(Lead) Mountain Musings - "Judge Dredd" Zomtober 2020

"The whole damned planet's covered in zombies!"

This month's themed attempt to reduce my mountain of metal, plastic and resin models will actually focus upon a handful of partially-painted figures dusted down from my collection of "Mongoose Publishing" sculpts. Surprisingly, these models weren't part of the Swindon-based manufacturer's infamously notorious "Judge Dredd Miniatures Game: Block War" Kickstarter from September 2012, but were actually bought to bolster up the Mega-City One zombie forces I painted as part of Zomtober 2016.

Shortly afterwards however, "Mongoose Matt" lost the future lawman's licence to "Warlord Games" and despite some extensive searching I was unable to locate any more of the metal torsos, knee-pads, shoulder-pads and heads they produced to convert the plastic multi-part zombies produced by "Mantic Games" into more Undead Citizens. At the time though I clearly attempted to create a few more Justice Department cadavers by hacking away at the last surviving Zombie Judge model I owned with a sharp modelling knife so as to kit-bash three more flesh-hungry figures.

"Copplestone Castings" WIPs - Both zombies require repairs and re-painting

Other bloggers taking part in Zomtober 2020 are:

Dizbusters Gaming Ephemera

The Wargame Addict

Dead Lead Project

Colgar6 and the Infinite Legion of Toy Soldiers

Alongside these Walking Dead I have also found another couple of old “Copplestone Castings” Plague Zombies from their Future Wars Range. These miniatures were actually pigmented well over a decade ago and seem to have been forgotten when I re-based and re-painted my entire collection back in 2015 as part of a drive to remove all my older figures off of the two pence pieces I used to use as bases..

Time has definitely not been kind to either of them. Both have areas where their paint has clearly flaked off and the PVA glue around their feet has gone positively opaque in places. In addition, there certainly isn't much contrast going on between the armed zed's boots, armour, automatic rifle and belt. All of these faults will need correcting, and the models based in line with the rest of their brain-chomping brethren.

September 2020 - Despite not appearing as a top manufacturer this was a great month for "Alternative Armies"

Progress wise, the past four weeks saw me enjoy a reasonably productive September, largely thanks to the "Hordes Of The Things" Challenge I held with Roger 'Dick Garrison' Webb of "Rantings From Under The Wargaming Table" fame. This 15mm event saw me power through a number of units produced by "Alternative Armies", and whilst I still have a wizard to complete before I'm able to field a full twenty-four point strong Elemental Army, I still managed to paint twenty-two of the somewhat diminutive miniatures.

In addition, I managed to finish the last two "Westwind Productions" British soldiers I needed from their "Secrets Of The Third Reich" range in order to field a 500 point Great Britain and the Commonweath force for "Konflikt '47" by "Warlord Games". Being a bit older than many of the models in my collection, these figures were a lot more straightforward to paint but came with the challenge of my having to 'match' an old(ish) colour scheme with newer paints.