Doctor Who: Nemesis (Cybermen faction)

Last week, I looked at the Dalek faction in the Doctor Who: Nemesis tabletop game from Gale Force Nine. Prior to that, I reviewed the game as a whole, at which point I realized that there was no way I could do everything in the game justice and promised a part 2 talking about the different nemeses that players could choose from. For anyone keeping score, I clearly failed at that review as well and now we are on part 3, talking about the Cybermen. You can head over to TheRatHole.ca/dw-nemesis-1 and TheRatHole.ca.ca/dw-nemesis-daleks, to re-read those reviews.

I don’t intend to go over the mechanics of the game in any sort of detail here. If you decide to simply read on (which you are welcome to do) and feel a bit lost, you know what to do. But continuing today, and for the next few issues, I’m going to be digging into each of the Doctor’s various nemeses that are featured in the game.

While I won’t go over the mechanics again, I will remind you what the concept of the game is. Each player will take on the persona of one of the Doctor’s classic nemeses: Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, or The Master. Each nemesis has a unique, double-sided, Control Board with a different “faction” or iteration of their chosen nemesis. Each player also has a unique deck of cards for their chosen nemesis and an additional set of cards added to that for their chosen faction. Further added to their deck are cards representing two randomly selected Doctors (Doctors 1-13 plus the War Doctor). Yes, I mostly just rewrote the exact same description from the last issue, but since the details haven’t changed, why should I?

CYBERMEN Core Deck and Control Board

After the Daleks, the Cybermen are likely the most recognizable monsters in Doctor Who. The Cybermen first appeared in the episode The Tenth Planet, which was also the last regular appearance of William Hartnell, before regenerating into Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor. The history and timeline of the Cybermen is more than a little confusing with constant costume redesigns, and several contradictory origins. Eventually, Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor surmised that “They happen everywhere that there are people.” In other words, “any human world with sufficiently advanced technology will inevitably produce Cybermen.” They’re the result of parallel evolution, being created independently countless times on countless worlds throughout the universe. 

The core Cybermen deck reflects this evolution by having just under half the cards be Character or Upgrade cards, with many of the remaining cards being used to speed up the process of playing and upgrading your cyber-army. Both of the core Schemes, ‘Delete’ (Nemesis, Instant ; Scheme) and ‘Surprise Attack’ (Nemesis, Instant ; Scheme) each give a +2 Strength bonus during conflicts or trigger a win if the play has 2 Captured Doctors. 

When playing as the Cybermen, you may choose to play as either Ashad or the Cyberplanner. 

CYBERPLANNER faction

The Cyberplanner, or more accurately any Cyberplanner, is basically just a more advanced Cyberman and the concept has undergone similarly massive redesigns over the years. One may be completely stationary while another could be as nimble and manic as the Eleventh Doctor, yet the one thing they all have in common is their uncommon intellect. They are the generals and oft puppetmasters of the cyber-race(s). Undisputedly the most advanced Cyberplanner we’ve seen on television is the specific Cyberplanner chosen to represent them as a faction of the game. Appearing in the Eleventh Doctor episode Nightmare in Silver, the Doctor was assimilated by Cybermites and the resulting Cyberplanner named itself Mr. Clever (as I will refer to him out of sheer stubbornness in my belief that he should have always used that specific name for the game).

In the game, Mr. Clever’s Control Board Locations are the Cyber Tomb, Cyber Converter, Cyber Controlship, and finally The Doctor’s Mind with an Ongoing ability to gain 1 Power during the End Step, and gives the player a hand size of six cards, rather than five. The first of his five faction cards is ‘Cyber Legion’ (Nemesis, Character ; Cyberman, Minion), which gives 1 Plot whenever the player wins a conflict involving this Character. This works well with ‘Mental Assault’ (Nemesis, Instant ; ) which allows the player to discard two cards from their hand to vanquish one Hero Character from the current Conflict. Alternately, ‘Mental Assault’ can be played in the End Step to Retrieve one Upgrade Nemesis Constant from the discard pile. ‘Cyber Control Room’ (Nemesis, Constant ; ) allows the player to look at the top two cards of their deck, discard one and place the other back on the top of their deck, to potentially be drawn next. When his last faction card, ‘Battle of Wills’ (Nemesis, Constant ; Installation), is played it is attached to The Doctor’s Mind Location and allows the player to search their deck or retrieve from the discard pile the card ‘Struggle for Control’ and play it. As well, it adds an action to the location allowing the player to reveal the top card of their deck and if that card is a Nemesis Constant or Character they gain 1 Plot. That leaves ‘Struggle for Control’ (Nemesis, Constant ; Scheme) as the only additional Scheme card. It has an Ongoing effect that gives the player 1 Plot each time they win a conflict and have Thwarted at least one Hero card. Important to remember here, that a Vanquished Character is simply discarded from play and that Doctor Character cards are Captured rather than Vanquished. ‘Struggle’s’ win condition triggers when the Cybermen have 6 or more Plot.

ASHAD faction

Ashad, also known as The Lone Cyberman, first appeared in the Thirteenth Doctor episode The Haunting of Villa Diodati. This is arguably one of the best stories of the Whitaker run and without a doubt one of the most brilliantly subtle episodes of the modern era. The story acknowledges that history has become unusually flexible around that night. This is a reference, specifically, to the Eighth Doctor audio Mary’s Story. Mary’s Story tells an alternate version of the Doctor’s “first” meeting with Mary Shelley and is itself notable for specifically acknowledging comic book, written, and audio continuities. Something not done elsewhere until the web-short The Night of the Doctor (ironically also an Eighth Doctor story). Ashad appears as a partially converted Cyberman whose casing seems to have been Frankensteined together from multiple past iterations of the race. (Frankenstein… Mary Shelley… See what I did there?) Unlike almost all other Cybermen, Ashad has no emotional inhibitor. Despite claiming he “[did] not need to be stabilized”, this is only because he is bat-guano insane. He killed his own children for resisting a Cybermen invasion and willingly submitted to conversion, which was never fully completed. He is an unmitigated zealot, aiming to destroy all organic life and restore the Cyber-Empire. His main plot arc ends with his apparent death in The Timeless Children. 

Ashad’s Control Board consists of Earth: Past, the Cyber Tomb, a Cybership, and the Ruins of Gallifrey with an End Step ability to gain 1 Power if the player has three or more Minion Characters with three Upgrade Constants. His five Faction Cards include ‘A Safe Distance’ (Nemesis, Instant ; ) which allows the player to move one Cyberman Character out of a Conflict or to retrieve one Upgrade Nemesis Constant. ‘Cyberlord’ (Nemesis, Constant ; Upgrade ) must be attached to a Cyberman Character in the Ruins of Gallifrey Location, if that Character is Thwarted during a Conflict they are returned to the player’s hand, along with all attached Upgrade, instead of being discarded. ‘Cyberlord’ is an upgrade itself, but the effect can be a major advantage if the Character also has the ‘Death Particle’ (Nemesis, Constant ; Upgrade ) attached to it. If that Character is Thwarted EVERY Character on the same Control Board is Vanquished. Playing similarly to Mr. Clever’s end game, ‘Find the Cyberium’ (Nemesis, Moment ; ) allows the player to find or retrieve ‘Protect the Cyberium’ and place it on the top of your deck. ‘Protect the Cyberium’ (Nemesis, Constant ; Upgrade, Scheme) must be attached to a Cyberman Character that already has two or more Upgrade Constants attached, and gains the player 1 Plot during their end step. When the player has at least 4 Plot the Scheme’s win condition is triggered. While Ashad’s Scheme only requires 4 Plot to Mr. Clever’s 6 Plot, ‘Protect the Cyberium’ is the only card in Ashad’s deck that provides Plot, meaning it takes a minimum of four turns to trigger a win. 

Other than my unreasonable annoyance at their use of the very specific named character Mr. Clever and just generically calling him a Cyberplanner, I like wreaking havoc with the Cybermen. Like the Daleks, they work best with an aggressive playstyle. However, while both Ashad and the Cyberplanner Schemes are triggered based on accumulating Plot, the core Schemes are triggered by Capturing Doctors in Combat. This gives a player more strategic options beyond overwhelming numbers. Generally using the Cybermen is a straightforward proposition. So straightforward that both factions have a card that can be dangerously easy to misplay. Ashad’s ‘Death Particle’ and the Cyberplanner’s ‘Mental Assault’ (Nemesis, Instant ;) both are used to Vanquish Characters, which removes those Characters from potential Conflict but also prevents any Doctors from being Captured which can work against the core Schemes.

Make sure you come back next week when I’ll be looking at yet another of the antagonists-turn-protagonist in Doctor Who: Nemesis! Until then, you can find Gale Force Nine at www.gf9.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/GaleForceNine. You can find more of my Doctor Who gaming reviews at TheRatHole.ca/who*. Enjoy.

[Editor’s Note: at the time this goes live we are experiencing some technical difficulties behind the scenes. Our Doctor Who Games landing page is specifically impacted and may not include our most recent Who reviews, including our Nemesis reviews. -dc]