Game: Stand-Ins Printable Figures – Sci-Fi Set #1
Publisher: Interactive Design Adventures
Series: generic
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 16th, August 2004
Reviewer’s Rating: 7/10 [ Good ]
Total Score: 18
Average Score: 6.00
I really quite like Interactive Design Adventures’s Stand-Ins PDF set. These PDFs come in two main bits; a black and white section and a smaller colour section. Each section contains pages of small, framed, illustrations. Print a page off, cut a long the lines (even I can do this!), fold them up, stick the bottom flaps together and you end up with a stand up paper figure. It’s much cheaper than miniatures, there’s no heavy box to lug around to which ever house you’re gaming in and you can print yourself out a hoard of monsters or entire company of Shock Troopers.
This is a review of the Sci-Fi set. There’s been a fantasy set and modern & superhero set already. The sci-fi repeats some of the tricks in the modern & supeheroes set; some of these figures can be used elsewhere. The spacesquaches can easily be used as, say, yetis in fantasy games. Another important success in the modern & superhero set was the way the stand-ins suggested certain famous superheroes or villains without actually breaching trademarks. I’ve already mentioned the spacesquach but once I describe that as a very tall, very hairy but otherwise humanoid alien and point out that, unlike droids, it might pull your arm off if you beat it at chess – you might just imagine which famous, tall and hairy alien these stand-ins could stand in for!
The Sci-Fi set does not just include humanoid aliens but it doesn’t include terribly exotic aliens either. There are no blobs or strange pluses of lights which represent non carbon based aliens. The non-humanoids in the PDF come from the robots – especially the petbots and the floating disc. A decent number of the robots are much larger than the standard cutout – twice or three times the usual size. This is exactly what I want from a stand-in called the Death Machine.
There are 250 stand-ins. This makes the sci-fi set the least cost effective of the PDFs. You’re paying less than 5c per stand-in if you only print the PDF out once but this is the first time we’ve breached the 4c barrier. Nevertheless I think this is another Stand-Ins PDF which should be on the Should Buy list of every gamer who appreciates the ease of paper miniatures.
