Doctor Who: Exterminate! - The Miniatures Game

Warlord Games
Released May 2017

Boasting that “an eternity of adventures awaits you” with this officially licensed miniatures game, “Doctor Who: Exterminate!” will undoubtedly take grown adults back to those heady days of running around the school playground screaming “ex-ter-min-ate” at one another, or more recent times when everyone was simply pounding the cement with their feet whilst shouting “delete”. Indeed, as far as capturing the frantic spirit of the BBC Television series goes, this boxed starter set genuinely seems to include everything any fan would ever need in order to recreate a classic clash of Daleks versus Cybermen; just without the need to risk an early coronary or pulled muscle by too much headlong rushing around within a confined play area…

For starters, the game contains no less than twelve unpainted plastic Time War Daleks, twelve Cyber Legion Cybermen and fourteen tiny Cybermats to help you quickly populate your battlefield and start rolling those dice. True, I personally didn’t find a few of Davros’ creations quite so easy to assemble as “Warlord Games” “easy-fit” instructions would suggest. But having scoured several other wargamers’ blogs and engaged in some forum-based dialogue on the subject, I sadly seem to be in a minority of one when it comes to this particular problem.

Fortunately, my apparent ‘fat fingers’ didn’t struggle to unfold the starter set’s double-sided 36" x 36" battlemat (which some have seen fit to later laminate) or to punch out the generous amount of card scenery which accompanies it within the box. These items are all incredibly well-illustrated and, amongst other items, includes a wonderful top-down illustration of the Tardis, a Dalek command console and death-defyingly deep mine shaft.

However, it is not until you read the game’s rules and gain an insight into its wonderful Adventure Card mechanic, that this product takes its owner from being simply a very eye-catching wargame between two of the Timelord’s greatest enemies and instead offers the potential to turn it into something far more akin to a special episode of our favourite science fiction programme.

Basic gameplay will undoubtedly cater for those people who simply want to set up Terry Nation’s creations against Dr. Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis’ finest, and subsequently, roll a fistful of dice over the space of a couple of hours in order to determine who is the victor. For those who want less of a wargame feel and more of a ‘televised serial’ atmosphere though, the aforementioned Adventure Cards can help factions suddenly call in reinforcements, develop additional sensory inputs to improve shot accuracy, score lucky hits, and even “reverse the polarity”; and always at the most opportune of moments when everything up until that point had looked lost.

Interestingly, “Doctor Who: Exterminate!” also contains plenty of statistics and cards for some of the Doctor’s other more prominent foes, such as the Zygons, Judoon and Silence, as well as those of the Tenth and Twelfth Doctors themselves. Such contents are clearly designed to encourage the series’ fandom to rush out and buy “Warlord Games” additional miniature expansion packs, and frankly, it’s worked with me.  Surely no-one can resist having David Tennant, armed with his sonic screwdriver and Tardis crew, tackling the Zygons, or how about the Judoon trying to thwart a Dalek invasion of the Moon..?

Doctor Who: Exterminate! is available from Amazon.