JDMG Scenario 04 - Meet Malexica

This fourth instalment of my Judge Dredd Miniatures Game utilises two new rules from the game - Melee Combat and Mobs. Surprisingly in my three previous games, Melee Combat never cropped up. This scenario introduces another two new Judges from Sector 13 - Street Judges Gilbert and Hillers. It is also notable for the first appearance of Zombie Mistress Malexica, who will be a recurring villain of my campaign and a growing threat to Mega City One. This scenario is the One Night in Mega City One standard scenario found on page 24 of the Blood on the Streets supplement, with one extra Special Rule added.
THE FORCES - MEGA CITY ONE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Street Judge Gilbert - Level:1 Infantry Hero with 0 Experience Points and worth 175 Credits.
Stats - Move 5", Agility +2, Shoot +2, Melee +1, Melee Dice 2D, Will +1, Armour +5, Hits 2.
Equipment - Boot Knife, Daystick, 2x Lawgiver Mk II Pistols, Stumm Gas Grenades and Standard Issue Armour.
Talents - Luck of Grud and Dual Shooter.

Street Judge Hillers - Level:1 Infantry Hero with 0 Experience Points and worth 150 Credits.
Stats - Move 5", Agility +1, Shoot +3, Melee +1, Melee Dice 2D, Will +2, Armour +5, Hits 2.
Equipment - Boot Knife, Daystick, Lawgiver Mk II Pistol, Stumm Gas Grenades and Standard Issue Armour.
Talents - Skilled and Deadly and Leg Shot.

THE FORCES - MALEXICA AND HER ZOMBIES
Malexica - Level:7 Zombie Mistress Infantry Hero with 25 Experience Points and worth 270 Credits.
Stats - Psi Points 15, Move 6", Agility +1(+3*), Shoot +0, Melee +1, Melee Dice 3D, Will +4, Armour +0(+2*), Hits 9.
Equipment - Cybernetic Blades (counts 2x Knives worth 25 Credits)
Talents - Animate the Dead, Brave, Concentrated Mind, Danger Sense, Foresight*, Shroud of the Dead, Silent Action, Stealthy and The Power Within.
Special Rules - Inner Strength, Psychic Conduit, Rise my Beauties! and There Can Only Be One.

3 Mobs of 5 Unarmoured Zombies - Level:0 Illegal Infantry Minions with 0 Experience Points and worth 15 Credits each for a total of 75 Credits per Mob.
Stats - Move 3", Agility -2, Shoot N/A, Melee +1, Melee Dice 1D, Will N/A, Armour N/A, Hits N/A.
Equipment - None.
Special Rules - Dead Flesh and Mindless.

The Justice Department force was worth 325 Credits, whilst the Zombie force was worth 495 Credits. Yet again, the Judges were outscored but this has never mattered in the past. Would it be different this time?
SET UP
The game was fought on a neoprene gaming mat measuring 2' by 2' that came with my Mars Attacks game. Because the scenario in the rulebook was written to be played on a 3' by 3' game board I reduced all set up measurements by a third. The buildings are all part of my Warhammer 40,000 scenery collection. The crashed silver car was produced by Studio Miniatures and the crater by Ziterdes.

The forces are set up in diagonally opposite corners of the board with each zone measuring 8" along the two long sides and 4" along the four shorter edges. I rolled a die for both forces with the Judges rolling a 10 and the Zombies rolling a 4. Whoever rolled lowest were placed first. I chose the large grey and bronze ruined building for the deployment of the Zombie force.

Both sides rolled one die each again to determine who went first with the highest roll taking the first activation of the game. The Judges rolled a 2 and the Zombies a 6, so Malexica and her Zombie Mobs would activate first.
SPECIAL RULES
Because this scenario takes place at night, no model can make any kind of attack against an enemy more than 12" away. In addition, any model using Talents from the Sneaky Does It tree may re-roll its opposed Will check if desired. This certainly applied to Malexica, who had a few Talents from that tree.
I added the following rule - if both Judges are reduced to 0 Hits they are captured by Malexica and taken away to her secret Undercity base, where they will be transformed into Armoured Super Zombies, providing that Malexica has not been reduced to 0 Hits and that she still has enough Zombies left to form a single Mob (in this case, 5 models) to carry the Judges. Otherwise, the Judges return to their Sector House as normal.
VICTORY CONDITIONS
The fight continues until all the models in one of the forces have been removed from the table, either through injury or failure of a Will to Fight test. The remaining force is the victor.

AFTERMATH
So, for the first time in my campaign, the Justice Department suffered a crushing defeat. Judges Gilbert and Hillers were never seen alive again. Malexica had been experimenting on creating Super Zombies. These two Judges would be the first of her Armoured Super Zombies.
Malexica earned the following Experience Points -
+1 for surviving the battle.
+1 for slaying 1 Level:1 Hero.
This earned her 2 Experience Points, taking her up to 27, which was not enough to advance to Level:8. She was 2 Points short of the target required.
CONCLUSIONS
What a great game that was! Where to begin? Let me start with why the Judges fared so badly. Quite simply it was all down to some bad dice rolling for them. Using Hi-Ex rounds against Zombies was entirely the right tactic. Killing Zombies works differently to killing or disabling other models. First of all, Zombies do not have any Hits, so they can absorb a lot of damage. To kill a Zombie, an attacker must roll one D10 and add the damage of the weapon to this roll. On a result of 10+, the Zombie is removed as a casualty. Hi-Ex rounds do 3 Hits of damage, which is doubled against Zombies because of its explosive effects. So the Judges were getting a +6 bonus to their rolls to kill. Sadly, I rolled a lot of low numbers for their damage results, so they struggled to whittle down the Mobs. That was just bad luck - it can happen to anyone. I was hoping they'd wipe out most, if not all of the zombies before they tackled Malexica. Together, they could have defeated her. But one on one, with her at full strength, it was no surprise she defeated Judge Gilbert so easily. When the Zombie Mob attacked Judge Hillers, they were rolling 9 dice to hit and they scored a couple of critical hits (a natural roll of 10), meaning Hillers had to roll a 10 on her 2 dice just to tie with them. She didn't and down she went.
Regarding the Comic Life program, I am learning a lot more about what it can do, and I'm loving it more and more. One of the things I learned was how to transfer fonts from one template to another. My comic strips are based on the Sc-Fi template. I opened the Zombies template and created the sound effects - Groan!, Grargh!, Grunt! and Glurgh! - using the Zombie font. Then I simply cut and pasted them to my comic strip as needed. Very easy to do but so effective.
I also experimented with a number of ways to show Malexica using her Psi Powers. In the end I opted for her green spiky speech bubbles to show her use of psionics. Although not properly explained, when Malexica used her Psychic Boost on page 2, what she was actually using was the Psi Talent, Foresight. This granted her a +2 bonus to her Agility and Armour stats for the rest of the game.
I also darkened all of my photos by 25% to indicate that this battle took place at night. I could have gone darker but it looked too dark when I went up to 40% or higher.
There is a lot of work involved in creating these comic style batreps but I thoroughly enjoy doing them and I have a lot more scenarios planned. Malexica will return. I'm not sure when but when the time is right she'll be back. I haven't decided what my next scenario will be but I fancy doing a big battle that features all seven of my Judges I have used in the first three episodes. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed playing and producing it.