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Doctor Who: Alien Armies Trading Card Game (2009)Â
Following the conclusion of GE Fabbri's Doctor Who: Battles in Time magazine and trading-card range, Panini Comics — the publisher behind Doctor Who Magazine — launched its own Doctor Who trading-card game.
Doctor Who: Alien Armies was announced by Panini in September 2009 and launched across the United Kingdom and Ireland on 1 October 2009. Unlike Battles in Time, the new collection was designed as a standalone trading-card game rather than a magazine partwork.
The concept was deliberately inexpensive. Individual booster packs contained six randomised cards and retailed for just 50p, while a dedicated starter pack containing the equipment needed to begin playing was priced at £4.99.
The game had a relatively short commercial life, appearing during the final months of 2009. Contemporary collector reports from November and December demonstrate that the cards were actively being sold at newsagents during this period.
Although Alien Armies followed Battles in Time chronologically, Panini did not simply reproduce GE Fabbri's format.
There was no fortnightly magazine, no magazine-mounted booster pack and no accompanying partwork. Instead, Panini produced a self-contained trading-card game with its own starter pack, collector's binder, game board, booster packs, promotional cards and collector's tins.
The game nevertheless retained the fundamental idea of comparing character statistics, making Alien Armies a spiritual successor to the Battles in Time card game. Contemporary collectors described the gameplay as having a similar comparative structure to other stat-based card games.
Alien armies were mentioned twice within the Doctor Who Magazine the first in Issue 413, and the second time was the above, within Issue 416.
The 260-Card Main Checklist
The standard Alien Armies collection consisted of 260 numbered cards:
180 Standard cards — 001–180
40 Glitter Foil cards — G1–G40
20 Super Foil cards — F1–F20
20 Super Foil Emboss cards — E1–E20
The four groups form the main 260-card checklist. The cards cover the Tenth Doctor's television era from The Christmas Invasion through to Planet of the Dead, with the embossed Doctor cards providing an unusual exception by featuring incarnations and material from earlier Doctor Who stories.
Main Card Distribution
The 180 standard cards are numbered consecutively from 001 to 180. The premium cards use their own prefixes rather than occupying additional positions within the main numerical sequence. This gives collectors four parallel numbering systems:
001–180 — Standard
G1–G40 — Glitter Foil
F1–F20 — Super Foil
E1–E20 — Super Foil Emboss
This structure makes Alien Armies particularly straightforward to catalogue compared with some earlier Doctor Who card releases.
Five Card Types
Every card belongs to one of five functional categories.
Doctor — Blue - Doctor cards represent the Tenth Doctor in different appearances and circumstances. The category is represented by a blue-themed background. The premium embossed series is particularly notable because it expands beyond David Tennant's incarnation, with the E-series containing Doctors from across the history of the programme.
Children of Time — Yellow - The yellow Children of Time cards represent the Doctor's companions and closest travelling allies. The category includes characters such as Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler, Martha Jones and Donna Noble.
Villain — Red - The red Villain cards represent the monsters, aliens and antagonists encountered by the Doctor. The extensive Villain category includes many of the most recognisable creatures from the Tenth Doctor's television era, including Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Judoon, Ood, Weeping Angels and other enemies.
Ally — Turquoise - The turquoise Ally cards represent friendly or supporting characters who do not fall into the Children of Time category. These include characters from individual episodes as well as recurring supporting figures.
Equipment — Time Vortex - Equipment cards use the distinctive Time Vortex background rather than one of the four character-category colours. The first ten cards in the standard checklist are Equipment cards, making them immediately identifiable when organising a collection.
Promotions
Starter Packs, Tins & Retail Exclusives
To support the launch of the trading card game, Panini rolled out specialized entry-level retail products and collector bundles. Tracking these down today is a major challenge for completionists due to a wave of store-exclusive promotional cards.
The £4.99 Starter Pack
Available at nationwide newsagents and supermarkets, the core Alien Armies Starter Pack retailed for £4.99 and acted as the primary gateway for new players. It bundled together everything required to house and play the game:
The Collector’s Binder: A custom, plastic-sleeved ring folder featuring a removable graphic cover insert, packed with an official printed master checklist detailing all 260 cards.
The Alien Armies Game Board: A tactical paper playmat where players positioned their active squad cards to face off against an opponent's stats. The complete game rules were printed directly on the reverse side.
Four Booster Packs: A total of 24 randomized cards to kickstart the collection.
The Store-Exclusive Starter Variants
Beyond the standard retail pack, Panini partnered with specific high-street chains to distribute three highly sought-after Limited Edition variant starter packs. Each retail giant received its own exclusive bonus card mounted to the packaging:
Davros (Limited Edition): Separately distributed and exclusive to branches of ASDA.
Rose Tyler (Limited Edition): Separately distributed and exclusive to branches of Martin's & McColl's.
Dalek (Limited Edition): Separately distributed and exclusive to branches of WHSmith.
The £9.99 Collector's Tins
Released in November 2009 to capture the holiday market, Panini introduced two premium metallic storage tins priced at £9.99 each. Each tin served as an instant collection booster, packing 10 full booster packs (60 cards) alongside an exclusive premium chase card for a total of 61 cards per tin:
Collector’s Tin 1: Included the exclusive The Tenth Doctor Limited Edition card.
Collector’s Tin 2: Included the exclusive Cyberman Limited Edition card.
Magazine Covermount Promos
To drum up widespread interest across their broader publishing empire, Panini utilized their flagship comic and television magazines to distribute the remaining promotional cards:
The Tenth Doctor (Variant Promo): A distinct, sixth Limited Edition card was attached as a free front-cover gift exclusively with Doctor Who Magazine (DWM) Issue 414.
Comic Book Multi-Packs: Two standard packs of cards were included as free covermount gifts across three consecutive issues of Doctor Who Adventures (DWA) Issues 135, 136, and 137.
The DWA Pack Anomaly: Intriguingly, these magazine-exclusive promotional packs did not feature standard factory randomization. Instead, they were deliberately collated to include 5 consecutively numbered standard base cards paired with one random variant card, making them a fascinating study in mid-2000s printing curation.
Unreleased Limited Editions
The Mythic Unreleased & Misprint Promos
While the standard retail run of Alien Armies was cut short, the behind-the-scenes production history reveals a treasure trove of hyper-rare collector anomalies. According to documentation compiled in Howe’s Transcendental Toybox, several promotional items were manufactured but never formally distributed—resulting in some of the rarest Doctor Who trading cards in existence.
The 6 Unreleased Retail Exclusives
Panini originally planned to partner with even more high-street chains to distribute an additional wave of six store-exclusive Limited Edition cards. However, due to a sharp lack of public interest and the rapid cancellation of the game in December 2009, these retail deals fell through.
The promotional partnerships were quietly abandoned, and the stock was ordered to be scrapped. Despite the cancellation, a handful of sheet-cut survival copies have leaked onto the secondary collector market over the years. If you spot any of the following six cards with a Limited Edition badge, you are looking at the ultimate series rarities:
Donna Noble
Martha Jones
Weeping Angel
The Master
Sontaran
The Tenth Doctor (Alternative variant artwork: Looking Upwards)
The Oversized Starter Pack Misprints
Before the game even hit newsagent shelves, the very first batch of promotional Limited Edition cards suffered a catastrophic manufacturing error at the printing facility:
The Error: The cards were mistakenly cut to an incorrect, noticeably larger dimension than the standard Alien Armies card frames. Furthermore, they were pressed using an alternative, experimental foil stock that differed significantly from the final retail reflection pattern.
The Cover-Up: Realizing the mistake would mean the cards wouldn't fit properly into the game's official pocket binders, Panini ordered the entire print run to be securely destroyed and replaced with corrected, standard-sized versions.
The Survivors: A small allocation of these oversized error sheets escaped destruction and were accidentally bundled into the earliest retail shipments of the £4.99 Starter Packs.
To date, the only confirmed surviving examples of these oversized, alternative-foil errors to be verified by the community are the Dalek and Rose Tyler cards. Finding an original starter pack containing these macro-variants is widely considered a legendary pull.
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