Mega City One Spring Clean Challenge

This time we’re going to increase to 100 reputation points so we can get more models on the table, and we’re going to try out the vehicle rules. At 35 points, Judge Dredd himself is unlikely to appear in a smaller game, so for my force I’ve decided to start with him and round it out with a few support Judges and the mighty Lawmaster, a vehicle that has its own A. I., making it function as an additional model even without a driver.

My opponent has elected to try to swarm me with robots, taking robot-controlling gangster Nero Narcos and a small army (okay, seven) of various reprogrammed service bots. They’ll also have a Grav Pod, a fairly speedy flying vehicle that might be handy for the Heist scenario we’ve chosen.

Set up is similar to the previous game, with the defender placing their models in the center of the board and the attacker surrounding. I’ll be playing the defender this time. I get to keep half of my force in reserve, so I’ve elected to have Judge Dredd and his Lawmaster bike start off the table, reasoning that with the bike’s increased speed it will be easier to get him where he is needed quickly.

In addition to our models, the scenario instructs us to place three objective tokens within 6” of the center of the board. The attacker (my opponent) must pick up at least two of these and carry them off any board edge in order to win. One small mercy is that a model carrying an objective can’t use any of the double move options. My models can pick the objectives up but can’t carry them to safety, and will drop them if successfully hit in an attack. My goal is to prevent my opponent from winning, which I guess means incapacitating all of their models.

Maybe it’s the increased model count, maybe it’s the less well defined victory conditions, but this game is a bit of a slog for us. The action never moves farther than 10 inches from the center of the board as we trade off picking up and dropping objectives. Judge Dredd himself rides his Lawmaster bike right into the center of the action, only to have it destroyed beyond repair by my opponent’s DemoBot.

We do get a few fun, comic book moments. My opponent has a bunch of oversized utility robots packed into the Grav Pod like a clown car, and his cleaning robot manages to hold on to an objective longer than anyone else. The Grav Pod, ironically driven by a MedBot, commits vehicular homicide by backing up over my Tech Judge.

Across the street, I manage to play a “Boingers” Big Meg card to great effect, resolving a devastating area effect attack that takes out three of my opponent’s robots, thematically destroyed by adrenaline-junkie citizens who bounce around the city encased in springy plastic balls.

We play for two and a half hours with no clear resolution in sight, and so decide to call this game a draw.