Thinking Outside The (Blue) Box

A quick apology to those who’ve been visiting this site and not found any new content over the last couple of weeks. January always seems to be rather busy for me and I’ve not had much opportunity to indulge myself hobby-wise. On those occasions that I did, things didn’t go quite as planned, so  rather than post for the sake of it, I thought I’d wait until I’d actually got something to post about.

So, the focus of my blog for the next couple of weeks (or possibly months), as you may have guessed from the title, is Doctor Who miniature gaming. As I took advantage of Black Tree Design‘s 30% off sale on their Doctor Who line, I am now the proud owner of the first seven Doctors, as well as the Roger Delgado version of the Master. Then they went and extended the sale…

So, I now have additionally winging their merry way to me a set of seven classic Daleks (including a Special Weapons Dalek), a Cyberleader to join my Games Workshop Cybermen, an Ice Warrior and Aggedor, the Monster of Peladon – because who doesn’t need a big hairy monster with a horn? And for those of you not familiar with this character, here he is:

Ah, bless…

Now, you might be currently thinking to yourself, “Actually, I quite fancy the idea of doing a bit of Doctor Who gaming, but I don’t have any suitable figures or rules…” and this is where the title of this post comes from.

Whilst it’s nice to have every version of the Doctor and all his iconic baddies (and those funky weird ones, like Aggedor), you don’t actually need them to do a bit of Doctor Who-esque gaming.

As far back as 1965, we were introduced to another renegade Time Lord, specifically the character who became know as the Meddling Monk, played by Peter Butterworth. Here was another Time Lord interfering with the course of history who had his own Tardis – on which the Chameleon Circuit actually worked. Then in the 1969 adventure The War Games, we were introduced to another renegade Time Lord, the War Chief. Then in 1971, The Master turned up, followed by the Rani in 1985. Even if you’re a fan purely of the new series, the 2011 episode The Doctor’s Wife introduced us to a character called the Corsair, another renegade Time Lord and friend of the Doctor, who had unfortunately already fallen foul of the entity known as House.

My point is that just because you currently haven’t got a miniature of Jon Pertwee or David Tennant, this doesn’t mean that you haven’t got a figure in your collection that could be a Time Lord.

Take this figure, for example;

This is 0763 Eccentric Individual from Moonraker Miniatures, available from their website for £1.50. A suitable ‘eccentric’ paint job and you’ve now got yourself your very own Time Lord, whose sobriquet you can come up with yourself.

Similarly, as Doctor Who has introduced us to a vast array of alien races, if you have some alien miniatures, or even some of the more weird and wonderful D&D monsters, you’ve got yourself some ‘aliens’.

The other wonderful thing about gaming in the Doctor Who universe is that you have no restrictions on time or place. If you’re primarily a historical gamer, it doesn’t matter which period of history you prefer and collect, you already have the rest of your cast for your Time Lord to interact with. The same applies for pulp, modern or science fiction gamers.

Basically, all you need to game in the Doctor Who universe is a Time Lord, his Tardis (which could be anything, if the Chameleon Circuit is working), an alien threat of some description, a supporting cast of locals and some scenery and terrain. Which is probably stuff you’ve already got.

“Okay, you’ve convinced us,” I hear you cry, “but what rules should we use?”

Well, as Warlord Games official “Doctor Who – Into the Time Vortex” miniature gaming rules have failed to materialise yet (see what I did there?), probably your best bet is the 7TV rules from Crooked Dice, either 1st or 2nd Edition. The profile for the ‘Unearthly Traveller’ from 7TV2 basically IS the Doctor and you can find a profile card to match most, if not all, of the various monsters, aliens, allies and companions that you could want.

Another option would be a copy of the original, unlicenced “Doctor Who Miniatures Game” which was the first published ruleset by Crooked Dice, and was available free to download on the Internet. Obviously, these have now been removed, so you will have to find someone who has a copy lurking on their hard disk and is willing to send them to you. After an extensive search, it would appear my own copy has vanished into the Time Vortex. I blame the Master…

I, of course, will be using my own rules The Way of the Crow, of which the basic rules were introduced back in June of last year (here, here and here). This year will see the completion and collation of these rules, and they will then be available to download from here for FREE!  Previews of the rules in action for gaming Doctor Who will appear on my blog as AARs, so you can get a feel of how they work.

So, during the next couple of months, you will see a variety of Doctor Who figures, both official and seconded, along with some classic and Nu-Who monsters cunningly fashioned from easily available resources and some AARs featuring the above as I fine-tune my rules.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to build a scale model of a quarry…