Love At First Sight...

I love these little buggers. They're three goblins from the newly released range of Pathfinder prepainted miniatures from Paizo and Wizkids (Paizo once again picking up a market share that Wizards Of The Coast inexplicably dropped - you produce a game system that revolves around miniatures and battle maps and then stop producing miniatures!)

I wasn't even going to use goblins in my swords and sorcery campaign until I saw these guys - they have such a mischievous, fairytale quality about them that I couldn't really say no.

Now I know nothing about Pathfinder - except that it's a tweaked version of the loathsome Third Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D for accountants, lawyers, miscellaneous number crunchers and min-maxing power gamers) - so holds no appeal to me whatsoever, but if this is their non-Tolkien take on goblins then I'm impressed.

There is much more faerie about them than Middle-Earth goblins and that puts them squarely back in my ballpark. I can see myself amassing an army of these critters to take on the pseudo-Arthurian/Robin Hood heroes (or anti-heroes) of Tekralh.

the figures are also well-painted, with good detailing in their faces, eyes and mouths. These I got as singles off of eBay and am awaiting the arrival of my first, small, batch of blind boxes... but so far, so good.