Tag Archives: Judge Dredd

SAD Dredd League kicked off and going strong

The SAD Dredd League kicked off with 7 players managing between 2 and 3 games each.

The second meet took place last week but turned into a large multiplayer game of judges against the undesirables.  John Alpha and his cutie mob joined forced with Ma Balls and her Ape posse.  Against them were ranged the Judicial might of Simon and Allan.

Allans forces were soon put out of action with my Apes following after the demise of Ma Balls.  Simons Judges looked to be in the winning position until the true nature of Johny Alpha was determined and he slowly whittled Simons forces down with the assistance of the few remaining apes.

Eventually it was a close thing but Alpha eventually killed Dredd and the remnants fled the field.

It was a great game and I am looking forward to having a few more large multi-player Dredd games in the future.

SAD 2015 – Judge Dredd Campaign

The second and final day of the Judge Dredd campaign took place on Wednesday (25th February).  Again we had 10 players continuing to battle it out over two or three games in the evening.

At the end of the evening the champion was identified as Simon with his zombie horde.  The prize was a great Judges badge to commemorate the event.  Andy came in a very close second with his Klegg Invasion force.

I think that the two day event worked well with most people getting either 4 or 5 games in over the two days.  It is a very quick game and lends itself to short campaigns very well.

Rules and figures can be obtained from Warlord Games and Mongoose, though most sci-fi figures will work.

 

Judge Dredd Campaign – SAD 2015

I am running a very short Judge Dredd campaign at the SAD Wargamers over two Wednesdays in February.  Given the nature of the game players should be able to get between 2 or 3 games in an evening.

The first day kicked off well with 12 participants playing across 6 tables of ruined urban, Cursed Earth, and Industrial.  The mix of gangs was fairly wide with nine different flavours being taken. Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos during the evening so will try and remedy that next time.

  • 1 x Renegade Robots
  • 1 x East Meg Invasion force
  • 2 x Justice Department
  • 1 x Ape Gang
  • 1 x Street Gang
  • 2 x Apocalypse War Resistance Unit
  • 2 x City-Def
  • 1 x Klegg Invasion force
  • 1 x Zombie Horde

the majority of the players were fairly new to the rules (and one completely fresh to miniature wargaming all together).  I tried to split the new comers up so that they were either sitting beside or playing against someone who had a basic grasp of the rules.  A few of us have played quite a bit in the past but were a bit rusty so the first games were slow.  Fortunately subsequent games speeded up significantly as well moved into the campaign.

I do enjoy the games and recommend it to anyone who wants a game which has minimal outlay on figures (many use old Necromunda and Dark Future figures to supplement to Mongoose figures) and most of what you need is contained in the core rules.  The new rulebook is a lovely piece of work incorporating both of the old Mongoose JD Miniatures rules and Block War supplement into one hardback book.  The presentation is fantastic, I’m just disappointed that the spelling mistakes and awful grammar errors are still present and carried over into the new rulebook.

..and now for something completely different!

Now that I’ve got the WW2 Americans and Germans to a decent enough point to play with without being too embarrassed I can have a look at other projects, hooray!

I pulled out my Judge Dredd stuff just to ensure that I have my figures ready for the campaign next week.  So far I have Judges, Apes, Robots, Mobsters and Street Gangs ready which should be sufficient for loaners to those without figures.  This means I can look at something quite different.

So I’ve pulled out my Indian Mutiny stuff and started sticking together three units of cavalry.  My figures are based on the pill shaped mdf bases from Warbases which look good for skirmishes but can also be put onto unit trays easily.  Hopefully I’ll have them cleaned up and undercoated within the next day or so.  there isn’t a lot of uniform detail to these figures so hopefully I’ll finish them relatively quickly and be able to start on my outstanding chariots for the Fathers Day event later in the year. (I have somewhere around 30 chariots still to do for my Hittites & their allies, as well as some Egyptians.)

SAD 2015 Judge Dredd Campaign

I’m running a short two week Judge Dredd campaign at the club over the two Wednesdays 11th & 18th February.  So far I’ve got 7 players signed up but am hoping for a few more if possible.

We’re using the rules from Warlord Games (as were Mongoose), which offer some very fast thematic games from the Judge Dredd Megacity One universe.  There are a whole host of different factions available including;

  • The Justice Department (The Judges)
  • Brit-Cit Justice Department (the British version of the Megacity One Judges)
  • The City-Def (cliche futuristic national guard weekend soldier types)
  • Street Gang (classic dark future types),
  • Ape Gang (gorillas, chimps and orangutangs – you gotta love it),
  • Mobsters (Mafia and such like),
  • a  Fattie Stampede (the faddishly super fat of the future on the rampage),
  • Cursed Earth Desperadoes (muties from the radiated wastelands),
  • East Meg Invasion Force (cold war future soviet stereotypes)
  • Apocalypse War Resistance Unit (Megacity one mishmash),
  • Sky Surfer Gang (street gangs on flying surfboards!),
  • Lone Vigilante (gadgetted up super-hero ala Batman type with sidekick),
  • Chief Judge Cal’s Retinue (a parody of Caligula Caesar in the future),
  • Zombie Horde (future undead types),
  • Renegade Robots (Robot rebellion),
  • the Angel Gang (badass gang from the wastelands)
  • the Dark Judges  (seriously messed up Judges from another universe)
  • and even a Demonic Cabal (as if what already existed in Megacity One wasn’t enough someone wants to add even more demonic madness to the mix!)

I’ve limited the campaign by restricting the Angel Gang, the Dark Judges, and the Demonic Cabal, but I believe that there should be enough of a choice for most people to be satisfied.

We’ll be starting with 500 point gangs and I’m hoping that we’ll get three games in on the first Wednesday, and likely only 2 games in on the second day due to the gangs growing (hopefully).

Whilst you can probably pick up most of the official stuff cheaper on eBay you can often get fairly good deals on Warlords site;

http://store.warlordgames.com/collections/judge-dredd/

Alternatively check out Mongoose

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/miniatures/judge-dredd.html

Of course you’re not constrained to the official figures and there are a lot of lovely alternatives which could be co-opted into your gangs.   I may revisit this in a future posting.

Revisiting some old homemade board games – part 1

I suppose every wargamer has some rules in them, and every boardgames has a boardgames in them as well.

I’ve started reworking some old Mega City One Block War games I put aside a few years ago.  I’m working on a game where each person controls a block during the Block Mania incident and looking to cause as much damage on the other blocks before the judges intervene.

I appreciate that there is a game which covers this theme which came out over 25 years ago called Block Mania (with its expansion Mega Mania).  However this game has been long out of print, and when played took quite a long time to play especially with three or more players.  I wanted a game which had the same theme but was a different game which was a lot shorter (target 1.5 hours for 4 players), was fun without being overly complicated and had a lot of replayability.

I want the board to be able to fit easily on a 3 foot wide table, so have been playing with a playing area of 2 foot square though may extend it slightly to 2 foot by 3 foot (60cm by 90cm).  This way there will be space for the inevitable drinks as well as clutter for cards, rules etc. on a small kitchen table.

I was also looking for a modular system for the board to cater to the re-playability aspect.  This could be addressed in a multiple of ways;

  • simply have a double sided board
  • 4 large double-sided boards (approx 1 foot/30cm square)
  • free moving hexes (4 inches across)
  • multiple smaller squares (approx 4 inches square or 10cm)
  • Deck of cards for locations which are drawn from the deck to create the map.

Currently I’m playing around with the 4 inch square solution as it’s relatively easy to manufacture.

I also wanted the game to have various elements from the Judge Dredd stories, especially if they were relevant to the Block Mania theme.  To this end I looked at including;

  • City Def,
  • Gangs
  • Fatties
  • Judges

No doubt some will stay and new ones may be added.

I’m using a fairly basic worker placement mechanism to drive the core mechanics for each player with event cards causing the mayhem at a higher common level.

The danger of these type games where there is so much thematic ‘history’ available is to try to include everything into the one game.