WizKids April 2026 Releases Include Nolzur's, Pathfinder Deep Cuts, and More

Wave 28 of WizKids' primed-and-ready unpainted lines drops this month across hobby retail and distribution, and the WIN solicitation for April 2026 is one of the denser single-month slates in recent memory. Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures and Pathfinder Battles Deep Cuts together account for more than a dozen distinct SKUs, all pre-primed with the label's signature deep-cut sculpting that makes brush control dramatically easier on fine detail. Before you start loading a cart, here is what actually warrants prioritizing, and a quick pre-order checklist for each major group.

D&D Nolzur's Marvelous Miniatures: Wave 28

The undead cluster is the standout painter's buy from this wave. Classic Wight & Classic Wraith ($5.99) and Classic Vampire & Classic Zombie ($5.99) arrive as dual-pack blisters, meaning you get two complementary sculpts for under six dollars each. The undead sub-genre has consistently strong engagement for painters, partly because the palette range is genuinely wide: desaturated grays and sickly greens for the Wight and Wraith contrast sharply with the warm burgundy-and-pallid-flesh reads that work for a Vampire. These are repaint-friendly staples, the kind of sculpt that plays well in speedpaint, contrast, and traditional layering alike, and that familiarity with the subject matter means tutorial content tied to them tends to get traction fast.

The Barlgura ($8.99) is the one to lock in a pre-order for immediately. A large ape-like demon from the D&D Monster Manual, the Barlgura sculpt sits at a bigger footprint than the standard medium-scale blister pair, which is why it carries the higher price point. Larger sculpts in the Nolzur's line historically move fast through hobby-store allocations; the increased surface area also makes it genuinely rewarding to paint, with musculature, demonic detailing, and texture that reward drybrushing and wet blending in equal measure.

Pre-order decision checklist for Barlgura:

• Who it's for: painters who enjoy large-scale monster work and want a centerpiece for a D&D encounter board
• Expected paint time: 3-5 hours for a solid tabletop standard; 8-12 hours for a display-quality finish with OSL on the demonic features
• Staple or oddity: one-off character sculpt with strong content hook value; not a sculpt you will repaint routinely, but it photographs exceptionally well

Rounding out the Nolzur's April slate are the Classic Yeti, the Assassin & Berserker ($5.99), the Werebear ($8.99), and the Bugbear Stalker & Goblin Hexer ($5.99), the latter confirmed as featured in the 2024 Monster Manual. The Assassin & Berserker blister is a reliable workhorse: two human-scale sculpts with defined costume and weapon detail that make excellent color-testing canvases when you want to try a new skin tone recipe or push contrast on leather and steel. The Werebear, like the Barlgura, carries the $8.99 price point signaling a larger or more complex sculpt, and therein lies the paintability upside. The Bugbear Stalker & Goblin Hexer pairing rewards painters who enjoy contrasting scale within a single session: the hulking Bugbear against the diminutive Goblin creates a natural two-model composition ideal for a paired display base.

Pathfinder Battles Deep Cuts and WizKids Deep Cuts

The Pathfinder side of Wave 28 is where April 2026 gets genuinely unusual, and "unusual" is exactly the right word for a slate that includes four separate Leshy variants. The Gourd Leshy & Cactus Leshy ($5.99) and the Fungus Leshy & Seaweed Leshy round out a de facto Leshy quartet that, taken together, give diorama builders a ready-made nature-spirit vignette. WizKids' own product copy describes the Fungus and Seaweed pair as "nature spirits bound by primal magic to associated fungi and plants," which telegraphs the sculpt vocabulary: organic textures, irregular silhouettes, and plenty of natural material reference. This is the kind of subject where earthy wet palettes and stippling thrive.

Pre-order decision checklist for the Leshy group:

• Who it's for: painters drawn to natural and botanical subjects, and anyone building an encounter board for a Pathfinder Second Edition campaign
• Expected paint time: 1-2 hours per figure at tabletop standard given the compact scale; the texture-heavy surfaces actually reward quick stippling or sponging over fine line work
• Staple or oddity: genuine oddity in the best sense, subjects this specific rarely appear in mass-market unpainted lines, making them strong candidates for display-case conversation pieces

The Leucrotta ($8.99) is Pathfinder's analog to the Barlgura in terms of painter value: a larger, more complex sculpt at the premium price point. Its official description lands the concept cleanly: "a monstrous cross between a demon and a hyena," with human-like intelligence backing up intimidating size and a powerful bite. For painters, that translates to a sculpt combining animal musculature with enough demonic character to push creative palette decisions, cool grays and yellows on the hyena body reading against warmer supernatural accents on demonic features.

The Arboreal Snag and the Dread Zombie Cyclops complete the Pathfinder Deep Cuts April lineup. The Arboreal Snag is a constructed nature creature, an animated dead tree entity that functions as both a creature and a potential scatter-terrain piece in the right diorama context. The Dread Zombie Cyclops brings size and the immediate visual hook of the single-eye motif, a detail that rewards careful wet blending and glaze work to sell the milky, dead gaze that distinguishes a zombie from a living Cyclops.

Over in the broader WizKids Deep Cuts brand, the Giant Rhinoceros Beetle, Wendigo, and Kong also appear on the April WIN list. The beetle in particular is a strong buy for painters interested in iridescent chitin effects, an increasingly popular technique across the hobby community. The Wendigo and Kong sculpts skew toward larger display-piece territory, with Kong especially likely to draw painterly interest given the sheer surface area available for weathering, fur texture work, and environmental storytelling through the base.

One additional date worth flagging: the D&D Blue Dragon bookend carries an explicit April 8, 2026 ship date on the WIN solicit, making it the most time-sensitive single item in the wave. If the Blue Dragon is on your list, that specific date is your planning anchor. For the rest of Wave 28, the standard advice applies: confirm pre-order availability at your local hobby store sooner rather than later. Popular Nolzur's SKUs historically clear fast through brick-and-mortar allocations, and this is an unusually deep single-month drop with multiple high-demand sculpt types competing for the same limited shelf footprint.