Review of Cardstock Cowboys, Wierd West #1: Starter Pack

Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Cardstock Cowboys are cardstock miniatures intended for use with the Deadlands: The Wierd West roleplaying game. As such, they were designed with Deadlands in mind, but can easily be used for any other Western roleplaying or miniatures game.

This set, the Starter Pack, includes over 200 full-color cardstock miniatures representing a wide range of character, villain, and monster types. The art on the figures is of high quality and is appropriate for the gloomy, gritty, and supernatural world of Deadlands. Each type of hero and villain is represented by several different male and female figures. Some of these figures are on horseback, which is unusual for cardstock miniatures but definitely a good idea, especially in a genre where mounted combat and travel is very common. Another example of the designers doing their homework is including numerous figures for certain villain types such as bandits and cultists that are usually found in large groups.

A distinctive feature of these miniatures is that most of them have three (instead of the usual two) sides. Two sides (the front-left and front-right sides) have the color illustration on them, while the third (the back) is a dark silhouette. Constructing the miniatures in this way allows for a better-looking miniature in that if you look at them from the side, you don’t see through them. However, this style also requires fastening a small tab attached to one side of the figure to the inside of another in order to hold the figure together. These figures are a little more work than some, but are still quite easy to use. Not all of the Cardstock Cowboys are three-sided, however: the mounted figures and large monsters are two-sided, and the miniatures for creatures such as Desert Things and Prairie Ticks are flat.

Cardstock Cowboys, like other paper and cardstock figures, are a good alternative to using painted miniatures in your games. And if you don’t use them, one look at the high-quality Cardstock Cowboys will probably inspire you to start.