For power cards, we found a set of fillable-PDFs with just the basic card layout, and colour-coded, and we just edit them in Acrobat and then fire them off. We often end up with blanks, so we just write on them in pencil until enough people need new power cards to justify printing another page.

Me, I’m thinking of going back to index cards. I like the space, and the fact that I can customize the layout, and draw little pictures of my druid’s kickass spells on the back.

What surprised me with the minis was the choice of races. I would have liked to see more of the newer races and combination rather than classics like human fighters and mages. I am really surprised that there was no male Dragonborn miniature. Dragonborn males are still prohibitively expensive as singles. I’m also surprised at 2 female Eladrin magic users I would have thought an Eladrin/Elf/Half-Elf type figure and a female Tiefling would have been a better choice.

The cost is ok here in the UK at about £3 per mini which is a lot better than £8 for a single metal Citadel hero. However it seems to me that some of the minis are much more rubbery than plastic. Some of the weapons also feel very weak so I will make them more rigid with a little superglue, especially on axes and hammers where the handles are quite flimsy compared to the business end of the weapon. I should add that there are also a good amount of multi part minis that have given some better poses with the Elf ranger and Goliath barbarian being stand out figures for me and I was nicely surprised by the human barbarian which has a better face than I thought although I will model over the ‘wolf head’ as it is so small it looks silly.

I’m thinking of semi-permanent OHP markers, that come off with a little rubbing with a damp cloth, but not easily otherwise.

Imagine if D&D art mainstays like Wayne Reynolds were to put out this kind of product, or even guys like Gabe over at Penny Arcade.

That said, I almost always go for a metal mini when I’m a PC and most of my Players do the same, but for a busy DM on a budget, these are a strong competitor to the WotC offerings.

You can’t write on them with the pencil, and ink from a ball point just doesn’t stick. I even tried my legendary Space Pen, the kind that writes upside down, underwater, and in the vacuum of space. It wouldn’t even make a legible mark on these cards!

http://www.sjgames.com/heroes/#fantasy

PCs, NPCs, monsters, treasure, and so on. I bought those a decade ago and still haven’t had a need to use more than about 20% of the whole set.

Here’s a larger image:
http://paizo.com/image/product/catalog/PZOP/PZOPDFPPMGNOLLSE_500.jpeg

I’ve switched to sticking a piece of tape on each card to write on in pencil, which I didn’t expect to wind up doing. That may turn out to annoy me down the road, but for now I’m going to see how using them in this weekend’s game goes.

I’ve updated my review accordingly.

@Ameron – I’m probably an outlier here, but I like the old-school feel of filling in character sheets by hand. I’ve done it both ways in the past, and the characters I’ve felt the most connected to have tended to be the hand-written ones.

So for me, the auto-fill and printing aspect of the DDI cards is inherently less appealing.

@LesInk – I definitely think there’s value in these figures, even at their slightly-too-high price. No argument there.

@deadlytoque – For my part, I can semi-competently paint BattleTech minis, and have painted a few dozen over the years — but nothing else. I hate, and am terrible at, painting anything but sci-fi figures.

I’ve tried several times, and it’s always the same: I buy some cool minis, re-buy all my paints since the old ones dried out, replace some brushes…and produce something a lobotomized monkey could do. It’s not for me — I love prepainted minis.

I’m not talking about the fact that it’s a bit messy (which it is, but so is any mini I’ve ever painted) but rather that they’ve ruined a lot of the detail by not using decent shading on their pieces. Look at how much detail is lost on that dwarf because it’s all just a solid black mess, and not a brown or gray with a black wash, or black with a brown or gray drybrushing.

The sad part of that is that if you look at the dwarf’s thighs, the detail there is easily visible precisely because it was picked out with a darker brown wash over the green leggings.

So maybe in a few more sets when they have not only have a handle on the right number of layers, but how to USE those layers correctly I’ll put down the cash. Until then, if I’m going to have to hand touch up the paintjob anyway, why am I paying for one in the first place?

The minis I might buy some if I feel the need at some point of getting specific minis but once again the Character Builder will have the powers included so the extra powers are not an extra incentive to get them.

Since I mostly DM, I will certainly get some of the monster packs that are coming up and the fact that I will get to choose one of the minis included is a bonus.