If you're a thrifty gamer like me, you can immediately see the value of being able to print up your own miniatures. Now I can already hear the groans from wargamers and RPGers who want to have pewter and plastic replicas of their troops and/or characters sitting just so on their carefully manicured static grass lawns. To those folks I say "Knock yourselves out!"
To everyone else who can live without sculptured perfection in your gamepieces, I highly recommend SPARKS. I'm reviewing only one set (a fantasy collection) of fonts, but the publisher has paper miniatures ready for just about any genre coming or going. From what I've seen on their site, they've got sci-fi, Western, espionage, and of course fantasy genres covered to a tee.
What you get for your money is a true type font that you simply add to your font listing in your word processor programs (their fonts are for versions of Windows 95 and beyond as well as Macintosh). Older Windows products apparently can't handle the graphics.
Once the font is added to your program, open a document, select the Sparks font and type away. Each character you type will produce a miniature. Capital letters produce one side of the figure and lower case produces the other side.
I've found that typing the backs of figures in one row and then typing the corresponding fronts on the next row is the easiest arrangement for me. This will produce paper mini images that are ready for printing, cutting out, folding and gluing into tiny triangular minis (the front and back form the long sides with a small paper base formed at the minis' bottoms.
One cool thing about these fonts is that you can scale them. For example, the freeware version has a large ogre (he's actually got a ruder name than that) included. Now if I make a bunch of orcs up (also included in the free version), I naturally want the ogre to tower over them--and any enemy troops. How do I pull it off? Simple, I just set the font size of the ogre much larger and viola--one big-behinded ogre ready to stomp on some humans' heads.
Here is a list of some of the pieces you get from the Legend of Winter Forest set.
Bug dudes, banshee, centaur, elf mage prince, genie, ghoul, gorgon=Medusa, harpy, imp/goblin-looking dude, ooze, saurid grunt=lizard-guy, mummies, orcs, brigands, bone ogre, troll, verminite=rat-guys (excellent skaven for WH fans, by the way), yeti, undead and other zombies. You also get what are called "flats", which are usually inanimate objects or scenery type stuff--in this case trees, puddles, treasure chests and other fantasy stuff.
The artwork for these minis is really good and I encourage anyone interested in them to go check out the freeware version first. Also, look through the specific sets listed on Cumberland Games' site to get an idea if their sci-fi, Western or other stuff fits in with what you're wanting; their Western stuff with maybe a little fantasy or freeware assistance looks great for DeadLands gamers.
Overall, this is a cool product. For $10.00 plus your ink and paper, you can literally print entire fantasy armies--for less than half of a regiment or boxed set of more traditional plastic and pewter equivalents. While I realize SPARKS won't ever run Reaper Miniatures or Games Workshop out of business (and why would we want them to), they do provide an alternative to these more expensive ways of providing miniatures for wargames and RPGs.
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(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)