You’ve never seen a Dalek jump… until now

I think I’ve worked out enough kinks in my Diabolical Plan for an audience participation piece at my Glitchcon table in a few weeks to let you in on it.

First off, it’s all in keeping with the Doctor Who theme, since I’ll be at Glitchcon primarily to sell my lovely little (well… little… 3-pound, almost-400-page) Doctor Who book. Also, and I don’t think I’m spoiling this for anyone since the BBC has already beaten everyone over the head with it, the upcoming season premiere of Doctor Who will feature – for the first time in the new series – every make and model of original series (1963-1989) Dalek that ever menaced the Doctor. This plays with that notion too.

The concept is: Dalek checkers.

I’m working on making a slightly-oversized checkerboard with a futuristic look. It’s slightly oversized to accomodate the Dalek action figures from Character Options. And here’s why.

You – the attendees – are going to play checkers against me. With Daleks. I’m gonna be the old-school Daleks, you’ll be the new series Daleks. Standard checkers rules apply, nothing fancy. You don’t even have to say “Exterminate!” if you don’t want to. (I’m not planning on saying it a whole lot myself.) Any Daleks that make it into the enemy’s home territory will be crowned with little fezzes, and then the mayhem really begins.

Why? There’s plenty of computer gaming presence and tabletop RPG presence at Glitchcon. But what about a plain old board game? One of the oldest games in the book? And with Daleks, no less? (I would load you down with some grandiose notions about making performance art out of a man in his 40s playing with his action figures, but the truth is that I’ve had a serious checkers jones of late with no one but computer programs to play against, hence the recent odd string of checkers games being reviewed in Phosphor Dot Fossils. And I’m betting that this will draw a crowd to the table and, hopefully, the book and other stuff I’m actually selling. Either that or it’ll scare people off – I’m betting that it’ll be the former.)

There’s no prize for beating me except bragging rights for leading an army of a dozen Daleks to victory. (Hey, it’s a sci-fi convention, those bragging rights might actually get you laid.) I thought about doing a bracket and giving away a copy of the book to the winner, but that creates a bunch of potential winners who are holding off on buying the book because they’re trying to win a free copy – bad idea. If they weren’t so bloody expensive, I’d get a couple more of the shirts to give away (or a couple more Daleks, for that matter).

For those into the action figures, it’ll be a pretty good chance to see some of the rarer Dalek specimens, including the Special Weapons Dalek figure which practically didn’t make it to American shores unless you sprang to import the box set which included it. (And don’t bother to go trying to steal them – you know they’re all going to be re-released, with sound chips this time, as soon as the episode in question hits, right?)

So that’s the concept. You will, in all likelihood, be kicking my ass at checkers all weekend at Glitchcon.

With little plastic Daleks wearing tiny fezzes.

Hardcore.

If this goes over well, you can count on this setup being duplicated at any future convention booths this year. (Perhaps I’m giving away a little too much by saying that…)