The end and new beginnings of Dredd

[eilif]

Thanks for the heads up on CP models. Those civies are great! At the price (and current exchange rate) I just couldn't help myself and ordered them and some squat vehicle crew.

I'd kind of forgotten about CP models but there's some cool figs in their catalog.

[JollyBob]

Ulfhednar - I can see where you are going with the old Imperial Guard figs, they do have a nice Citi-Def look to them.

I would say they would be about a head shorter than the Warlord Dredd stuff - I have some examples of both at home and if I get chance I will take a quick pic tonight for comparison. They'd definitely be chunkier in style, if not shorter.

[nozza_uk]

These are some of the alternatives that I use.

To augment my Ape Gang.

From Reaper, Ape-X.



And Orangutango, Cyber-Ape.



For Cursed Earthers, I use these Chaos Cultists from Games Workshop.

[nozza_uk]

Also, have you looked at the Foundry Street Violence range for perps?

[Ulfhednar]

Excellent thanks for the info on the old Imperial Army. Yes it's a citi-def idea, I have a sealed blister of these old Mongoose CD command and was looking for troops to go with them. Then I saw one in this colour scheme below and it occurred to me they have the potential to be like a Confederate styled CD, that could be great for Block Wars.





It's the earliest version of Imperial Army with the long boots (1987), by beginning of 1988 they'd moved to the Imperial Guard with the ankle boots and they start looking too military for Dredd. I do hope they scale but it's not sounding positive.

Re the Reaper proxies, Reaper has some exceptionally nice figures and many look like they'd scale, they're on my list to add a few choice characters from once I've got the main forces sorted. They suffer for being so good, I have no fear they'll go OOP so I'm leaving them for now :-)

Re the GW's Chaos Cultists as Cursed Earth proxies, that's a great idea. I've been avoiding GW stuff because I assumed it would be too big, but they went through a transition of getting bigger, I guess it's just a matter of working out which period they were a compatible size and taking from that, it seems to be around 87 / 88, Citadel's early Dredd figures are too small
to go with Warlord but their later Dredd seems to scale with it fine. There's lots in GW's stuff if it scales, they had a consistent cartoon style for a while that matches with Dredd, was in their Dredd, Paranoia, Space Pirates / Adventurers, Early Imperial Army stuff. It's the period of Citadel that they modded these figures below into East Meg Proxies and the style is perfect (these are available from Wargames Foundry listed under old Citadel).



(one's a conversion from the Citadel SCS with rifle, the other from the Citadel Judge giant).

[Ulfhednar]

Re Wargames Foundry they're on my list but like Reaper, they're too successful and stable for me to worry they'll go out of production so although I have stuff I need to get from them (Dredd & Street Wars) it won't be for a while. Those gangers do look excellent, gang war figures are definitely not an issue in Dredd, Cursed Earth is looking good with things like Blind Beggar Miniatures People of the Sand maybe augmented by Pig Iron Kolony Ferals and a few from Sgt Major Miniatures, plus old citadel, random mutants etc. But uniformed civilised people are difficult, finding ones that are comic & urban enough, not too sensibly military.

edit - I'm definitely going to have to get Fast Lucy's & Olivia's Street girls at least. It's brilliant, makes it possible to have a number of different gangs each with their own fashion style, they could ally for proper Judges versus gangs wargaming. Like that old Warriors film with all the different gangs.

[JollyBob]

Here we go, managed to snap a pic at lunchtime.

As  you can see, the old IG figures are a lot smaller. I hadn't read your comments about the boots, but as I have IG figures in both styles I can confirm they are the same size overall.

I would hazard a guess that all Citadel figures of the same era would be too wee to mix with Warlord, and certainly with the Foundry Dredd models. 

[nozza_uk]

Games Workshop can be a cost effective way (ie Ebay) of supplementing the Dredd universe.
For example here's a a re-purposed Tau tank.

The middle Lawmaster is a 40K mod.


Also, took a size comparison between the Mongoose figures and the Choas Cultists.

[nozza_uk]

Excellent thanks for the info on the old Imperial Army. Yes it's a citi-def idea, I have a sealed blister of these old Mongoose CD command and was looking for troops to go with them. Then I saw one in this colour scheme below and it occurred to me they have the potential to be like a Confederate styled CD, that could be great for Block Wars.

Modern Games Workshop Cadian troops go well with that old blister pack.

[Ulfhednar]

Bugger :-( That's one of the biggest Warlord Judges but it's not over-sized, just a big person and maybe a half head taller than some others, but a whole head is probably too much. Compared to him the old Citadel Army do look too small (in height) but then they have the right chunkiness. I guess I'm going to find out for sure anyway, when I first rediscovered them on ebay last night I got all excited and bid for 2 before I remembered I should double check how they match for scale :-P

Yes there's a lot of Citadel that merges well. I was out of the hobby for years so missed out on the Arbites and their bikes, too expensive to go back for now they're out of print in any volume, though the odd one could work great as another City's Judge. I'll have a look for GW Chaos cultists as you're right, they fit great with the Cursed Earth Desperadoes. I think long term I'm going to have to go to an event / meet so I can rummage through different current ranges and traders old OOP stuff, there's too much in old GW stuff to ignore if you can just find the stuff that scales.

edit - I think the Cadian maybe look a bit too sensibly military for Dredd with their ankle boots & thick armour, like they actually know what they're doing, mean to achieve objectives and survive. I was looking at the Kasrkin too, Miniature Heroes have an ok painted unit of 9 for £20 (which judging by ebay prices is good), but again they look a bit too seriously full-time military.



edit - and really nice job on the grav tank conversion. I was going to avoid stuff like that as the Warlord Manta tank was impossible to get hold of, way too big & powerful to fit into a wargame and insanely expensive. I was going to get a load of ground to air missile defence scenery (supplied to the baddies by East Meg, as they do) for my Badlands & Cursed Earth towns to account for Meg one not just using missiles or Manta's against them and having to go in on the ground, but that smaller Tau tank maybe makes some air support viable in model terms. Really good idea :-)

Re old Citadel Dredd, I have a big stash of it I'm going to recover this weekend, but at the moment only a Nort trooper, a Skink mutant (that I got cuz it was too cheap on ebay) and some lawmasters & riders to hand. The lawmaster bikes are way too small, but all the people look like they match ok, but then none are standing up straight so it's hard to tell, it's really just judging it on size of hands and head that do match, but that may be because Citadel was chunky and Warlord is slim, the actual heights could turn out to be completely wrong & look like they might.

Yes I saw that Foundry was big and possibly even slightly bigger than some Warlord (by being fractionally taller but more by being too chunky / heavier set for their height), and so in turn too big for Citadel too, it's going to be another range I'll have to test from & go slowly with.

[nozza_uk]

Here's my Citi Def (The old command pack & Cadians).


Here's Foundry & Mongoose. (Bases still need to be finished).


Also, here's some more Games Workshop conversions.

[Ulfhednar]

wow. That's really helpful thanks, the Cadians definitely scale ok and they do work with that citi-def command, but I'm not sure closely enough & with enough comic character to warrant me opening the sealed blister of them (I came to this late, picked up the figures only after they were already OOP and I know from looking, relatively they're extremely rare, possibly too valuable to a collector for me to use for my tatty gaming). If those CD were more available and so more run of the mill they'd be great with the Cadians as background troops. Mind you there are lots of Cadians, I only need 3 or so to make sense of that CD command, maybe I can find a few that will work. The Cadians though are maybe good enough on their own as proper military, I do need some more-military type troopers for my Vril Cit project (4th Reich under the Antarctic with Hitler bot, allied to Argentina & Vatican for a new apocalypse type war against Meg 1 & Brit Cit)

Maybe it's that I find those slightly later period GW's figures difficult, I guess it's the point that imo GW started taking themselves & what they were doing too seriously. Imo sci-fi warfare and armour is a comic thing, by the point technology is advanced enough for things like Imperial Guard / sci-fi, bullets and stuff would have on board AI targeting, finding gaps & weakspots and penning easily, they probably won't even use bullets will just be clouds of nanobots, drones and all very remote. I think it's why Dredd is such a winner as a genre, it allows for sci-fi warfare but because (on top of it being comic and not trying to be serious) it's urban and civil, can still be thugs and guns and knives & ordinary people. It just causes me a problem fitting in figures that look too seriously military.

Thanks for the Foundry shot, that's encouraging, fractionally tall (considering Judges are meant to be big) but still scales well enough and the Foundry gang range seems too useful not to use.

And your Justice building and landspeeder are excellent & definitely stuff I'll have to try and do. It was looking at the Imperial Guard landspeeders and bikes that led me onto rediscovering the original Imperial Army. They have so much useful stuff. Like the tarantula heavy gun, that would go great with Fast Pursuit Car Judge and the Dredd out of the Walter Wobot blister as operators.





Infact is that an Imperial speeder it looks better than theirs.

edit - I'm being mean about GW's vision of sci-fi warfare. But it's not really a criticism, within their own World it works, it's like Star Wars, it occurs in a different galaxy far away, maybe long ago, it has an entirely different / alternate history & reality to us and so like Star Wars, reality is suspended and it can be believed, it's immersive. But I don't think it merges into Earth timeline as our potential future (like Dredd is positioned), our future looks very different, imo civil / urban and even a bit comic just like Dredd is, where contesting optimised militaries aren't really present or at least can't afford to ever go to War because they'd be too capable & destructive. And I guess the Cities Justice Dept's wouldn't want their CD to develop into a competent organised military force as it would be a potential threat to their absolute power, they'd mean them to be amateurs.

edit - I'm going to guess I don't believe in future hard-core military, or at least can't fit it into my personal vision of Dredd / Earth future because I grew up during the cold war, in between Sabbaths Children of the Grave and When the Wind Blows, there wasn't going to be a future military and sci-fi warfare, just apocalyptic oblivion (maybe ending up like Mad Max) or no nuclear war and everything would just merge into overcrowded urban grubbiness with all powerful elite civil / commercial authorities, like in Blade Runner. 2000AD ended up with a bit of both, post apocalyptic & sci-fi urban, but still without the military.

[Ulfhednar]

Re the Games Workshop Cadian's (and your land speeder & bikes), sorry I didn't realise they were still in production GW things, was lead to believe the Cadians at least were OOP by ebay ads trying to get inflated prices and hadn't checked the Games Workshop 40k site for... possibly ever, I literally haven't bought anything off GW for decades.

I realised last night your Cadians were current GW, really surprised they scale with Warlord Dredd like your picture shows they do (in fact a tiny bit short but they're more chunky / less vampy for their height, so their bulk matches and overall they look fine), so had a look through GW's site. It's a shame to say I just found it depressing. I thought they had some decent figures at first, the Adeptus Mechanicus Skitarii Vanguard looked brilliant. They're in stylised 15th cent German gothic armour like Citadel's original fantasy fighter FA10, I thought they'd do great for Vril Cit & their 4th Reich (being so Germanic), thought GW were celebrating their heritage referencing the FA10 fighter & were maybe even getting back to basics and their original core brand rather than continuing to indulge their out of nowhere made up nonsense:




But no, I thought the models had unusually slim ankles so I double checked the description to make sure they weren't robots, and wow, their back story is they've been cut off at the knees and given artificial legs to make terrain easier! Perhaps something for Bear Grylis to consider. And they're radioactive, so radioactive they'd poison anyone who went near them, but the radiation sickness doesn't put them off their (robo-leg) stride in being elite. I guess I could green stuff boots on them, but on such finely detailed figures it would probably look too rough and I'm not into modding entire ranges. I can't imagine that false leg / robot ankle detail has caused more to be sold, but it must have stopped some people from buying them, it's limiting & is just GW indulging themselves. They have no space / sci-fi adventurers, pirates, bombshell females, in fact anything just sci-fi, personal, or believable, it's all only feverishly out there extreme & OTT prescribed 40k. And they don't even have metal commanders, hardly anything is metal anymore it's almost all plastic. They look for all the World like a monopoly expecting people to fit in with them & their vision rather than other way around, if how they are now is how they'd been early 80's they'd never have been more than also-rans. edit - but they're plastic so only £23 or something for all of them, I guess I'm going to give in and have to try and mod their stupid legs into boots. (edit, looked again not possible, they don't only have robot legs below the knee the robot lower legs are too short, they'd need cutting off at the knee and pinning to whole new legs, don't have a clue how possible that is with plastic. Maybe it's easy but it means buying another 10 figures with normal human boot legs to butcher to fix these, not worth it, what a mess of a concept they are).

Then separately, they also have these 3 metal figures for £8.20, I'll mod a couple of them so their staffs are topped by a Soviet Star instead and use them as mind control wardens for my East Meg / Cyclos (Scotia Grendel) convict troops). So they can do useful affordable metal figures, they just choose not to very much. It's like they're limited under their own licence, if you don't play 40k proper there's little point looking at their stuff. (edit - you can tell I'm annoyed with GW, have been for years, the way they changed and took over the hobby with that was the reason I originally quit the hobby, just wish they'd go back to basics, stop trying to impose their imagination on others and stop designing figures like they live on Red Bull).



Anyway, I bought some old Antenocitis GOT figures off ebay & received them today but found they're definitely too small (too short & slight / true form) to go with Warlord Dredd, very similar to the current Infinity stuff. Some really nice figures though, I'll break up the pack and hopefully sell them on in the Bazaar with my spare Dredd stuff.

And, I got this figure as a one off a while back from Prince August, registered it scaled but because there wasn't a lot of exciting stuff in the range to go back for, put it to one side and forgot about it. I noticed it again last night and it's actually a potentially really useful figure. It's perfectly in scale with Warlord Dredd, she has shoes and trousers that end just below the knee pads, some boots green stuffed on would make her perfect as another Cursed Earth Judge. Her knee pads are almost exactly like the Warlord Cursed Earth Judge, he has only his Eagle Pad, she has only her other shoulder pad, that pad is extremely similar to Meg1 Judge pads, but even more like Brit Cit shoulder pads - maybe she'd do as an exiled Brit Cit Judge in the Cal Hab highlands or something. Or if not another exiled Judge, with those pads she'd just work perfectly as a ganger or something.



http://shop.princeaugust.ie/bt06-future-shock-girl-punk-with-uzi-machine-pistol-28mm-scale-metal-miniature/

[Wachaza]

Err these might be the figs with robot legs fella

They both have.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Skitarii-Rangers

"Mindful of the harsh terrain of Mars, their legs have been removed from the knees down, with bionic replacements lending each model an air of cold, cybernetic augmentation"

[Mason]

It is what they did with the amputated limbs that worries me.
Martian barbecue, anyone...?