Judge Dredd Zombie Horde Set Painted

Yup, more zombies.

I painted most of this set at the same time as the RAFM zombies box I posted earlier. The only additional figures here were the zombie judge and zombie mistress, which I'll talk about at the end of the article.

As I mentioned in my review of this set, the contents consist of two sprues of Mantic zombies with some custom metal bits mixed in, plus original sculpts for the zombie mistress and zombie judge in metal. I've already discussed the construction of the figures and components in that post.

Overall the figures turned out very well and were quite a lot of fun to paint. I do have another JDMG Zombie Horde set but when I build my next batch of zombies I think I'll add in some parts from my box of Wargames Factory male zombies too. There are plenty of parts to go around, and mixing them all together should provide me with some really unique figures.

Since all the metal torsos in the set were the same I didn't want to use them for every figure. There were some unique metal heads and accessories as well, which I also mixed in. Even with all those part options I still ended up with a few figures made exclusively of Mantic zombie parts.

The other half of the figures were made with using the Mantic lower bodies and left arms, the metal torsos and a mix of metal and plastic heads. There are also a few shoulder and elbow pads thrown in too. With a little modification of the attached metal left arms (ie: bending the crap out of them) I was able to get even more variety out of them. I think it'd be tough to tell without looking very closely that the torso is exactly the same on each one.

Unfortunately I ended up dropping not one but two of these on the floor after I'd done the base coats of paint. The result both times was an explosive separation of plastic parts from the metal parts. Luckily no actual parts breakage occurred, but I had to re-glue and re-paint around the broken joints which resulted in some seams that are more visible than I'd like. Since they're zombies however, I am not greatly concerned about them, and I'd challenge you to point out which figures they were, if only I could remember now myself!

At least neither of the ones I dropped was Johnny, the zombie-in-black. That would have made me sad.

I'll share a little secret with you all. There are eighteen of these zombie figures (including the RAFM ones) and I didn't even bother to clean off the mould lines, not on a single one! In most places you can't tell so score another point for lazy. Don't tell anyone though or I'll have to sick my growing zombie horde on you...I know where you live.

Any time I saved however was definitely eaten up by using the quickshade.

Like the RAFM figures, I used the Army Painter Soft Tone Quickshade on these, finishing off with two coats of brush on AP Matt Varnish. In all honesty, I'm not quite sold on the quickshade at this point. The result when contrasted against my standard workflow doesn't truly seem like a time savings, nor do I think the result is all that much superior. Perhaps it's simply the soft tone, as it's quite a dirty brown colour and I don't exactly love it. Maybe one of the other quickshades would prove more effective.

The zombie judge I saved until after I had done all the other zombies so that I had a solid plan for painting. He was also a good place to try out a paint scheme for my Justice Department set. I wasn't sure if I wanted to use the colour scheme from the movie or go for the brighter comic book blue, gold and green. Instead of doing the elbow and knee pads in the same green as the boots and gloves I opted for gold like on the shoulder pad. It might be a bit much but still turned out pretty well. Now I have a baseline to work from for future paint jobs.

His colours are AP Necrotic Flesh, GW Mordian Blue, GW Snakebite Leather, GW Goblin Green, GW Burnished Gold with some gray for the visor and a splash of GW Mephiston Red around the helmet border. GW Red Gore took care of the blood, and it was all finished with a generous wash of GW Gryphonne Sepia.

I was going to try something a little different with the zombie mistress and started painting her robes in blue and green, rather than the red and gold that I think of when I hear 'evil sorcerer'. After finishing the zombie judge however I felt that she would look too similar so I looked up the paint scheme on Mongoose Publishing's website. I really liked the red robes and black boots and pretty much just copied that.

For her patchwork skin I used GW Elf Flesh and Tallarn Flesh with a few spots of P3 Thrall Flesh, then brought it all together with some P3 Flesh Wash. A splash of GW Devlan Mud on the rest of the figure took the garish red down to earth. Finally I did a quick highlight of Mephiston Red over her robes again to help her stand out a bit more from her horde. With her base I tried making it look like the grass around her had died and a little farther away it was still living. It wasn't entirely successful, but it'll do.

I haven't decided if I'll give the judge and mistress a coat of the matte varnish as well. Right now I think they look fine. The brighter colours make them stand out a little bit, but not so much as that they're jarringly out of place with the rest of the set. I'm proud of these 10 figures.

"We need to play games...."