Panther

Even when sometimes it pretends to ignore them, a panther never leaves a prey. Its attacks, fast and brutal, are always focused in knocking down its victim.

At Level II, it improves its basic Tear Up attack with Knock Over (better damage, adds two free Knocking Down results). It acts first and it can ground an enemy, thus easing its team’s gladiators work.
Also, it can Follow Up an enemy it is in contact with; if this enemy tries to flee, a 5+ result in the blue die will mean the Panther follows them and prevents them to keep moving… These two skills are a great strategic asset. Its downside is that its stats do not stand out in any specific way.

Design process

For the Panther and the Leopard, we used references from the Triumph of Bacchus from Sousse Archaeological Museum, the relief of a maenad with satyrs from the British Museum, and finally the impressive mosaic of the great hunt from the La Olmeda Roman Villa in Palencia (www.villaromanalaolmeda.com)… a great catalogue for the beasts fighting in the venationes!

In the Panther case, the stance was an initiative from 3DBreed, and we approved it on the spot… without noticing that it only occupied one hex, like the small Beasts!

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Once the legs were on a double hexed base and after some final touches in the head, we had our Panther ready, the proud symbol of the victorious green team!

During the first Gladiatoris tournament, held in the Castilla & Dragon 2009 convention, the great green Beast handed out the victory to Rodrigo Alonso (aka “Parmularius Victor” and “Comici”). While fighting against the Elephant (from the Colosseum expansion) and a band of grey Barbarians, his Beast was the only survivor in an epic escape that earnt him the Pavidus marker, the scourge from the loralii, and his rivals’ complaints!

Here we can see a picture from that last turn… but back then the great green Beast was not a panther, but a Tiger! 😀

The great green beast from the first Gladiatoris prototype was a Tiger. Orange had an Aurochs, and there was no Panther. During our first revisions (with another company that was interested in publishing the game at the time) some cuts had to be made, and one of them was using a single great feline model, changing only the color. So the Aurochs was moved to the Colosseum expansion… thus moving our dear black Crocodile even further back (it had to wait until the arrival of the Mercenarii). At that moment, we decided that the Orange team would get the best great Beast, the Tiger (gaining a lot aesthetically with its new color).

Fortunately, with EscenaRYS, we finally decided to go for four different Beast models for the base game.