PERMES Review, by Jacob DC Ross
Salud! My name’s Jake and our Tavern’s owner was kind enough to give me a little soap box. My goal with this and other articles is to highlight lesser-known publishers who put out high-quality content. The focus is going to be mainly on artistic products, such as printable paper miniatures and terrain, as well as stock art.
PERMES, the nom de plume of artist Przemek Skiba, publishes a wide array of paper miniatures for games of virtually any genre. When I say any genre, I mean any genre. He covers the standard fantasy tropes, but if sword and sorcery isn’t your thing (I play historical and sci-fi games, myself), PERMES has you covered.
The various sets include samurai, pirates, American Western, sci-fi/post-apocalyptic, European knights, ancient Egypt and more. One cool thing is that PERMES creates miniatures based on the Polish winged Hussars, which are some of the sweetest-looking mounted warriors in history.
PERMES groups his modules by theme to make it easy to search them out. Most products are under 3.00 USD, and a lot of those are in bundles for around 6 bucks, which gives you many units to print out for very little start-up cost. His art style is consistent across the lines so any character looks at home with the rest. The lines aren’t limited to warrior types, but also feature characters like Japanese courtiers (and scenery for their throne rooms) and Roman Patricians so you can use them in warfare- or politics-based games.
Many of the packs feature “Mod Kits”, which are printable double-sided accessories, such as shields, banners, wings or cloaks, that you glue onto the models for added customization. Like a lot of the miniatures put out today, PERMES includes multiple colors for differentiating factions. You make the figures by printing them out, cutting the front and back into two sections, folding them so the bottom flanges out, and then wrapping a base around it for stability. Various bases have different colors to represent dirt, grass or other grounds.
One issue that I have with PERMES’ products is that I’d like to see them put into layers so you can select the colors you want. Some products have sheets of characters all from a single color scheme, but others, such as Samurai 2, have four archers and four musketeers on a page, each with a different color scheme. This is fine if you’re playing an RPG with only a few characters present at a time, but it makes printing out similarly colored units for larger wargames much more time- and paper- consuming. I’d also like it if there were uncolored versions of each unit so people could select their own custom decor. The final issue is that the bases tend to depict only outside ground, even in sets with figures made for indoor scenes (such as the Daimyo’s Court).
All told, PERMES work is gorgeous and well-researched (though the Native American set blends scenery from all across North America, that’s a pretty common trope in Western games). I highly recommend his products, especially starting out with his various free samplers. You can find his publisher page
HERE.
