Doctor Who in the Deadzone

Here is the first draft of the game rules. I’m using Deadzone as the base ruleset, so all the stats on the character cards feature standard Deadzone stats, and wherever possible I’ve given the characters standard Deadzone abilities (with extra flavour where necessary. e.g. Two hearts – life support). Some abilities have been newly created, so these are explained succinctly but fully on the cards.

The most difficult bit was trying to make Mickey and Jackie actually do something useful, rather than just be easy meat for the autons, like they are in the tv episode.

The scenario (and the character traits) are based loosely on the plot from the first episode with the ninth Doctor. And so the scenario has the same objectives as in the tv episode. The board set up just puts the two forces roughly equal distance from the first objective for the doc and companions. Both sides get some choice of deployment zones. Doctor’s side goes first as it’s him storming into the middle of the Auton invasion.

This is a first draft, it’s just what I imagine in my head might work. I will need to play test it to see if the scenario works, and if it’s a close game between the two side.

And I’m undecided about whether to include Jack, as he wasn’t in that episode, but i’d rather use all the models I’ve painted. He may have to wait for the Slitheen scenarios if he’s too strong against the Autons.

Feedback is welcome if you try playing the scenario.

The Autons were primed grey, then enthusiatically drybrushed with white to pre-highlight the raised areas. Then it was a case of choosing the colours for each piece of clothing, getting a solid basecoat of colour, applying a wash on the dark blues and browns, then a couple of highlight layers on the top folds and top surfaces. The ‘skin’ tones were a warm grey and a desert yellow, to show different material types. The faces are deliberately lacking much shading to demonstrate less depth and detail than real faces, as seen on the box photo.

I painted these up relatively simply, but tried hard to keep it neat.

Each part is basecoated, then 1 or 2 lighter tones for highlights. I’ve minimised my use of washes here because of the bright colours: Mickey and Jack’s jackets being the main use. Army painter dark tone over Field gray basecoat for Mickey, Blue tone over Uniform grey basecoat for Jack. Helpfully, the Uniform grey is a very close colour match to the Halford’s grey primer.

The casting was a little imperfect on Rose, so she’s not looking as pretty as Billie herself, but I can cope with that as they are primarily gaming pieces, although I think they are sufficiently interesting pieces that they can go in the display cabinet inbetween games.

The simplest faction to paint as they all have a simple colour scheme. Primed grey, drybrushed with white to give a zenith effect, painted all over with a light yellow-green, green wash, little purple wash in the recesses, and bone on the claws. Base textured, painted green-grey and highlighted grey.