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Doctor Who: Alien Armies Trading Card Game (2009)
Following the massive three-year run of GE Fabbri’s Battles in Time, Panini Comics—best known to the fandom as the long-running publishers of Doctor Who Magazine—decided to launch their own competing card game. Formally announced in a Panini press release on 19 September 2009 and hitting shelves that October, Alien Armies took a completely different approach to the retail market.
To maximize accessibility, Panini stripped away the expensive magazine component entirely, delivering a pure trading card game. Each booster pack cost a mere 50p and contained 6 randomized cards. Despite its aggressive pricing, the series had a remarkably brief retail lifespan, vanishing from store counters by the end of December 2009.
Card Anatomy & Design Mechanics
The game featured full character photography accented by a distinct glossy lamination over the primary subjects. The cards spanned storylines from the Tenth Doctor's debut in "The Christmas Invasion" all the way through to the 2009 special "Planet of the Dead".
Every card prominently credited the specific episode title at the bottom. Mechanically, cards were split into five distinct, color-coded functional types:
Doctor (Blue Background): Central hero cards featuring incarnations and variants of the Time Lord.
Children of Time (Yellow Background): Dedicated companion cards tracking the Doctor's closest allies.
Villain (Red Background): Monsters, aliens, and rogue entities.
Ally (Turquoise Background): Secondary characters and friendly factions.
Equipment (Time Vortex Background): Item cards utilized to modify stats during battle.
Aside from Equipment cards, every card carried dedicated Power and Attack ratings, alongside a blue Tiebreak value. They also featured coloured modifier slots (Blue, Green, Red, and Yellow) designed to receive stat power-ups when paired with Equipment cards during gameplay.
The series consisted of 260 cards, being numbered from 001-185, G1-G40, F1-F20, and E1-E20 featuring characters from TV: The Christmas Invasion-Planet of the Dead. They were split into the following categories:
180 Standard cards
40 Glitter Foil cards (Print Ratio 2:1)
20 Super Foil cards (Print Ratio 4:1)
20 Super Foil Emboss cards (Print Ratio 4:1)
Each standard pack cost 50p and contained 6 cards. The cards were split into five types, each with a different colour-coded background:
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.
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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