Helion's Paper Soldiers series FINALLY in PDF format
Jul 29, 2020 5:18:12 GMT -9
squirmydad, Rhannon, and 5 more like this
Post by wyvern on Jul 29, 2020 5:18:12 GMT -9
After years of badgering (since 2016...), Helion publishers have at long last decided to release digital PDF versions of their Paper Soldiers series, previously only available in hardcopy, softback format. They've gone live only in the last couple of days.
This page gets you to the main Paper Soldiers portal, from where clicking any of the "More Info" links for individual books will take you to a page where you can buy the PDF version.
Unfortunately, these are not especially cheap, being only a few pounds (GBP) less than the full list price for the hardcopies, though they are further reduced currently (but only until August 9th UK time, so don't wait too long).
Irritatingly for those of us who already heavily supported this venture in its hardcopy version, there's no discount for previous purchases, though I suspect most folks who have had use from the works will already have created their own PDFs anyway (some of the early books can't be scanned properly on a single normal flatbed A4 scanner, despite supposedly being A4-page-sized - the artwork was published far too close to the page margins - so have invested still more time to construct page artwork that can be actually printed on one page). I do wonder if the artwork has been resized suitably for this project, but am not interested in paying Helion still more cash just to confirm that point!
To be fair, you do get a LOT of army-style minis, with variants and customisation options, and scenery, in each book (which latter has uses far beyond the purely historical, of course), the artwork in a pleasing (to my eye anyway) style, along with some straightforward wargame rules and historical notes, so you're not just paying for the minis. Plus you do get two or more historically/archaeologically accurate, complete, forces per volume, in a consistent style, which I know is a big problem across the historical wargaming paper minis hobby elsewhere more generally (we've discussed it in relation to these Helion publications on the CWF before). So if you've held-off purchasing previously because of things like shipping costs to non-UK destinations (even worse now the US postal rates have gone insanely high), this might be a good time to take the plunge electronically.
This page gets you to the main Paper Soldiers portal, from where clicking any of the "More Info" links for individual books will take you to a page where you can buy the PDF version.
Unfortunately, these are not especially cheap, being only a few pounds (GBP) less than the full list price for the hardcopies, though they are further reduced currently (but only until August 9th UK time, so don't wait too long).
Irritatingly for those of us who already heavily supported this venture in its hardcopy version, there's no discount for previous purchases, though I suspect most folks who have had use from the works will already have created their own PDFs anyway (some of the early books can't be scanned properly on a single normal flatbed A4 scanner, despite supposedly being A4-page-sized - the artwork was published far too close to the page margins - so have invested still more time to construct page artwork that can be actually printed on one page). I do wonder if the artwork has been resized suitably for this project, but am not interested in paying Helion still more cash just to confirm that point!
To be fair, you do get a LOT of army-style minis, with variants and customisation options, and scenery, in each book (which latter has uses far beyond the purely historical, of course), the artwork in a pleasing (to my eye anyway) style, along with some straightforward wargame rules and historical notes, so you're not just paying for the minis. Plus you do get two or more historically/archaeologically accurate, complete, forces per volume, in a consistent style, which I know is a big problem across the historical wargaming paper minis hobby elsewhere more generally (we've discussed it in relation to these Helion publications on the CWF before). So if you've held-off purchasing previously because of things like shipping costs to non-UK destinations (even worse now the US postal rates have gone insanely high), this might be a good time to take the plunge electronically.