Saturday 20 January 2018

MC1 Perps - The Brotherhood of the Sump

As I gear up to prepare for my next Judge Dredd Miniatures Game scenario, I thought I'd show you an old street gang of mine that I made many years ago. These are the Brotherhood of the Sump - part cultists, part toxic waste survivors and all round bad asses. The sump in their title refers to the devastated area of Mega City One they come from - a bombed out wasteland known as Sumptown - and has nothing to do with the late Otto Sump. It is one of the many slum areas of MC1 still waiting to be redeveloped.
At the left of the photo above is the leader of the gang - Father Mephisto - a Level 4 Punk Infantry Hero. He is armed with a Laser Rifle and a Knife. He has five Talents - Accurate, Brave, Luck of Grud, Skilled and Deadly and Voice of Command. He costs 245 Credits. All Brotherhood of the Sump gangers are equipped with Respirators and Rad-Robes, which offers a lowly +1 armour protection and helps them avoid radiation sickness. Rad-Robes cost 5 Credits and are something I added to the game.
Next up are the gang's two heavy weapons specialists - Dagoth and Gorath. They are both Level:2 Punk Infantry Heroes and they have identical weapons and stats. They armed with Heavy Spit Guns and they have three Talents - Brave, Maximum Firepower and On Their Knees. They cost 195 Credits each.
The rank and file footsloggers of the gang are these four Level:1 Punk Infantry Heroes. From left to right are Ikthalon, Zallatou, Kierrok and Karathos.
They, too, have identical weapons and stats. They are all armed with Long Rifles and their two Talents are Aim and Brave. They each cost 115 Credits.
Finally, are three Level 0 Punk Minions, named from left to right as Ikonn, Belthauzer and Shumal. Note that there are no Juves in this gang, only Punks.
They are armed with Handgun Pistols and they cost 55 Credits each. The gang has a total rating of 1,260 Credits.
All of these figures were sculpted by me around about 1990. They are based on the Cultist Gang shown below, who were a set of 20mm scale figures produced by Games Workshop for the Dark Future game - their version of Car Wars, also set in a near future post apocalyptic world. Dark Future came out in 1988. GW produced some really cool figures for this range but the fact that they were 20mm scale really irked me. Yes, they fit in well with Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars, but I wish they'd produced them in 28mm scale. At that time, I made quite a few 28mm scale copies of the figures from this range. For this gang, I also added some new sculpts of my own, most notably, the leader, Father Mephisto, whose Laser Rifle came from a plastic House Goliath ganger from the original Necromunda game.
This photo was taken from the Internet and is included just to show you how close my copies are to the original sculpts.

19 comments:

  1. Staggeringly good stuff, Bryan. As soon as I saw them I immediately looked for the company that produced them, as they looked excellent - so great work on both the sculpts as well as the painting. Marvellous additions to your MC-1 gangs :-)

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    1. Thank you so kindly, Simon. I do wish these figures were available as 28mm scale sculpts. They are a cool post-apocalyptic gang, who fit in perfectly in Mega City One. At the time when I sculpted these I was a very prolific sculptor. Of course back then, there were far fewer figures available for sale. I was lucky that I could fill in some gaps with my own sculpting.

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  2. Blimey!
    As I admired the photo's and read the info on the gang I was waiting for the manufacturers name to appear and jog my memory - they looked so familiar, but I couldn't place them.
    THEN you dropped the bombshell that they're yet more of your own excellent sculpts! The penny finally dropped when you revealed your source...... I had Car Wars and Dark Future 'back in the day' and have fond memories of the games.
    Great looking gang and another great post Bryan :-)

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    1. Many thanks, Greg. It is heartening to read comments from people like you and Simon who think my own sculpts are commercially available products.

      I, too, played "Car Wars" and "Dark Future" a lot in the old days and loved them both. I'd have loved them a lot more if they came with 28mm sculpts!

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    2. Let's just say that if your sculpts WERE commercially available, I'd be buying some :-)

      At the time, I was playing 'historical' wargames with 15mm figures, so the 20mm were a step back up towards my old 25mm and scale creep towards 28mm had not long started IIRC

      Another game we had great fun with (over a few beers) was GW's Judge Dredd. Sadly all my copies of these old classics are long gone (except for Warlock Of Firetop Mountain), but I managed to find a pdf of all the JD game components on the web, so we may well see Judge Death being arrested for littering again :-)

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    3. Blushes! That is so kind of you to say, Greg.

      Ah, I remember only too well when GW brought out some great boardgames. I still have the Judge Dredd game you mentioned. My gaming group probably played that one the most. But we also enjoyed Block Mania, Rogue Trooper, Chainsaw Warrior and Doctor Who (with Tom Baker on the front cover). Heck, I even have the original Blood Bowl game with the cardboard counters for the teams!

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  3. Great addition to your MC1 gangs Bryan, nice sculpting and atmospheric painting.

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    1. Thank you so much for the kind words, Dave. Much appreciated.

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  4. Hi Bryan - I remember your St Trinian's school girl sculpts with affection (well who wouldn't) and thinking what a good job you had done then. Maybe you missed your vocation, I can't see any difference between your sculpts and the commercial product!
    Well done that man.

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    1. Thank you so kindly, John. At one point I did think about setting up my own figure sculpting business but the start up costs were too prohibitive for it to be anything more than a dream. Ah well, que sera, sera!

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  5. They would be good as necromunda figures as well. very nice sculpting. I can also see an "Omega Man" use for tem along with MANY other uses. Nicely done

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    1. Thanks, Clint. I agree with you about Necromunda. Just one of many uses for them.

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  6. These guys look the business Bryan and sound pretty tough to boot. If they play to their rad robes and pick the terrain they might pull off some successful civil disobedience and send those bossy Judges packing. I'm not holding my breath though because Judges are nasty.

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    1. Thanks, HP. Remember that Judges have access to Rad Cloaks, this negating that possible advantage of these guys. Yes, Judges are nasty... and deservedly so!

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  7. Awesome job on these. I instantly recognised them as the DF Cultists. Got to say fabulous job on recreating them in 28mm. I really wished someone would do the same with many of the line they would be fantastic.

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    1. Thank you, Simon. I wholeheartedly agree that this line should be done in 28mm scale. I'd be all over it!

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  8. These are excellent Bryan and the fact you sculpted them shows amazing talent! I still have a copy of Dark Future and really love the game. I didn't mind the 20mm scale but getting post apoc minis for it was a chore....

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    1. Many thanks, Andy. I must admit that I much preferred playing "Car Wars" to "Dark Future" but DF was still a lot of fun to play. You are spot on about the scarcity of figures available for it. That was likely a big factor in the game being so short lived.

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