Shattered Star Minis

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook will probably have noticed that I went into quite a lot of detail on receiving and opening my latest set of shinies, the Shattered Star minis from Paizo and Wizkids.  This is the third set of minis from the partnership, and the third case I've bought of them.  They are pre-painted plastic miniatures, sold in random blisters of four minis.  I bought a case, which consists of 32 blisters split into 4 'bricks', and this meant that I was able to pick up the Gargantuan Blue Dragon promo piece attached to the set.

A note on the photos:  My phone's camera is decent, but the lighting wasn't good, and I'm not the world's best photographer.

The Set still contained

 Here we have everything ready to be opened.  When I open a case, I tend to make it far more laborious than is strictly necessary, recording each mini in it's position in the boxes, and checking them off the list.  This stretches out the process of opening, and also builds the tension as the last few blisters get opened, as you can see which of the minis you've yet to get one of.

All my minis, arranged by their number

 I managed to get one of each of the 17 rare minis, 2-3 of each of the uncommons, and 3-5 of the commons, which is a good ratio.  I actually got more uncommons than commons overall, although this is purely because there are more uncommon sculpts than the common.

I'm not going to go through all of the minis one by one, but I am going to pick out a few highlights:

Gargantuan Blue Dragon

Scary.  Also, rich!

 This one literally towers over the set, at over half a foot tall.  She comes in four parts; the Main body, the two separate wings and then a curved tail piece that is clearer below.  Details that can't really be seen above include the very tight scales across the blue, and the runes inscribed into her chest.  The separate parts don't quite squeeze in as much as I'd like, and I'm probably going to take some glue to them at some point to secure them, but overall it's a wondrous mini.

Tail is Clearer

Pallid Path Cultist

This is the mini that actually made me exclaim "oh wow!" when I picked the first of him out of the box - the photo (and in fact the preview photo on Paizo's website) don't make it obvious, but he is more or less clear plastic.  Given the the race he's supposed to be part of is extremely adept at camouflaging themselves, this makes him very appropriate.  He's also a common, which means that I actually got four of him.

Alchemical Golem

 
 I love how they've used little bits of clear plastic interspersed into this Golem, with the various protuberances and joints.  He's quite small for a Large mini (not something that can be said for many members of this set), but unlike say Heroes & Monster's Trolls or the various Lamia from Rise of the Runelords he doesn't look so small as to break the illusion.

Clockwork Reliquary

 

This guy, the BBEG from the Shattered Star Adventure Path, is just a wonderful large.  There's a in depth blog post detailing the creation of this guy here, but it's the little touches of design - the way it has seven limbs (a significant number in the history of this guy), the exposed skeleton in the middle, the significant motifs across it, all just make a memorable end piece to the AP.

The Elementals

left to right; Air, Earth, Fire, Water

I decided to do all of these guys in one shot so you could get a good comparison, and also have a look at things side-by-side.  This Covers off the four core elementals in both medium and large.  The large minis are at the top limit of the large category, so I'm going to try and produce some 3" bases with an indentation for the core base, in order to convert these guys to huge if needs be.  I've got 3-4 each of the mediums, which gives enough for most summoning spells to get out.

Overall, the set is wonderful.  I've been lucky to mostly avoid the damage that has been being reported from wandering Larges in case, having only had a Pallid Path Cultist swept clean off his base and a Hound of Tindalos loose its tongue, but both of those are either fixed or so minor as to be practically unnoticeable.  There's not what I'd call a bad mini in the set; it's a bit disappoint that the swarm mini is a cone which means others can't be piled on top, and the Hill Giant, although better than the original preview, is still based off a piece of art I'm not the greatest fan of, but neither are too problematic.  I've got a decent range of minis - I'm going to pick up another swarm and another time puppy to round out numbers to fit my needs, but other than that I'm happy with what I've got.

9/10