Buffet of the Daleks

Hobby time this week has been limited and taken up with the super-special secret project I mentioned last week, so I’ve not actually got anything new or any progress to show you.

However, when has they ever stopped me from posting before?

So, as you may have gathered from the title, this week we will be looking at Daleks, as whilst you could play a Doctor Who game without them, at some point you going to want/need some.

Now, since their introduction in the aptly named First Doctor serial The Daleks in 1963, the actual design of the Daleks has not varied all that much. Yes, they may have had rings or slats on their mid-section or a slightly bigger skirt, but the basic design remained pretty much unchanged right up until the end of the classic run in 1989.

The only variation we got during the classic run was the Special Weapons Dalek, which appeared in the 1987 Seventh Doctor serial Remembrance of the Daleks, which had a single high-powered energy weapon and no eyestalk.

Obviously, when the series was re-launched in 2005, it was felt that the Daleks required a bit of a re-design and our first look at what has become known as the ‘Time War’ Dalek was in the  Ninth Doctor episode Dalek in 2005.

Then, in the 2010 Eleventh Doctor episode Victory of the Daleks, we were introduced to the controversial design that has become known as the ‘iDalek’.

Lots of fans kicked off about this design, so much so that it’s quietly been ‘retired’, last appearing in the 2012 episode Asylum of the Daleks.

For a full guide to Dalek designs, hierarchy and, more importantly from a miniature gamer’s point of view, colour schemes, your best resource is the very comprehensive “Dalek Colour Schemes and Hierarchy” guide on The Doctor Who Site, which can be found here.

However, this is a miniature gaming site, so let’s talk about miniature Daleks.

If you want the ‘iDaleks’, your only option are those that came as free gift attached to the front of the Doctor Who Magazine here in the UK. They were pretty well-detailed, the right size to scale in with 28mm figures and pretty inexpensive. You may be able to find these on eBay, if you weren’t lucky enough to pick some up at the time – like me. So, if anyone’s got half a dozen of these knocking about spare and would be willing to sell them on, I would be quite prepared to give them a new home.

For ‘Time War’ Daleks, you will be able to buy multi-part plastic ‘Time War’ Daleks from Warlord Games when they finally decide to release them. Obviously, they still have to release a couple of boxes of obscure monsters that only appeared in one episode first, because these are so much more useful…

So, until these are released, you will have to track down the Doctor Who Micro Universe figures if you’re desperate for some new-style Daleks.

Which leaves us with the classic style Dalek. Luckily these are readily available from our old friends Black Tree Design.  And as I took advantage of their 30% off sale, I can do a review of them!

So, first up the classic style Dalek;

As you can see, they come in three parts; the ‘skirt’, mid-section and head, which means that you can rotate the head to provide variation in ‘pose’. As they are metal, you can also ‘adjust’ the gun and plunger arms for further variation. The detail is very crisp, although they did come with quite a bit of flash, but this was mainly on the underside of the skirt, so didn’t obscure any of the detail. The other thing I noted was that as the ‘skirt’ is a solid piece of lead, these figures do have a bit of heft to them.

As I got the Dalek Patrol set, this also came with a Special Weapons Dalek;

The SWD comes in two parts; the skirt and mid-section/head. As you can see, the skirt comes with a square platform on the top, so it’s fairly obvious which of the skirts belongs to the SWD. Detail is also very nice, with minimal flash and the same heft that the normal Daleks have.

Now, showing you the components is all well and good, but what do they look like assembled and how do they scale with say, a Crooked Dice Third Doctor 28mm figure?

Like this…

So, accurate, ‘official’ classic style Daleks which are nicely detailed and scale well with modern 28mm figures. I really like them and as the Dalek Patrol set offers six normal Daleks and a Special Weapons Dalek for just over 21 quid, they’re pretty good value too.

That’s all for this week – join me next time for more Doctor Who…in miniature.