Doctor Who: Worlds Apart Basics — Life Forms & Races
In this article we will cover the TCG’s Creature design, specifically:
- Life Forms.
- Races.
- Examples of cards that can interact with these.
Life Forms
The hundreds of different alien species in Doctor Who have dozens of building blocks that make up their physical bodies, but to keep it simple we’ve identified Organic, Mechanical, and Elemental as being the main categories.
That’s not to say we won’t add a couple more in the future, though.
Each Creature card’s Life Form is shown via one or more of these symbols in the upper left corner, just below the card name.
Organic Creatures make up the majority of aliens across the universe, including Humans (the human races is technically alien to all non-Earth species), Time Lords, Silurians, Ice Warriors, and many more.
However, during the initial game design phase we quickly found that there are many, (MANY) grey areas when it comes to how each race should be categorized in the game.
Take a look at these two cards for instance:
They are both Daleks, yet one is clearly more Organic and the other is more Mechanical. All Daleks look like the tentacly parasite to the left, but most of them drive (or fly) around in battle casings which are essentially mini tanks with plungers.
Therefore, if a Creature on the card’s artwork looks Organic or Mechanical, then in most cases it also is.
- Mechanical Creatures are a more niche but still very varied bunch of Creatures in the game, ranging from the vast majority of Daleks to small robots like the Cybermites and K9 series and huge battlemechs like the CyberKing.
Cybermen are another one of those grey areas, though. Cybermen are modified Organic Creatures (humans in most cases), and could definitely just be categorized as “Cyborgs,” but instead we will let the players come to that conclusion themselves by simply marking Cybermen as Organic AND Mechanical.
We love the flexibility of the Life Form system because it allows us to combine things like Organic and Mechanical in a way that is more clear to the player, especially in the future when more Races and Life Forms are added.
- Elemental Creatures are harder to define in some ways, and easier to define in others. Take the Pyroviles for instance. Clear contenders for the Elemental tag, no issues there.
But when it comes to things like the Weeping Angels, which are quantum-locked humanoids that turn to stone when looked upon, things become a bit more tricky. We don’t want to overly complicate the game by creating Life Forms specifically just for one or two Creatures, but we also don’t want to wrongly categorize something that shouldn’t belong here. For now, Weeping Angels in the game are Elementals and will stay that way for the foreseeable future, but we’d love to discuss this in Telegram or Discord!
Other Elementals in the first release of cards include Bad Wolf, Abzorbaloff, and the Kotturuh.
Races
Each Creature’s Race is written next to the card type on the middle plate of the card. There are also cards like Chameleon Arch and Cyber-conversion that can change a Creature’s race — this creates opportunities for some very interesting combos! But will let you speculate and discover those for yourself ;)
The list of Races from Unearthly Origins is as follows:
- Auton (if you count The Lone Centurion).
- Cyberman
- Dalek
- Human
- Human: UNIT
- Ice Warrior
- Judoon
- Khaled (Davros ftw!)
- Krafayis
- Monk
- Multi-form (Prisoner Zero)
- Ood
- Pyrovile
- Raston Robot (a.k.a. the Raston Warrior Robot)
- Red Leech
- Reptile
- Silurian
- Slitheen
- Sontaran
- Stenza (Tim Shaw? Tzim-Sha!)
- The Doctor (technically a Timeless Child)
- Time Lord
- Tree of Cheem
- Vashta Nerada (run!)
- Weeping Angel
- Zygon
With many more coming in the next releases.
Now, as promised, here are some examples of cards that interact with Life Forms:
And a few that just interact with Races:
