This month's themed attempt to reduce my mountain of metal, plastic and resin models will actually consist of a second attempt to complete a number of "Mongoose Publishing" models inspired by the “2000 A.D." and “Judge Dredd Megazine” comic book crossover event from 1992 entitled “Judgement Day". I actually tried to pigment a number of these figures during last year’s Zomtober, but having lost my hobby mojo for much of the challenge, disappointingly failed to finish a single miniature as planned.
Happily however, I’m actually currently playing quite a bit of “Judge Dredd” using some homemade rules, so don’t see my enthusiasm for the project being much of a problem this time round. Indeed, I have already spent some time searching through my backlog of models from the 2012 “Judge Dredd Miniatures Game: Block War” Kickstarter for anything remotely connected to writer Garth Ennis’ multi-issue storyline, including the immortal necromancer behind the zombie uprising - Sabbat the Necromagus.
Initially though, I thought it might be prudent to simply begin where the “Judgement Day” narrative itself starts, and pigment at least a couple (more) Cadet Judges to represent the Year Twelve cadre being examined by Dredd during their Hot Dog Run at Yancey Station in the Cursed Earth. Sadly Cadet Krowe would be the first Justice Department casualty of Mega-City One’s war against the Undead, so I felt he would make a suitable candidate for my opening paint-job.
Having had a good scrounge around I have found that I own another two male Cadet Judges, along with a Female Cadet Judge sculpt, so intend to additionally add Giant, Santando and Ekerson to my group respectively. In addition, I have dusted down the three metal/plastic zombie conversions I attempted to paint last year, along with a couple more old “Mongoose Publishing” Zombie Judge models I didn’t realise I owned.
Other bloggers taking part in Zomtober 2021 are:
Progress wise, the last month was rather mediocre and not anywhere near as productive as I had originally hoped. I was expecting to have ploughed through a few more bases of 15mm “Battlefront Miniatures” than I actually achieved, as ordinarily playing a game really helps inspire me to crack on with the relevant rule-set’s figure line. That being said though, I did manage to get 16 more Panzergrenadiers under my belt for “Flames Of War”, which not only helped me take my painting points total for the year above that accumulated during the entirety of 2014 and 2015. But also saw the New Zealand-based company finally become one of my favourite Top Five manufacturers for this year.
The past four weeks have also seen me manage to complete the last of my medium-sized Mechs by “Catalyst Game Labs”, and already dip my toe into the somewhat ‘hit and miss’ range of “Judge Dredd” models by “Mongoose Publishing”. I still hope to ‘pick away’ at my “Battletech” backlog should time permit as I have a test-game of my homemade rules using the 1:285 scale plastic miniatures later this month. Albeit, I feel the majority of my foreseeable hobby-time will be spent bolstering my German Beach Defence force and building up a sizeable collection of “Judge Dredd” figures with which to replay “Judgement Day”.