Keith Tatroe, lead designer on Monster Manual: Legendary Evils, gives us our first sneak peak at this summer's huge release!

Welcome to the first DDM Guild preview of Legendary Evils! It feels like just yesterday, a new set came out. Or was it yesterday? While Legendary Evils won’t be out until after Gen Con, not everybody is preparing for the upcoming Constructed Championships. Some of us are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to share what we've been hard at work on for the past several months.

It doesn't even seem possible, but the second set of _Player's Handbook Heroes_ miniatures are just around the corner. Soon, you'll have the Rashemi Witch, the Windmaster Mage, and the rest in your hands.

While several of these cards retained stats originally designed and developed for _Feywild_ and other unreleased sets, and several others are reprints of past and upcoming restats, the rest are entirely the Guild's own creations.

The stat cards will be legal for all DCI-sanctioned and Online League events starting July 21, 2009.

After last week's scary jaunt in the wilderness, and at the risk of sounding a bit like a Drow, might I suggest we retire to the safer and more secure caverns of the Underdark?

Here, we will meet three different heroes that will only play nicely together when found in this sunless realm. However, they are a true bargain as a squad, weighing in at under 80 points. Nonetheless, outside the Underdark, they only see each other over crossed swords (or spears, as the case may be).

In particular, the Tiefling Spearfighter is a disciplined veteran of both Borderlands and Underdark warbands.

This week's preview takes us on a jaunt into the scary wilderness, where we find three different takes on the Wild hero. Player's Handbook Heroes, Series 2 gives Wild a shot in the arm -- perhaps enough that we'll see many green warbands at GenCon in six weeks or so. Perhaps even one or two of the creatures previewed today will make the critical cut.

We'll start with the least wild of the bunch, the Gnome Sneak. While normally a Fey child of the wild, you'll sometimes see him creeping into the civilized lands -- and not just to steal from them!

It has become a tradition, just prior to GenCon, for the designers and the Organized Play folks to sit down and examine the state of the game. Of course, given the current state of the Guild, this is a metaphoric sit down, as we are scattered across the globe, but it follows the pattern set down by our predecessors at Wizards. Our quest lies in those figures that are causing problems for the Guild membership at large.

In just under a month, Player's Handbook Heroes, Series 2 boosters will be gracing the shelves of your Friendly Local Game Store -- and that means 18 new figures for your skirmish game.