Dire Azathoth?!
Everyone loved Dire Cthulhu. SO… I started brooding on Dire Azathoth. Why? Well, even as I was concerned that our former Cthulhu was so svelte, I was never fully happy with our Azathoth. For me (I realize this is subjective) Azathoth was one of our weaker Great Old One designs. He looks a little too much like a fatter Nyarlathotep, or maybe an interstellar starfish. He certainly doesn’t (to me) seem to be literally the most terrifying entity in the universe. So a new Azathoth seemed like a good idea, IF we could fund it. Since it would be a large, detailed, and expensive figure, this was tough to figure out.
Anyway, this week Kent Hamilton (our Onslaught 3 artist) was visiting me – (we were actually discussing a future project), and I broached the subject of Dire Azathoth to him. He loved it and we started beating our brains out on what this entity should look like. He has already begun! We have a sculptor lined up (one of our best) and we are going to have this puppy put together and good to go by the end of the campaign (because we don’t want to violate our China-ready ideal).
Anyway, we are really proud of what this looks like, and I’m excited to improve upon a sculpt that now might be an “earlier stage” of Azathoth’s development. However, Petersen Games has a confession to make. We did not plan for, nor allow for, the construction of this impressive new model (it’s big, too – one of my issues with the old Azathoth model was that it was only middling in size). So how could we handle the cost? It became even harder, because we had just made the decision to add the gigantic $30 6-8 Player Shaggai map to most pledge levels (Yothan, Hound of Tindalos and Great Old One), unexpectedly. Again this was done at your feedback. You the backers talked us into it.