Ye Olde Inn

So I had an order with BoardgamesMaker, the sister site of MPC (and I don't want any of this to sound like an advertisement). I was anxious to see the results, and now that day has finally come this week! I knew production and delivery would be slower during this pandemic, but I was patient.

I have created custom tiles before, simply printing stuff out (using local copy services) and using a glue stick to adhere the paper to chipboard, then cut with scissors when dry and it works pretty well. I tried doing some ogre tokens on card stock, but it's just so thin as a single layer, so the chipboard was better overall. But back to the pro treatment...

This professional service obviously costs a little more, and there is a nice matte finish and they are die cut (but not the exact same size as the equivalent would be in the classic original game). Also there are rounded corners as was pointed out. Still I think they turned out pretty well.

A few of the tiles turned out a little larger than I would have liked, and I don't plan to trim them, but they would fit even better on the Remake board, with its slightly larger squares.

You have to order them in sheets... (and they're double-sided, 1.66mm thick cardboard, finished and pre-cut on punch out sheets).

Small single tiles about 8 cents each.
Double tiles come out to about 33 cents each.
Big round tokens at 38 cents each.
Big (character) tiles $1.50 at least with the glossy finish. (these came pre-punched and shrink wrapped)

The shipping was probably the most expensive thing, so I waited until I had many items to do before ordering, and sadly I was not able to find any working coupon codes this time (MPC is generous with their coupons, by contrast, and I'm sure that's because they have a lot more people doing custom cards... BGM also does custom cards and they are setup identically to the other site, I wouldn't be surprised if they farm the work out directly).


Examples attached below...

(I already did a thread about the Mercenary Tokens and a thread on the Torch tiles.

The "Zargon Tokens/Coins" below are for designating "Elite" Monsters, which have enhanced attack and defensive abilities (for use in my Heroes and villains upgrade system).

Instant Ice is part of my "de-magicified" mod. And the weird purplish tiles are a re-creation of the multi-part "error" printing of the cloak of shadows from WOM/WOZ.

The following are considered "tiles" as well, although they are Character Cards. As you can see, they aren't a perfect match for the classic character cards, having slight borders, and being about a half an inch smaller than the originals. Still, I did them with a glossy finish and I like how they look and feel. I did these four as a test (they come in packs of four). I may end up doing the rest at this point to match.


A slight error.. technically it should say "Spell" on the back of these since they are part of the "magic" campaign instead of the "De-magicified" one (where "Skills" are a generic replacement for "spells" of any kind).

Having finally unpunched my "pro" printed tiles and work with them a little bit I've noticed a few things:

While uniform in size and shape which is nice, the sizes are a slightly "off." I don't mind variations from the originals too much because I don't plan to try to fool anyone with these, I'm not trying to sell them on ebay, in other words (!!!). So that means the "single" tiles are slightly smaller than the squares on the classic HQ board. The "double tiles" are actually larger than the squares (and slightly larger than the bases of the classic miniatures). So the double tiles would fit better on the Remake HQ board... but if you're just throwing a double tile here or there, it's not too bad, it only becomes really noticeable if it's a crowded room or you are laying a bunch of them together.

It's interesting because most of the custom minis I'm using having smaller bases than the classic HQ (matching the square size on the board), so it's all over the place but at a glance it looks "close enough."

These tiles are HEAVY. Nothing like the super thin ones that came with KK & ROTWL expansions... or even the thicker "double sided" ones that came with my US Game System.

Yes, these are double-sided, which I did on purpose. I put exotic tiles on one side and generic (filler) type tiles on the bottom. So I have plenty of whatever I need, though it can take some sorting sometimes, because the pairs tend to be random. I did purposely put the question marks on the bottom of the torches, but pretty much everything else is all over the place.

The tiles have slightly rounded corners instead of being "sharp." I could trim them with a scissors but I don't want to ruin the nice formation. They punched out great and have a nice sound when you drop them onto the board.

The finish is great, it's a nice matte finish and I don't worry about fingerprints or moisture damaging them as I might with some of the "plain paper" ones I have (many of my larger tiles are just laser printed, meaning they have a nice satin shine to them but the underside is just plain brown chipboard.

The tiles are thick, so they're easy to pick up off the table, much easier than if it were just a piece of cardstock (and say you just trimmed your fingernails!).

I like these, I just wish the custom sizes weren't so expensive. Again, this is a vanity project. BGM is intended for people who are making their own board games, or some kind of one-shot for a big event. Trying to re-create a "professional" looking version of HeroQuest would be absurdly expensive, much costlier than just tracking down a vintage copy on ebay.
But if you want quality even higher than the original, and looking brand new, you could do it... if you don't mind the extra wait and cost.

It was an experiment. I think I could re-do the round tokens again in a slightly smaller size as a gift for my other HQ buddies. If you had a squad of Elite monsters, it would really get crowded fast, and the same for a squad of mercenaries, but one or two it wouldn't matter too much.

The finish on these tiles allows them to easily slide across the board (with a miniature on top). I had the Heroes Merc Tokens done in matte finish and the Zargon (elite monster) tokens done in gloss. I think I like the matte better, but it does distinguish them and the gloss really slides easily (but not so easily that it is going to fly off the table like a "linen air" playing card might).

looks great

The matte tiles also give off less glare when using them on camera (for Zoom games). Using the custom printed board with 1 inch squares, everything is just fine. The bigger double tiles fill up the whole squares, while the smaller tiles still don't look bad even though they don't take up the whole square (even the classic original tiles get covered up by classic minis so there's no change there).

I started thinking about printing some of the bigger tiles in sections, but then I thought, why go to all that extra expense. This was an experiment. Sure it would be cool to re-print ALL of the tiles in this quality, but it would be extravagant and unnecessary. Using the chipboard and laser printed pages works just fine and ends up more or less 99% the quality of the originals in terms of finish and better quality in terms of the backing and weight. Yes, I've heard now that the expansion tiles in the EU were higher quality than their counterparts in the NA, but that's fine. My customs are just what I want now, so it's cool.

The limitation with BGM are the custom sized tiles... the long strips of hallway, the big "room size" tiles, those are way too expensive to print through their service unless you were doing them in bulk. But for single and double tiles? Just fine. I could have printed up a sheet of staircases, but I only needed one.

I like the idea of "Zargon Coins" to make elite monsters. Sometimes if the party is doing too well in a mission, It would be nice to just have the option to upgrade some opponents as the GM sees fit in the later stages of the quest, to make it more of a close and exciting challenge for the players.
Might borrow that idea

Yeah, you can kind of sort of do that already with certain Wizards of Morcar spells and Evil Wizard Cards. A monster gets two attacks per turn, or an extra attack/defend die, etc. Orc Berserkers, Chaos Champions, etc. The boss empowers one of his guys, or that guy acquires a new weapon or potion and suddenly he's really out for blood.

I love how the Combat Cards do that with Goblins... haha, look at that cute little punk thinking he's going to make any difference (oops, he's got a crossbow! oops, he stole my weapon! oops, I'm surrounded and captured! etc). Keep the heroes guessing.

Kurgan wrote:Yeah, you can kind of sort of do that already with certain Wizards of Morcar spells and Evil Wizard Cards. A monster gets two attacks per turn, or an extra attack/defend die, etc. Orc Berserkers, Chaos Champions, etc. The boss empowers one of his guys, or that guy acquires a new weapon or potion and suddenly he's really out for blood.

I love how the Combat Cards do that with Goblins... haha, look at that cute little punk thinking he's going to make any difference (oops, he's got a crossbow! oops, he stole my weapon! oops, I'm surrounded and captured! etc). Keep the heroes guessing.

Crap, he's got a crossbow! BURNINATE!

They do look great on stream! I've considered ordering cards from them, just haven't had time to get all the assets together since I kinda decided I want to print "standard" size cards to increase my sleeve options, give me space for larger text, that kind of thing. I just haven't had a chance to put a lot of time into making new cards and beyond the basic cards (which drathe did—but I'd probably have to re-do anyway if I want larger text), it's a big project.

I need to decide what I want to do about tiles still. I think for rocks, rubble, and stairs … I'm probably crafting those because I know I can and the result will look even better than heavy custom tiles. Pit traps make less sense to craft because it's always going to look silly to raise up a pit trap. So I have reasons to print 1x1, 1x2, and 2x2 tiles for those. I don't think I've seen 1x2 as an option on BGM, so if I had them do that it'd be custom and … not a good use of money in my case.

I'm still torn on the choice of 25mm vs. 28 or 30. With 28, a 1 inch tile would still seem to fit well enough. With 30, none of BGM's standard tiles will feel like they fit. People making the tiles 32mm or larger … can afford more table space than I can.

They do actually have 1x2's. Some of the sizes come in huge sheets (way more than I need) hence why I only did certain ones through them, and while they look nice with great weight (and the fun of punching them out yourself), I can do serviceable ones much more cheaply on my own with the old print 'n' glue then scissors method.

Kurgan wrote:The following are considered "tiles" as well, although they are Character Cards. As you can see, they aren't a perfect match for the classic character cards, having slight borders, and being about a half an inch smaller than the originals. Still, I did them with a glossy finish and I like how they look and feel. I did these four as a test (they come in packs of four). I may end up doing the rest at this point to match.


A slight error.. technically it should say "Spell" on the back of these since they are part of the "magic" campaign instead of the "De-magicified" one (where "Skills" are a generic replacement for "spells" of any kind).

Thank you for the information on this! Good to know that full rooms and large tiles really aren't really reasonable through them, but these character cards look good! I've got several that I'd love to have printed and I might end up using these guys.