Mass Combat/Steve Jackson Games' "Cardboard Heroes"

[AdamGarou]

My gaming group is gearing up for a number of mass battles using the old 1e/2e BATTLESYSTEM rules for unit combat between armies. Obviously, one of the tougher issues with this is the expense involved in getting miniature figures and castles to aid the play (one of the first battles is our PCs helping to defend an allied human keep against armies of giants, gnolls, orcs, goblins, etc.).

Has anyone here used either the miniatures or the castles from Steve Jackson Games' "Cardboard Heroes" product line? As I understand it, everything is printed on light cardboard and the designs are key-cut so they can be folded together to assemble a castle (and more simply, miniatures to represent individual characters or units). It looks like a perfect alternative to spending hundreds of dollars on the pewter miniatures and the plastic model castle, but I wanted to get some opinions before I placed an order.

As a side note, what are some of the other ways in which you've all conducted mass battles in tabletop gaming? Do you have any unlikely sources for the miniatures of humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, etc.? One person recommended the Lord of the Rings version of the classic game RISK, but I haven't really looked at that one yet.

Thanks!

[Brandi]

The figures work very nicely-- a friend of mine had the original sets from about a decade or so back for Champions, and it was the easiest way to get loads of VIPER mooks onto the table.

You might also look into some of the random PDF/font versions of the Cardboard Heroes concept, which can be home-printed or scaled to whatever size you like:

S. John Ross' Sparks font sets (there's even a Halloween special that is very Ravenloftesque);

Planet of the Paper People (random PDF minis column on RPG.net).

Others might be out there with Google searches...

[AdamGarou]

Well, I decided to go ahead and buy the Castle set--specifically "Walls and Towers"; I figured if I was happy with the purchase, I'd get the second set "The Keep" later on. One of the cool things about these sets is that you can supposedly combine them with others to make larger or more complex castle structures.

The set arrived in the mail a day or two ago, and it's going to involve a lot more work than I thought it would. I was under the impression that everything was fully assembled and that all one had to do was punch them out of the cardstock sheets, fold over, tuck a tab into a slot, and be done with it.

Not so, though. There's a LOT of gluing involved--a lot more than I thought there would be. A piece on one page is supposed to be glued to another set of pieces located three pages away--did they design it that way just to make things more complicated?

I used to put together plastic models of cars and jets, but that was quite a while ago. I didn't know that's what I was effectively gearing up for here--it'll probably take me a week to get all the pieces together.

Oh, well, not much that can be done about it now. Maybe when it's all together it'll be worth the effort, but I doubt it.

[AdamGarou]

Just as a quick update--it's going just about as slow as I figured it would. I know it's going to look very cool when I get it all put together (lots of features that enable you to customize the castle you build--banners and flags of different colors and designs, tabs that can be added to place gargoyles on the walls, etc.), but it's still a VERY tedious process. GAAAR!!!