The Doctor is IN!

Welcome to Warlord Week on the Blog.  Not intentional, but I've got nothing from Mantic lately to discuss, and it turns out I have a couple of things from their neighbor in Nottingham this week.

With surprising speed, my pre-order of the Dr. Who : EXTERMINATE! game from Warlord that I bought during Salute arrived last week.  Of course that was the week I was out of town for work, so I didn't have a chance to open this big box of goodies until Thursday night after I got home.

Of course I had to get out the phone and snap pictures!

all the goodies, after the packing material is removed

Game box, top

Game Box, bottom

Then comes time to open the box.  There are three booklets for the game - the Rules, The Guide to the Time Vortex, and Adventures.

Rules

Guide to the Time Vortex

Adventures

There are also two quick reference cards - one for the Daleks and one for the Cybermen.  They have the exact information on them, just different pictures.

Dalek reference card

Cybermen Reference card

Then what may be the most important part - the miniatures.  You get two sprues of Cybermen and two sprues of Daleks - each makes six (so 12 Cybermen and 12 Daleks).  The Cybermen also have Cybermats on their sprues - there are two additional bases in the box to glue the three loose ones on (to make swarms), then there are 4 on bases (for a total of 14).

Cyberman Sprue front

Cyberman sprue back

Dalek sprue front

Dalek sprue back

The models are all snap fit, except for making the cybermat swarms.  I did a dry fit test of a dalek - and it was solid - so much so that I had to use a knife to pry the halves apart.  I glued all my models together because I'm that way.

The Cybermen have three arms and three bodies (two of each on the sprue) .  This allows you some slight variation as you can change the angle of the arm as well as which arm goes with which body. The Daleks have no variation - as far as I can tell all six on a sprue are identical - which is typical with Daleks anyway.

You get ten custom dice in the set - the dice are all identical - three sides with a hit, two with a shield and one with a lightning bolt.

custom dice

cards

There are three types of cards provided - battle, adventure and recruitment.

The recruitment cards give stats for the models in the game - move, defense, melee and ranged bonus. The cards also have special rules, an icon indicating if they are unique, the number of models they represent, and the number of fate tokens they generate at the beginning of the game.  A nice bit of these is the full text of all the special rules for each card is printed on the back.  Of course the cards for Cybermen and Daleks are all there, but there are ALSO cards for The Silent (I had always thought they were the Silence - I guess I was wrong), the Judoon and Zygons.  These match the three expansion packs for each of those races.

Recruitment Cards

Additionally you get cards for The Doctor and his companions.  These are in two sets, to match the 10th Doctor and 12th Doctor expansions.  12 comes with Clara Oswald, Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint and Strax, while 10 comes with Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble and Wilfred Mott,

All the cards have icons to indicate which set they belong to - it is interesting to note that the icon for 12 and his companions is the same as the base set, though the minis are NOT part of the base set.

It is a nice way to get people to want some of the expansions by including the cards in the base set to "wet your whistle".

Battle Cards

The battle cards are used to help during combat - there are nine types. Four can only be played on your turn - add an additional hit, double all hits, add a defense, add infinite defense.  The other five can be played anytime, which include a hit and defense, as well as one to re-roll your dice, get a fate token, and add a lightning bolt to your roll.

Adventure Cards

Finally there are adventure cards.  These include equipment, monster reinforcements and various others that have special effects during the game.  Some unique/special characters get certain of these for free (for example, the doctor always get his choice of sonic device (sunglasses is the base for 12, 10 has a screwdriver).  There are 15 generic cards - the rest all belong to specific characters or monsters.  You get five for the game - you can either pick from your collection (if say you bring your own models (such as Judon) to play, or you can randomly draw from the generic ones.  The Silent, Judoon and Zygon each have six cards - one for bringing in reinforcements and five with various abilities (but you can only have 5, so you must choose wisely).

The game includes a two sided paper battle mat - which turns out to be bigger than I expected!

folded battle mat

tech side

desert side

One side is a technical layout - the other is a desert.  There is also a set of two sided cardboard terrain pieces.  There are rules in the book for terrain - unfortunately my single read through of the rules booklet did not give height for any of these - but height is a necessary component for how terrain works.

tech terrain

desert terrain

These terrain pieces need to have height defined for them, but make an interesting out of the box set to make your battlefield more interesting.  I did ask on the Facebook page for the game about this, and got back the 'non-answer' "you can decide yourself how high you want the terrain to be".  Well of course I can always , but it would be nice to have a consistent answer not just "you decide".

There is also a double sided sheet of tokens for use in the game

tokens front

tokens back

Now I know there are already unboxing videos and people talking about the base game.  What I've yet to see however is much about the expansions - so let's open them up, shall we?  There are two main ones right now, Missy & the Cyberman and Davros & the New Dalek Empire.

box front

box back

Missy & the Cybermen (is that a band name or what?) doubles the cybermen you get in the box game, plus includes the exclusive Missy figure  She of course has her own recruitment card, and there are additional cards for the cybermen as well.  There are also adventure cards, for Missy, the Cybermen, and a few generic ones as well.

What it doesn't have, unfortunately, is any new scenarios.  I think it would be fun to actually have a specific game scenario with Missy & the Cybermen vs 12 and Clara  (of course you would need a card for a Brigadier Cyberman and as well as Kate and Osgood Stewart).

contents

Like so many others, I bought this more for the Missy model than for more Cybermen, and I was not disappointed.  And she looks to get more interesting in the current season (oops - spoilers!)

Missy - front

Missy - back

Davros and the New Dalek Order is the other big expansion.  Like Missy & the Cybermen, it has 12 more plastic daleks to expand your base game.  It also includes cards and an exclusive Davros figure.

Box Front

Box Back

Box Contents

Davros has always been one of my favorite Dr. Who villains - he is so ruthlessly evil - letting nothing stop him and his Daleks (well except for the Doctor, of course).  The episode last season where the Doctor had to decide if he should kill Davros as a kid really added so much more depth to him.  (Of course you can't kill a child even if you know they will grow up to be a monster (yes, this is a twist on "would you kill Adolph Hitler as a baby?") - you put them in an Evil Baby Orphanage!)

Davros almost works just as an addon for Daleks - but again it would be nice to have some scenarios for him vs 12 (or 4 even!)  Hmmmm - do you notice a pattern here or anything?

Davros front

Davros back

Of course Dr. Who would not be complete without the Doctor himself - and so far Warlord has released two of them - 10 and 12 (c'mon - where is 11 (with Amy, Rory and River Song!)?).

Beautiful box art, but what is interesting is that the clamshell inside has a wrapper around it, with more information about all the figures inside.

Box Front

Box Back

Wrap Front

Wrap Back

Wrap End

Of course 10 may be the most popular of the modern doctors, so it makes sense to bring out the this version already (where is 11?)

Interesting clamshell in the box

bases - boring but necessary

The sculpts for this set are very good and very lifelike.  The Doctor captures David Tennent exactly, and the Donna Noble model is Absolute Fabulous!

Doctor and Companions

Doctor and companions, back

There are no cards in this set, as they are all included in the base set already.  Now if there were just 10th Doctor specific scenarios!

As expected, the 12 Doctor and companions are also available (it does feel like they are missing one between these, doesn't it?)

Box Front

Box Back

Wrapper Front

Wrapper back

Wrapper bottom

I'm glad they used the version of 12 from last season - with the guitar, sunglasses and cloak.  Peter Capaldi's first season just didn't do much for me, and this season just isn't as fun as last.  A nice choice of companions as well (though it is interesting that they talk about Clara as the "impossible girl" - when that story line with with Matt Smith as 11, not this incarnation)  (Can you guess which of the modern Doctor's is my personal favorite?)

Doctor and Companions front

Doctor and Companions back

Warlord has also put out seven (so far) smaller 'monster' packs.  Three of these have cards included in the base game, so they are playable as mercenaries in other factions.

The Silence are some of my favorite monsters, and were featured in what was probably my favorite season (A Good Man Goes to War may be my favorite episode - "Any Questions?"

I mentioned earlier that the cards in the base game are "The Silents" - but on the box they are The Silence.  So which is it supposed to be.  Sure a minor point, and I expect to forget about it completely once I am no longer looking at it.

Even the small boxes have smaller blue clamshells to hold everything.

Three nice sculpts (but again - scenarios for them!!!)  And with these, three is all you need.

The Judoon were interesting, and I hope to see them show up again sometime (and maybe scenarios for the minis)

Three nice models to go with Martha Jones and the 10th Doctor.

Back with the 4th Doctor, the Zygons were just guys in rubber suits.  I wasn't excited about them coming back but was very pleasantly surprised.  While they are still in stupid looking rubber suits, they have become much, much more interesting.  The fun things is you don't need more than a couple of these figures, as any OTHER figure may be a Zygon.  Wouldn't that be an interesting scenario to have one of your companions turn out to be a Zygon during the game?

The last four monster packs do not have cards unfortunately.  Warlord has said that they will be available as PDFs - but that doesn't replace real professionally printed cards.  These are also all one-shot monsters - each only being in a single episode.

The Return of Dr Mysterio was the 2016 Christmas special - and this box features the Ghost and Dr. Sim from that episode.

When I first saw this I could barely recognize the picture.  I am a bit curious as to why they picked these for the first release - even in the show they aren't that interesting UNTIL Professor Yana discovers he is actually The Master, kills Chantho and is mortally injured, so he steals the Tardis and regenerates.  Getting the John Simm Master is what everyone wants, especially with him coming back for an episode with Missy (Michelle Gomez).  

The Clockwork Droids were interesting, but are these really needed before things like - maybe UNIT?  UNIT could be a third complete faction facing either the Cybermen or the Daleks.  Both the Stewart sisters from modern UNIT, plus classic figures like the Brigadier and Seargent Benton would be awesome.

These are nice models, but until they at least have cards are probably for hard core collectors only.

The final expansion is the most puzzling to me.  They are minor one-shot monsters from the CLASSIC series.  While Daleks and Cybermen were both in the classic series, they have been updated in the modern versions.

However these are some of my favorite sculpts - so go figure.  But still not cards, so not usable in the game.  Plus they work for the Rani - and she is also, like all the rest of the classic characters, not in the game.  (I was really hoping last season that Missy would turn out to be the Rani - and interesting way to update an old villain for the new generation.  Plus she could then have teamed up with the Master again (like they did in the classic version) - though the actors will be teaming up soon.

These are probably the ONLY figures without cards that I might paint up - but this entire game is actually way down on my list.

I do hope to get a chance to actually play it soon because I have so much cool stuff for it.

Because it is all fun and games . . .