Game: Disposable Heroes: Fantasy 4 (Villains)
Publisher: Politically Incorrect Games
Series: generic
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 6th, February 2005
Reviewer’s Rating: 8/10 [ Really good ]
Total Score: 8
Average Score: 8.00
Politically Incorrect Games’s Disposable Heroes line is a tricky one to judge. Here we have paper miniatures and have not only to judge the quality but whether the series has legs.
The first GameWyrd review of Disposable Heroes discussed this. The quality of the illustration is there. These paper miniatures – shapes to cut, fold and glue – are easily good enough to use. In fact, any individual miniature is great. The biggest decision to make before splashing the cash is whether or not you’re buying a one hit wonder. This is the Fantasy Set 4: Villains and so there’s proof in the title. Politically Incorrect Games are supporting the series and so the series has “lastability”. That is to say if you buy one edition of Disposable Heroes there are other sets in the same style which will expand your collection and reason to believe there will be future sets too.
For a couple of bucks you get a couple of pages. One page goes to the instructions and guidelines – suggestions for how sturdy the paper should be and who to email in Politically Incorrect Games should you become stuck. One page acts as the contents, and lists the paper miniatures from 0132 (Assassin) to 0161 (Vampire). I do like the running contents count for the paper miniatures here. When there are enough editions I’ll print off an uber-index.
This leaves two pages for the minis. One page is chock full and other is pretty sparse with only a third of the space used. You don’t feel as if you’re getting very much for your money. Fantasy Set 4: Villains really does feel like a slim product. It takes a minute to realise that the concept is hugely cheaper than metal miniatures, more flexible and more easily customised too.
Disposable Heroes has the edge on customisation issues. You can pick and choose which of the miniatures you want to include in your PDF. It just takes a tick of a box to turn your selection into an army. And yes; if you download an army then you’re downloading way more than 4 pages. Every paper miniature selected in the customisation menu under the army option is reprinted again and again until you have a page full of them. If you do this for the whole PDF then you’ve 30 or so pages. This can be managed through an account at Politically Incorrect Games where you’re able to access your list, select different miniatures and download a modified set. This is ideal if your browser or internet connection can’t cope with you ordering up armies of villains.
This is an impressive feature. It’s a new edge on the whole PDF market. Villains is perhaps not the best set of Disposable Heroes to illustrate the feature for as many of the minis seem like bosses rather than hence men. Despite that it’s a good plus point for Villains and an even better one for certain other sets. It adds weight to the series as a whole as we can realistically hope to expect it in future Disposable Heroes sets (and it does apply to the previous 3 sets).
I suspect “Fantasy Set 4” could easily have been a Super Villains set. Miniature 0136 is a big, fat, kingpin like crime boss. Other paper miniatures like the fishman or female thief also have that comic book feel to them. This could be seen as a strength or as a weakness in the product. If you’re only getting 30 or so paper miniatures for your money then any miss cast miniatures take a decent chunk out of the product. On the other hand it means you can use these miniatures in a wider scope of games.
Politically Incorrect Games’ Disposable Heroes range is shaping up well. There’s not quite the depth of resources in the series to make it a must buy yet – but I do suspect that’s coming. There other important plus for the Disposable Heroes is that it can tie in with Politically Incorrect Games’ own RPG product line. We could compare the way this set of villains seems to be not quite wholly fantasy to the escape-from-cliché fantasy of Rune Stryders.
As the start of the review said; this is a hard product to judge. The real strength is in the collective value of the whole series. As a stand alone product Disposable Heroes Fantasy Set 4 (Villains) is good but expensive.
