Since Wizards of the Coast's Harbinger set quietly surfaced on the shelves of the Sentry Box back in 2003, I have been actively collecting all sorts of gaming miniatures and coincidently hemoraging cash from my bank account. After collecting nearly every single miniature from the D&D minis line, most of the Axis and Allies minis, many of the Star Wars minis and hundreds of Reaper and Rackham miniatures, I now humbly consider myself an authority of 28mm collectable minis.
Pathfinder Minis came out recently. Obviously, I was obliged to buy a case. Here is what I think of Pathfinder Battles: Heros and Monsters from Paizo:
Good Stuff:
1. Only 40 minis to collect. I like smaller sets. They are easier to complete.
2. The plastic is nice and hard. There was little 'floopy-dong' syndrome that plagued D&D minis.
3. Some of the painjobs are quite good. The Lich is particularily good.
4. Great distribution in a case. If you buy one case, you will most likely get the entire set. There seemed to be a really good small-to-medium ration.
5. Nice details in the muscles on many of the creatures like the minotaur, ettin and ogre.
Bad Stuff:
1. Price. These little suckers are expensive. A booster pack is around 4 bucks. A booster comes with one or two minis. A large booster is around 6 bucks with one mini. WOTC's stuff was far cheaper than this.
2. Packaging. Holy crabapples, the packaging weighed 4 times as much as the minis. Seriously, for one single mini, there is a full color box and large plastic insert. The way Paizo packaged this stuff will surely fuel any pro-green organizations out there.
3. Sculpts are a little shakey for some. The wings on the chimera and on the manticore were very poorly done. My manticore actually came with two left wings.
4. The look of the monsters. I really hate most of the artwork from the Pathfinder Bestiaries. Some of the minis are exact duplicates of the crappy artwork in the book.
I suppose this set was better than the first set that Wizards put out 9 years ago, but Heroes and Monsters still pale in comparrison to most WOTC sets. Rackham sets are still far better than any of the prepainted minis sets that have been put out so far.
I have hope for Paizo, though. This is their first set. Just like Wizards, Paizo's future sets are sure to become much better as they continue to release stuff.
3 out of 5 stars.
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4 comments:
I have no plans to buy in, but I can't wait to see them.
There is really no need to buy into this set, unless you just want to collect for the sake of collecting (like me). Monsters like the minotaur are better than the WOTC minotaur, but most monsters are inferior duplicates of what you already have. All of the monsters in this set are just generic renditions of your already large collection.
Subsequent Paizo sets might be more attractive as they delve into more Golorion specific monsters that WOTC never built.
I bought a case, and got at least 1 of every fig.
You may look at Troll and Toad. I got a bunch of goblins for 1.50 each when the set first came out. I looked at it again and they were pretty well sold through but they still have some minis. They seemed a better price than the paizo.com store or ebay. I really wish they would give a nice big package of goblins or undead for a decent price
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