SJG's Cardboard Heroes

[rogatny]

I loved my Cardboard Heroes by Steve Jackson Games when I was a kid.

I only had the first set that came out in 1980 with the art by Denis Loubet. But they were my mini of choice for my games back in the day.

For those that don't know, the Cardboard Heroes were paper stock cut-out miniatures similar to those that were in the AC3/8, B6 D&D modules. I liked these better because they were more Swords & Sorcery in feel and had better art in general. SJG did a whole bunch of sets with more art by Loubet as well as others by Jaquays and Dee.

I went for a long time not knowing/remembering who made them, but recently I figured it out and further found out that SJG sells them in .pdf form for $5 a pop. Here.

I got the first two sets. .pdf is the perfect format for these because you can print and re-print as many as you want. Here's what they look like:


A thief, a dryad (or druid or whatever), an assassin, and a cleric. There are 36 more in the first set.

Apparently, they have dungeon floors, caverns and castles. Anyone else play with these?

[francisca]

I got some of them! I also picked up a couple of their fold-up castle sets at gencon a number of years ago.

[JasonZavoda]

They were my favorite minis back when they came out. I have the book which reprinted them all but I never went for the floorplans.

[thedungeondelver]

I had the dungeon floors! 'cos, you know me...dungeon terrain! But, ultimately I found them kind of disatisfying because of the tendency for the pieces to get knocked into next week with the slightest touch. And forget having a room fan

But still I liked them.

Do they (SJG) still make the counters etc.?

[rogatny]

People who like counters in the style of Cardboard Heroes and who like the Order of the Stick web comic (a Venn diagram that may possibly consist solely of me) will love this:

http://www.giantitp.com/AMFESSpring.html



Appears to be a different (larger) scale than the Cardboard Heroes, but who cares. Totally downloading, printing and putting together tonight.

[rogatny]

Anal geekery...

They are slightly different scales. Not too different though...



You can alter size that you print things out in Reader, so I increased the print size of the Cardboard Heroes to 115% and got a nice result...



Problem is, when doing that, Reader cuts off the edges of the paper it's printing and you lose about half the figures. I could probably get a .pdf editor and manage to print everything with some simple cutting and pasting.

But I tried reducing the Order of the Stick figures to 80% and got this...



That's pretty good. The simplicity of the OotS minis lend them self to a slight reduction in size. Think I'm going to go that route unless someone can suggest a free, easy to use .pdf editor that would let me cut up the Cardboard Heroes .pdf.

[Terrex]

One of the guys in our group had the SJG ones. He had fantasy and car wars stuff. I haven't seen them in nearly 30 yrs, but I think I remember them having plastic stands. Is that right?

We never really used them in play. In hindsight, these have a lot of practical advantages v. all the lead and pewter we were accumulating.

[rogatny]

One of the guys in our group had the SJG ones. He had fantasy and car wars stuff. I haven't seen them in nearly 30 yrs, but I think I remember them having plastic stands. Is that right?

We never really used them in play. In hindsight, these have a lot of practical advantages v. all the lead and pewter we were accumulating.

They made plastic stands for them. You didn't need them, but they might come i useful if anyone sneezed.

Amazon sells generic ones that look like they'd work.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KFWQ444/_e ... LT8KNU8SE3

[JasonZavoda]

One of the guys in our group had the SJG ones. He had fantasy and car wars stuff. I haven't seen them in nearly 30 yrs, but I think I remember them having plastic stands. Is that right?

We never really used them in play. In hindsight, these have a lot of practical advantages v. all the lead and pewter we were accumulating.

They made plastic stands for them. You didn't need them, but they might come i useful if anyone sneezed.

Amazon sells generic ones that look like they'd work.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KFWQ444/_e ... LT8KNU8SE3

We used to tape pennies or washers to the bottom. Much more stable than the plastic bases

[ThirstyStirge]

This guy has quite the collection, and he is using washers.
I used to love GitP when it was relatively new. Lost touch with it though. That halfling dude just cracked me up.
Thanks for the heads-up about these paper minis. Yet another thing in my long, long, long wishlist.

[thedungeondelver]

Are all the SJG Cardboard Heroes available as .PDFs?

[francisca]

Are all the SJG Cardboard Heroes available as .PDFs?

http://www.warehouse23.com/products?tax ... 8398540-sb