Monday 24 July 2017

Warlord Games Daleks

The Daleks are without doubt, one of the most iconic race of bad guys in the sci-fi universe and one of the most enduring. They first appeared in the Doctor Who TV series in a December 1963 episode called simply, The Daleks. Like the Cybermen, the Daleks have evolved over time and whilst the basic shape and form of a Dalek remains constant there are subtle differences between the many variants. The Daleks shown here, produced by Warlord Games as part of their Exterminate! miniatures skirmish game, are known as the Time War Daleks, who first appeared in the 2005 episode of Doctor Who called Dalek. This is one of my all-time favourite episodes of Doctor Who as it showed the Daleks in a new and terrifying light, making them enemies to be truly afraid of.
Here are the four types of Dalek I have from the Warlord Games range. At the far left is Davros, the supreme leader and creator of the Dalek race. He is the only metal Dalek figure made by Warlord Games at the time of this posting, and he comes in three parts. He is available in the "Davros and the New Dalek Empire" boxed set, which contains him and 12 plastic Daleks.
The Dalek Leader is easily identified as being all black in colour. In the Exterminate! game he is a unique figure. Note that I painted the 52 sensor globes around his lower body and the two waistbands in gloss black paint. He is one of the plastic multi-part models and I gently bent his eyestalk, sucker arm and exterminator weapon to reposition them.
The black headed Dalek is a member of the elite Imperial Guard. Whilst they are also a unique choice in the Exterminate! game, you are allowed to field three of them as a single unit. As you will see below, this is what I have done.
Finally, we come to the standard patrol Dalek and the only limit to how many of them you can field is the points total you have decided on for your force. They are cheap, but very tough and hard to kill. I currently have 20 of them.
For those interested in how I painted them I first primed them with Foundry Black Shade 34A. I then painted the bodies in Citadel Skullcrusher Brass. When dry, I gave them a Citadel Agrax Earthshade ink wash. The 52 sensor globes around the lower body and the two waistbands were painted with Citadel Liberator Gold. The three appendages were painted with Foundry Spearpoint 35C. The two side lights on the head and the middle section of the eye stalk were painted with Foundry Arctic Grey Light 33C (basically, it's white by another name). I used Foundry Black Shade 34A to paint the bulbous end of the eyestalk, the three recessed rings of the head, the plunger end of the right arm, the tip of the exterminator weapon and the lower skirt. I painted the upper half of the skirt with Foundry Stone Shade 57A and finally, I painted the end of the eyestalk with Foundry Vivid Blue Shade 22A. It looks like a lot of work, but really, they were very easy to paint and I was able to plough through them very quickly.
Unlike most of the other figures in the Warlord Games Doctor Who range, the Daleks do not come with separate bases. To be honest, they don't need them but some gamers like to affix them to bases anyway. I haven't, but what I have done is glue a piece of thin card to their undersides, to hide the ugly hole there and to give them a perfectly flat base, which I cut to fit snugly. I painted the card black and as is custom with my figures, I stuck small adhesive stickers to them to identify each one.
Here are all 25 of my Warlord Games Daleks lined up in rank, with Davros and the black Dalek Leader in the front, just ahead of the 3 Imperial Guard Daleks. Behind them is the bulk of my horde, the standard patrol Daleks.
That is quite an impressive sight and a very formidable force. I have to admit to being a huge fan of the Daleks and they are without doubt, my favourite Doctor Who alien race. These figures are just superb, extremely well sculpted and fit together very easily.

26 comments:

  1. Grouped together they are impressive. Nicely done.

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  2. marvellous! i do love a dalek. What a heart warming sight

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  3. Great looking force Bryan, love all the additional details and careful alterations, really adds to the group

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    1. Thanks, Dave. I really don't like seeing masses of figures all in the same pose. So a small alteration here and there pleases me, and because these are made of plastic, it is so easy to alter the positions of the three appendages.

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  4. They look brilliant. I'm sorely tempted to buy into the Warlord game just so I can have a load of Daleks myself.

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    1. I can certainly highly recommend them, Roy. And the game itself is rather good.

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  5. I can only repeat what Roy just said! Oh, and add in a Dalek voice..
    "Must Resist"
    "Must Resist"
    "Must Re-sist!"

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    1. As the Daleks would say,
      "Resistance is futile!"
      "Resistance is futile!"
      "Resistance is futile!"
      "The Daleks' rule is SUPREME!"

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    2. Ha ha! I just KNEW you'd say that!
      What I didn't expect was to find myself looking at rules and figures without realising it - are the Daleks using some subliminal weapon??
      BTW, N.E.W. rules are 25% off this month at DriveThruRPG ;-)

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    3. Great minds think alike, Greg!

      I know about the N.E.W. rules discount but I already have the PDF and the hard-backed book. Still, $7.50 for a book of this size is an absolute bargain! Incidentally, you can find rules for the Daleks and the Cybermen in the downloads section of the WOIN website (they're free).

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  6. Superb stuff Bryan, they do look suitably impressive, one of the few things I do like about the new series is the Daleks (though not the paragrim or IDaleks so much), I do think they have over exposed them a bit though, back in the day you would only get one or two Dalek stories per doctor, made it more of an event to look forward to in my books.

    Cheers Roger.

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    1. Much appreciated, Roger. I do feel you can't have too many Dalek stories, but that's because I like them so much. That said, the Paradigm Daleks were a HUGE mistake! Even their creator, Steven Moffat, admits he screwed up with them!

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    2. Oh and I love the fact you still wrote Davros on the bottom of his base, maybe they should all have Davros on their bases, like Andy in Toystory putting his name on the bottom of all his toys ;-)

      Cheers Roger.

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    3. Laughing my ass off, Roger! :-) What a brilliant idea!

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  7. Lovely job Bryan especially that last pic. Going to need some special tricks to get past all those!

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  8. Why can't I stop thinking about Dr. Strangelove when I look at Davros? :)

    https://giphy.com/gifs/peter-sellers-dr-strangelove-14s7HeebEpuFJm

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  9. There's a real "Power Of The Daleks" feel to this posting, Bryan... you sure you didn't find a submerged space capsule floating within the Mercury swamps of the planet Vulcan - cause that churned out Daleks as quickly as you seem to be doing currently :-) Nice work on the different plunger positions etc too, as they do mix up your group shots rather nicely. Great stuff, and good to see Davros at the lead too!!

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    1. Cheers, Simon. I can't remember rattling through so many figures in one month as I have this month with my Daleks and Cybermen. And there's more to come in two days time as I show the "Nightmares in Silver" set.

      As their creator, Davros simply had to lead my Dalek force.

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