Mars Attacks Dredd?!!

Observant citizens will have noticed that Mantic have launched a Kickstarter based on the legendary Topps trading card series Mars Attacks!

Whilst this is pretty cool you may be asking yourself what has this to do with Judge Dredd? Well, until last month not a lot when IDW Publishing launched a four issue comic series entitled Mars Attacks Judge Dredd!

This is not the first Mars Attacks crossover, with the "ack, ack" critters ending up facing a wide range of opponents from the Transformers to Popeye....

Clearly this is not going to be the most serious of Dredd tales but it does give you an excuse to buy some of those cute little alien figures and bring them to justice on the streets of the Big Meg...

Five Years Of Dredd For A Tenner!

As part of their Kindle Fire sale, Amazon are currently offering the Kindle e-book editions of the first five Judge Dredd Case Files, covering such classic stories as The Cursed Earth, The Day The Law Died, The Judge Child, Block Mania and The Apocalypse War amongst many, for £1.89.

They can be read on the iPad (using the appropriate free app) as well as the Kindle Fire.

America, Origins and The Pit are also available at these criminally cheap prices.

Obviously the Justice Department has contacted the authorities in Brit-Cit as the sale ends tomorrow night, so if you want to grab a bargain, get over to Amazon UK now!

Judge Minty Now Showing...

For all that the Karl Urban Dredd movie was a good film it is impossible to deny that the uniforms looked wrong, the vehicles looked wrong, MGC-1 looked wrong, even the bad language was wrong. All the more frustrating when you watch the fan made Judge Minty film and see how all those things could have been done right with minimal effort...

Rookies...

One of the recurring character types in Judge Dredd are the white helmeted Rookie Judges, with many stories written about their final real world test on the streets with a Senior Judge deciding whether they should receive the black helmet and full eagle, indeed Judge Dekker first appeared as a Rookie in the pages of 2000AD.

Mongoose produce three Rookie Judges but whilst not too keen on the pose of the third I love these two models. Using similar painting techniques to Dekker below, the biggest problem was researching the correct paint scheme.

Whilst the Judges uniform has undergone some variation over the years, that of the Rookie has seen a ridiculous amount of versions drawn. Sometimes the helmet has a red stripe around the visor (like the Judges helmet), sometimes the knee pads are yellow... In the end I went with the more recent look and I think it looks really good.

As miniatures go they are probably more useful than first meets the eye. Aside from final assessment test, the Rookies get sent on the Cursed Earth "Hotdog Run" as part of their training and invariably get involved in any major city threatening event such as The Apocalypse War so they are worth collecting.

I have accidentally ended up with duplicates of these miniatures as I misunderstood what was coming with the Kickstarter, but they are easy enough to convert pose wise so I will soon have another two Rookies finished, ready to hit the streets...

Judge Dekker...

Dekker is the first of the Justice Department figures from Mongoose that I have painted and as such is the learning curve where decisions have to be made and techniques worked out.

The first major decision is what colour are Judge's uniforms. Over the decades artists in 2000AD have painted them anything from black to a royal blue. After some pondering I have gone with black as not only is this the colour Dredd designer Carlos Ezquerra colours his on the comic strip, but it reinforces the hard pseudo-fascist nature of the Judges.

I also had to make a decision about the eagle and shoulder pad. Metallic gold or non-metallic yellow, are both the same (yes with most artists but no consistency in the comic strip!). In the end, as you can see, I went metallic gold, using an ink wash and silver/gold drybrush to add depth and highlights.

The model is mounted on a resin industrial base, part of a set I picked up off eBay but for the life of me cannot remember who from. Whilst the base is grungy industrial metallic, I added a splash of leaking chemical gloop for a bit of colour contrast.

Overall for my first attempt at a Judge, I'm quite happy with how Dekker has painted up.

It was interesting that Mongoose picked Dekker as a character to release given her minor status. She appeared as a Rookie in four episodes (Progs 370 to 373) before reappearing in Muzak Killer (Progs 746 to 748) before being killed off in Judgement Day (Progs 786 to 799). That said she seems to follow a fairly standard look of black haired and brunette female judges and can be used as other characters such as Judge Hershey.

Merry Christmas Creeps!

Merry Christmas to all citizens of Mega-City One!

This project should kick on in the new year as Mongoose keep posting me goodies. Four Rookie Judges and Judge Dekker are currently half painted on the workbench and the fatties are being stuck together...

Female Wally Squad Judge...

I've had this miniature sat around unpainted for a number of years now, IIRC she is a Shia Khan Infiltrator from Alternative Armies.

Initially I thought she would make an ideal model for The Stainless Steel Rat's beautiful psychopath Angelina but I was never quite happy with the face so decided she could do duty as a Wally Squad undercover Judge (or bodyguard or generic female ganger with gun).


I slightly converted the figure by adding a miniskirt, the original miniature as skin tight trousers but that was about it, aside from removing the integral base and mounting it on a resin industrial one.

I tried the keep the colours quite bright in keeping with the background and this provides a good contrast to the grubby base. I especially enjoyed painting the hair pink!

Next on the painting table are some Judges, I just need to do some research into getting a good effect on the metallics...

Marauder!

With my thrill levels of anticipation rising pending the arrival of my first Kickstarter miniatures I decided to re-visit some old 2000AD progs and having re-read the Marauder series that appeared in 2009 I decided that I had to have a Maruader model, even if Mongoose didn't produce one (and given the character's sole series 12 episode run are unlikely to).

If you are unfamiliar with Marauder, it is the story of orphaned Danny Falcone who is expelled from the Academy of Law in 2134AD and returns to Sector 13 to wreak vengeance on the corrupt Judges who killed his mother.

Equipped with a unique looking Hellbender Armour suit with stealth technology and an array of weapons, Falcone is certainly a distinctive looking character.

To produce the model I took a Heroclix DC Super-Adaptoid, removed the click base, smoothed the facial detail and added some of the raised detail using Liquid Green Stuff before painting.

Painting was starightforward using Sephia wash over red before addng the green line details. I think I probably spent more time on the industrial base which I picked up of eBay a couple of years back.

Overall I'm quite pleased with the result, now to devise some stats and rules for him...

Mega Bases...

I was looking for some inspiration for paint schemes for some resin industrial bases I have mounted my first figures on and came across this excellent DIY piece which I thought I'd share.

Whilst these bases have designed for 40K miniatures, the idea is simple enough to use in Mega-City One...

A Big Box Arrives...

Having been working away in Euro-Cit over the last few days I came back to find the postie had delivered a box box of goodies from Mongoose. Inside were a six of the boxsets and all the singles I ordered under the Kickstarter. Now I have to find some time to paint it all! :-)

Minty The Movie!

It seems that not only has Mega-City's greatest lawman had his own film this year but also Long Walk veteran Judge Minty (yes, him of charity fame below). There are some limited cinema showings on now, so if you get the chance check it out and report back. The trailer looks pretty good...

Bringing Charity To The Cursed Earth...

You may have seen that the Frother's UK 4th Charity Thingy has an excellent model of Judge Minty (a judge who took The Long Walk early in 2000AD history) as its donation reward.

To get hold of this excellent model you need to make a donation through Just Giving to either:

MS Society or Cancer Research.

Then send an e-mail to charitymini(at)gmail(dot)com with;:

1. Your Name
2. The address you want the mini sent to
3. Your Just Giving reference number
4. Your preference as to Metal or Trollcast or both

More details can be found here.

Judge Dredd RPG

As part of the Kickstarter, Mongoose said they'd include a PDF edition of their Judge Dredd RPG which has just turned up. At 274 pages I may be gone some time... :-)

Judge Dredd Year One: City Fathers

I've just finished reading Judge Dredd Year One: City Fathers an e-book novella written by Matthew Smith and published by 2000AD Books. 

The first is a new series of stories set in 2080AD, Dredd's first year as a Judge, it was an entertaining read, notably noir in places. The plot starts off as a seemingly straight forward case of investigating the gang murder of a Justice Department informant before expanding into something more sinister as the bodycount starts to rise. 

Overall it was a good read, a couple of quirks, notably the portrayal of clone brother Rico but nothing that can't be lived with.

From a gaming point of view that isn't a great deal in it, though a raid on a known narcotics club and the end act at the spaceport have potential. 

The raid to capture a suspect whilst confronted by random gangers who may or may not take on the Judges could prove unpredictable fun, whilst trying to capture the perps at a busy spaceport before they escape could make for a great time limited scenario.

The Toughest Lawman...

When 2000AD was launched it 1977 I was eleven years old - prime target age for this new SF comic. Unfortunately an over zealous mother threw out my original comics but I still recall some of the early stories that provided much enjoyment such as Flesh, Rollerball, M.A.C.H. 1, Robo-Hunter and of course, Judge Dredd. I still remember being captivated by the Cursed Earth storyline and waiting eagerly for each new prog to arrive at the corner shop to find out how Dredd, Spikes and, of course, Tweak were.

Despite wargaming many periods and genres and even collecting a few of the Citadel Judge Dredd miniatures in the eighties my SF interests drifted away from the kind of stories in 2000AD to that in RPG's like Traveller 2300AD and books by William Gibson, my SF wargaming owed more to Hammer's Slammers and Neuromancer, than "the Galaxy's Greatest Comic".

However, my enjoyment of Dredd and some of the other 2000AD characters has endured and over the decades I have picked up the odd graphic novel which has somewhat expanded into a rather large collection, albeit with some large storyline gaps. To fill the gaps I have started collecting the excellent Case Files series but still have yet to purchase half of those available.

So what has this to do with wargaming?

Well I fell hook, line and sinker for the Mongoose Kickstarter and pledged in at the Council of Judges level. I may now be some $300 lighter in the wallet but I will have a hell of a lot of Judge Dredd related miniature goodies coming my way over the next few months.

I am determined that these miniatures will not join 'Lead Mountain' so am starting this blog as a way of encouraging myself to paint the miniatures shown below (gulp!) as well as some  other unofficial figures from other manufacturers that can be used on the streets of Mega-City One or the rad-wastes of the Cursed Earth.

I also hope to look at some of the various storylines that have appeared in comic books, novels, audio adventures (I have the Radio One Cursed Earth series tape somewhere...) and films and see which lend themselves to tabletop recreation or as inspiration...