Police Brutality
More Judges today, this time from the best-of-the-best, 80% mission mortality rate Holocaust Squad. Continue reading
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2000AD, 2011, Dredd, Judge Dredd, Judge Dredd Miniatures Game, Justice Department, Sci-fi | 6 Comments »
Street Division Judge and Tech Division Judge
Continuing on from the Mega City One Project post, my first pair of Judges for show are from Mongoose.
They are Gangs of Mega City One figures rather than Judge Dredd Miniature Game figures. That distinction is significant for only one reason: casting quality. Mongoose got a lot of deserved grief for the sub-standard quality of the casting of many of the figures that they released around the mid 2000s and there were casting problems on each and every GoMC1 judge figure that I bought. I can personally attest for the quality of the figures that they have released for JDMG though, they are cast to a much higher standard.
The Street Judge worked out fine, but I love the Tech/Tek. Something about the miniature and the colour scheme and its application makes it look like he came straight out of a comic. Which is fine by me.
SJS Judge and Street Judge
Next is another pair of Mongoose Judge miniatures. In addition to the fairly standard Street Judge is the SJS (Special Judicial Squad) Judge. SJS judges function as internal affairs, MP types. As their quarry is highly trained Judges, SJS judges are particularly bad-ass.
SJS judges have been depicted with various different uniform colours and features. The look above is my favourite as while they definitely have that judge feel, the grey eagle design makes them unique amongst all of the other specialist and street judges: perfect for an outsider like a member of the SJS.
Street Judge and Psi Division Judge
Another two Mongoose judges: a Street Judge and a Psi Div Judge.
I have mixed feelings about how the Psi judge came out. I am as happy with the uniform as I am with any of the other judges and I am particularly pleased the figures red hair. It looks quite a bit like real red hair, rather than the more fiery colour usually used on miniature gingers.
On the other hand I find painting eyes harder than ever these days (I think that I need a new prescription for my glasses). It took me several attempts to get these ones even to the barely acceptable, astonished expression that they have now. I also foolishly attempted to add something that looks vaguely like freckles (similarly to how ex-judge DeMarco is depicted in the comics) to the cheeks, which didnt quite work. In fact in conjunction with the miniatures rather prominent top lip it made her look a bit like a cat.
But I am just obsessively moaning really. She doesnt look *that* bad.
Riot Judge and Judge Giant
The first pair of Foundry Judges.
As a rule the Foundry judges have crisper detail than the Mongoose ones. The Foundry proportions are a little odd I reckon, with quite large heads. They also often have somewhat peculiar poses. They are nicer to paint than the Mongoose figures that I have painted so far nonetheless.
I can imagine some scale purists having issues with mixing figures from the two manufacturers. I dont think that its worth worrying about: on the table the difference are close to non-existent.
The characters represented here are cool. The Riot Judge carries a Riot Foam cannister, which is a signature judge support weapon.
Pic from Wikipedia
The judge on the right is Judge Giant. Two generations of Giant have featured in Judge Dredd stories (three if you count the civilian Jetball player who fathered the first Judge Giant). It isnt specified which Giant this is, although the MkI Lawgiver pistol suggests that it is the first Judge Giant.
Ppenultimately, those of you with an eye for judge uniforms may notice a couple of things about the scheme that I chose. Artists have always had some leeway with how they represented the MC1 Judge uniform over the years, both its physical shape and dimensions and its colours.
Originally Dredd was a black and white strip, with colour versions of him being shown on the cover of 2000AD and centre spreads. This has meant that Dredds undersuit has been depicted as blue, navy and black over the years. Similarly the shoulder pads were always yellow from the strips inception in the late seventies right through to the nineties, when gold started to appear (at least, thats how I remember it). Whether this yellow was supposed to represent gold or not is one of the mysteries of the four colour priniting technique. So basically, there isnt a definitive uniform scheme.
I dont mind this. I think that leaving those details vague helps to keep the character somewhat legendary, somewhat mythological. Usually when a setting like Dredds starts to lock down too many details it starts to collapse in on itself. Keeping it vague suits me.
Lastly here is a shot of the nine judges that I have painted so far. I get a big kick out of seeing a project about a setting that I have enjoyed my whole life taking shape like this 🙂
They are the Law
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2000AD, 2011, Dredd, Judge Dredd, Judge Dredd Miniatures Game, Justice Department, Sci-fi | 4 Comments »
Judge Dredd
I am a lifelong fan of Judge Dredd and 2000AD. With the release of the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game I have decided to put my paint where my mouth is and get a set of figures influenced by the setting ready to go. Eventually all going well I hope to get my own miniature chunk of Mega City One made and populated for gaming in. Continue reading
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2011, Dredd, Gangs of Mega City One, Judge Dredd, Judge Dredd Miniatures Game, Justice Department, Sci-fi | Leave a comment »
Having been cutting, gluing and painting ork miniatures and post apocalyptic terrain for the last few months, MT and SOS paid a visit to play some GorkaMorka a couple of weeks ago.
The plan was to concentrate on putting our respective mobs through their paces by playing nothing but GoMo for the duration, which is what we did.
I used my Bigdogz mob. SOS had plans to paint a Freebooter pirate mob, but only got a couple of figures painted. MT didnt have anything ready so he used SOSs figures.
SOS "Kaptin"
One of the reasons that GoMo was chosen for this particular gaming weekend is that SOS has enough orks already painted to allow us to build pretty much any ork mob we could want. That way we had a fallback in case painting plans didnt come to fruition. Therefore MT and SOS picked their mobs from SOS older stuff and we got going.
The look of SOS ork army is largely themed around WWII Wehrmacht, in case you were wondering, with each squad looking like paratroopers or desert camo guys or whatever. SOS chose the ride above to start with.
MT chose the vehicle above as his first transport. He chose to use one of SOS squads denoted by their soft brown caps.
We played a number of games over the day. We didnt record exhaustive details of each game (there was enough bookwork in keeping track of the mob development itself), but we took photos of some of the more memorable moments, starting with the distinctly unmemorable picture below.
The opening three way game. Believe it or not, that turned out to be too much terrain for a game of GoMo...
GoMo needs very little terrain. Manoeuvring the vehicles is sufficiently difficult that including too many obstacles makes things a bit too frustrating.
Playing with miniatures on gaming tables that are largely devoid of scenery is anathema to me: part of the point of tabletop gaming is the visual vignettes and the 3D, train set nature of the pasttime. Without those it quickly becomes something that would be better played with cardboard counters on a hex grid.
That said however I think that elements of the vehicle side of GoMo work well and give an unusually fluid (some would say non-existent) battle line. For the unique game experience that this brings I am willing to suck up the fact that GoMo games are played on largely featureless plains.
A head on ram by SOS causes MTs truck to explode, while my boyz circle in for the kill...
... but a lucky shot from SOS jams the throttle on the Bigdogz truck, sending the lot of them hurtling off the table with flame shooting from the exhaust. Giggling ensues.
The end of the first game had amply illustrated the Keystone Kops nature of Gorkamorka. It is very much a think-on-the-fly followed by shoulder shrugging and laughing sort of affair. There is a lot of screwy randomness involved.
In addition this game illustrated that despite having a combined age of ~105 that the three of us are categorically not too old to titter in a juvenile fashion at repeated uses of the words “Nob”, “Chopper”, “Thrust” and “Ram” (all deliberately incorporated into the rules by puerile designers, bless ’em). Examples included:
I didnt think that I would laugh as much as I did either, but it wore me down 🙂
Chase Scenario 2 starts with two trucks hurtling through the wasteland, but...
...rapidly turns into a collision, an explosion...
...and a fistfight, with very little chasing involved.
Next we tried a couple of Chase scenarios. During these games most vehicles largely remain stationary on the table, while the terrain travels towards the edge, giving a “rolling road” effect.
This was something that I had been looking forward to trying for quite a while, but our two attempts didnt work out terribly well. It is likely to me that this was due to the fact that we were using mobs composed of raw recruits, with only one vehicle each (plus the usual caveat about the Yahtzee like random elements in GoMo).
I think that chase scenarios would likely work better with more vehicles involved and with potentially more skilled vehicle drivers (models that is, not necessarily the players) to flatten out the averages on some of the more extreme results of GoMo games.
King of the Hill three way fight.
MTs mob tries to shift the Bigdogz from their tenuous foothold on the plateau while SOSs boyz opportunistically flank the Bigdogz at ground level.
SOS boyz forgo the enfilade in favour of hurtling bodily into one of the Bigdogz trucks, as is traditional in GoMo. This causes engine explosions in both vehicles (also traditional).
The King of the Hill (or “Nob of da Kop” to use the vernacular) scenario turned out to be one of the more enjoyable games for me.
I specifically made the daft but (to my eyes at least) somewhat charming “Kop” with this scenario in mind. It was fun for me to have a purpose built piece of terrain with its (albeit limited) functionality (well it is large and flat) in full use.
The game was the usual shenanigans of course. Nonetheless it gave us all a few laughs and was unpredictable fun. MT won as everyone else ran away but, in true GoMo style the Bigdogz ended up with the lions share of the booty.
Trucks chase around the fort while the Bigdogz rescue their brother in arms.
More tyre squealing antics as MT rescues his comrade from SOSs clutches.
The last couple of games that we played involved the fort. I was hoping for a little bit of a Mad Max like siege atmosphere and I got a little of that at least. I got a kick out of finally using the fort (having owned it in various unfinished states for about sixteen years). The games themselves were mediocre from my perspective (and I think MTs) and “shit” from SOSs perspective if memory serves.
Conclusions
Definitely not for everybody, but despite (and sometimes because of) its failings, Gorkamorka proved to be ridiculous but entertaining fun for a day. Not something to play every weekend, but for a while every so often, sure.
For a game as profoundly silly as it is Gorkamorka has a far too convoluted post game sequence, for little gain. If that part of the game were smoother I could see my group playing it more regularly.
Our three mobs have a little history now.
Filed under: Games in Progress | Tagged: 2011, 40K, 40K Skirmish, Gorkamorka, MT, Orks, SOS | 7 Comments »
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2011, 40K Skirmish, Bigdogz, Gorkamorka, Orks, Post Apocalyptic, Sci-fi | 2 Comments »
Dual Wielding Nob and Boy with Kannon
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2011, 40K, 40K Skirmish, Bigdogz, Gorkamorka, Orks, Post Apocalyptic, Sci-fi | 5 Comments »
The prototype Town Sign. Still adequate for use, but I prefer the smaller one shown previously.
After assembly, painting and varnishing some tarting up of the pieces was the final thing left to do for this stage of the Standard Falls project. Lots of photos after the jump… Continue reading
Filed under: Terrain | Tagged: 1996, 2011, Gorkamorka, Judge Dredd, Post Apocalyptic, Sci-fi, Standard Falls | 6 Comments »
After assembling the elements of my post apocalyptic shanty town I sprayed most of the pieces black. I left the wooden signs unsprayed as I wanted to try painting them with washes and a little drybrushing and to leave the existing wooden colour show through a bit.
Sprayed Pardulon Shacks
Filed under: Terrain | Tagged: 2011, Gorkamorka, Judge Dredd, Post Apocalyptic, Sci-fi, Standard Falls | 2 Comments »
The vulture model to sit on the sign is in the post.
I warbled about getting my post apocalyptic town ready for gaming with just over a year ago. The setting and my conceptual plan are loosely detailed in that post.
I finally got around to working on the town itself over the last few weeks, only one year later than I intended… Continue reading
Filed under: Terrain | Tagged: 2011, Gorkamorka, Post Apocalyptic, Sci-fi, Standard Falls | 5 Comments »
More tiny gaming props today.
Shown above are two unexploded grenades and six “Scrap Counters”.
The unexploded “stikkbomz” might occasionally be used in games of Gorkamorka.
Scrap in the Gorkamorka setting is analogous to treasure in a dungeon RPG setting: its the main reasons for the protagonists to be there.
Scrap was originally represented by cardboard tokens in the Gorkamorka game. While 3D representations of things like that can be nice to look at, they are often impractical in game play terms, proving to be awkward to move around with the model that is supposed to be carrying it and the like. Often cardboard tokens are just more practical, if not as pretty.
Despite that I decided to make Scrap Counters anyway, based on 22mm tiddlywinks. I made sure that each counter had a piece that served as a handle to pick it up and tried to make the profile of the scrap reasonably flat, so that they wouldnt be too awkward to use in game.
I actually really enjoyed making these, almost like a set of tiny dioramas. Painting the ork skull and the Necron head were highlights.
Filed under: Miniatures, Terrain | Tagged: 2011, 40K Skirmish, Gorkamorka, Salvage Crew, Star Mogul | 11 Comments »
sho3box 