produce physical maps. If you're expecting to see Fusion Queen, Acreon or Drift Rock as physical map products, you're out of luck. The only way to get AP maps physically is to take them directly from the adventure (scanner if you have the physical AP volume, copypaste if you have the PDF). The maps inside an adventure will not be sold as separate products. They're DIY stuff. You make them digital yourself through the aforementioned means, and then you either use them in a VTT or print them out physically, according to your own preference. I have done both and run adventures successfully both on VTT using maps I copypasted from PDF, and physically with printouts that I printed on my color inkjet.
The maps for each module are already released, within each AP volume. It just requires some legwork to get them out of each volume. That may be more legwork than you wish to do, but I will say that once you've done it a few times, it's a couple-of-minutes process.
The resolution for the maps of the locations in the APs will always be a little fuzzy when blown up to one real life inch per square, but they're still perfectly playable. And it's the best and only thing we're gonna get.
For VTT purposes you pretty much just take the maps from the PDF. There's absolutely no need for standalone.
Yep I am currently running a VTT game in Roll20 and ripped all the maps I needed right from the PDFs they are 300dpi which leaves more than enough room to scale them up to the appropriate size for a monitor and still look great.
For Starfinder I did switch to portrait tokens rather than top down images (I prefer those) but the switch was fine with my players and again I can rip all the art I need for the tokens out of the various PDFs of the various books and adventure path PDFs without any additional purchases.
Over all it works fine and the free PDFs provided by subscribing is exactly why I do it to provide me with all the PDF material I need for my Roll20 game. Plus I love to have a hard copy of all the books for my collection.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Samy wrote:
The resolution for the maps of the locations in the APs will always be a little fuzzy when blown up to one real life inch per square, but they're still perfectly playable. And it's the best and only thing we're gonna get.
They are indeed perfectly usable. You can see a photo of Docking Bay 94 here. I printed it at 800% using the artist's image, freely available here.
1. How do you get the images out of the PDF? They are understandably password protected.
2. It turns out there won't be internet access where we will be playing, which makes my last few days of learning Roll20 pointless. Does anyone know of a VTT for Mac that does not require Internet or and I back to using GIMP and tons of layers? Unfortunate as once you start getting past Roll20's learning curve for GMs you get to liking it.
1. I don't have any problem just clicking on the image to select it, right-clicking to Copy, going to Paint and Paste, then crop as desired. If that doesn't work, there's also a Take Snapshot option in Acrobat's, I think, Edit menu.
2. Fantasy Grounds is an installable VTT program, I haven't tested it out whether it can save assets offline.
1. I don't have any problem just clicking on the image to select it, right-clicking to Copy, going to Paint and Paste, then crop as desired. If that doesn't work, there's also a Take Snapshot option in Acrobat's, I think, Edit menu.
2. Fantasy Grounds is an installable VTT program, I haven't tested it out whether it can save assets offline.
Thanks Samy. It looks like FG does not require network but I will find out. I'm going to hold off on getting it as they are working with Paizo to release full functional Starfinder rules minus space combat. It's been submitted to Paizo as of yesterday and it's waiting on approval. They say it will probaly take a week or two for Paizo to approve or submit changes/corrections so best case is that the full Starfinder rules for FG could be available in a week or two. Someone else suggested Maptool and I briefly looked at it and for just maps it should work.
No Ellicoth really hurts. I was just looking for it thinking "I'm all prepared, it's in the book, wait, where?"... Now it's just an empty large base on my table. Was it left out because it was in a Pathfinder Bestiary before?
