Game: Disposable Heroes Paper Minis
Publisher: Politically Incorrect Games
Series: generic
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 29th, November 2003
Reviewer’s Rating: 7/10 [ Good ]
Total Score: 7
Average Score: 7.00
I reckon I’m a strange gamer. There’s nothing I like more than a bit of politics, history and complex plotting in my games. I easily get bored if combat becomes the focus of the adventure. On the other hand, I do appreciate a climatic action scene! When it comes to the melee I prefer either one of two extremes; I’d rather keep the entire encounter nice and abstract or I’ll go for a paper battlemap and miniatures. It seems pointless to faff around in between. Is that strange? I suspect so.
As usual, there’s a catch. I don’t really have time for minis. I can’t paint – that’s a major point. I’m poor – there’s another issue. I don’t want to commit myself to collecting and carrying around large chunks of metal either! Throughout my school RPG days I GM’d using plastic Cluedo pieces since they were simply so much easier. The problem with the plastic Cluedo shapes is that they’re hardly atmospheric. There simply has to be a better alternative.
… and there is. Politically Incorrect Games offer us Disposable Heroes Paper Minis. It’s a simple idea; buy the PDF, print out the sheets of paper, cut, fold and glue the illustrations. You’ll end up with stand-up paper models for NPCs and PCs alike and, if you’re anything like me, glue everywhere. The point is that you’ve paper models that are easy to replace, easy to make, cheap, effective and much more atmospheric than coins, dice or Cluedo people!
There are thirty cut out heroes, thirty cut out other-humanoids (orcs, gobbos, etc) and thirty undead. That’s 90 minis for $6.50. Not bad at all. One side is in colour, the other is a silhouette of the front and you’ve the choice of gluing the base so either the phrase “Disposable Heroes” or “Politically Incorrect Games” is visible.
The PDF repeats everything. If you don’t have a colour printer (one day it shall be mine!) or if you don’t fancy churning through your colour ink then you can make do with the line drawing illustrations of the paper heroes.
Disposable Heroes work for me. I prefer PDF print-out-as-often-as-you-want combat maps to expensive and hard to replace grid maps found in the back of supplements and adventures. For a similar reasons I find the easy to deal with and easy to replace paper miniatures a great time saving device.
I’m demanding though. Thirty heroes, thirty humanoids and thirty undead simply aren’t enough. Oh sure, it’s enough for one night’s gaming, maybe even two or three sessions but what happens next? If I begin a campaign with paper minis then I’ll want to continue with paper minis to the very end. I’m left to hope that we’ll see future editions of Disposable Heroes from PIG. I’m a little worried that this will be a one off edition.
Fears of one off products aside; Disposable Heroes is really effective and convenient. I think Disposable Heroes has come out at a good time of the year too. It strikes me as the ideal sort of gift to give to a fellow gamer, especially a GM.
Weird fact 101, before GameWyrd was picked as this site’s domain name both “Disposable Heroes” and “Cheap Heroes” were considered.
