si pegg block

SiPegg Citi-Def

2009-04-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-03-19T02:51:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-03-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-12-03T14:08:00.000-08:00

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)

2008-12-03T13:53:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-17T13:42:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-09T11:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Inspiration

2008-10-08T05:15:00.000-07:00

Mentioned to a friend of mine who blogs for a living (!) that I had joined him online and within 10 minutes of putting the phone down he'd forwarded me this picture:

asking 'you mean you're going to build a block like that?' 'That' being a prop from the 1995 Judge Dredd movie.

To be honest I had thought of doing something a teeny bit more abstract but how inspiring is that? Began to wonder if I could convince she who must be obeyed that its a suitable focal point for the living room before I realized it wouldn't be in scale anyway....

Then, in one of those strange geeky eureka moments, remembered the 1st thing that drew me into Dredd miniatures, an article in the 1st White Dwraf I bought (number 79 I think) with an article on a convention game set in Mega City 1 using Citadel miniatures. Will have to dig the mag out - will have been put away when I 'grew out' of wargames when I went to university and not seen the light of day since.

Patwagon

2008-10-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

Mega-City 1 seems to be filled with VERY big vehicles and having searched across the ether for a suitable Patwagon I keep on coming back to these:

I bought 2 of these plastic APCs from Aliens off ebay a few years ago - apparently they had been used in a participation game at Salute with 1/35 scale figure and fit in very well with what I would envisage a Patwagon to look like. I'm trying to source some suitable Justice Department logos to put on them (anyway know where there are any relevant jpegs?) but apart from that they are ready to roll.

Cits

2008-10-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

A few of Si Peggs inhabitants. I use mainly Mongoose's own GoMC1 miniatures of which the plastic gang set is excellent but for various reasons (chief amongst which - I'm pretty lazy when it comes to painting and most are with a miniature painter getting repainted whilst I continually change my mind over colour schemes...) here are some of EM4's excellent prepainted gang members. These are pretty fantastic for pre-paints and they have 2 sets (each of 5 miniatures) that are suitable for gangs as well as one that is useful for citi-def/pri-sec members.

For extra 'cover' and just to add scope to scenarios we use rebased Heroclix and Star Wars miniatures for civilians and robots. All these figures, along with the rest, will be rebased to 23mm washers. Having flirted with the 30mm display type bases I've found even the standard 25mm plastic bases too big for use inside buildings as well as adding a little too much height to the figure.

Most of the Heroclix figures are pretty.... 'imaginatively' dressed and there is a definate gender imbalance in favour of the ladies. To demonstrate, this particular figure:

was the one that prompted my wife, upon viewing it, to label wargamers as perverse stating 'no-one would wear THAT.' Actually the exact term she used was pervert wierdo freaks (hey shes known me a long time) but as I have experienced Sunderland on a Saturday night I would probably beg to differ on the availability of women to dress in such a way.

Anyway, they work well with most 28mm figures and their clothing on the whole suits the Mega-City style.

Buildings and Burgers

2008-10-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

Presenting the first of the Ziterdes tiles. They're 2' by 2' made from plastic by Ziterdes (funnily enough) and there are 2 different types. More to come about these.

Now, bear with me with this one.... Yes you might believe this to look like a plastic dog chew shaped like a hamburger but you'd be enormously mistaken. Actually what you're looking at is a 'Burgostop' eaterie in early stages of construction. No, I'm not convinced either.... will have to see how it turns out.

Walls & floors - the plan

2008-10-02T07:49:00.001-07:00

I’m going to be using a combination of terrain tiles from Ziterdes and cardstock walls from Worldworks games who coincidentally have just announced a cardstock shopping mall that seems perfect for the Mega City 1 universe.

This should be released sometime in mid October which should coincide with me receiving the Ziterdes tiles (I have only 1 at present). As an aside I’ve also been collating images to use to try and ‘mega city up’ the Worldworks graphics and, perhaps less realistically, am also looking at utilizing some Electro-Luminescent wires to try and go for a neon effect. Whether that is possible remains to be seen.

Will have some pics up soon.

Vehicles

2008-10-01T14:53:00.000-07:00

A few suitable Mega-city vehicles with an EM4 miniatures gang member for scale.

Refuse Truck: Don't laugh - its a desk hoover bought off Amazon for a few pounds. With a paintjob (disguising the out of scale doors) I think it will look ok.

Hovertaxi; A converted mouse - still need to add markings to it, does kinda look like a mouse painted yellow at the moment.

Slab bike; Batman Hero cycles or something similar - bought off ebay. Will paint the one with the bat symbols on but might leave the others as is.

Ground Car; An excellent Resin vehicle from Antcenociti's Workshop - see here
They have a number of suitable vehicles and are adding to them steadily. Will have a few more of their models to show soon.

Groundcar; Stolen (borrowed) from my 3 year old. Can't remember the brand - something like RPM Overload or something similarly silly. Will leave it as it is.

Intro

2008-10-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

Many years ago I was being shown round a central London flat by the atypical estate agent type - expensive shoes, cheap suit - when I remarked on its size (or lack of). 'Yeah' muttered this polished property professional in genuine agreement, 'its smaller than a hab in the big MC.'

My partner missed the connotation of this remark, but I did not. The bouffant haired fool was indeed a Dreddhead, a reader of 2000AD, the seminal British Sci-fi comic. I had not read it since school but had remained occasionally interested in the world of Judge Dredd, the rather fascist lawman of Mega City One - a vast conurbation built along the east coast of the US - despite the best efforts of Hollywood and Stallone to defer further interest (see Judge Dredd the movie for explanation)

A few years later I rediscovered my childhood hobby of wargaming, coincidentally through the Judge Dredd world, when I saw an advert for 'Gangs of Mega City 1' a miniatures game developed by Mongoose Publishing. Having dabbled on and off with painting and playing with miniatures for these last few years I decided that as a suitable break from real life I needed a project.

Rather than having a grandiose plan with any particular timeline the following will be irregular ramblings charting particular events inside Si Pegg Block, a community of 70,000 malcontents stuffed into a building over half a mile high. A community certain London urban planners seem desperate to emulate....

Playing