Friday 27 December 2013

Dalek Invasion Earth



Well today I managed to persuade my beloved non-wargaming spouse to play a game of Risk: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, which I had been given for Xmas.  In the excitement to set-up the game board and play I had forgotten that there were already rules for two player games; after I had dealt three factions out, with the third being nominally controlled by the plush toy kitten's.  They represented a neutral Dalek faction that would attack with each of us controlling their forces on alternate moves.

What is nice about the new editions of Risk is that there are ways to end the game in a reasonable period of time.  In this case the game ends on the eleventh regeneration of the Doctor.  You track his regenerations by using a Clara token that progresses each time a player's turn begins, with some of the slots making you roll a D6 to see if he takes another regeneration if you fail the roll.  So games can theoretically be much shorter than eleven rounds.  Ours was over in two hours, which was mostly down to having to read the special rules, refreshing my memory on how the game plays and taking the pictures for the blog.

The other twist to this version of Risk is the TARDIS moving randomly around the board and wherever it lands no movement or fighting may occur.  Other bits of chrome are the Mission cards that give one bonus Daleks for conquering certain territories, and Power cards that can either reduce or increase the number of Daleks one gets at the beginning of your turn, on top of the usual amount that one is entitled to.  One of the Power cards allows you to move the TARDIS to another territory.  However, after counting the cards at the end of the game the odds are you will lose Daleks more often than you will gain them.


As usual every territory you successfully invade gets you a card that you save up and cash in for more Daleks, based not on sets, but on the number of stars on the card.  More stars equals more Daleks.  Our game ended with the plush toy kittens having the most territories, but if the Doctor hadn't regenerated then my partner was about to hand in a heap load of cards and sweep all who stood in their way off the board.

Of course I know that the rabid Dalek fans who are reading this really want to know if the miniatures in this game fulfill their need for 15mm scale Daleks for wargaming.  The answer is yes, but I would want to replace the plunger arms with pins as the moulded Daleks do not have plungers on the end of the arms.


As you can see above the small Daleks are very compatible with my old white metal ones from thirty years ago.  The mid-size ones appear to be a good match for 20mm games, and the large for 28mm wargaming.  However, do note that two of the five factions are mouldings of the New Paradigm Daleks and they suck.  More details on contents here and where to buy it here.
  

16 comments:

  1. As a Whovian Grognard I want to know whether you can drill a mineshaft in Bedfordshire, blow out the core of the planet with a Really Huge Bomb, and install a space drive.

    (New Paradigm Daleks? Pah. Does my bumper look big in this?)

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    1. I think they have excelled themselves with this one and as a fan of Dr. Who this for me is one of the must have 50th Anniversary tie in products to buy. Now all I need is to get more Daleks.

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  3. Looks a very interesting version of Risk. It's a shame that Dr. Who never got a solid fan base in Spain; actually, the old series was never shown on TV and the most recent chapters has been showed in the new digital TV free channels but have gone mainly unnoticed. For people like me in frequent interaction with the British culture (mainly due to my hobby activities) it's been a theme calling attention but the "knowledge/cultural gap" is difficult to fill.

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    1. One tends to forget that the Daleks are a very British cultural icon and that Dr. Who is outside of Briton not as well known among the general populace.

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    2. Well, not so. There's a Swedish guy quite active in the TFL forums (Thomas Nissvik) absolutely mad for all things Dr Who. He even travelled to Londos last month to attend some sort of Dr Who premiere celebrationg the 50(?) years of the series

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    3. I Know Thomas and I expect he will be along here soon to comment.

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  4. "One tends to forget that the Daleks are a very British cultural icon and that Dr. Who is outside of Briton not as well known among the general populace."

    Although just about every American I've spoken to knows all about Daleks and Dr Who - one of our best exports :)

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    1. Yes exports, my mind boggles. However, I was on IO9 reading a post and an American said what's the big deal about Dr. Who? So clearly we need to send the Americans more Daleks until all of them know the Power of the Daleks!

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  5. Great news with this! I'm going to have to buy 2, one for the minis, another for the game itself! Dr who in 15mm here I come!!

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  6. Damn! I heard about this a while ago, but it's only available through one store in the UK, and when I checked they weren't taking advance orders for US customers.

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    1. But you can buy it now, according to the FAQ.

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  7. Can you tell us the height of each of the three classic Dalek models?
    Thanks.

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  8. The exact height of each is 16mm, 21mm and 31mm measured from the bottom of the base to the top of the dome.

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    1. Excellent, thanks very much.

      My current Daleks are 26mm high:
      https://ncc1717.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/daleks-1.jpg

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    2. No problem. It's nice to know that people are still reading old posts and getting useful information from them.

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