Doctor Who update and skirmishes

Right, it's about time for a real update to my blog... I've been working on some UNIT soldiers, including the Brigadier and Sgt Benton, for a scenario I have planned and yesterday I finally finished them!

Sgt Benton leads his troops in the defence of rural England!

Scouting the edge of a forest

The Brigadier ponders having a swift pint at lunchtime

The characters and SMG armed figures are all Black Tree, the rifle armed figures are from Gripping Beast and are an affordable option for fleshing out forces.

As regular readers may know, the scenario I am working on has several monsters which may emerge to menace the players during the game. One of them is this bad boy:

Some say scarecrows are 'corny'.

I've had a peculiar affinity for scarecrows ever since I was unexpectedly attacked by one while crossing a field playing a Fighting Fantasy gamebook. Just to be clear, the scarecrow was in the book, not attacking me while I was reading it.

So I thought I'd pit my newly painted soldiers against some cybermen to get a feel of how the game plays. A Cyberman ship has crashed near a village and the survivors are looking to cause trouble.

Cybermen emerge from a crater.

Sgt Benton and co pass a familiar looking car while on patrol

UNIT destroy a Cyberman in a puff of special effects...

The first game proved to be far too easy for the UNIT forces, so I doubled the Cyberman force and included a leader.

Back with a vengeance...

UNIT makes a final stand against overwhelming odds.

The second game was pretty devastating for UNIT, especially compared to how easy the first game was. It wasn't just down to the number of Cybermen though, and I learnt a couple of valuable lessons.

1) Leaders are very important: As you can only activate half your forces on your turn, having characters which give you additional activations can make a huge difference.

2) Keep it together: The 50% activation means it is quite easy to leave some of your force behind, but this greatly reduces your options and effectiveness. Even with only one additional activation from leadership, the Cybermen and leader had no problem against UNIT when they kept together as it meant they could take a few losses without losing the momentum of their attack. Againtst a divided enemy, UNIT could focus their fire on one or two Cybermen at a time and whittle them down.

This was, of course, just a simple test of the rules. The scenarios based on episodes of the show are much more varied and interesting. I can see these rules getting a lot of play in the future.