Vampifans Views 116 - Monthly Musings 86

February has been a very good month for me on the hobby front. I'll get round to that soon, but first I present another portrait of my favourite vampire, Vampirella, as painted by Manuel Sanjulian. It is a very beautiful portrait that I like a lot. Vampirella just oozes sex appeal here.

I have been painting and am continuing to paint a lot of 35mm scale Doctor Who miniatures from Warlord Games. I just recently finished painting the 9th and 11th Doctor and their companions sets. On my painting desk right now are the 4th Doctor and his companions, the five figure Master set and Kahler-Tek the Gunfighter (a free figure if you spend £75 or more, which was so easy to do). With quite a backlog of Doctor Who figures to paint I did not want it grow any bigger, which is why I have been doing my best to reduce it. They are a lot of fun to paint so it certainly isn't a chore.
I also still have loads of 32mm scale Black Scorpion Tombstone figures to paint, so I have also been making inroads into getting more of them finished. Black Scorpion is my favourite manufacturer of Wild West and Weird West figures, so painting them is a real pleasure. I am currently painting a group of skeletons and zombies which I hope to showcase soon.

On the gaming front, I finished playing the basic Resident Evil 2 campaign from the starter set. My heroes survived and completed it successfully. I look forward to trying out some of the expansion sets. I have almost completed the campaign provided with the Here's Negan board-game, which has been a lot of fun. No survivor deaths so far, so fingers crossed I can successfully finish the 12 scenarios that make up the campaign. Also, I completed the first scenario of my St. Trinian's campaign using the N.O.W. rulebook. You can read it on my WOIN blog. It was an incredible amount of fun.

Just last week, I bought a brand new game called Judge Dredd - The Cursed Earth, a card game by Osprey Games. The premise of the game is that a group of three Judges (Dredd, Giant and PSI Judge Anderson) are searching the Cursed Earth for Max Normal who has fled Mega City One. Also on his tail are a group of perps led by Mean Machine Angel. The Judges must find Max before the perps do. Gameplay is very simple and it does not take too long to play a game. You can play as a solo player (always a big plus for me) or as a team either co-operatively or competitively with Judges verses Perps. Playing as the Judges is the default mode. Also, there are three difficulty levels for the game - Cadet (beginners level), Judge (standard level) and Chief Judge (difficult level). Each investigation is split into two day parts beginning at Dawn and Dusk. In each part, six Encounter cards are laid out in a row and must be played in order from left to right. In the Dawn phase, the player chooses three cards from his hand of six to play and the top three cards from the deck to form a row of six cards which are arranged in numerical order from low to high. At Dusk, the player places his remaining three cards from his hand plus the top three cards from the deck but each card placed can be placed to the left or right of the row. Once they have all been resolved the player draws six more Encounter cards to add to his hand. A new day begins at Dawn.

The encounter cards show their numerical value at the bottom left corner. The boxes at the top of the cards are split into three codes - yellow boxes are compulsory and must be played; red boxes are choices (you choose one red box to play and ignore the other red boxes); blue boxes are optional - you can decide whether to play them or not. The symbols in the boxes must be resolved in order from left to right. They can be good, granting you resources or allowing you to progress through the Cursed Earth, or bad by removing your valuable resources, wounding you or allowing the Perps to advance. A symbol in a circle is bad, a symbol not in a circle is good.

Here is an example of the end of a game. The black meeple on the Max Normal card at the right of the row of location cards shows that the Judges have won. The grey meeple on the Great Dust Bowl card in the same row represents the Perps. My thoughts on this game are very favourable. The cards are large tarot card-sized with beautiful and evocative artwork. It is a very difficult game to win, which is not meant as a criticism. I played Cadet level first and won first time, by the skin of my teeth, admittedly. Afterwards, I played eight Judge level games and only won once, again by the skin of my teeth. I have not attempted to play Chief Judge level. My only criticisms are that the tokens are made of thin card; I'd have preferred they be made of much thicker card. Also, I do not like the two meeples used to represent the Judges and the Perps. In my opinion, they cheapen the look of the game. I use a 28mm scale figure of Judge Dredd and Mean Machine Angel to replace them.
If you are a fan of Judge Dredd I can highly recommend this game. It costs £24.99 from the Osprey Games webstore. However, I bought my copy from Amazon UK for just £21.23.