I AM THE LAW! Judge Dredd First Impressions

A couple of days ago PJ from Shades of Chaos and myself tried out the Judge Dredd minis game from Mongoose Publishing.

After reading the basic rules, which are really easy to pick up, and a couple of the advanced rules we decided to try out the intro scenario in the book called 'The Barko Brothers' (All in the FREE PDF)
PJ started with 1 Judge and I had 4 Punks. Although I used my apes as a stand in.
We tried to copy the scenery as best as we could.

The game play is very simple.
In each turn you activate each model separately. They then have 2 actions. You can Move, Move and Attack, Shoot and use a models of weapons Special action. They can be mixed any way you want. Including using the same ones twice.
As my Punks advanced across the board, the Judge managed to gun the down as soon as they appeared.

PJ then suggested we try again with the Punks playing abit more defensively.
When an enemy first appears in front of a Judge, there is a great little rule. The Judge HAS to tell the model they are under arrest by using a Special action before they can attack. This is unless the enemy has attacked them to start with.

When a criminal is told to surrender you roll a Will check. Each player rolls a D10 and adds their Will stat. The highest wins. If it s the Judge, the criminal is removed from the board but not killed.
If the criminal wins then they don't have to take another one of these checks for the rest of the game and can act normally.

This second game ended with the Punks taking down the Judge in a deadly firefight down a narrow alley.
A shooting attack is very similar to the Will check D10 + Shooting stat v D10 + Agility stat. Any shots that have rolled higher than the defenders Agility total cause damage.
It did take 3 of them to finish him off though!

We then decided to try out a full on game. Judges v Apes. The book says you start with 350pts but to make things a little simpler we went for 375 to fit in rounded models without too much equipment.

After the first couple of turns, most models were in decent positions to attack.

The apes actually managed to take down a Judge again. Massed firepower again.
They didn't do too well after that. The Gorilla Gangster and Sniper Orangutan were arrested and a Chimp was killed.

Both the Judges and the Apes then closed in on each other.

At this point I decided the Gorilla in a dress should charge in and we could try out the Melee attacks.
The rolls are basically the same as the other in the game. Each players rolls an amount of D10s in their profiles and adds their Melee stat. The winner is the highest and each high dice causes damage.

The Gorilla went full boar but seeing I hadn't armed him/her with a melee weapon I had a minus to my rolls. Allowing the Judge to take advantage and take the great beast down.
After that, the final Chimp decided it was a good idea to run and fight another day.

The final gangs looked like this

1 Judge and 1 Rookie still standing. 1 Judge dead.

Orangutan and Gorilla arrested, Gorilla and Chimp killed and last Chimp ran!

Overall I think that Judge Dredd is a great game.
The rules are very easy to pick up. By the 3rd game we were only looking at the , FREE PDF, rules for the stats. It has captured a great Dredd feel as well. Looking forward to out next games and trying out some other gangs and weapon combos. (Including melee weapons this time)

We are going to try out the campaign system next time as well. Had a read through and it seems as easy to pick up as the main rules but lets you add alot more to your gangs including additional members, weapons and skills as the survivors advance.

I would highly recommend checking this game out. Its already ranked up there in my top 6 games after only 1 night!

Over the next 2 weeks I will also be taking a closer look at the model range. Starting with the box sets for Judges, Robots and Punks.

What do you think of the game?

Hendybader awaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!