Doctor Who and the Replacement Miniatures

Well, apparently my Google targeted advertising is working. While looking at something completely unrelated online, I got served an eBay ad featuring a copy of the rulebook from Invasion Earth, the game that Harlequin Miniatures put out in 1996 to go along with their range of Doctor Who models. Having never picked up a copy back in the late ’90s when I was collecting these models, I jumped at the opportunity.

I definitely missed out by not getting the full boxed set — a quick look at the listing on Board Game Geek shows that it also included 10 miniatures (6 UNIT troopers and 4 Daleks), 6 full color cardstock buildings (I would love to see those). counters, “loads” of templates, and 2 dice!

The rulebook is a little worn but in pretty good condition. Interestingly, it’s peppered with handwritten notes from a previous owner, many of which read like an existential cry for help in the face of what are admittedly some pretty vague and unconvincing rules. It’s I-go-U-go, which I’m not a big fan of, and overall the game mechanics are pretty uninspired.

However, it does handle the generally non-violent Doctor in an interesting way. At the start of any game that features the Doctor, each player places 3 “discovery counters” (presumably these were included with the boxed game) on the battlefield. The Doctor’s player can have any of their units collect these counters, but only the Doctor himself can reveal and use them, combining different tokens to create helpful gadgets.

There are stats for several different types of UNIT Troops and Daleks in the rulebook, plus the Doctor and a few different types of generic companions. I don’t know how Harlequin originally distributed the stats for other characters like Cybermen or Sea Devils, but about 10 years ago some helpful soul compiled a mammoth 198 page PDF full of official and fan-made material and uploaded it to Board Game Geek.

The rulebook concludes with a 3-game campaign requiring an escalating number of models. The first scenario is playable with what came in the box, but the other two require a lot more Daleks and soldiers than I have available…sort of. I’ve had the old Citadel/GW “Daleks and Cybermen” set of plastic models mouldering in storage since they came out in the 1980s, and I’ve also got a fair number of Warlord’s plastic Daleks, but…the GW Daleks are cartoonishly small, and the Warlord ones are too big — they’re not too bad but it’s enough that I know it would bother me.

I feel like I should give Invasion Earth a try, for the sake of comparison if nothing else, but honestly it doesn’t really look like it will be worth taking the time to learn the rules. I think I might have a closer look at Beast in the Broch’s Doctor Who Miniatures Game instead…