Mega City One Spring Clean Challenge

More years ago than I care to admit I bought Sarissa’s Judge Dredd bundle, which consists of 3 buildings plus some rooftop gantries and stairs. I assembled and painted one of them but I’m not overly thrilled with the results. I was going for a concrete look similar to what we see in the Karl Urban Dredd film, but in practice I’m finding that it looks a little dull, and I think I overdid it trying to bring out a stippled texture on the MDF. It was a surprising amount of work for a mediocre result.

In thinking about it, I’ve decided that I want to go for a much more comic book look for the other two buildings. The natural inclination for futuristic buildings is to go with grey and silver, but it’s pretty boring to paint and I’m noticing that they rarely do that in the Judge Dredd comics. I also really like the board for Osprey’s Helter Skelter game (the Judge Dredd version of Wildlands) so I’m looking at at the color choices there for inspiration.

My plan is to build and paint the other two buildings with the new color scheme in mind, and then repaint or at least touch up the one I’ve already done to make sure they all look consistent.

The last time I played the Warlord Judge Dredd game was in 2021, and I have a vague memory of it being a little unsatisfying. I remember thinking it was a little tedious that it took four dice rolls to make an attack: I have to succeed at an attack roll, my opponent has to fail their defense roll, I then have to make a damage roll, and my opponent makes a roll to resist the damage. I freely admit that my memory of the game is pretty vague, so I want to give it another try, which will be the last part of this spring clean challenge — I’ll write up a battle report here and do a proper review of the game on my blog.

I’ve taken the huge first step of opening the package for the larger retail unit. It’s pretty similar to the storage unit I’ve already done, but that was quite some time ago so I don’t really remember how it fits together.

It looks like I may have been too clever for my own good in making the door on the storage unit openable. Should I bother doing that with the two retail buildings? If I do it’ll be complicated by the fact that each retail building has two doors: a normal sized door and a wider shutter for the service window. I’m thinking I may make the normal door openable, but either fix the shutter or do away with it entirely. I definitely want at least one of the buildings to have an open service window — I’ll paint the interior in a different color to provide some contrast.

Speaking of color, I’ve decided on yellow for the buildings, and now I’m remembering how difficult yellow paint can be as it tends to be very transparent. On previous Sarissa kits I’ve used cheap craft paint, reasoning that it would take too much miniature paint to cover such a large area. But what I seem to always conveniently forget is that the coverage on those cheap craft paints is pretty awful, so I’m having to spend time on multiple coats. It’s bad enough with grey, but just impossible with yellow which offers no coverage at all.

After giving up on the craft paint I switched to my usual miniature paint, in this case a Reaper mustard yellow that I reasoned would cover the MDF okay. After two coats I’ve blown through half the bottle and coverage is still pretty blotchy, so I’m going to have to rethink.

The kit includes some cardboard pieces meant to provide surface detailing. I tried coloring those with a Prismacolor marker and that actually looks pretty good and goes really quickly. I think a quick drybrush with a lighter yellow will have the cardboard bits looking the way I want them to.

I set aside the project for the day to work on other things, and later on inspiration hit me. I recalled that pink is a good underpaint color for yellow — I had tried this for the first time with some Star Wars Shatterpoint handmaidens and the results were pretty good. Even better, for quite some time Reaper was throwing in a free bottle of pink paint (for breast cancer awareness) with every order, so I have several bottles of pink that I hadn’t previously envisioned a use for.

Later in the evening additional inspiration hit, in the form of this week’s episode of The Bad Batch. Part of the story takes place in a cargo bay with some yellow and grey crates in the background. The shapes and detailing are similar to the buildings I’m working on, and I like the look of them. Plus it would involve painting most of the MDF parts dark grey instead of yellow, which should be a lot easier and quicker.

I did almost nothing that I talked about doing in the previous entry. While underpainting in pink does work well for yellow, it gives the yellow a golden hue. I’m looking for more of a sickly institutional yellow, but I found that mixing in just a hint of black and painting over a light grey base coat is giving me the look I want.

Adding the “scratched paint over metal” look is providing just the right amount of detail, but it’s also taking forever to do. I’ll have to see if I can come up with a faster way to do it for the other building, and when/if I repaint the first one.

I decided not to make the door openable, but I did add a countertop to the service window.

I’ve got the roof assembled other than the sign. the kit came with a sticker sheet with different Dredd-themed signs, but I don’t really like any of the choices for the larger building so I’m thinking of trying to come up with something myself.

Next up: final assembly!

I’ve got all the pieces put together, and I think it looks pretty good.

The Sarissa kit came with a sticker sheet with different signage options, but I didn’t like either of the choices for the larger building. So I made my own sign, cobbled together using artwork from Tasty Bullet, a graphic novel by Jonathan Vankin and Arnold Pander. I think it makes a good name for a Mega City One kiosk, it’s so vague that it could sell anything from ammunition to fashionable clothes to fast food.

Next up is the smaller kiosk building, then a rooftop gantry. Then the big decision, whether or not to repaint that first building…

I need to get a move on if I’m going to finish these buildings and get a game or two in before the Spring Clean deadline. Hopefully this will go faster since I’ve worked out what I’m doing and I’d like all three buildings to look more-or-less the same in terms of color.

This time I’m going to try painting on the sprues (except where over-eager pieces have fallen out). I’m starting with a base coat of cheap craft paint, black where it’ll be dark grey, and white where it’ll be yellow. You can see how poor the coverage on the craft paint is — any money I’ve saved is pretty well wiped out by the time it takes to do multiple coats of paint. I’ll be using Monument Hobbies paints for the actual color like I did for the first building. More expensive paint to be sure, but it leaves a nice flat finish and should only need two or at most three coats.

The yellow marker on the cardboard bits is working great, I should just need to paint in some dark grey for the roof and a bit of silver for the scratched metal look.

I got excited about how quickly this second building was coming together, and so didn’t get as many in-progress photos as I would have liked. I went back and forth on what color to paint the shutter doors, but decided on a metal/silver for this one after re-doing the first building’s door in red to match its sign. I am very happy with the results.

Next up I have a rooftop walkway with stairs and railings, similar to the one you can see in the first post for this project, but sized to fit the smaller building. I think I’m going to do the stairs and railings the same as the earlier one, base black with drybrushed gunmetal and silver, but I want to do the floor differently. I’m hoping to give the hint of a checkered pattern similar to what we see in the Hall of Justice map for the Helter Skelter boardgame (middle image in the first post below), but I don’t want to paint in a whole grid, just hint at it here and there. I’m thinking I might cut a stencil to use as a guide.

After that I’ll re-paint the original grey building to match the grey and yellow on the two new ones, and also re-do its rooftop deck to match.

Sundancer looked at my project on this week’s Unofficial Hobby Hangout, and in the process reminded me that there are less than two weeks (and only one weekend) left before the Spring Clean Challenge deadline. Why was I thinking I had until June 30? Why have I been spending so much of my hobby time painting Mythic Battles: Ragnarok figures?

Anyway, after Sundancer’s kind reminder I got straight back to work, this time on the smaller rooftop platform and stairs. I did the first, larger platform and stairs some time ago (you can see them in the first entry for this project) and I’m reasonably happy with the way they look, so the challenge here will be to match the look of the earlier piece.

Priming is definitely easier when the pieces are still on the sprue. As usual I’m using Vallejo brush-on primer. Much As I would love to just give these a quick spray, I live in a second floor apartment with no balcony or decent ventilation, and there just isn’t a good place for me to set up for spraying.

After punching the pieces out and filing & priming the edges where needed, a quick drybrush in gunmetal followed by a lighter silver and the pieces look good. Assembling the stairs was actually pretty fun, the steps look tedious but they fit into the rest of the piece really easily.

The floor platform is two pieces stuck together, with slots for the railings to fit in. I learned the hard way when assembling the larger platform that the two layers need to line up precisely for the rails to fit, so I’ve inserted enough rails to line them up properly.

The rails are designed to be movable so you can place the stairs at different spots. I had to file down the edge of the floor piece to make it fit in between the signposts on the roof, but I think the final piece looks pretty good.

Now on to repainting the original piece to match the two new ones. The yellow on the two new pieces is a mix of yellow, grey and just a bit of brown. Yellow is very translucent, so I’m hoping if I use it straight from the bottle over the building’s previous grey it will be close enough, and I’ve got time for a quick paint test before I close up for the day.

It looks okay, but a just a little too bright compared to the others, and the yellow covers a lot better when mixed with the grey and brown. Still, this will make a good base coat so I shouldn’t have to do as many layers of the mixed color.

The final phase of this project will be to actually play a game of Warlord’s Judge Dredd on this terrain, which means I need to finish up before the weekend. Wish me luck…

Repainting went well, I think I’ve got the final building in line with the other two. The yellow paint over the cardboard bits (curved roof and wall details) was a little brighter than the marker over bare cardboard that I did on the other two buildings, but a quick soft tone wash took care of that. I’m reasonably happy with the results.

I’ve got Sunday afternoon set aside for a game of Warlord’s Judge Dredd Miniatures Game — the final part of this spring clean is to reassess the game and see if I want to continue with it, or maybe look for an alternative system to use these miniatures with. As long as the weekend doesn’t get away from me, I should be able to complete this spring clean challenge just under the deadline. Stay tuned…

Now that the buildings are done, it’s time to get a few games in. Obviously my three newly painted buildings will be the centerpiece of the table, but I did need to fill it out a little bit with some papercraft buildings from Dave Graffam. Since the mat features a road going through the middle, I’ve also added some cars – most are from Black Site Studios, with one of Warlord’s Hover Vans. We won’t be using the vehicle rules in this first game, but we came up with a simple house rule to move each vehicle 6” after each character activation, rolling a die when they need to decide whether to turn left or right. It’s a nice simple way to make the game feel like it’s taking place in a populated area.

We’ve chosen the Ambush scenario from the Judge Dredd rule book. It doesn’t seem too complicated and I like the idea of one side setting up in the center and the other in the surrounding area, rather than starting on opposite sides and running to the middle. The scenario’s win conditions seem a little lopsided – the defending player just has to move half (rounding up) of their models off any board edge, which seems pretty easy. The attacking player has to stop them, which presumably means incapacitating or subduing over half of the opponent’s force.

The rules describe a 50 point game as mid-sized, but in reality that only gives us 3 models each – the average model seems to be in the 15-20 point range, with only nameless block gangers and citi-def soldiers coming in at under 12 points. Looking over the models we have available I’m drawn to SJS Judge Gerhart and Wally Squad (undercover) Judge Aimee Nixon. My opponent wants to play street Judges, so we settle on a story where Aimee Nixon has received dubious information about a group of corrupt Judges, leading Judge Gerhart to set up an ambush for them. Whether or not they are actually corrupt probably doesn’t matter to Judge Gerhart, he’s a bit of a zealot when it comes to rooting out bent Judges…

My force is rounded out by a 12-point Citi-Def trooper with a rocket launcher (Gerhart and Nixon clearly can’t trust any Judges to back them up). My opponent’s force consists of a Veteran Street Judge, a regular Street Judge, and Cadet Giant, who is in for one hell of a training day.

My opponent starts in a pretty good position, with all three Judges in cover. I get to start the game with one of my models off the table, to be brought in from any table edge later in the round. I figure this will be helpful since my opponent’s win condition is simply to leave the board – once I know which direction they’re headed I can move my reinforcement to intercept. I start with Nixon and the Citi-Def trooper on the board and Gerhart in reserve.

My rocket launcher gets off one good shot before getting taken out by a Seeker round, which ignores line of sight rules. The game uses cards to add flavor, with each player staring out with a handful of Armory cards (such as the aforementioned seeker) which tend to modify attacks and defenses, and “Big Meg” cards that introduce the general chaos of Mega City One. We both get some good use out of our Big Meg cards – my opponent uses “Munce for Brains” to limit the Citi-Def trooper to a single action on his turn, but since one of my models is a member of the undercover Wally Squad, I get to start with an extra “Wally Squad” card that allows me to steal my opponent’s turn and activate one of my models instead.

I decide to bring in Judge Gerhart on the opposite side of my opponent’s position to try for a flanking maneuver. It is somewhat successful, and I am able to immobilize one of my opponent’s Judges using a “Boing” armory card, which traps the target in bouncy plastic. That’s one Judge immobilized, if I can just trap or eliminate one more I’ll have this game. Neither of my opponent’s remaining judges is within a move action of the board edge, however…

This is where the somewhat egregious nature of this game comes in. Judge Dredd determines activation order by drawing chips out of a cup, so my opponent is able to activate both characters before I get a chance to go again. For Cadet Giant my opponent plays “Crazie!” which allows him a free Charge action ahead of his normal activation, which he uses to get down the stairs from the roof of Mac’s Mek repair. He is then able to use his activation to double move, allowing him to get off the board. Similarly, my opponent’s Veteran Street Judge gets lucky with a Sprint action, which allows the model a double move with an extra d6” of movement – my opponent rolls a 6, and the Veteran Judge is off the board, ending the game with a win for my opponent.

Since the game ended so abruptly, we’ve decided to play a second game.

This time we’re going to increase to 100 reputation points so we can get more models on the table, and we’re going to try out the vehicle rules. At 35 points, Judge Dredd himself is unlikely to appear in a smaller game, so for my force I’ve decided to start with him and round it out with a few support Judges and the mighty Lawmaster, a vehicle that has its own A. I., making it function as an additional model even without a driver.

My opponent has elected to try to swarm me with robots, taking robot-controlling gangster Nero Narcos and a small army (okay, seven) of various reprogrammed service bots. They’ll also have a Grav Pod, a fairly speedy flying vehicle that might be handy for the Heist scenario we’ve chosen.

Set up is similar to the previous game, with the defender placing their models in the center of the board and the attacker surrounding. I’ll be playing the defender this time. I get to keep half of my force in reserve, so I’ve elected to have Judge Dredd and his Lawmaster bike start off the table, reasoning that with the bike’s increased speed it will be easier to get him where he is needed quickly.

In addition to our models, the scenario instructs us to place three objective tokens within 6” of the center of the board. The attacker (my opponent) must pick up at least two of these and carry them off any board edge in order to win. One small mercy is that a model carrying an objective can’t use any of the double move options. My models can pick the objectives up but can’t carry them to safety, and will drop them if successfully hit in an attack. My goal is to prevent my opponent from winning, which I guess means incapacitating all of their models.

Maybe it’s the increased model count, maybe it’s the less well defined victory conditions, but this game is a bit of a slog for us. The action never moves farther than 10 inches from the center of the board as we trade off picking up and dropping objectives. Judge Dredd himself rides his Lawmaster bike right into the center of the action, only to have it destroyed beyond repair by my opponent’s DemoBot.

We do get a few fun, comic book moments. My opponent has a bunch of oversized utility robots packed into the Grav Pod like a clown car, and his cleaning robot manages to hold on to an objective longer than anyone else. The Grav Pod, ironically driven by a MedBot, commits vehicular homicide by backing up over my Tech Judge.

Across the street, I manage to play a “Boingers” Big Meg card to great effect, resolving a devastating area effect attack that takes out three of my opponent’s robots, thematically destroyed by adrenaline-junkie citizens who bounce around the city encased in springy plastic balls.

We play for two and a half hours with no clear resolution in sight, and so decide to call this game a draw.

I’ve given my general thoughts about the game on my game review blog, but to summarize: I like the models and components a lot, but I don’t think I care for the rule set. Every attack requires two opposed rolls, meaning that to make an effective attack I have to succeed at an attack roll, my opponent has to fail an evade roll, then I have to succeed at a damage roll, and my opponent has to fail at their resist roll. It’s an awful lot of rolling, and a lot of chances to fail.

Additionally, the scenarios seem a little under-written and poorly thought out. In both of our games, one side had either a much easier win condition or a poorly defined one like “prevent the other player from succeeding.”

The Big Meg and Armory cards are meant to provide flavor and variety, and sometimes they succeeded, adding little, unpredictable details to prevent the game from getting stale. However they just as often led to an unfair advantage for one side of the other – one card in particular, “Confusion Reigns!” was devastating, taking away two of my action chips which essentially stopped me from being able to play for the rest of the turn.

I love the models and the setting, and I definitely want to keep gaming in Mega City One, but I don’t think I want to do it using this rule set. One possibility might be to house rule in order to simplify the game and come up with some more interesting scenarios. Another option would be to switch to a different set of rules. 7TV is an obvious choice, or really any game with a vaguely futuristic urban setting. One thing we thought was missing from the game was the sense that the environment was a populated city – it seemed like we were fighting on deserted streets. With that in mind, something that handles non-player civilians well would be good. Possibly a re-skin of Core Space, with block gangs or other villains replacing the killer robots. I would love to hear other suggestions from the community.

If nothing else, I think the old GW Block Mania board game (recently reprinted by Rebellion Studios) is designed so that the cardboard counters can be replaced with miniatures…