Majestic 13: Special Mission "Ambush"

 I've played another game?! Yes! I did not sleep well (or much) last night, and decided three hours of sleep in the ol' tank was not enough to fuel me through an 8 hour work day, grocery shopping and cooking dinner. So I took a personal day, did my grocery shopping early when the store was practically empty, kept meals simple for my wife and I, and allowed myself the luxury of a restorative solo game. After all, this is a special round of Majestic 13 - my first "Special Mission."

The sinister invaders known as FORCE have taken note of my team, and dispatched a strike team of FORCE troopers to eliminate them. To represent FORCE on the tabletop, I painted up a half-dozen "Ferox Mercenaries" from Khurasan Miniatures - this is a company that I think has flown under a lot of peoples' radars, but they make some really cool stuff in both 15 and 28mm scale, their castings were super clean and their customer service excellent and friendly. I've assembled them with helmeted heads and painted them with Turbodork colorshift metallics - "Laserface" (which shifts maroon to yellow-green) for their armor and "Let Them Eat Cake" (dark blue to red-violet) for the gun casings. Some details in silver (washed with Nuln Oil) and the eyes on the helmet picked out in Vallejo Fluorescent Green and they were done. 

I really need to make more trees my next terrain investment.

A lot of this game boiled down to figures moving from one piece of cover to another, taking pot shots, and moving back towards other pieces of cover, so I'll just highlight a few key moments.

I also finally got everyone's name written on their bases.

I successfully upgraded my team's base defenses following the last game, meaning each of these FORCE troopers took 1D6+3 damage before the game even started. I rolled really well, and two of the aliens started play with 21 HP instead of their customary 30. This really helped me out a lot. 

Turn 1, Agent Moseley (newly equipped with a sniper rifle) took up a position behind the chimney of an old, abandoned cabin, and on Turn 2, he scored a critical hit on FORCE Trooper # 2, killing it. Boom, headshot. Even better, both he and Agent Arnold succeeded on their saving throws to avoid taking damage when Trooper #2 subsequently imploded. Yes, the FORCE troopers implode on death, to insure that their technology doesn't fall into human hands. Stingy bastards. 

Turn 3, Agents Klass and Barker were temporarily blinded by an alien grenade. Both agents cleared their vision, returning fire. Turn 4, another grenade was thrown, again blinding Barker. This is becoming a theme with him after the last game. 

Immediately following this, Agent Arnold successfully Called for Aid on Turn 4, calling in a drone strike against the FORCE troopers. An attack roll was made successfully against each of the five remaining troopers, and the damage dealt was enough to kill three (#s 1, 4 and 5) of them simultaneously, while reducing the remaining two to low single-digit hit points. Unfortunately, the rolling wave of concussive implosions took both Agent Barker and Agent Moseley out of action as well, and left Agent Klass stunned. 

The remainder of Turn 4 and Turn 5 were spent mopping up the remaining two FORCE troopers. Keel's Killers were successful in their mission, though they paid a price for their victory.

Rolling into the post-game, while Agent Moseley recovered quickly and will be good to go for the next mission, Agent Barker succumbed to his injuries, his internal organs pulverized into jelly by three concussive implosions. Majestic 13 is loathe to let a good agent go though, and a clone of Agent Barker was decanted and added to the Keel's Killers roster; an imperfect and slightly weakened copy of the original, Barker II is nonetheless a welcome addition to the team. 

He died doing what he loved; shooting aliens until he went blind.

Following that, my team's requests to requisition new gear got lost in the bureaucratic maze of Majestic 13, but I did successfully add another upgrade to my base; an Emergency Medical Facility was built, which will hopefully reduce my losses in the future. I know I've been really lucky so far in not having characters die every mission, but the loss of even one good soldier is too much. 

What's next? Well, uh...I only have three more painted monsters that can serve as aliens on hand, and I have no idea what I'm going to use for my FORCE Shock Troopers in the next special mission yet. So I might have to slow my roll a little bit with how many games I'm playing and spend more time painting.