Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2014/02/20/tabletop-review-horrors-from-beyond-call-of-cthulhu/

Call of Cthulhu isn’t a game you usually have miniatures for, but the concept seems to be getting a bit of a surge as of late. Reaper Miniatures has released a few for its Bones line, RAFM just had a very successful Kickstarter based around Call of Cthulhu miniatures and now Project Zero Games has put out a collection of print and play paper miniatures entitled Horrors From Beyond. While not an officially licensed Call of Cthulhu product, there are some obvious pieces of Lovecraftia in this set such as a Shoggoth, a Dark Young and a monolith with an Elder Sign on it.

For $3.99 you get the following pieces: A Dark Young, a Shoggoth, two creepy monsters I can’t place, a living green glob, a tree, a living green ectoplasm thingy, a stone pillar and an interdimensional gateway. Everything aside for the gateway is a single piece you just print and cut out. The gateway though takes a bit of assembly. This collection comes with some very easy to follow instructions for cutting out the pieces and also how to put each figure on a base. A full page of the PDF is devoted to instructions on assembling the gateway. The art on each miniature is fantastic and I especially love both the Shoggoth and Dark Young designs. All miniatures are on scale with regular miniatures, so you can use these from pre-painted D&D or Pathfinder figures on down to the aforementioned RAFM metal figures. In fact, I actually like the look of this paper Dark Young better than the “real” metal version. It’s also a lot cheaper. So you get a nice set of fantastic looking figures, for about the cost of a single resin or metal figure. That’s a pretty good deal –especially when you consider how nice these things look.

Now speaking of cost, remember that the $3.99 price tag merely gives you the rights to print these figures off. Actually making the figures will cost you a bit more, as you’ll have to have a high quality printer, card stock paper, enough color ink to print these off and a good pair of scissors to cut out the figures once printed. If you don’t have all these items already, this little set of print and play figures will end up costing you more than most metal or resin figures. Paper figures are a cheaper buy only in the long run, so if this is your first set, expect to see that simple $3.99 investment skyrocket before you are done. As well, make sure you are really good with scissors before you start on paper miniatures, because one bad cut and you have to reprint everything. This is especially true with the Horrors From Beyond set we are talking about today due to all the wacky angles and strange shapes that come with Lovecraft creatures. Finally, you’ll also see Adobe Acrobat 6 or higher to view and print this product. As always, print and play sets are for a very specific type of gamer rather than for the general public, but if you’re a fan of paper minis, this is one of the best sets I’ve seen in some time.

I absolutely love the design of these figures and if you’re a big Call of Cthulhu fan and/or miniatures type of gamer, Horrors From Beyond , this set is easily worth the $3.99 price tag – but only if you know what you need to actual make a set of print and play miniatures useable. I’m pretty happy with it, especially the scenery pieces and the art for each figure is top notch. I really hope Project Zero continues this line of Call of Cthulhu themed print and play miniatures as it appears the market for CoC figures is growing faster than it ever has.

An excellent set that takes advantage of Acrobat's layer function the way that more of these products should. The artwork is excellent, instructions are clear, and there is very good attention to detail. The columns, for example, have score guides on the edges but not on the pieces, to add to their realism. Three base surfaces are available for each figure. The grass tile can be customized with 18 different features and with or without gridlines, allowing for a wide variety of tiles from one page (alone worth the price of this product, in my opinion). All pages have minimal notes/logos/etc. to conserve ink. My only suggestion would be to use a layer to enable removing these before printing, to conserve ink even further. Overall an excellent product, and well worth the price.