New Years Hobby Resolutions 2022

It's that futile thing we all do around this time of the year.  Some people might say that this only counts if you make your resolutions on January 1st but I say stuff that I had a 3D Printing hangover...

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I am in lock down until the Prime Minister says otherwise so this gives me ample opportunity to get ahead in the blogging stakes.  My goal is to brain dump at least one article a day and schedule the posts ahead of time.  

The name of the game is short and sweet with lengthier articles in between.  This is harder than it looks though so don't hold me to it.   

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My List of Games I need to play in 2022

• Block Mania - One of my Games Workshop Bookcase Games and a Judge Dredd one at that.  Do I wait until I have the 4 player expansion Mega Mania? or do I just bite the bullet and try before I buy?
  
  
• Rogue Trooper - Another Games Workshop Bookcase Game which has never been played and really should.
  
  
• Dune - Another bookcase format game this time from Avalon Hill, with the re-imagined version launched to coincide with the Dennis Villeneuve 2021 movie release prices for punched but unplayed copy have plummeted to below the price of a new version so I should really work out if this is something I want to hang on to as I don't have the valuable version with Sting on the cover.

 

• Jaws - A gift from my old work colleagues which desperately needs to be played.
   
  
• Mow - A stupid little card game I picked up in a charity shop last year.  The box goes Moo and it's by Bruno Cathala (Shadows over Camelot, Cleopatra & The Society of Architects, 7 Wonders Duel)
  
  
• Shuggy Hall Brawl - A print and play game from the pages of Warlock Magazine back in the 80s which I am currently making a 3D version of.  This will require some 3D modelling work and I ought to learn how to use FreeCAD.
  

Print More

There's no point in having a 3D Printer if you don't use it.  Plus Jessie's Prints is always in need of new content so why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone.  Here are some grail prints which I really should try and get done in 2022.

• Aliens Pulse Rifle (Thingiverse 2334265) - A truly iconic weapon from the Aliens franchise and one that needs to be on my prop wall. Wait a minute I don't have a prop wall.  Well that needs fixing.  I don't think I will go the whole hog of adding lights and sound but you never know...
  
  
• Judge Dredd Killdozer (Thingiverse 3840028) - An absolute must addition to my 15mm Judge Dredd Vehicle Fleet and a great objective or background prop for my RPG Campaigns.
  
  
• ABC Warrior Bust (Thingiverse 2568026) - Stallone Dredd rarely gets any love, but the set dressing and special effects were awesome.  I refuse to call this Hammerstein but it's a pretty iconic robot which would look fantastic on one of my floorstanding speakers.  The eyes must light up of course and it would be a good starting point for an arduino sound / IR remote project.  I promise not to use it in anger and especially not to kill off Ian Dury's character.
  
  
• 15mm Blank People (Thingiverse 1695396) - My 15mm boingers were a great start but they were let down by my pathetic sculpting skills.  What better way to learn mesh mixer than by reposing these blanks and printing them.  I could also do with some fatter fatties if you know what I mean. 

I think that's enough to be going on with right now.  If you have any suggestions of games I ought to play or things I ought to print, you know what the comments box is for.

15mm Judge Dredd - Boingers

In the megalopolis of the future one of the more popular crazes is boinging.  I couldn't help but scratch build a few boingers to harrass my players in my next Judge Dredd RPG at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club.

What the Heck is Boinging?

One of the many crazy inventions which are an everyday occurence in Mega Dity One, Boing is a miracle plastic-in-a-can which saw its debut in the Daily Star serialised adventures of Judge Dredd between 1981 and 1998 and fully fleshed out in the Prog 136 story Palais de Boing

One spray with Boing encapsulates the user in a bouncy ball of plastic, turning them into a living pinball.  Within days of Boing hitting the streets the first casualties occurred it was made illegal but since when does that ever stop the citizens of Mega City One, and soon regulated and safe establishments sprang up in every sector to cater for the boing craze.  These Palais De Boing feature tubes and bumpers to really accentuate the boinging experience.

Needless to say the enterprising, and foolish, perps of MC-1 have occasionally used Boing in their criminal ventures and illegal use comes with a mandatory 20 year sentence or death as Boing is incredibly flammable.  Boing was notably used for good to encase Judge Anderson as she harboured the spirit of Judge Death.  However, the three other Dark Judges, Fire, Fear and Mortis managed to orchestrate his release.    

Make Your Own Boingers

My boingers are made from 40mm plastic fill yur own christmas baubles with hand sculpted figures made from milliput hot glued inside.  

My sculpting skills are pretty pathetic and I will definitely have another go at this.  I will probably try making an armature or using one of the 15mm "Dolly" miniatures from Alternative Armies.

But in anycase the mission statement for these guys is to be a surprise encounter for my players.

Judge Dredd Boardgames

Continuing with my current addiction to Judge Dredd I thought I would try and assemble a list of the boardgames which feature Uncle Joe aka old stoney face himself.

Judge Dredd - The original Games Workshop game that got this whole mess started and the one which started my own collection of Games Workshop Bookcase Games.  Designed for kids, this game is a simple roll and move and try to arrest a random perp doing a random crime.  The player with the most victory points combination of crimes and perps wins.  This does lead to some laughable combos like arresting Judge Death for littering, but it's a fun light hearted game.

 Judge Dredd The Cursed Earth - This 1 to 4 player push your luck card game sees Judges Dredd, Anderson and Giant battling various hazards and monsters through The Cursed Earth as they try to find Max Normal and the antidote to the disease that threatens Mega City One. 

This is a super hard game and I don't think I've ever won it despite numerous plays.  

3 Promo cards (The Cursed Island) were available at pre-order from Osprey and Judge Dredd Megazine #405 features print and play character cards for the classic Cursed Earth heroes Tweak and Spikes Harvey Rotten.  

Judge Dredd Helter Skelter - Less of a Judge Dredd game and more like a cavalcade of characters from the pages of 2000AD.  This is a 2 to 4 player game by prolific designer Martin Wallace (Age of Steam,  I don't own this one just yet, but it is on its way courtesy of eBay.

Judge Dredd Block War - Published by Game and a Curry (2018), this is a 2 player card game simulating a Block War between 2 gangs of perps.  I don't know much about it as this didn't get much distribution in the UK, but ebay has been informed and as soon as a reasonably priced copy comes up from a UK seller I'm on it. 

Supersurf! - A fan designed print and play boardgame for 2 to 6 Players.  This seems very familiar to me for some reason even though this was never commercially available.  Did it feature in an issue of the comic? I don't know but this is on the list of print and play games I need to make.  All the files are available for download from Board Game Geek.

Shuggy Hall Brawl - A weird tie in with Fighting Fantasy's Warlock Magazine #11 which featured an entire print and play Judge Dredd game.  It uses the basic fighting fantasy combat system and features upto 19 playable characters each with their own mission objectives.  I definitely want to play this as a mini meta game in a future Judge Dredd RPG campaign but this needs a lot of work to get it to the standard I want.  Simple things which take time to make such as individual character cards which contain the NPC stats and their goals.

That said, I am in the process of building this in 3D to use with my 15mm civillians and will update progress in a dedicated blog post once it is complete and this mega project has hit the table.  Here's a brief photo to whet your appetite.  This is going to be a lot of fun.

Free Judge Dredd Games

In Mega City One distributing comics is a crime but if you aren't scared of doing the time then 2000AD online has a bunch of games just for you.  These all at one time featured as cut out and play games in the pages of 2000AD.  I am dying to try Block War and see how it matches up against Block Mania.

Secret Damage, Wound States and Initiative Cards

This post might be controversial but when I am running my games I don't like my players knowing how many hitpoints they have left.  I know, crazy right... 

(shuts curtains and ignores baying horde of players brandishing pitch forks and flaming torches)

The Initiative Card

The core concept behind this is my use of 5x3 Record Cards as a sort of mini character sheet to record each character's current Initiative, Hit Points and any interesting side effects they may experience in combat.  Each character has one, but so do each of the monsters or NPCs that are engaged in the combat.

A used Initiative card will look something like this

Roll for Initiative

When the combat ensues the players write their initiative in the corner of their Initiative card and hand it to me.  I roll for the monsters and do the same.  These cards are then sorted into descending numerical order and the combat begins.  My role as DM is then to tell each player when their characters card comes up and they can resolve their action.  when they take damage I roll and record the result and then tell them how wounded they are.

In the Real World there are no Health Bars

In real life, if you become injured you don't know how close to death you might actually be.  Beyond the sensation of pain or a physical cut, stab wound or a broken leg you really have no idea if you are about to shuffle off this mortal coil or bleed out in 10 hours.  Cut to the RPG and we've all had the experience of taking the fight to the enemy even when we are on our last hit point.  Does that seem like the action of a hero to you?  It's the not knowing if you are going to make it which makes the self sacrifice heroic.

Enter the concept of Wound States these are simple subdivisions of your characters hit points into one of 4 wound states:

• Bruised - less than 75% (3 quarters) of your Hit Points left.
  
• Bloodied - less than 50% (half) of your Hit Points left. 
  
• Battered - less than 25% (1 quarter) of your Hit Points left.
  
• Unconcious - 0 Hit Points left.
  

When you get damaged by an opponents attack that moves your character into a new wound state then I will update you.  Armed with this knowledge It is your decision to push your luck and to continue to fight or not.

The inspiration for this push your luck mechanism was in the video game Driver 2 (correct me if I am wrong) in which you had to hazard a guess at how physically injured you were by the increasingly laboured way the character walked.

Passing Other Secret Info

I don't know about your players but some of mine are want to loot bodies and stash those special items before announcing that they didn't find anything.  Sometimes I want to drop a hint that they might have discovered something during combat that they don't realise is important until after the fight is done. The initiative card system allows me to do this effortlessley without breaking out of combat unnecessarily or telling the world and their wife what only the character should know.   

Am I still Crazy?

Now that you've heard about it, what do you think?  Am I still a madman or is this a technique you'd like to inject into your games?  Answers in the comments below.

Surf's Up - 15mm Judge Dredd Sky Surfers

In preparation for my next Judge Dredd Savage Worlds game at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club, I've been printing and painting like a banshee.  I covered this in my post about 15mm Judge Dredd Civillian Vehicles but now the Sky Surfers are complete.

Supersurf 7 and the Midnight Surfer

Illegal competitive Sky Surfing was first introduced to the Dredd universe in the Midnight Surfer story (Progs 424 thru 429) and one of the iconic thrill packed stories which I devoured when I was a kid. Prog 425 has a great line-up of the contenders which I used as the inspiration for my surf dudes.

The Competitors

Supersurf 7 had a huge number of entrants, 57 in total, and many got no more than a partial reference in text or their name printed on the bottom of their boards.   

• Dak Goodvibes - The first ever supersurf champion, and recently released from a five year stretch in Mega City Two's cubes, wipes out and gets impaled on a spikey sculpture at the Fountain of Yooth.
  
• Yogi Yakamoto - Current World Champ from the Fuji Territories in Hondo Cit gets knocked off his board by a truck's wing mirror in the Manfred Fox tunnel and saved at the last moment by Chopper.
  
• Natilda Stank - Aka The Flying Ozzer was arrested by Dredd an ultimately gave up the final route of the race, the Manfred Fox tunnel.  
  
• Klaus Reich - Shot and killed by a Judge
• Johnny Cuba - Gets squished in one of the Phoenix Scraps vehicle crushers
  
• Caruso - Crashed into the OkeyDokey Man and then headfirst through a Chemicool truck windscreen causing a multi vehicle pileup on the Kranski Zoomway.
  
• Fargo - Shot and killed by Judge
• Crazy Kwezi - Shot and killed by a Judge
  
• Tijuana Pino - Shot and killed by a Judge
• Marlon "Chopper" Shakespeare - Arrested after winning Super Surf 7 and saving Yakamoto's life. 

Chopper returns in the epic 26 episode story Judge Dredd in Oz (Progs 545 thru 570) where escapes the iso cubes and journeys to Oz to participate in Supersurf 10.  Good vibes indeed.