It was with some concern that we opened the Vashta Nerada expansion for Warlord Game’s Doctor Who: Into The Time Vortex game. After all, the Vashta Nerada are essentially shadow creatures that consume all flesh, and that’s not the sort of thing you want to take out of a box.
Luckily, what we got was three rather nice looking metal figures of skeletons in space suit, rather than the entire Starburst offices getting devoured by shadows that melt the flesh. As we’ve come to expect, these come in a set of three models, all with slightly different poses. They are very neatly done; each pose is appropriately frightening and they’re as screen accurate as 38mm scale model of a shambling skeleton in space suit can be. They’re supplied unpainted, but this is pretty easy to do as they’re bleached bone skeletons in white space suits. Glow in the dark paint for the skulls is recommended, for that extra spooky effect.
They don’t come with rules or additional counters which is a little disappointing. After all, the Vashta Nerada are a very visually interesting sort of monster. On the other hand, painting shadows is potentially a nightmare and in theory you can represent the ‘unsuited’ version of this monster with some black cardboard, which simply isn’t as exciting. You could it theory paint some of the provided bases black to represent the crawling shadows, but that’s not what this is about. This is a box set containing one of Doctor Who’s most memorable a creepiest monsters. Warlord are likely to release scenarios for these horrors separately, it’ll be interesting to see how the Into The Vortex Skirmish game handles the all-devouring horrors.
Fans of sci-fi minis are well served here; corpses in space suits have been a thing since the ‘80s. Of all of Warlord’s recent Doctor Who models, these are ironically the most generic. You could easily use these as display pieces or in other science fiction skirmish games if you wanted. Eager hobbyists may also want to risk cutting them up to repose, which is pretty easy to do thanks to the way they are designed. Fun.
VASHTA NERADA – DOCTOR WHO INTO THE VORTEX EXPANSION / PUBLISHER: WARLORD GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
