Judge Fire

Judge Fire

Like Judges Death, Fear and Mortis, Judge Fire is a supernatural Dark Judge.  Where Mortis shtick is a familiar-for-the-trope, accelerated necrosis thing, Fear can scare people to death and Judge Death is just plain old badass, Judge Fires raison d’etre is the barbeque of every living thing in creation.  Literally every living thing, no exceptions.  Thats commitment.

Judge Fire renders his comrades backlit.

Judge Fire is always depicted in a head to toe state of combustion.  While his form is physical (he isnt composed of “living flame” or any of that jazz) he is only ever visible as a smouldering, coal like figure in weird Judges garb.

Is this the end for Judge Dredd...

...no, I thought not.

I started painting Judge Fire with a black undercoat.  I intended to paint the dark inner areas first and work outwards, common miniature painting practice.  This was a mistake.  I found it difficult to get the flames looking how I wanted them to.

I finished the figure like this but wasnt sure.  The following morning I took a look and still wasnt certain.  I then went to work and looked up a few articles on painting miniature flame and subsequently popped the figure into one of my paint stripping jars.

A couple of days later I cleaned off the paint, sprayed the figure white, painted the flame effect all over the figure and subsequently painted Fires charcoal like body.  I am much happier with how the figure looks now.

Backdraft

Please ignore the unfinished base: I got an unexpected opportunity to take a couple of photos and so jumped at it before I tidied up the basing.

Fire was the last of my Dark Judges (for now).  As such I took a group shot of the four of them, plus  a shot of the four flanked by a couple of Mega City One Judges, just for the sake of comparison.

Deadworld Justice Department

MC1 and Deadworld Judge Comparison Shot

I think the Dark Judges look good as a group.  A very satisfying sub-project, even if it gave me more than a few headaches in the execution.

 

 

Judge Fear

Judge Fear

Like Judge Mortis last time, Fear is a Dark Judge.  Of all of the Dark Judges he sports perhaps the most preposterous outfit, which in the context of the Dark Judges is really saying something.

Fear has the ability to throw big man-traps that immobilise and/or injure targets.  Im not sure where the traps come from, but they tie in thematically with his costume at least.

Fears never ending Mantrap projectile ability is in addition to the standard suite of Dark Judge powers (immortality, fatal touch, extreme zombie-like resistance to physical attacks, trans-dimensional transport technology, telepathic link with other Dark Judges, the ability while in gaseous form to telepathically control susceptible psychics: common or garden spooky stuff) Fear also has another unique form of dispensing “Justiccce!”.

Fears face is capable of causing fatal effects in onlookers via his creepy gaze.  Fear usually controls the effect by opening the gate/portcullis like faceplate on his hilarious looking helmet.  Barring one or two exceptions Fears spooky visage has not been shown in the strip.

Like most things in the Judge Dredd strip, the interpretations of the Dark Judges uniforms have varied and changed over the years.  I picked the bits that I liked the most from the images that I had looked through and went with scheme shown.

Fears cloak is usually shown as black.  I decided to go with a brown similar to that shown on his cloak and the bat wings on his helmet in the image above as I thought that it would make for a more interesting miniature visually and give him more identity in the context of his colleagues.

While all other Dark Judges play second fiddle to their leader Judge Death (coming in a later installment) Fear in particular never gets any respect.

A lot of this stems from the very first time that Dredd confronted Fear.  Fear had been employing his creepy fizzog to bump off numerous residents of Billy Carter block .  Fear tried it on Dredd, spouting “Gaze into the face of Fear!”.  The rest is a little bit of comic book history, as shown below.

That pattern has become something of a theme.  Judge Dredd + Judge Fear = Fears head gets mangled or severed.

I never understood why in these cases Judge Fears helmet appears to have the durability of a Digestive biscuit, but who cares.

The image above is noteworthy as it shows Fears face (although I imagine that Fears face is indescribable and probably in the eye of the beholder, rather than just a creepy eyeballed thing).

Also of note is that the image is actually a pair of panels from a Dredd “fantasy gaming strip” (a “choose your own adventure” or “you are the hero” sort of affair) called House of Death.  It appeared in a 2000AD spin-off called Diceman in the eighties.

Jangly

While Judges Death, Fire and Mortis are metal figures manufactured by Foundry, irritatingly Foundry never sold a metal Judge Fear (although there is one on Kevin Dallimores site that never saw production as far as I know.  Boo!).

Handily enough the sculptor of 90% of the Foundry 2000AD range (Tim Prow who I presume sculpted that Kevin Dallimore painted Fear figure as well as the other Dark Judges) was hired on the back of his work sculpting 2000AD Heroclix.  Conveniently, he had sculpted a Fear for Indy Clix, which is where this figure comes from.

I had trouble stripping paint from the ‘clix and some of the detail was a bit blobby and indistinct, which made Fear something of a chore to paint.  Another reason why my Dark Judge project stalled for so long I think.

Like my painting on the other Dark Judges many shortcuts were taken while getting Fear finished.  As I had got so bogged down on these guys I simply had to do the minimum to get them done and put them to one side, which had a negative effect on the quality of the paint job.  Unfortunately Fear is the low point of my Dark Judge sub-project.  Ho hum.  I may return to the figure at some point in the future, but its not likely any time soon.

Judge Fire and a group shot of the four Dark Judges finally go up tomorrow.

 

Judge Death

Judge Death

Judge Death is the leader of the Dark Judges and the archenemy of Judge Dredd and/or Judge Anderson.

"The crime isss life, the sssentencce is death."

Visible above is Deaths shtick.  As a trans-dimensional, undead super-fiend, Death dishes out his form of justice up close and personal, usually via the plunging of  his semi-ethereal hands into victims chests.  He then “squeeezzessss” with fatal results.

Apparently Judge Death was conceived as a recurring nemesis for Dredd largely because he couldnt be killed.  Dredd tended to bump off his adversaries in short order, so Judge Death sidestepped that problem for the writers by being undead and tricky to capture or hold.

Deaths Pterodactyl Shoulder Pad

Deaths all-life-is-committed-by-the-living-therefore-all-life-is-crime standpoint is even more draconian than Dredds law and order views.  This provides obvious parallels with Dredds own pretty black and white standpoint.  The two-sides-of-the-same-coin thing is particularly apparent for these comic book foes.

Death sporting quite a green complexion.

As time went on Deaths origin story was explored.  As often happens when the mysterious or creepy is explained its impact is lessened.  This in addition to a few ill-advised comic turns taken by Judge Death during that era turned him into more of a comical character than the creepy ghoul he had started out as.

There have been efforts to make Judge Death creepy all over again since, some of which have worked quite well to emphasise his otherworldly serial killer-like zealotry.  Regardless I think that for readers of my era for whom Judgement on Gotham was a big deal, Judge Death will always tend to be a little more comical than scary.

As you can see from the various takes on Deaths look shown in this post, the colours used for the various parts of his uniform and his flesh vary from artist to artist. When painting my take on the character I had to pick and choose which colours I thought would work the best on the figure in isolation and also in conjunction with the bright primaries of my Mega City Judges.

Like my other Dark Judges, I found Death to be a stumbling block for my toy soldier painting productivity.  As a result the painting on some areas is far superior to that on other areas as I finally rushed to get the figure finished.

Another Dark Judge next time.

Judge Mortis

Judge Mortis

The Dark Judges are foes of Judge Dredd that hail from “Deadworld”, an Earth like planet located in another dimension.  Like Dredd they are law enforcers but the Dark Judges laws are even more draconian than Mega City Ones famously strict codes: the Dark Judges eradicate all life in order to eradicate all crime.

In order to achieve this goal, the Dark Judges are dead.  Their ectoplasmic forms inhabit corpses.  If the corpses are destroyed their gaseous forms escape until another suitable host is prepared.  ”You cannot killll what doessss not live!” is a pretty common soundbite from these guys.

More agile than one might expect.

So technically the Dark Judges are liches or something, possibly wights.  I am still adding the “zombie” tag to this post though.

"Hol(e)y Judge Mortis Batman!"

There are four Dark Judges (although two other female characters did feature in their ranks for a while, plus another character from comics joined the Dark Judges for a story once, but more on that at a later date).  Each Dark Judge has his own shtick: Mortis here cause decay and putrefaction in anyone or thing that he comes into contact with.

"You cannot killll what doessss not liivvvee!" etc

The Dark Judges robes of office are each a thematically different parody of the Mega City One Judges uniform.  A pretty funny parody in my opinion, with pterodactyls in place of eagles and skulls, bones and body parts featuring heavily.  Fashion restraint is not a desirable quality in a Dark Judge.

Pterodactyl Skeleton Shoulder Pad

Various artistic interpretations of the Dark Judges have coloured different uniform elements in various ways.  I decided to go with a mix of influences from different artists to give each Dark Judge a visual identity while keeping them thematically linked.

Mortis features more bones in his uniform than the other Dark Judges.  Considering that he sports a cows skull for a head and has a bony tail he is pretty easily distinguished from his colleagues.

I did have to represent the bony armour differently to the bony head and tail, which in turn has to be similar but different to the rest of Mortis body, which is covered in stinking meat.

Bovine

I hit a painting slump in mid-August part of the way through painting my Dark Judges.  They have been sitting on my painting table since then in an unfinished state, while I have been unable to get anything else painted.

I finally got the enthusiasm up to do some painting in December and decided that I would finish the Dark Judges one way or another.  As a result I took a few shortcuts and there are a couple of areas on each of these figures that really could have done with some more careful painting.  In the interests of clearing the decks for new projects I decided to grit my teeth and do a basic job on the remaining areas.

Hopefully those areas dont let the miniatures down too badly, as there are still some bits on the Dark Judges that are quite nice in my opinion.

Another Dark Judge up next time.  Comments and criticisms on Mortis are more than welcome.

Judge Dredd in the Cursed Earth

PB and MT visited a few weeks back for a gaming weekend.  In addition to the boardgames that we had planned we also wanted to get a game or two of the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game and In the Emperors Name played.

We set up the post apocalyptic shanty town of Standard Falls as shown above.  This was the first game to use most of the scenery shown, as I put the majority of it together earlier this year.   I got a kick out of simply setting it up to be honest.  Standard Falls isnt finished just yet (more stuff in the pipeline) but it is satisfying to have got it even this far.

L to R: Psi Judge Geller, Riot Judge Barrabus, Street Judge Giant, Med Judge Trapper and Rookie Street Judge Lacey

A lot of factions were added in the most recent JDMG update.  I have suitable minatures to field many of them, but as I have most recently been working on Mega City One Judges, I wanted to use some of them again (above).  I was sorely tempted to use a zombie or robot force, but the Judges won out in the end.

As there were three players we decided to keep things simple and go for a game with two sides, rather than three.

Both MT and PB wanted to play using zombie forces so they each chose a force using half the points of the Judge force.  Above is PBs force of sickos led by Patient Zero (the Zombie Master) plus his henchman the horribly mutated Hoo Hoo and five former humans.

MTs force of rather gorier cadavers was led by the kinematically redundant, cybernetic demonoid, Adam.  MT had sunk a chunk of his points into Adams formidable psychic arsenal.

The scenario was set to be the assassination of the opponents leader(s).  Street Judge Giant was the most senior on the Department side.  In turn the judges had to apprehend or failing that execute both Patient Zero and Adam.

The Judge force proceeded Northward while each undead force attempted to flank them.  Which is kind of tough seeing that as yet, the only zombies sighted in Judge Dredds world have been the traditional slow variety.

Patient Zero psychically impels his rotten rogues down the abandoned street.

Riot Judge Barrabus has dealt with the walking dead before (or at least has seen a lot of old Horror tri-vids) and knows that standard projectiles have reduced effect on the living impaired.

Riot Foam on the other hand is just as effective on the dead as on the living.  With a jet from from his foam gun Barrabus locks Hoo Hoo and one of the zombies in place, still gnashing their teeth but completely incapacitated.  Patient Zero starts to get nervous.

The Judge force proceeds with the refused flank (not that difficult against shuffling undead) and concentrates the attack on Patient Zeros forces.  Spotting the danger Adam begins the slow redeployment of his force.

After another devastating display of Justice Department riot foam drill, Barrabus tops the zombies forces “Most Wanted” list.  Anticipating this, Med Judge Trapper moves close enough to administer stimm packs when Barrabus is dropped by a psychic assault.  Giant and Geller provide Hi-Ex covering fire.

Barrabus backs around the corner to regain his breath while Trappers selfless heroism is rewarded with a psychic blast that causes his brains to run out of his nose.

Giant remains close enough to tempt the zombie masters into stalling their retreat.

The view from the Southern edge.  Note the Rookie (bottom right) who has been helping to hold Adams forces in indecision on the West side of the large building.

With the sort of efficiency that one would expect from a totalitarian police state, the zombie rising of 2143 is crushed in its early stages.

—————————–

Not a particularly tactical game, but I enjoyed it.  I did get to thoroughly lambaste two gaming buddies simultaneously with my newly painted miniatures over my newly built and painted terrain though, so that helped.

What was interesting was that some of the rules that were used had been modified since our previous JDMG session, in part due to feedback that we supplied on the Mongose forum.  Power to the people indeed.  Dredd would crush that sort of feedback under his reinforced heel.

JDMG is proving to be one of my favourite miniature gaming systems yet.  I am not sure exactly what it is about the system that I like (although I have a number of  theories that I wont blather on about here) but the whole seems to be greater than the sum of its parts.  Its pretty “clean” as systems go too, which is important.

And of course the fact that a system that is working as well as this for our group is officially based in the Judge Dredd licence is completely fantastic as far as I am concerned.

We also played a game of In the Emperors Name on the same terrain following this game.  I will report on that soon.

Justice Department Group Shot

This is the entirety of my painted Mega City Justice Dept figures right now.

I like how they look so far.  I have a number of other Judge figures in various states of progress, but I probably wont get around to finishing them for a while yet (hobby progress is slow at the moment).  So this is the total as it stands right now.

Mega City Creeps: Jimp

Bring out the Jimp

Impersonating a Judge in Mega City One is a serious offence. Anyone illegally abusing the powers of a Judge, a “Jimp” (J-udge IMP-ersonator) can be thrown in the cubes for ten to twenty (depending on intent).

In the comics two things tend to show Jimps for what they are:

1. Jimps lack the distinctive Lawgiver pistol
2. Jimps are often portrayed wearing obviously substandard knock-offs of Judge uniforms. Usually the styling is different to that particular artists prevalent Judge uniform styling and in some cases more extreme differences such as reversing the position of the eagle pad are shown.

A Daily Star Dredd single page strip, "Jimps".

As the Judge uniform has been represented in a variety of ways over the years the scheme that I chose for the Jimp is canonically legitimate (not that that matters a shite really), but it is different to the scheme that I use for my “proper” Judges.

As well as varying the where some of the colours are located, I also used different shades and tones of those colours when painting the Jimp in comparison with “the real deal”.

The Jimp in comparison with Judges.

I reckon that I may not have made enough of a distinction between the Jimp and the Street Judges paint schemes to make the Jimp distinct on the tabletop. On the other hand if someone mistakes the Jimp for an actual Judge mid-game, well that will be kinda funny in its own right anyway.

Mega City Justice Department: Street Judges

 

Street Judge

Another rank and file Street Judge today, this time from Mongoose (complete with irritating piece of sand on he side of his helmet.  It has since been brushed off).

It appears that Mongoose have used a number of sculptors for their Dredd related figures (Shane Hoyle and Bob Naismith at least).  In addition to the design variance that this causes, some of the sculptors seem to have been allowed quite a degree of artistic interpretation when rendering the basic Street Judge.

Mongoose, Mongoose, Foundry.

 

This fact combined with how I am mixing miniatures from another manufacturer (Foundry) in my Justice Dept force and my uniformly equipped Street Judges end up having quite a lot of minor aesthetic differences.

As I have mentioned before, I actually prefer this. When painted up in a uniform style the differences are minimal. It also helps me with burnout as the different styles of miniature keep the painting process a little fresher.

It reminds me a little of painting up Space Marine and Eldar units in the early nineties, when the styling of various members of the units could vary hugely, which in turn made the figures more interesting to paint.

Mega City Justice Department: SJS Judge Slocum

Special Judicial Squad Judge Slocum

Judge Slocum was a member of the SJS (Special Judicial Squad: Justice Department internal affairs) under the then head of the SJS, Judge Cal. When Cal took over the Department he used the SJS as his personal retinue.

Slocum had qualms about how Cal behaved and eventually ended up aiding the resistance. But being a Judge, Judge Slocum should have never left things get that far in the first place.  Therefore his ridiculous end at the hands of the by then totally off the rails Chief Judge Cal was somewhat deserved.

Slocum is a Foundry figure and like much of the rest of the range, is a little bit more cartoony that I would like.  Nonetheless the Foundry figures are more crisp than the Mongoose Judge figures and a little more satisfying to paint as a result.  Slocum really needs to find a more practical way to carry his daystick than in a boot holster though…

Mongoose SJS, Foundry Slocum and Mongoose Street Judge

Of note here is some scale comparison between Slocum and the Mongoose SJS figure that I painted up a little while ago.  The Mongoose SJS figure is the shortest Mongoose Judge that I own.

Slocum on the other hand is a tall figure from a different, slightly larger range which also gains another couple of millimetres from its integral base.  The end result is that the height (and to some extent the proportions) are compared at extremes in this case.

The differences between the two bother me only minimally. When stood together Usual Suspects style the differences are as apparent as they can be and yet are still within acceptable parameters for me. Spread out on the tabletop there is essentially no discernible difference.

I actually like elements of the size difference, as the pair of SJS Judges remind me of various duos from crappy buddy cop movies, “Ponch” and “Jon” from CHiPs and “URL” and “Smitty” from Futurama.

Mega City Justice Department: Med Judge

Med Division Judge Trapper

Another Judge today, this time from Med Division.

Like Tek/Tech Judges, how these guys uniforms are represented in the stories is not really locked down. As it varies from artist to artist to colourist a lot of leeway is available to anyone painting one of these Mongoose figures.

I chose to go with green rather than yellow shoulder pads, inspired by recent Boo Cook artwork (above).  This also helps to distinguish the Med Judge from the Tech on the tabletop.

I decided to paint the big syringe/cattle gun/medical doohickey that the figure wields yellow to tie in with the rest of the Judge palette.   I have included the blue, red, green and yellow colours in some capacity on every Judge that I have painted so far.

Tech, Med and Riot Judges

For comparative purposes, the Med guy is shown in context with some other auxiliaries above.  The first two are Mongoose while the Riot Judge is from Foundry.  Note the slightly chunkier build and integral base which adds some height.