Judges

Having faffed around for ages about painting my judges blue or black I decided to outsource the issue to a professional painter and have a growing collection of black uniformed judges. 

4 years!

Although its been pretty quiet for the last few years (!) I haven't stopped the project completely.

Spurred on by the excellent Dredd Kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1990654819/judge-dredd-miniatures-game-block-war and by the fact my kids are at a prime gaming age I've started to pull together a lot of the things I have been collecting.

Whilst stuck at an airport I used the free Wi-Fi to browse the web and ended up with 300+ more Heroclix figures (pre-painted collectible miniatures) that make great Mega City cits.

I have rebased them (and all my other figures) on clear plastic bases from Fenris Games. 

Heroclix is also a good source for villains. I once had the misfortune to sit through 'Faust' and the devil was played by someone who looked just like this guy:

Will be using him as one of the gang bosses.

SiPegg Citi-Def

SiPegg block is less than a decade old and the block Citi-Def Unit was formed largely from the unit of the nearby demolished Mary Ellen Ellen Mary (Ellen) block.

This leaves an interesting legacy as the Mary Ellen Ellen Mary (Ellen) Citi-Def fought one of the crucial battles of the Apocalypse war. It was a battle in which a heroic band of brothers fought off a numerically superior but incompetently led foe leaving them broken and vanquished on the field of battle.

The fact that said band of brothers were a company of Sov judges who cut a bloody swath through the meekly bowelled Mary Ellen Ellen Mary (Ellen) blockers whilst the later ran screaming in terror has thankfully been largely forgotten and the Citi-Def have been raised to the peak of mediocrity expected of firepower obsessed nuts with an overdeveloped sense of self.

Below is a work in progress, its a mishmash of Mongoose Publishing Starship Troopers and Gangs plastics combined with Games Workshop Imperial Guard heads.

Battle Report: The Hit

Ruled with a hand of iron, SiPegg block has for years been the personal fiefdom of its very own cuddly crime overlord Don Donald. In recent years the task of keeping in check the local gangs has proven increasingly difficult since, having stepped on the toes of a regional crime boss, his henchmen have been stretched to breaking point.

Last week a Suppository smuggling scam turned ugly and the offended crime boss decided to put paid to Donald once and for all engaging the services of the ‘Spiltz’ Blitz agency. 2 Blitzers have been despatched with orders for a very public execution.

Scenario

Don Don and his 2 bodyguards need to make their way from the Samurai 7 nitespot to the Don’s waiting Cadilax Papster 3000. The Blitzer player needs to kill the Don and then escape.

The cast

Crime Lord player

Don Don Crime Lord No weapon, Energy Shield

Macs Bodyguard Handgun

2 Shot Si Punk 2 Handguns

Shorty Gaz Punk Handgun

Pedro Punk Stutterblaster Assault rifle

Blitz Agency

Suzie Blitzer Spit Pistol

Bez Blitzer Spit Pistol

The Blitzer player has 10 citizen models to use. 2 of these will be his Blitzers (identified by a sticker under their base) that can be exposed at any point by the Blitzer player or by the Crime Lord player if they make a successful agility test (see below)

House rules

• Move sequence is Gang player - Blitz Agency/Citizens
• It takes one action to draw a concealed weapon.
• Citizen models move once per turn with a movement allowance of 5”.
• Once the shooting starts citizens have to flee directly away from all visible threats.
• No citizen models can move directly towards the Don.
• Any citizen models within 5” of the Don HAVE to move directly away from him.
• Any citizen model within 5” of the bodyguards can be ‘challenged.’ On a successful agility role the Blitzer player has to confirm whether the model is a blitzer or a cit.

Setup

• The Don, Macs and 2 Shot Si start within 2” of the Samurai 7 entrance and may start moving to the car.
• Gater Dan starts within 2” of the Samurai 7 entrance and can only move when someone has opened fire.
• Pedro starts adjacent to the car and can only move when someone has opened fire.
• The 10 citizen models can be placed anywhere on the board at least 10” away from the Crime Lord figures and from each other.
  

The game board, Don Don & fellows in top corner, his car is in the bottom right.

Don Don, flanked by 2 Shot Si & Macs with Shorty Gaz behind.

The game.

The Don, Macs and 2 Shot Si moved quickly down to the mall floor, challenging a couple of cits who strayed too close.

They carried on making good progress till the blitzers turn 8 when the Splitz Blitzers showed their hand with Suzie drawing her spit gun and mowing down 2 Shot Si with a serious arm injury.

Before Macs could react he was in turn blown apart by Bez who appeared behind the, now much reduced, party.

Reacting as any Crime Lord should to a threat, Don Don ran screaming like a girl for the nearest cover. Hearing the commotion, Shorty Gaz drew his weapon and rushed towards the sound of gunfire and Pedro reacted the same way, pulling his Spit Gun from under his coat he released a burst of lead towards Suzie behind the car succeeding only in peppering the car.

Suzie replied in her turn by wiping out poor old Pedro with a head shot, whilst Bez managed to defeat the Don’s energy shield dropping him to the floor with a serious injury.

Charging at 2 heavily armed Blitzers screaming the banshee war cry he had heard on a vid slug does not a sensible tactical move make and when Shorty Gaz’s shot at Bez went wide there was only one possible outcome, a head wound duly being delivered by the ice cool Bez. Suzie meanwhile strolled to the prone form of Don Don and with a squeeze of the trigger consigned SiPegg’s Block Overlord to the history books or, more accurately, a red smear on the floor.

Don Don got done.

Blitzers are pretty tough then (!) With their ability to ambush in this scenario it would probably have been fairer to only have one hitman but hey, nobody will weep for the Don and the floor is open for a, more imaginatively named, successor.

Bases are go.

Have finally decided on basing, buying some 25mm display bases from Fenris games with inserts cut from World Works Games floor tiles. Not a perfect solution but I like the look so am busily rebasing all the figures including the various Heroclix ones. Think I'm going to paint the Heroclix figures with a wash or maybe I'll trying dipping to bring out the detail.

Battle Report: Urban Spaced (Rep 11) v Meatbeaters (Rep 24)

Full battle report as promised with thanks to ned-kogar (Meatbeaters) for the script.

The Urban Spaced (Rep 11) versus The MeatBeaters (Rep 24)

No-one's sure how long The Urban Spaced have been making quiet incursions into Sector 90, but they were last week spotted strolling unhurriedly along the gentle rampways of Gloria Estefan Crock Block, coming to the attention of local robot gang The Meat Beaters. Circuits fritzing, the robots tailed them through City Bottom, back over the sector border for miles before reaching the environs of Si Pegg Block.

Reacting to the mechanoid threat to the Urban Space's haunt, the local Munce Munch, top dog Dav 2 Barrels rallied his fellow spuggers to defend their turf.

The field of battle

The protaganists

Heroic Homosapien defenders: The Urban Spaced.
Dav 2 Barrels (Top Dog), Shades (Lieutenant), 2 Gun Hon (Punk), Juve Derek (Juve), One Cred Fred (punk), Queenie (Juve), Dame Jead (Juve)
Maraudering metal freakoids: The Meatbeaters.
Dr Mop, Dr Beat (Top Dog), Dr Plop, Dr Print, Dr Chop, Dr Tank (lieutenant), Dr Copy.
Deployment


The game

Turn 1
Realising that they'd been detected, but still tucked away around a corner, Dr Plop, Dr Tank & top dog Dr Beat tucked in behind some stinky munce crates. Dr Mop, not having fought for a while, decided to impress by starting his own pincer movement, skipping, mop high, up a ramp at the rear.

Turn 2
The Urban Spaced (Dav 2 Barrels, Shades, 2 Gun Hon, One Cred Fred, Queenie, Dame Jead and Juve Derek) turned as one and Big Dav marched forward, sending his lieutenant, Shades, and femmes Queenie and 2 Gun Hon off towards the metallic footfalls.

Turn 3
With Dr Mop relaying that the Spaced had split up, Dr Beat stomped up a crate behind the Munce shack (followed by Drs Chop and Print) discarding caution to ensure they won the higher ground of the plaza.

Turn 4
Shades, and his two barely-clad companions reached the plaza, paused near an InfoBooth, guns cocked, robots visible.

Turn 5
Corrupted pruningbot Dr Chop lurched forward past his leader, revving his built-in chainsaw, while Dr Beat fired the first shots of the battle, one slug hitting 2 Gun Hon, but pinging off some kind of implant, stunning her. Nervy Queenie fled immediately. First blood.

Turn 6
Unimpressed, big Dav 2 Guns, strode up a slope, reinforcing his gang's nerve, while swaggering Juve Derek strolled down the centre of the alley, watched by Dr Tank and Dr Plop, who had taken position behind a green Kryzla Koopay.

One cred Fred ducked into a corner, checking his handgun. Shades squinted and took a stump gun punt at the approaching Dr Chop, missing.


Turn 7
Dr Chop now raced into melee with 2 Gun Hon, his chainsaw sparking off the plascrete plaza as she dodged to one side. Limping XeroxBot Dr Copy had ground his way up a ramp on the far side of the rat run, and started to eye up targets.

Dr Beat, with an internal confidence rating of 8.2, strafed the upper level, catching Shades in the belly, felling him. Without his shell jacket he'd have been gutted - as it was, he left the fight with a hefty target bruise. 2 Gun Hon could take no more. She ran, Chop's chainsaw revving in her ears. Big Dav gritted his teeth and levelled his 2 Barrels at Dr Beat.

Turn 8
Dav pumped away at Dr Beat, one shot pinging off his plasteel headpiece. Juve Derek missed Dr Beat, but Dame Jead was luckier - drawing a bead on Dr Chop from the alley below, her handgun slug severed a hydraulic line. Easily repaired, but not under fight conditions. Chop froze and clanged to the floor.

Turn 9
Dr Beat's gun arm hit a glitch, and would have jammed but for its internal righting mechanism... sewageBot Dr Plop saw his Overseer looking a little exposed and ran out of cover to take some wild potshots at Dav.

Lieutenant Dr Tank followed, but then thought better of it and hid behind Plop (he's not been the same since the Green Goddess's Big Cynth drove her Las-Scythe through his turret). Dr Print creaked to the very edge of an overhang to fire at Juve Derek, but Derek shrugged off the hit. Not even a scratch.

Turns 10 & 11
The noise of gunfire increased as 1 Cred Fred, Juve Derek, Dame Jead and Dav all fired on Drs Plop and Beat, but caused nothing but a few dinks in the paintwork. The robots' frantic return of fire proving no better.

Turn 12
Having already got a taste for hydraulic fluid, Dame Jead now blasted Dr Plop in his gyros, sending him scurrying clumsily away. Dr Tank fled, and - as Dr Beat turned to command him to stay - Jead's very next shot also found its mark: shattering the robot Top Dog's shoulder plate. He was out of the game... and Dame Jead had earned herself a new nickname: The Can Opener.

Mop, still at the rear of the field, followed.

Turn 13
Only Dr Print remained, creaking past the Munce Munch to face the remaining Urban Spaced men.


Turn 14
They charged across the plaza, 1 Cred Fred failing to make his mark on the battle...

Turn 15
Print impressivley managed a nice calm headshot which dented Big Dav's shell helmet.

Turn 16
Dav, unphased, returned fire and Dr Print took a shot to his chest unit, wilted to one side and switched off. The Urban Spaced were victorious.

In the aftermath, no hostages were taken, but The Spaced were able to re-enter Sector 90 unchallenged and establish turf in Sugar Ray Leonard Block (which has lacked a resident gang since the mysterious disapppearance of the Sugar Ray Leopards years back).

Meat Beaters undertook some sombre upgrades, keen to up their kill rating after this humiliating defeat.

The Urban Spaced are bloodied

1st game in SiPegg block. A win for the home team!

The Urban Spaced are the predominant gang in the lower levels of SiPegg block and when some delinquent tin cans decided to intimidate them by making a move on the Munce Munch there could only be one response.

Luring the invading 'Meatbeaters' Bot gang into thinking that the Urban Spacers didn't have a clue what they were doing enabled the plucky humes to wipe the floor with the metal slabed freaks. Early reports suggest that at least 14 robots were destroyed outright with another dozen or so fleeing in panic as Dav 2 Barrels and his gang triumphed.

A pic of the battlefield below - a detailed battle report (written by the vanquished player so there may be certain indiscrepencies with the claims above) will follow.

Have been experimenting with LCD lights and the like without much luck so far but bought a few digital photo frames off ebay for a couple of pounds to use as advertising hoardings. I will try and incorporate these into the walls so they don't stand out too much and they do look pretty good first hand - you can have the pictures change every second or so. Photos don't do them justice.

Sample of the pictures I've uploaded (apologies bad flash from the camera)

Only me.

Not entirely sure where November went, but a mitigating factor was that unfortunately Si Pegg Block got hit by the credit crunch. Can confirm one of the retail units I will be making will be a bank, for no reason other than it and its inhabitants will be a suitable target to vent/shoot at/bomb enabling yours truly to keep his own personal feelings to the real conniving, useless, myopic tossers to myself.

A number of things have arrived recently, notably a couple more Ziterdes boards. Unfortunately the retailer sent only 2 and not the 5 I have ordered but at least you can see below what it might look like (one of the boards includes a nifty little bridge)


Apologies for the change in EM4 ganger used to show scale, the pevious model was posted by my 2 year old down the back of the radiator and will be AWOL for a while.

Have decided now of the paint scheme and the figure bases. More to follow shortly on that.

Club entrance

Scenery making has been a little wayward recently. The photos below show roughly what I want to achieve, in this case being the entrance to the 'Samurai 7' niterie. Its just an anime wallpaper off google earth with a door made from the bottom of a yoghurt pot and is probably far from the finished article but hopefully it hints at what I am trying to do.

Old crow vehicles

Seems that the only prerequisite to start a company specializing in high quality 28mm sci-fi vehicles and accessories is that your name begins with a 'J'. I cannot enthuse enough about the creations of Jed (Antenociti) and Jez (Old Crow) each and every model of theirs I have bought genuinely exceeds my expectations.

Below are 3 vehicles from Old Crows 25mm vehicle range plus a grav-bike from Antenociti (still have to add a few bits and pieces to all of them)

Grav bike:
Rebel Light utility vehicle:

Provider transport:


Trojan APC :

Cars, trucks and things that fly

A Rebel cart from the plastic Star Wars range. Not sure what to turn this into at the moment.

Not subscribing to the 'Cheese eating surrender monkey' brigade, I actually do like France and the French so I can say with utter conviction that the only positive outcome from the total destruction of said country in the Dredd verse would be the subseqent lack of any plastiky, shoddily made, government subsidized French cars.

Except this one. A Peugeot concept car, bought of ebay for £7. Looks very similar in profile to the Antenociti one.

A Ground Zero Games (I believe) hover vehicle. Bought for £5. Needs a repaint – might make it a med vehicle.

More toy goodness from my son's toybox... Some kind of Power Ranger truck – I've seen pictures of a much larger vehicle that would make a good Mopad. This will do as a small roadliner.

Ads & a large plastic burger.

Small (totally self inflicted) problem with the scenery building, should be back on track soon, just been learning some lessons in cardstock...

Been playing around with Google images and have been trying to build some very MC1 images to decorate the block interior - looking to incorporate theses into the aforementioned cardstock and Ziterdes bases. Its surprisingly easy and quick to do these - I did them at work on a laptop just using Word and have 20 or so so far I'll be using. Tried to get clever and printed out a 'holograph' news screen but haven't been able to get that to work yet.

An update on the dog chew - presenting the 'Munce Munch.' Still very much a wip, not sure whether I'll cut the roof off to be able to model the interior, or just put plastic windows in. As an aside, much to the amusement of my wife, I got chatted up by an old dear in 'Pets at Home' whilst looking for any other suitable dog chews. Didn't have the heart to tell her I didn't have a dog and was actually looking to use it for the nefarious activity of cutting it up to play toy soldiers with, so Si Pegg has its first canine resident, a lovely little 2 year old black and white Jack Russell called 'Sam'.....

Droids

A selection of Clix and Star wars plastic droids. Still playing about with alternate basing - have been experimenting with pasting World Works games graphics on bases - really need to decide and get started.

'Golden Gordon' personal security droid alongside a Mk VII Medium lifter droid.

Erectoet Mk 6 heavy construction droid.

'Sam the soak' firemek

Selection of General Purpose and Domodroids.

'Fred' Mk 57 Jacktrade, EP200 Litter droid, Robodoc

Have made a start on the new World Works Megamall, should have pics up soon.

More vehicles

Its funny (considering how painfully kitsch the TV and film adaptations have been) but looking on ebay for suitable vehicles I keep on coming up with cars and motorbikes from 'Batman'. The 2 below are 1:43 scale diecasts and are readily available, the red one in particular looks great and won't need any repainting to make it usable.


This is a resin model from Grendel I picked up years ago. I think it was called a security something or other and it had a gun I had to remove from its front. Will be painting this soon.