Majestic 13: Operation Nightmare Fuel

 The final round of "debriefing" - interrogation, really - had barely concluded when the Lieutenant's burner phone chirped. He stared dumbfounded at the message.

"They've already got a mission lined up for us," he said incredulously. 

"Are you kidding me?" Becky whined. "I haven't even washed the antiseptic spray off me after the fourth round of 'checking me for alien implants' and they want me back in the field? My skincare regimen's totally shot!"

"What are they sending us out after?" Hank said quietly, an intense look in his eyes.

"Gzurn Shadow," the Lieutenant replied slowly. "Nasty bastards, nearly totally invisible at night. They'll blind you without even noticing you. Rumor has it these things'll eat an entire M13 squad and the only evidence it was ever there is that it leaves no trace of its presence behind."

He laughed hollowly. 

"They want us to collect tissue samples while we're at it."

"You know what this is?" Maria snapped. "This is workplace retaliation. Someone call HR."

"Whatever," Sarah-Jane said, her voice neutral and empty. "Let's kill the lousy thing and get it over with. Don't give the higher ups any more reasons to suspect us of anything."

*** 

The fireworks stand I got from Black Site Studio feels like a mandate to play a game on the July 4th weekend and have it on the table, so I set up my next game of Majestic 13. Fittingly, I rolled up a monster that looked challenging and a fairly nasty result on the mission bureaucracy table - "Amongst the Enemy," which meant the monster would be deploying after my team and within 6" of two of them. And to top it all off, I got a FUBAR result at the beginning of the first turn - "Civilians" were on the table! 

 

The Gzurn Shadow slithered out of the darkness beneath the billboard, and leapt across the alley to tackle Maria, its dark tentacles flailing and striking her blind. Striking again for good measure, it vanished into the night, reappearing in an alley across the street.

 Hank leapt across the divide from the shoe store to the TeeVee Shak, and sprayed the alley with gunfire - and missed! Maria struggled and failed to clear her blindness, feeling her way down the ladder from the roof of the pizza place and towards the street. Becky and Sarah-Jane both fired on the Shadow with minimal success. 

 With a howl, the Shadow hurled itself up on to the TeeVee Shak roof, engulfing Hank in its tentacles and blinding him.

 The Lieutenant closed in, taking a running leap from the roof of the OTB parlor on to a passing truck, before firing at the creature and missing; it retaliated with an area of effect ability, forcing the entire team to save versus blindness and damage, with the Lieutenant failing. 

 So right at this moment, three out of five agents are blind...

Maria managed to shake hers off, and raced down the street in the direction the creature was heading; Becky followed the monster as it squirted on to the roof of the Urgent Care. 

 It wasn't long, however, before the creature was on the move again. While the Lieutenant couldn't shake his blindness, Hank did and ran towards the creature's latest hiding place.

 The Shadow came boiling out at him, hitting him and unleashing its area of affect ability, blinding him and Maria.

 And the creature was off again.

 It was quickly making a nuisance of itself, as the Lieutenant continued to struggle to clear his vision. Hank and Maria cleared theirs, but couldn't find the creature.

"We're here tonight with a visiting alien monster..."

"Hey girl, you see something tall and twice as ugly as shit run by here?"

The team began to have a lot of trouble putting eyes on the Shadow, with it disappearing between buildings and blending into the shadows. Once spotted, it let loose with its area of effect, blinding Becky as she collected a tissue sample from the fireworks stand.

 The team managed to put enough hurt on it, chipping away bit by bit, that the Shadow went into Extremis, becoming far more aggressive and dangerous - and putting Maria and Hank out of action!

 At the end of the fifth turn, it all came down to Sarah-Jane. As long as she successfully hit the creature with her sniper rifle and didn't roll minimum damage, she'd kill the Shadow. 

 

She lined up the shot, and... 

 

Oh, no. The Gzurn Shadow limped off to menace another day as the Last Liners withdrew to salvage what little OPSEC they could.  

***

"Oh dear, Lieutenant, this is disappointing. But perhaps we allowed ourselves to get our hopes up too far over your past successes? After all, one's luck does run out, sooner or later, doesn't it?" The blond man pursed his lips and tapped his pen against the blotter on his desk.

"We're lucky we got off as easy as we did," the Lieutenant growled. "By all rights that should have been a meat-grinder. The damned monster was in our DZ waiting for us!"

"Yes, it is... interesting, isn't it, that you managed to escape with so little lasting harm done to your team? Other teams have, as you know, disappeared entirely when confronted with a Gzurn Shadow. And yet your team, save for Maria, escaped with only superficial injuries. Some might find that fact suspicious, Lieutenant."

"Where is Maria?" The Lieutenant demanded brusquely. 

"There were some unusual readings on her EEG. She's being held for further study for the time being; once we clear up those little discrepancies on the print-out she'll be free to go."

*** 

Well, that could have gone better, though to be fair when I saw the "Amongst the Enemy" bureaucracy result I was expecting much worse! Did I kill the monster? No. Did I complete the secondary objective? Also no. Rolling a "1" on the last shot of the game, which could have made all the difference, smarts some, for sure. 

Hank recovered from his injuries without issue, while Maria has a "Questionable Injury" and is going to miss the next game.  

Only the Lieutenant, Sarah-Jane and Becky had enough XP, between what they'd banked previously and what they earned this game, to trade in for ability score increases. The Lieutenant boosted Dexterity again, while Sarah-Jane and Becky raised their Acuity by one. 

I tried again to requisition a targeting HUD and got denied, and tried to requisition power armor for Hank now that I've got access to Phase 2 gear, and that also got denied. But I do have a drone control pod for the base now, which gives me opportunities to spot and call in drone strikes on monsters that I don't have direct LOS to, which is nice.  

So what's next for the Last Liners? Next mission's taking them out into the wilderness again... 

Two More Monsters for Majestic 13

 Completed two more monsters for my stable of boojums for Majestic 13 this morning, and well pleased with both of them.

First up is a "Mother-in-Law Abomination" from the board game "Zombicide: Invader," which - I have no idea why it's called that. Some of them - "Stomper Abomination," "Shadow Abomination" more or less make sense and tell you something about how it operates. Is this one going to nag me about not having a good enough job to support my wife? 

 I mostly followed the board game art for this one, though I added a bit more red glazing to the carapace and I changed the tongue color to a vibrant, alien green. 

 This was mostly done with Army Painter speed paints over a white primer coat; two coats of "Ancient Honey" for the yellow armor, and a coat of "Goddess Glow" for the pinkish flesh in between. The red glazing was my trusty old pot of GW "Bloodletter" glaze. The tongue was Reaper "Dungeon Slime" glazed with GW "Waywatcher Green," and the little teeth and the two claws on the tail are Reaper "Yellowed Bone."

 

The second one is a 3D print I got from Etsy - the figure is called an "Adolescent Dark Young," and I got it from TranscendantalPrints, who I've ordered from before. He changed the resin he's using for his prints, however, and I was less happy with what I got in this batch than I was with previous orders, and the figures in that order required some extra curing and cleaning compared to previous figures I'd gotten from him. 

 

The Dark Young is a monster from the Cthulhu Mythos, a waddling, tree-shaped creature on hoofed legs capable of grabbing and crushing multiple people at once in its tentacles. I had this one printed at 50mm tall, and largely painted it based on how the monster's traditionally depicted in game art.

 

Over a white primer coat I painted Army Painter "Dark Wood" speed paint over the entire figure, and once dry I drybrushed with Reaper "Desert Stone." Over that, I gave it an all over wash of GW "Athonian Camoshade." I added another drybrushing of "Desert Stone" over the body and legs, leaving the crown of tentacles untouched, and then glazed the tentacles with GW "Waywatcher Green."

 

After that, I painted the interior of the mouth with Reaper "Dungeon Slime" and applied some "Waywatcher Green" to emphasize the interior texture before picking out the teeth in Reaper "Yellowed Bone." I like how the interior of the mouth almost seems to glow.  

I've got three more prints left to paint from this order, and they're designs I'm really excited for; I'll probably give them one more once-over with isopropyl alcohol and a UV light to be absolutely certain they're totally cured, however, before I try painting them. Getting sent uncured resin has been a recurring problem for me with ordering 3D printed figures; these weren't the most egregiously bad (I ordered a set of printed scenic bases that went straight in the trash because they were so soft I was leaving fingerprints in them) but it's been happening so frequently that I expect these are going to be the last 3D printed figures I buy.  

 

Miniatures Acquired: 184

Miniatures Painted: 144

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 7

Scatter Acquired: 8

Scatter Painted: 10

 

More Completed Modern Figures

 I've completed another batch of figures, some of whom have been moldering in my leadpile for...a very long time, let's leave it at that. It's a good mix today, including a bunch that will likely prove useful for games like Zombie RV.

First up, a mix of Copplestone troopers. These are leftovers from "Female Troopers" and "Mercenaries" packs from the Future Wars range, mixed together and given a cohesive paint scheme. The armor might be a little bright, but it's not bad. Maybe they're an elite anti-zombie or anti-alien force?

 The shirtless Ah-nuld clone had a pretty severe mold line running right down the middle of his face that was a doozy to try and fix. 

Next up, some trailer park inhabitants; these are mostly from a Copplestone "Citizen Militia" pack, with the woman carrying a shotgun coming from a "Babes With Guns" pack. I'm pretty proud of the slogans I carefully lettered onto the T-shirts with a brush. Note also the guy with a Dale Earnhardt Sr. cap and a Marlboro jacket. 

 Finally, some miscellaneous; the woman in the silver boots and swimsuit is from the same Copplestone "Babes With Guns" pack as Miss Shotgun above, while the bald guy with the rifle is from Hasslefree Miniatures and has been sitting half-done on my desk for almost two years. I hadn't been happy with how his skin was looking and set him aside, but I got that issue resolved and finished him off. 

The middle figure is from Crooked Dice, and is intended to look like Kelly LeBrock as she appeared in the movie "Weird Science." I went with different colors, painting her legs as bare instead of covered by leotards, producing a wild "swimsuit and tube top look." After I gave her red hair, I thought to myself, "redheads tend to be fair skinned and prone to sunburn, what if I painted a sunburn on her?" A red glaze later she was sunburned, and then I went, "what if I painted some tanlines on her to show areas that didn't get burned?"

 

I'm pretty amused/pleased with how it turned out. 

So that's another 13 figures completed...but I got a pack of 28mm sheep in the mail today (the first scenario for Zombie RV calls for a couple), and I ordered some more cars from Miniature Tanks, so there's a couple lines on the tracker getting updated today.

 

Miniatures Acquired: 184

Miniatures Painted: 142

Terrain Acquired: 4

Terrain Painted: 7

Scatter Acquired: 7

Scatter Painted: 10

 

Majestic 13: Operation Truth Hurts

 The Lieutenant eased off the side of the road, taking his foot off the gas and letting the RV roll to a halt. Ahead of them, half-shrouded in greenery, was a chain-link fence; this far out from populated areas, it seemed out of place.

"Is this it? Where's our secret new friend?" Maria asked, tapping a cigarette out of the pack one-handed and lighting it. 

"Past this fence is a Majestic 13 installation. Top secret, like everything else in Majestic. Real hush-hush stuff. Our meeting point is 50 yards beyond the fence."

The Lieutenant's phone chirped as a text message arrived. He held it up to show the team.

"Don't keep me waiting! ~ Indrid Cold" it read.

"This informant's a real prick," Hank muttered.

"We're going to have to break in to this facility to meet him, kids," the Lieutenant said slowly. "I've got a bad feeling about this but it's the only lead we got on the questions you've been asking. Everyone working in that base is doing, ultimately, the same job you've been doing - protecting Earth from FORCE. Don't go in guns blazing unless you absolutely cannot help it."

***

So this is a "Special Mission," but not the next sequential one from the Majestic 13 rulebook, which sees the alien soldiers of FORCE attacking the team in their home base. Instead, I took it upon myself to come up with something different based on the Last Liners' story so far - which has been one of death, dismemberment, rebirth and burn-out. They want more information and the higher-ups aren't offering it, so when an informant, one "Indrid Cold," reached out offering a meet-up, the Liners took him up on it. Unfortunately, to get to the meeting place, the Last Liners will need to bypass another Majestic 13 fireteam - the Force Discreet, a much more militarized group led by a cutthroat Belgian mercenary named Anna-Maria. The Force Discreet's name is ironic, as they are very fond of rocket launchers. 

 The Last Liners spread out quietly and carefully, with the Lieutenant jumping the fence and circling behind the nearest hangar. I decided that they'd need to investigate each building, and on a D6 roll of 6+ (adding +1 for each previously searched building), they'd found their informant. 

Unfortunately, Javier spotted them and raised the alarm, moving towards Hank and opening fire - and missing. 

 And thus began a trend this game - I rolled absolute trash on attack rolls this game. Probably 75% of shooting rolls, for both the Last Liners and the Force Discreet, were below 9 on a D20. I'm rationalizing it as both teams have trained extensively to fight aliens - fighting humans causes some hesitation. 

Before long, Anna-Maria had jumped the fence to confront Maria II, while the rest of the Force Discreet had closed in.

 Anna-Maria did manage to give Maria II a nasty pistol-whipping before the Last Liner broke free and darted for cover. 

 In the midst of this, the base defenses fired (FUBAR roll - errant drone strike), and the Lieutenant, Maria, Sarah-Jane, Pilar and Javier all took some minor damage. 

Meanwhile, you know how I said on a 6+ roll on a D6 they'd find their informant? Guess what the Lieutenant rolled as he slipped in the back door of the first hangar. A one-armed man stood there, calmly smoking a cigarette. "Took you long enough, Lieutenant," he said.

 

The man quietly slipped the Lieutenant a USB drive even as Ortiz appeared in the hangar doorway, spraying the darkness with lead from his machine gun. 

 Sarah-Jane was having a bit of a rough time of it as well; she'd scaled the garbage truck to get a better vantage point for sniping, missing, and took a running leap on to the cab of the freight truck. She was bleeding from some superficial wounds from the drone strike but wasn't ready to open her medkit and treat herself just yet.

 

And then Javier  took aim and squeezed the trigger on his automatic rifle.

 

A hit, and maximum damage. Sarah-Jane is out of action! 

 

I realize as I'm writing this I actually rolled one die too many for his damage, and she technically shouldn't have gone out of action, but no retconning it now!

Maria and Anna-Maria were trading hits and shots as they darted around the trucks, and Emilio of the Force-Discreet was hot on Becky's tail as she dashed for cover behind the UPS van. The Lieutenant withdrew from the hangar, signalling to his team to get the hell out - mission complete.

 Anna-Maria managed to shoot the Lieutenant in the stomach as he crossed the fence towards the waiting RV, and Pilar moved up to join her commanding officer, despite having not scored a single hit on any of the invaders thusfar. 

 The Lieutenant rolled into cover behind the green pickup truck, quickly patching up his wound with his own medical kit. Maria II tossed a flashbang grenade at Anna-Maria and Pilar, stunning both of them. Quickly shaking off the stun, Anna-Maria said, "Fuck this," shouldered her rocket launcher, and fired at the clustered Last Liners in cover. 

And missed. 

I decided the rocket fell short and blew up the truck they were hiding behind.

 With information obtained and only additional injuries and death to be gained, the Last Liners piled into their battered RV and burned rubber getting away.

 ***

"Majestic 13 has turned a blind eye towards your more... unorthodox... methods, Lieutenant, because you've shown considerable success in countering FORCE's bioweapons. However, this is beyond the pale. Infiltrating a secure Majestic black site because a voice on the radio told you to? Absolutely unacceptable. You're lucky you're not being treated as FORCE collaborators."

"Yes, sir." The Lieutenant kept his tone neutral.

"You could have at least Googled your alleged contact. 'Indrid Cold' has been an enigmatic figure in UFOlogical circles since 1966, an ageless prankster inserting himself into investigations to muddy waters and confuse data. Does that sound like a high-ranking agent of Majestic to you?"

The Lieutenant bit back what he wanted to say, instead replying simply, "No, sir." 

"It is only your admittedly impressive success in the field that stays Majestic's hand, Lieutenant. Your team will be allowed to continue to operate against FORCE, instead of being disappeared into the US prison system. But you will be monitored much more closely going forward. Today's fiasco cannot happen again."
 

"Yes, sir."

 ***

 So a relatively quick and mild mission this time around, with things eased by how few hits I actually rolled for combat. The Last Liners made contact with the informant, whoever he was, and escaped mostly unscathed. Rolling on the casualty tables, Sarah-Jane had a full recovery and will be ready for the next mission. 

The crew gained enough XP to each boost an ability - The Lieutenant, Sarah-Jane and Maria each bumped Dexterity up by 1, while Hank boosted Acuity and Becky boosted Combat. There was no gear requisition this time around - all requests immediately canceled by the higher ups!  

Next time around, the Last Liners will be back to fighting monsters. Will having the bureaucracy breathing down their necks impact their ability to succeed?  

Hitting the Open Road

 One of the things I'll need if I want to start playing Zombie RV (besides zombies) is... an RV! Fortunately, I had one in my backlog - a clever 3D-printed kit from Miniature Tanks here in the US. I got a bunch of vehicles from them for Christmas this past year, and I decided it was time to get this one assembled and painted. Assembly was pretty easy, though I did need to use a pair of tweezers to glue on the railings at the top and the silver bits on the side - weight supports when parked, I'm guessing? 

 

Because it's a 1970s Ford F-150,  I started looking up 1970s paint jobs, and found a pretty sharp-looking black, red-orange and silver example. I decided to change the red-orange to just plain red, and got to work. Except for the headlights and taillights, everything here is just done with cheap craft paint instead of expensive hobby paint. 

 I painted the license plate yellow with blue lettering to match the color plates on my own car, and carefully freehanded "ZRV" in lieu of trying to squeeze on an authentic plate number. 

It's not going to win any awards but it's a solid addition to my scatter collection, and I'm looking forward to seeing it on the table. 

The Last Liners are never far from hand so obliged for a scale shot.

 

Miniatures Acquired: 178

Miniatures Painted: 129

Terrain Acquired: 4

Terrain Painted: 7

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 10