Anyone try this?

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

Have opinions?

Someone at my FLGS picked it up and I know at least a couple are interested so if I get into it we might have a critical mass for it to take off.

The question being... is it worth taking off?

The non-Stallone Dredd movie totally rocked, really captured the world.

But I dunno about a minis game. No matter how good the rules are, I just don't see much beyond a one-off. Just how many scenarios have much potential as a minis game?

Let's see here. You've got a small group of judges against a horde of lightly armed criminals. You've got a pack of "good" Judges fighting "bad" Judges, but that's a stretch.

Aaaand...we're done.

Quote from: Doom;739703The non-Stallone Dredd movie totally rocked, really captured the world.

But I dunno about a minis game. No matter how good the rules are, I just don't see much beyond a one-off. Just how many scenarios have much potential as a minis game?

Let's see here. You've got a small group of judges against a horde of lightly armed criminals. You've got a pack of "good" Judges fighting "bad" Judges, but that's a stretch.

Aaaand...we're done.

So the old board games were okay.
Judge dredd run round collecting perps, Block mania blow the crap out of the other blocks.

I can see a few scenario options here on top of the two you have mentioned

i) Block war
ii) total War scenario - Sov Block invasion or whatever
iii) Death race - they do have a Spike mini already
iv) Supersurf - they have a chopper mini
v) Dark Judges - necropolis etc etc

As for the movies the Karl Urban movie was a much better movie but the Stalone Dredd movie was more like the comics.
In the Urban movie the judges were too much like US cops willing to change side for cash. In the comics judges are selected and trained from the age of 5when they get corrupted it's due to them becoming heavy handed fascists not to get a few creds.
The entire block structure in the more recent film also didn't fit. Mega city one blocks are not dark decaying places where crime is rampant. They are plastic and disney-fied as this is the way the government keeps control of its population through bread and circuses. The places are antiseptically clean because of the droids that clean it all all the time and put 98% of the population out of work. In the comics outside of the periods post apocalypse (post Sove block invasion, post necropolis etc) the judges have absolute control over everything. The idea that a block would just be left to rot like a US ghetto is anthetical to the conceit. The Judges would just move it and lock everyone up in an isocube. This is after all a place where you get 6-12 months for not returning a library book on time and sugar is an illegal substance that will get you 5-10 maximum security.
Mega City one is in short more like the Alpha Complex or Logan's Run place (what was that called?) than The Projects

So the last film is certainly a better movie than the first but its not a very good Judge Dredd movie.

Oh and as for the game looks like it woudl cost a freaking fortune at 5 quid a mini

Hey, I though the board game was decent enough, too.

Ok, perhaps I enthused overmuch, and I concede "taking money" was a silly motivation for the corrupt Judges. These are darker times, perhaps, making the darker interpretation more satisfying for me...it really seems like there were some slum-like buildings, however, and there totally was a drug aspect to the comics. It also seems like there was corruption factor there, maybe not for money, perhaps, but I'll take one miscue in exchange for much that was pretty good.

Quote from: Doom;739777Hey, I though the board game was decent enough, too.

Ok, perhaps I enthused overmuch, and I concede "taking money" was a silly motivation for the corrupt Judges. These are darker times, perhaps, making the darker interpretation more satisfying for me...it really seems like there were some slum-like buildings, however, and there totally was a drug aspect to the comics. It also seems like there was corruption factor there, maybe not for money, perhaps, but I'll take one miscue in exchange for much that was pretty good.

Yeah sorry to get so specific
Without doubt Dredd is a good movie. And indeed it's how a realistic Mega City 1 might look. However, Mega City 1 was never really supposed to be a grim dark urban setting or even terribly realistic. It's much more of an ironic Utopia where the only way to maintain its utopic profile is a fascist law enforcement system that imposes sentencing without trial and is answerable only to itself.

As for drugs... well the most commonly prosecuted drugs in MC1 are sugar, umpty (a sort of candy which although not being addictive just taste so good its hard to stop eating it) , Synthi-caf (a replacement for caffine which has been banned because it has been found to be slightly addictive itself).
One of the whole drives of the writers was to poke fun at the hypocrasy of the system that arbitrarily decides that some things are legal  smoking in a smokatorium for example whereas other things, such as sugar are illegal. Whilst other drugs come up, like Stookie glands, or whatever they are not part of the millieu.
The comics deliberately wander from grimdark (Amerika, Dolby Queeg) to silly (Otto Sump, Umptybaggers, the Chimp gang). I don't think for example a bunch of fatties with their belly wheels campaigning for increased food rationing for the obese would fit well with the Urban Dredd movie setting. Likewise I can't see Otto Sump, the worlds ugliest man and founder of the Otto Le Sump Uglifier clinic chain, where being different instead of blandly normal is a way of cresting the fashion wave would work in Urban's MC1

Quote from: jibbajibba;739779Yeah sorry to get so specific
Without doubt Dredd is a good movie. And indeed it's how a realistic Mega City 1 might look. However, Mega City 1 was never really supposed to be a grim dark urban setting or even terribly realistic. It's much more of an ironic Utopia where the only way to maintain its utopic profile is a fascist law enforcement system that imposes sentencing without trial and is answerable only to itself.

As for drugs... well the most commonly prosecuted drugs in MC1 are sugar, umpty (a sort of candy which although not being addictive just taste so good its hard to stop eating it) , Synthi-caf (a replacement for caffine which has been banned because it has been found to be slightly addictive itself).
One of the whole drives of the writers was to poke fun at the hypocrasy of the system that arbitrarily decides that some things are legal  smoking in a smokatorium for example whereas other things, such as sugar are illegal. Whilst other drugs come up, like Stookie glands, or whatever they are not part of the millieu.
The comics deliberately wander from grimdark (Amerika, Dolby Queeg) to silly (Otto Sump, Umptybaggers, the Chimp gang). I don't think for example a bunch of fatties with their belly wheels campaigning for increased food rationing for the obese would fit well with the Urban Dredd movie setting. Likewise I can't see Otto Sump, the worlds ugliest man and founder of the Otto Le Sump Uglifier clinic chain, where being different instead of blandly normal is a way of cresting the fashion wave would work in Urban's MC1

Not much choice but to concede each of your points.

That said, Megacity 1 is, well, huge. The movie only covered 1 building in any detail.  For all we know, there ARE places in that movie world that look like Disney, you just don't see them in that building. Just like the real world, where you can have armed militants walking down a street in some Middle-Eastern city, while Gay Rights members in full regalia in a different city. You don't see both of those in the same movie (much).

I mean, New Orleans can look very fancy and pretty...and two blocks later you get burned out buildings and bullet-hole ridden slums. They shoot movies there all the time because you can change urban scenery with so little effort.

Quote from: Doom;739834Not much choice but to concede each of your points.

That said, Megacity 1 is, well, huge. The movie only covered 1 building in any detail.  For all we know, there ARE places in that movie world that look like Disney, you just don't see them in that building. Just like the real world, where you can have armed militants walking down a street in some Middle-Eastern city, while Gay Rights members in full regalia in a different city. You don't see both of those in the same movie (much).

I mean, New Orleans can look very fancy and pretty...and two blocks later you get burned out buildings and bullet-hole ridden slums. They shoot movies there all the time because you can change urban scenery with so little effort.

Fair enough but I didn't get that vibe.
The Vibe I got from Dredd was very much "Lets take Detroit and make it 100 times bigger".
To me it was like the original writer wanted to make a grimdark future cop movie set in a distopia future and wrote the script then grafted in judge Dredd on top when a license came up.

Like I said its a good movie it just doesn't feel like a Dredd movie to me (but as you can tell I was reading Dredd from age 8 in 1977 when he appeared in issue 2 of 2000AD

Your Dredd-fu is vastly greater than my own, Sensei.

But for all the goofiness of the comics, there still was an overriding dark ambiance from the reality that a judge/jury/executioner could spot you at any time and put you down. Dredd certainly was a "good guy", but it  was still a far more negatively than positively dystopian world...assuming "positively dystopian" makes any kind of sense.  

That darkness was something I found missing from the Stallone movie. I mean, yeah, Dredd was sent to prison and people got shot, but there was always a happy-go-lucky vibe that gave no doubt it would all turn out all right.

Or was my interpretation there a bit off as well? It's been a while.

Quote from: Doom;740253Your Dredd-fu is vastly greater than my own, Sensei.

But for all the goofiness of the comics, there still was an overriding dark ambiance from the reality that a judge/jury/executioner could spot you at any time and put you down. Dredd certainly was a "good guy", but it  was still a far more negatively than positively dystopian world...assuming "positively dystopian" makes any kind of sense.  

That darkness was something I found missing from the Stallone movie. I mean, yeah, Dredd was sent to prison and people got shot, but there was always a happy-go-lucky vibe that gave no doubt it would all turn out all right.

Or was my interpretation there a bit off as well? It's been a while.

No I think you are pretty close.
MC1 is a lot like Singapore, a benign totalitarian state.

Singapore -

MC1 -
Good article here too - http://www.bdonline.co.uk/blog-travels-in-toon-town-%E2%80%93-part-2/3096167.article

By the way I don't think JD is good. He is the epitome of LN in alignment terms. He was good in the first few comics but after his stint on Lunar1 they changed the character and little asides about why the law was important were dropped (I recall in issue 9 or so when JD arrests someone for slow driving, doing 95 in a 100 zone, he states that a little girl died on that stretch of road because someone was only doing 95 thus justifying his heavy handed 6 month prison sentence, such justificatiosn were dropped futher on). Chopper and the whole Amerika and democracy arc cemented the city as one where Law matters more than freedom, justice or rights of any kind.

The original films vision of Mega City 1 was pretty good I thought. A sprawling mass of people crowded in, on top of and around each other. The film was ruined when people started talking in it, of course.

I'm not really a Judge Dredd fan but I thought Dredd was an excellent movie. I still hold out hope for a sequel.

Quote from: APN;741229The original films vision of Mega City 1 was pretty good I thought. A sprawling mass of people crowded in, on top of and around each other. The film was ruined when people started talking in it, of course.

We are largely in agreement.
the Stalone movie looks like MC1.

Now this isn't as hard as it sounds as there is 35 years worth of material depicting the setting. But it takes 2 things -
i) money - though CGI now could cut this back
ii) Desire to replicate the comics - this is where Dredd went in a different direction. the guys that made Dredd kind of said we like the idea of a tough future cop in a city full of massive city blocks but we don't buy into some of its sillier and more disnified features so we will take the Dredd character and drop him into a more gritty and realistic distopian future city

Both movies have precedent in the 2000AD comics. There are parts of MC1 that are smooth plastic over an iron fist and there are areas that are clearly heading towards the block from hell that was the later film. The block wars that appear in the stories quite often are very clearly serious shit, and based on gang culture not that different to the second film. On the other hand there are very nice and clean and controlled spaces as well. Dredd in the comics does veer from dark dystopia to comedy to social satire from tale to tale and artist to artist and write to writer.

My view is that both were valid, save that Stallone should not have taken off his helmet so much..

Quote from: tzunder;741339Both movies have precedent in the 2000AD comics. There are parts of MC1 that are smooth plastic over an iron fist and there are areas that are clearly heading towards the block from hell that was the later film. The block wars that appear in the stories quite often are very clearly serious shit, and based on gang culture not that different to the second film. On the other hand there are very nice and clean and controlled spaces as well. Dredd in the comics does veer from dark dystopia to comedy to social satire from tale to tale and artist to artist and write to writer.

My view is that both were valid, save that Stallone should not have taken off his helmet so much..

Block wars are usually between the Citizen Defence organisations from opposing blocks as opposed to gangs.  
Citizen defence is basically the "right to bear arms as part of an organised millitia".
The idea of superpowerul drug lords that are openly opposed to law and order just doesn't fit the MC1 setting at all.

The acting and script in the stalone movie are pretty dire but the sets and costuming is much more MC1.

A problem you have is that the first RoboCop movie basically stole Judge Dredd. it added wry social commetary to an emotionless lawman. Robocop even looks like Dredd and doesn't he actually say "your move creep" at one point?

Quote from: jibbajibba;741511Block wars are usually between the Citizen Defence organisations from opposing blocks as opposed to gangs.  
Citizen defence is basically the "right to bear arms as part of an organised millitia".
The idea of superpowerul drug lords that are openly opposed to law and order just doesn't fit the MC1 setting at all.

Yes, Citi-Def organised at Block level is how Mega-City One gets by without a national army, since Judges are too few & too expensive. The Judges hate armies, ever since they fought the war to overthrow President Booth and put themselves in charge - Booth's support was based on the US Army, including the robot divisions.  Whereas mutually antagonistic Block Citizen Defence Forces make the city hard to conquer by an external enemy, but pose no existential threat to Judge power. It's a very clever system.