Doctor Who game report

Today is apparently one of the last days of sunshine we are going to have in the UK before normal weather service is resumed, so how better to spend it than sitting indoors pushing lead men around?

A good buddy of mine also works part time and has Mondays off, so we were able to take advantage of this coincidence (finally) and play a game of Doctor Who.

We modified a scenario from the main rulebook, which has Sea Devils attacking a UNIT base while the Master searches buildings for a vital component for his escape from earth. Our version had Cybermen attacking a village while the Master searches buildings for a vital component for his escape from earth...

I took the part of the good guys, controlling the 4th Doctor, K-9, Leela, the Brigadier, Sgt Benton and several UNIT soldiers. My friend took control of the Master, a Cyber-Leader and several Cybermen.

Here is a summery and some pictures:

The Cyberman assault begins!

The Master sneaks into a building which also happened to contain material the Doctor could use for inventions

Leela entered the house to confront the master but ended up being hypnotised by him!

Cyberman advancing on the right flank, soon to be shot!

The Cyberman left flank approaches the village

You can see UNIT forces deployed along the road with the intention of slowing the Cyberman advance and buying the Doctor time to deal with the Master or come up with a useful invention!

The Doctor stuns Leela with his sonic screwdriver!

 The above picture requires a bit of explanation. After hypnotising Leela and conducting a search of the building, which showed it did not contain the device he was after, the Master left and ran into the nearby woods.  Under his control, Leela attacked the Doctor with her poisoned blowpipe, fortunately missing. As she attacked an ally, she was entitled to make a check to break the hypnotism at the end of the turn. However, the Doctor was not taking any chances and stunned her with his sonic screwdriver. Fortunately she made the hypnotism roll and came back under the control of the good side. Unfortunately she failed every single stun recovery roll for the rest of the game except the last couple of turns! This kind of 'narrative' event which spontaneously happens in the game is absolutely fantastic and makes it a great experience.

Cybermen fall to concentrated fire from UNIT

The view from the UNIT battleline

Man down!

The left UNIT flank starts to buckle. Cybermen distruptors are brutal when they hit...

More dead Cybermen...

The casualties mount up.

Okay, this is how it went... I was so pleased with my defence of the village that I took a few pictures of the dead Cybermen. My buddy insisted I return the favour and photograph the UNIT casualties. The result? A load of picture of miniatures on their backs... Ah well...

The Master breaks cover from the forest and is confronted by K-9 and his nose laser!

The Master makes it to the church, where he will again search unsuccessfully.

UNIT starting to feel the pressure. Their fire was most effective when concentrated on a single foe. By this point he Cybermen were gaining ground and able to bring their superior weaponry to bear. Nasty...

Cyberman viewpoint along the road

Sgt Benton falls, the Brigadier fails a morale test and starts to run!

At this point the good side had about 4 figures left and the Cybermen had breached the village.

The stunned (quite literally) Leela looks on as the Doctor finally completes his invention. A quick d6 roll shows it to be a weapon designed to take out Cybermen with ease! Hurrah! Just a shame it is a little late...

A view of the village and UNIT corpses...

A Cyberman makes his ominous way along a hedgerow.

The Brigadier looks on, helpless in the face of the Cyberman advance.

"Delete! Delete!" The Brigadier falls!

The Doctor and companians make a last ditch effort to stop the Cybermen.

Regeneration time... the Doctor falls.

So, the good side didn't do too well at all. It all seemed to be going okay at the start and I rolled some excellent damage dice against the Cybermen, but when they got close enough to use their slightly shorter range weaponry they really started to take a toll on my forces.

The Doctor was fairly slow in creating an invention and by the time he did, most of the UNIT force was dead. The Master didn't have much luck with finding what he was after, but in the end it didn't matter too much! UNIT definitely should have tried to avoid the full on firefight with the Cybermen.

Final Victory Points: Bad Guys 12, Good Guys 1. But a very fun game!

On the workbench

Here is a picture of the last three companions I'm painting for Doctor Who:

(L-R) Sarah Jane, Leela, Nyssa

I think they are okay, but I got so fed up with Nyssa that I just settled for a single colour and a wash. Too frustrating trawling Google and finding page after page of pictures of her in some kind of velvety looking brown/purple clothing which seemed to be the costume the figure had on. So she just got what she was given in the end.

Just because I know wargamers are a nosey bunch, here is the current state of my work area. Roughly going from left to right:

• Dug out my 15mm zombies after watching the first season of The Walking Dead back to back on Monday. Okay, it is only six episodes, but still! I need to base these properly but have been putting it off. I've got more figures out of shot which need working on. As for the TV show, it was good, but I had to force myself a little to take it on its own merits rather than compare it to the comic, which (ironically some might say) managed to convey the humanity of the characters much better than the show did. Characters were added to the show for no real reason and major plot points added or removed for zero benefit. But let's be clear, both myself and my wife really enjoyed it, it probably just helps if you haven't read the comics.
• Behind this are some unpainted Skaven which used to be my Blood Bowl team but are going to be reappropriated for Warhammer 3rd Edition.
• To the right of the Skaven is the unit of beastmen I rush-painted in a day to see what would happen. I'd put them on the table, but there is a reason I have not posted a photo!
• On the mat, in the back row, several plastic Space Marines in various states of paintedness, for Rogue Trader. There are more still on sprues in the top left of the picture. There is something strangely exciting about knowing you are working on figures which are about 20 years old and haven't been used before.
• In front on the left are Sarah Jane, Leela and Nyssa waiting for their flock to dry.
• Finally, to the right of the Doctor Who figures are the Skaven who started all this mess on my table. I find painting blocks of troops to be hugely dull, so I need other projects around to break things up a little. It doesn't help that once I have these done I have another 20 waiting for me. Will I ever manage to paint a whole Skaven army?!

(As an aside, blogger has lost its 'follow' option on the toolbar when I am logged in and is just showing 'share', regardless of whether I already follow the blog or not. Is anyone else experiencing this? It's hard to add blogs at the moment!)

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.

Heroes and Villains

Time for another update on my Doctor Who project. I've managed to make a little progress around everything else taking up my time, so have a few figures to show you now.

First up the bad guys...

Delete... Delete!

These Cybermen will make up one of the player forces available in the scenario. Apologies to any purists upset by mixing of different 'eras' of Cyberman, but too bad. The paint job turned out out and was ridiculously easy. Gun metal coat and a black wash. Job done.

You must be washed....!

I'm basically addicted to washes, and hopefully the picture above shows why. The figure in the middle is pre-wash, the ones to the left and right are post-wash, although still drying. As someone who finds painting quite tedious, I use black and brown washes to make my painting look semi-decent!

Here are a couple more baddies:

EXTERMINATE!

Okay, so I would prefer classic Daleks, but these guys were cheap on eBay and I wanted to try them out. I regret the lighter grey on them as I was thinking it would darken more after the wash. But good grief, painting all the 'bobbles' on them was a bit of a drag!

Anyway, these are going to be a possible non-player force, brought into play by the scenario specific event deck I have created. If they appear they will be 'damaged', meaning they'll move around pretty randomly terrorising everyone!

Okay, on to some good guys now... First up is Harry Sullivan, UNIT medic and Doctor's companion:

I'd have preferred darker trousers, but I'm quite happy with him. Of course, for those Doctor Who fans among you, this will pretty much have given away my choice of Doctor, so without further ado, here is the great man himself:

Yup, the Fourth Doctor. So choosing Tom Baker may be a bit of a cliche, but he was pretty awesome. I'm quite pleased with how this figure turned out.

Still on the table: UNIT troops and several other companions. Tune in later for further updates.

Maggots and flies and cars, oh my!

Time for a quick update!

Firstly, the dark light didn't do some of the figures any justice in my last post. I am going to take future pictures in the man-cave where I have more control over the lighting! Here is one of K-9 seeing as he deserves a bit better!

Next up, I recently managed to acquire the Corgi model of Bessie. It took a surprising amount of work to remove the figure of the Doctor from the front seat, and I managed to damage the model a little, but nothing too serious. It was a bit of an extravagant purchase in some ways as it is not really required for the scenario. But one of the event cards in the game allows for Bessie to be placed on the board, so I wanted to be prepared!

I also finished off the 6 bases of maggots for the game, so here they are:

Pretty icky! And of course, the rules allow for these beauties to change into flies. Had a bit of a problem here as it is surprisingly difficult to source a decent fly. I found one picture on the Doctor Who Miniatures game forum, but could not find them to buy. In the end I decided that, in keeping with the slightly dodgy effects the show is known for, it would be okay to use some joke shop flies! I got these in two packs of bugs and insects from Poundland. They actually also came with some large maggots, but I prefer my more 'realistic' fishing bait ones! Here are the flies:

I basically left them as they were, but applied a heavy dark grey drybrush and painted the eyes red. I think they look very much the part in terms of dodgy sci-fi monsters, but also slightly creepy...

There is plenty more on my workbench right now, UNIT troops and characters, the Doctor and companions, plus some Cybermen and Daleks. Stay tuned for more adventures!

Doctor Who Project

Well, I have felt the need recently for a more light hearted project where I am not trying to build big armies or paint a whole load of figures. Pressures in other parts of my life have led me to want a more relaxing game to work on. So I am pleased to announce my Doctor Who project!

I have written a 3 player scenario which will involve a search for an alien artifact, the rescue of hapless civilians and the presence of multiple non-player game-controlled alien forces. In short, chaotic and fun. I'm using the full event deck from the miniatures game, but also a scenario specific event deck of my own nefarious devising. It will all be kicking off big style. At least, that's the idea!

But let's start off slow... A couple of orders from Black Tree have arrived and I thought I'd start off small (sorry for the poor lighting):

K-9 will be one of the companions the Doctor player can select at the start of the game. Which Doctor? Well, let's just say I have selected a series of companions appropriate to my chosen Doctor, of which K-9 is just one.

Next up a few more Weeping Angels, from the Doctor Who Adventures Magazine, who may or may not be making an appearance in the game:

I'm a bit happier with these than my previous effort, but that might be due to basing them differently...

Finally (and randomly illuminated by flash...).... maggots from the story The Green Death:

And where are these from? Well, I searched far and wide for my perfect maggot...

Whoever Frank Warwick is, his fake maggot endorsement sold me on these bad boys. They are dead squishy, but paint up okay I think. Plus they actually scale pretty well with 28mm figures, looking similar to this:

So these maggots may be making an appearance in my game as well....

That's all for now, but stay tuned as there is plenty more to come.