Majestic 13: Operation Trailer Trash

 I've been feeling a lot of stress lately with the upcoming move and all, and my wife encouraged me to get the table cleared of and set up for a game. Given that I'd just finished two monsters for Majestic 13, I decided to get set up for the next game in my ongoing campaign. It's time for another installment of Keel's Killers versus alien monsters.

I rolled up a Poisoned Lasher as the enemy du jour; a clever hunter with long tentacles and poisoned attacks, with a special move that allowed it to drag Agents across the board and inflict all sorts of harm. Unfortunately, I rolled a FUBAR event on the first turn, and a second monster showed up. This second monster was a Jel Brute - a hulking, heavily-armored creature that can punch through steel plate and generate shockwaves by punching the ground. 

Activating first, the Lasher charged Agent Klass, hitting him with a flurry of tentacle strikes that left him Poisoned and Restrained. Meanwhile, Arnold and Barker II moved to engage the Jel Brute, firing ineffectively into the creature's armored carapace. 

Klass was unable to break the creature's grip, and the Lasher dragged him to the roof of the Atomic Gas Station; a journey that Klass did not survive.

The Jel Brute stunned Barker II, and then charged him, crushing him to a pulp beneath its powerful fists. Moseley sniped at the Brute with minimal effectiveness.

The Lasher and the Brute then convened on Agent Arnold; the Lasher struck the killing blows on her.

The Brute then turned its attention to Agent Keel, while the Lasher lunged for Moseley. Keel tried to Call for Aid without success, and before the end of Turn 3, the entire team was wiped out.

Ouch! I'd done fairly well through the last few games of Majestic 13, so I guess I was due for a game where nothing went right. As soon as the FUBAR result came up "second monster" I knew this wasn't going to be a game where Keel's Killers did well. I don't think I was prepared for just how fast the team would be put out of action. 

Rolling into the post-game phase, Keel, Klass and Moseley recovered just fine; Barker II has permanent brain damage (-2 to his Acuity stat) and Arnold is going to miss next game due to some persistent, questionable wounds. I tried requisitioning a Targeting HUD for Moseley and a VTOL with landing pad for the base, but both requests were lost in the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Majestic 13. 

I've got some more 3D printed monsters on the way for Majestic 13, and I've ordered a few more teams of operatives; a buddy of mine just bought a house and we were in his new basement man cave/gaming room yesterday. While showing off the new D&D table he'd built from scratch, he proposed getting some skirmish gaming in on it, and I feel like some co-op games of Majestic 13 would be a good fit.

Two More Aliens for Majestic 13

 I've gotten as far as I can with my cave people and cave bear right now; we've got some late season snow all of the sudden after a very mild winter so no taking them outside to prime. 

In the meantime, I've finished up two 3D-printed monsters for my games of Snarling Badger's "Majestic 13." These were purchased from "TranscendentalPrints" on Etsy, after Mr. Martin gave them a shout-out on his blog. These were really high quality prints, arrived super clean, well packed and quickly. I'm sure I'll be ordering from them again soon (much to my wife's chagrin, I think) and highly recommend them. 

These are both monsters from the Cthulhu Mythos which, if you've been around here for a while, you'll know is dead center in my wheelhouse; I've been lucky enough that I've been able to publish RPG scenarios for both the venerable Call of Cthulhu RPG, as well as more recently for Cthulhu Eternal, an open-source alternative ruleset. 

First up is a Flying Polyp - these creatures first appeared in Lovecraft's story "The Shadow Out of Time," in which they were mortal enemies of the scholarly mollusks known as the Great Race of Yith. Only partially existing in the physical world and capable of generating and controlling winds, the Polyps are a nasty threat to deal with in any game system. I got mine printed at 75mm tall, which ended up being big enough that it needed a 3" base to stand on.

The sculpt here seems like it was influenced by Loic Muzy's illustration for the 7th edition Call of Cthulhu rulebook, with its swirling, spiraling body and fang-lined circular mouth:

Over a black basecoat, I gave it a heavy drybrush of Reaper's "Deep Ocean," followed by progressively lighter drybrushes of "Marine Teal" and finally "Surf Aqua." I wanted the eyes to be kind of flat and deadened, so I gave them a simple coat of Vallejo "Gory Red" with no pupils or highlights; the tongue and the inside of the mouths were Reaper "Light Violet Red" washed with GW "Druchii Violet" then re-highlighted with Light Violet Red. Finally, I picked out the teeth in Reaper "Stained Ivory," washed with GW "Seraphim Sepia" and highlighted with "Creamy Ivory." 

I'll tell you right now, my wife is not a fan of this figure and has called it "Satan's sea cucumber" and told me I owed her ice cream for showing it to her. 

The second figure I got is a "Star Vampire" - these creatures first appeared in the short story "The Shambler From The Stars" by Robert Bloch (of PSYCHO fame), in which famously one eats a thinly-disguised version of H.P. Lovecraft. I actually did write an RPG scenario around this creature some years ago, but due to copyright issues I can't publish it. This figure was printed at 50mm tall and is on a 40mm Renedra round base. 

Again, the influence of Loic Muzy's creature design is undeniable:

The challenge in painted a Star Vampire is that these creatures are normally invisible; only becoming visible while feeding, as the blood they drink is pumped through their body, giving them a reddish coloration until it's digested. So I opted to just not worry about that.

I gave the whole creature a base coat of Reaper "Worn Olive" over a black primer coat, then washed it liberally with GW "Athonian Camoshade." Once dry, I gave it an all over drybrush of Vallejo "Dead Flesh" (the same color I use for my orcs). The mouth/feeding tube I gave two coats of Reaper "Light Violet Red," then washed with "Druchii Violet" and highlighted with Light Violet Red. I then gave it a light drybrush of Reaper "Heart Throb Pink" to brighten it up some; the color choice may have been a mistake because it kind of looks like the world's angriest rectal prolapse but maybe that just adds to the horror of it all.

In a nod to the source fiction, I used GW's OOP "Bloodletter Glaze" to glaze the tentacles red, with each coat getting progressively more concentrated towards the tips. A very light drybrush of "Dead Flesh" towards the base of each tentacle smoothed the transition between green and red. Finally I picked out the teeth using the same formula I used on the Flying Polyp: Stained Ivory - Seraphim Sepia wash - Creamy Ivory highlight. 

I'll get the bases finished today or tomorrow, and then hopefully Monday the weather will be warm enough that I can take them outside and hit them with some spray varnish. 

Also, my wife says I need to paint some puppies or kittens after this.

Beginning the Wolf Tribe

 So, I know I said I wasn't sure when I'd start on painting more prehistoric figures, aaaaaand...I've started. Well, getting them cleaned up and glued to bases at least. I've been struggling through a hobby slump - I've only managed to actually get paint on a single piece of scatter terrain this month. Insomnia's been a big issue for me, and that combined with day job and being a caregiver for my wife, who has an autoimmune condition...I don't have a lot of energy left at the end of the day so just sitting down at the hobby desk has felt a bit like scaling Everest lately. 

I've been really fixated on the prehistoric stuff lately - reading through rulesets, examining different companies' offerings in terms of mammoths and mastodons, watching "Quest for Fire" and "Clan of the Cave Bear" - and I'm hoping I can re-invigorate myself by getting work done towards playing more prehistoric games. 

 

Over the past two days, I've gotten 15 figures cleaned (even filing mold lines!) and glued to bases. These are all from Lucid Eye Publications' Savage Core line, and comprise two packs of Cro-Magnon warriors with javelins and atlatls, two packs of "Age of Ice" Amazons with bows (and one blowgun!) and some heroic leader-types. They're all anatomically modern humans (no Neanderthal brow ridges here) dressed warmly in tanned hides and fur cloaks so should mesh together fairly well. I'm calling them the Wolf Tribe, since one of the heroes is the shamanic-looking "Wolf Mother" clad in a wolf pelt. 

The goal is to have a pool of figures I can draw from for any prehistoric wargame I please; I can split these up into two opposing forces for Lucid Eye's "Savage Core" game, for example, or I can treat them as a pool to pull from when building a hunting party for "Tusk" or "Palaeo Diet." And what I've got right here can be a Warlord, two Heroes, and two Formations for Mana Press' skirmish game "Tribal." I've got an eye towards picking up another two packs of Savage Core Cro-Magnons for a more robust Tribal warband.

I'm also considering converting one Cro-Magnon and one Amazon to be holding torches; both Tusk and Palaeo Diet offer rules for starting fires to drive game, and I'd like to be able to play with those rules.

Tusk: Ground Sloth Hunt

 It's been a couple weeks since I've gotten anything on the table to play with, or even to paint for that matter. I did get another few sets of prepainted trees from Monster Fight Club, and wanted to get them on the table, so for simplicity's sake I set myself up for a couple rounds of Wessex Games' Tusk. I've got a lot of unpainted cavemen in a box in my closet and I hate playing unpainted, so I used the same batch of Lucid Eye cavemen that I used in my last game back in December. I still don't have a mammoth purchased or painted, but I did find a Reaper Bones giant prehistoric ground sloth that I painted a few years back so that was today's substitute megafauna. 

I played twice, but only took pictures of the first game since my phone was low battery. Both games lasted about 15 minutes and ended with the ground sloth being run down and killed; also in both games, Og the Hero (here portrayed by Lucid Eye's "Muok Mangod") got squished while trying to show off for his tribe. He's got a 50-50 chance of either killing the prey animal in one hit or getting killed himself, and so far on my tables it's been 100% "Og bites it."

 

The one thing I really haven't done that I should do for Tusk is get some fire and smoke markers prepped. Tusk offers rules for cavemen to start fires and try to hem prey in or herd them towards cliffs or marshes to kill them. The fires, once started, spread with the wind and can get out of control, even turn around and and threaten the cavemen.I think that would add a very different tactical element; as is, my painted cavemen run in with their clubs and on a 10+ on 2D6 kill the mammoth/ground sloth/Brontosaurus etc. which makes for very fast games. 

I'm not sure when I'll get more cavemen painted; my wife and I are moving to a new city this summer so I know I'll be winnowing down my collection somewhat over the next couple months to minimize what we're moving. I also want to work on being better about being less of a hobby mayfly and really focus on one project at a time for six months or a year; for 2025 I really want that focus to be on prehistoric wargaming. Tusk, Savage Core, and Mana Press' "Tribal" are all on my list of games I want to try playing with painted cavemen of various types, and I've heard good things about Ganesha Games' "Palaeo Diet" - it's been described to me as "Tusk on steroids" so I'll be picking that up at some point. Cavemen and various prehistoric animals will be a great painting project, plus terrain; not just natural stuff like hills and rocks, but villages, idols, etc.