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Author Topic: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games  (Read 6372 times)

Offline n815e

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #15 on: July 21, 2019, 02:21:52 PM »
Having heavily invested in 28-32mm stuff, that’s where my money will continue to be spent. 

I may not be the target audience for them, I’m not looking to replace my current collection.  But I’d love to support this line by using it to add to my stuff.

So hopefully they will work well together.

Offline FreakyFenton

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #16 on: July 21, 2019, 03:19:35 PM »
Reckon those are the usual warlord bases, so they might be fine with the other stuff. Good since I picked up a few oop models recently!  :D ;D
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Offline JollyBob

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #17 on: July 21, 2019, 06:12:44 PM »
Splendidio.

Like many others I'd just be looking to fill gaps in the ranks of my Sector House's worth of Foundry and Mongoose stuff, but I'm pleasantly surprised with these and it'll make a nice change to have some consistency with the uniforms and equipment.

I hope they do fit with the SD minis, as I picked up the Darkus Howlers set a while back and they are a really good fit for my other stuff.

Offline Westfalia Chris

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #18 on: July 21, 2019, 06:37:50 PM »
This is great news. I got and painted most of the initial wave of SD minis, and will get the rest; as for the JD branch of the franchise, if they already plan to do odd characters like Judge Grice, I am very much looking forward to things to come.

Offline majorsmith

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #19 on: July 21, 2019, 09:00:43 PM »
 Yeah they look nice!

Offline BlaxKleric

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #20 on: July 22, 2019, 08:21:40 AM »
Thanks for sharing the pics!

Thanks to everyone for looking and commenting. Glad you all seemed to enjoy the pics!!  :)
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Offline arktos

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #21 on: July 22, 2019, 10:10:15 AM »
Dredd has to be one of the most desired and poorly treated franchises in the history of gaming.

At this point i can't manage any enthusiasm for a new rule set and range of figures. Especially as the range will no doubt start with all the character figures that most people who are interested already have - and then slowly die off before they get to interesting things that others have not done well, like characterful vehicles, civilian crowds, stylistic scenery etc.

I would certainly trust Warlord to have more longevity and more care about the product than mongoose but Dredd has already been so badly treated by GW, Foundry Mongoose et al that I doubt eventhey can save it.

Pessimism much?

So true !
As for Warlord, rembering the "death" of their zombie game, the poor choise of figures for Warlords of Erehwon ( orcs and skeletons from the Wargames Factory, oh my ...! ) and the ''complition'' of Terminator Genisys, well to put it mildly, let's cross our fingers ...

Offline DivisMal

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #22 on: July 22, 2019, 01:21:34 PM »
Hmmm...definitely something to be aware of, but maybe JD is the long term hit Warlord has been looking for? They also seem to have Strontium Dog and Slaine.

Offline John Tailby

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #23 on: July 24, 2019, 08:22:14 AM »
I think one of the weaknesses of the SD game is the very limited cast. I can see it working as a coop game were everyone is a SD and trying to take down the baddies but trying to make it an opposed game means someone always has to play the baddies or you get two people both wanting to play Johnny and Wulf.


It will be interesting to see what sort of rules the team at warlord come up with. Will it be similar to the mongoose rules perhaps with the dice activation mechanic warlord like or will it be completely different.

Warlord make a lot of 28mm models and it would be nice if they designed their JD models to be compatible with their SD ones.

Alternatively rebel minis still have many of the generic ranges from the mongoose range.
http://rebelminis.com/sciencefiction.html


Offline Cubs

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #24 on: July 24, 2019, 09:59:15 AM »
Well, hope springs eternal that Warlord will buck their own trend on this one and actually keep it running for more than 6 months rather than losing interest and wandering off to something else shiny. It's a well established universe and genre and the models seen so far are certainly top drawer, they've got plenty to build on.
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Offline Muzfish4

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #25 on: July 25, 2019, 03:34:53 AM »
That the SD command tokens are marked as being ‘2000 AD’ suggest that the game (and miniatures) will be fully compatible with future releases of 2000AD intellectual property. I’d expect both the JD rules systems and miniatures to be the first iteration of this compatibility, being true to the source material and making JD/SD cross-over games very possible. The minis look to be very good but I’m too far down the Mongoose road so will just look to pick up the rules at this stage. Unless I crack and pick a few up anyway…

Offline John Tailby

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #26 on: July 25, 2019, 05:38:24 AM »
if the rules are good they could have the people with mongoose figures act as ambassadors for the game and getting people excited.

if people then saw that the Warlord JD figures were better then they would buy them.

the last presentation by Warlord suggested that they would explore other universes within the JD pantheon including rogue trooper and slaine.

I like the idea of a warband scale game of Norts vs Southers. Or even the Jaegir inspired nort secret police teams hunting down mutants or those found to have dishonoured the Nort state.

Offline JollyBob

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #27 on: July 25, 2019, 08:12:25 AM »
The crossover potential is actually a good call - aside from the already canon JD/SD crossover stories, there was a GI shuttle pilot character in that space hospital series a few years ago, plus am I right in thinking the Norts and Southers were originally mega-corporations?

There was a Rogue/Dredd crossover story, where I believe an element of time travel was involved but Nu-Earth could conceivably be in a future not too distant from the Dredd-verse. 

On top of that, we have potential crossovers with Nemesis/ABC Warriors - they did a whole story arc in the Time Wastes after all, and even Slaine became a Time Warrior after his stint as High King...

Who wouldn't want to play out that story!

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Offline Brandlin

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #28 on: July 25, 2019, 11:44:51 AM »
The issue with all of these 2000AD licensed games is the business model and the history.

Companies need to make a profit. And they do that by selling figures, typically not by selling the rules. And to sustain a business they need to sell product over a period of time, so they need repeat sales. This is the fundamental reason why companies such as citadel rewrite rules editions and resculpt models because they realise that you only buy your figures once but play potentially for ever.

Now consider the franchises they are selling in 2000AD. JD, SD, Rogue, even ABC warriors are predominantly character based hero stories and in some cases lone hero. You only need to buy one judge dredd, one Johnny alpha etc. Every other sculpt they sell is basically a supporting cast member. Most of these stories are at their heart "Horde" style conflict... rogue vs hundreds of norts. Dredd vs everyone, Slaine against whole armies, etc. Yes, there are sides, nort and souther, and other judges etc. But mostly your character figures are massively outnumbered by the 'enemy'. A real Mega city board would have a handful of judges, a handful of perps and hundreds of civilians. A real Nu Earth table would have a handful of GI/southers and hundreds of norts. An SD table would have a couple of SD agents, some baddies and hundreds of civilians and mutants.  The issue with this is that we simply dont buy the necessary numbers of supporting cast to make a game economically viable.

I find this interesting as it is a shift in the gaming landscape over the years. Time was we would think nothing of fielding several hundred figures a side for a game - to an extent historical gaming is still like that. But sci-fi and fantasy has moved to smaller skirmish games. Where once we might have bought 300 zulus or 500 napoleonics, or even 600 dwarfs (as i have), we do NOT buy 100 civilians to flesh out a JD board. There simply isn't the appeal in these more 'mundane' models. It is also compounded by the fact that on the whole civilians are civilians, and we will repurpose models from other ranges in our games far more willingly than we will re-purpose our WW" german paratroopers as norts. So again the companies that are depending on volumes simply do not make the sales.

There is also the issue of cost. Material prices have gone through the roof which has pushed up prices. But remember the % profit margin has remained roughly the same (or dropped as companies have try to absorb some cost rather than price their product out of the hobby market). So lets say prices of metal figures have doubled in the last decade on average. And lets assume that profit margin has remained the same. So where you sold 100 figures in the past, you now need to sell 50 figure to have the same revenue and profit. But the game shift has moved from 100 figures a side to 10. so your volume is through the floor also. It ceases to be viable. GW recognised this and as sales fell shifted entirely out of the mass fantasy market.

The one game I thought would buck this trend was Rogue Trooper. It has a hero background but there are hundreds of possibilities to build both Nort and souther armies in volume - and therefore the ability to sell in volume. You only need one morgan the sniper, but you would buy repeat sculpts of basic nort troopers in the same pose to flesh out units. Also the variety of units and assets like vehicles already established as canon is huge.

This is where the rogue trooper rules from mongoose went massively wrong - and i argued this point long and hard with them at the start of the kickstarter. Rogue is a lone soldier and he is fighting a horde army. Its a zombie apocalypse game in a different guise. Rogue can breathe the atmosphere, no one else can so they die if they are hit at all. They utterly ignored the environment in the rules so it just became any other skirmish game. Rogue should be wading through hundreds of them - so you need ONE rogue figure, maybe a handful of southers or other GI but lots and lots of enemies. But they sculpted a number of GI's and then complained they didn't sell in volume. And they barely made enough nort figures to field a platoon let alone a company or more. Their business model was flawed from the outset.They actually produced rules for a skirmish game but based their hopes on selling large volumes of figures. Oh and the fact it was plagued by mongooses usual ineptness and the quality of the sculpting was very poor!)

Now add to the business model that all of these franchises have been tried before so there are already rules and figures out there. So the market for sales to customers is already deflated. If you make your miniatures compatible with someone elses then you will sell fewer because people reuse the miniatures they already have. If you make them incompatible you risk alienating whole swathes of players that wont buy anything at all.

Now add in the fact that Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, Slain, ABC Warriors and Judge Dredd are all 40 years old. And Only Dredd remains current. So there is not a new a replenishing fan base out there. All of us that remember the original stories and are the fan boys must be pushing 50 by now.

Don't get me wrong - In my heart I yearn in particular for a massive NU earth battlefield. But I genuinely don't see the economic viability for any business to make it so. As these companies come and go and abuse the franchises in the hope of quick profit without fundamentally understanding either the nature of the asset they have or the requirements of their business, so the cycle of hope and bust will continue - throwing more half finished product into the market place and making it harder for the next company that wants to try.

Pessimistic - maybe. But i needed to get that off my chest.


Offline majorsmith

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Re: Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Preview by Warlord Games
« Reply #29 on: July 25, 2019, 02:18:31 PM »
Aren’t they making. Rogue trooper film? Hopefully that will mean more interest!