This is one of my favorites, but that could be that I am a huge fan of Doctor Who. I feel that it captures the theme of the show quite well. It does get better with the expansions as you will have more Doctors to choose from and you will have a little bit more wiggle room when you regenerate.
This one has works really well for me. My wife and I play it Co-op. We are crazy in love with the theme, so that helps us over look other things. My main critique is that its a little long for a dice game. a dice chucker starts to outstay its welcome past 60 min.
I am a fan of Dr. Who and tried this game at Gen Con when it came out and felt the same way as you do. It didn't thrill me. In my mind, I kept comparing it to Elder Sign and felt I'd rather be playing Sign than Who and I didn't know why. Maybe Signs felt more thrilling to me or that I already had this type of game, mechanically, at home. What do think of the comparison?
I had a similar experience - I got to try it at Origins 2017 and felt a strong similarity to Elder Sign. In my case, though, I found that I’d MUCH rather play a game themed on Doctor Who than a game themed on Cthulhu. As soon as it went to retail, Elder Sign went up for trade and I was happy to add Time of the Daleks to my collection.
I’m a big Doctor Who fan, and this was my greatest dissapointment of 2017. The semi coop didn’t work and the theme just seemed so thinly painted on a dice chucker. Seemed like an excuse to put some screenshots in the box to please the fans.
The coop-competitive nature of the game does not quite work well with a full table we found. It was before lockdown, so I don't remember exactly what we did, but we came up with our own purely coop version that was much more satisfying and pretty darn hard too. And yes, if you are a DW fan that makes a world of difference. Throw in an expansion or two and it's a little more fun too. I think the mechanics can be fun, but the fan service is really the draw here in my opinion. And it's pretty good fan service.
I'm a sucker for tricky dice games and this one was on my radar for a long while due to a way different color dice interact, how challenges work etc. Unfortunately, I've never got it as - same as you - Doctor Who theme fell completely flat for me😐 Tried a few different series but it's not my cup of tea. Just hoping it will be rethemed at some point😁
Yeah I'd agree with your summary. I was a Dr Who/Torchwood fan back in the day. I grew up watching reruns of the earlier Doctors as a kid then the 90s movie and then the big reboot when I was in my late teens/early twenties. I'd say this game is the best "Dr Who game" but it's not a very good game. All the dice and random card/tile drawing make it far too swingy and the game takes too long so the randomness can really hurt players as opposed to balancing out which I had expected it would. Add to that the weird semi-coop racing idea (which sort of plays on the Doctors various egos I guess) , the dalek end game factor (which makes already difficult challenges even worse) , the horrible time anomaly penalties (that force the semi coop idea further but feels like its wasting players turns when they could be doing something better) and the travel dice (thematic but can be quite mean) and we found it punishingly frustrating. Its a shame as to look at any component in the box brings back memories and cool references but we found the actual game to outstay its welcome far too soon and never be a close finish. I'd say base Elder Sign is a significantly better dice game but even then....
It is so interesting to imagine that you are not familiar with Doctor Who. I can tell you at least that the 10th Doctor is the real one and the best one. That every Rose has its Thorns. That the ninth Doctor is underrated. And you don't know about the adventures of Clara and Rose and Amy and Donna and Martha and Rory and Bill? About Rory guarding Amy for 2000 years? So interesting, it's a whole life flashing by while I type. Oh, and you have never seen a doctor regenerate? Never heard the attack cry of a Dalek? Never seen the earth taken over by Cybermen? Oh my, oh my, ... It's actually great history how the BBC almost destroyed all the old films from the sixties due to lack of space. I remember watching the fourth Doctor as a child in the seventies. I think it is hard to get into if you never were exposed to it. If you ever want to give it a try start with the ninth Doctor and Rose, not sure if HBO runs those. Okay, I am getting carried away. Thanks for another nice review!
@@metalmugen I think it's fairest to say, that as a fan of Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor Who, that half of all the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor Who content ever released is actively bad. Most fans of the three franchises, if we're honest, will agree with that. The disagreement comes in that every fan of the franchises likes and dislikes different parts of it. I'm currently catching up on the Classic Who, and just like with nu-Who there are individual stories I adore, but they're right next to stories I think are irredeemable garbage. Yet when I look online at the many "skip/watch" lists for Classic Who (necessary, as not everyone has the time or inclination for 26 seasons of catch-up), EVERYONE is recommending different stories to both skip and watch. Doctor Who is the most wildly inconsistent show I've ever seen. With Trek you can say 'TNG gets better once Riker grows a beard", or be generally a fan of a couple of the franchise shows while disliking others, I mean I adore Discovery but hate Picard, love TNG but mostly dislike Voyager. Who can have some of the best episodes of TV ever made followed immediately by the most cringeworthy and embarassing thing ever put to film the week after, and then go back to being brilliant again. There's nothing else like it to have ever existed, we'll all never agree on which bits are good or bad, but absolutely it is worth checking out because, again, there's nothing else like it to have ever existed. In conclusion, Doctor Who is a land of contrasts.
