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?  

A Fistful of Kung Fu: Poliziotteschi Style

 My friend Chris recently suggested I give Osprey Games' "A Fistful of Kung Fu" a look; I'd seen the figure range on North Star plenty of times over the years (the game originally released in 2014), but I'd never bothered to check it out; well, now it seems the rulebook is out of print and only sold in e-formats, because I had to go to eBay to get a physical copy. It does not seem like the game made a big splash; I was actually kind of shocked at the scarcity of play reports on the web. I suspect this comes down to it being a game with a modern setting, instead of fantasy or scifi, and one that calls for a terrain-dense table. There's a level of physical investment that's likely more than most people would want to expend on just trying a game.

Fortunately, I've already made that investment with my terrain collection, and while I don't have any modern East Asian figures, I do have a lot of Mafia types, so I figured out a scenario using them in place of Yakuza. Consider this an Italian knockoff of a Hong Kong action film! 

A SWAT team, led by Lt. Lords, had to protect Angela Dellamorte, daughter of the head of the Dellamorte Crime Family, as she prepares to turn over evidence relating to her father's crimes - and his recent involvement in the occult. Papa Dellamorte, it seems, has acquired a copy of the Necronomicon ex Mortiis, and has made a pact with the Powers of Darkness to expand his own influence. 

Opposing them was one of Dellamorte's capos, Joey "The Viper" Marciano, accompanied by his right-hand man, Fat Paulie, and a number of lesser soldiers and a minor summoned demon. He'd been tasked with capturing Angela and bringing her home to her family in as close to one piece as possible for punishment. 

With the SWAT forces stopped at an impromptu barricade, a shot rang out; Mr. Fibbs, a low-level soldier in the Dellamorte Crime Family, had decided that he wasn't on board with trafficking with demons, and had offed the nearest gangster.

Marciano advanced and opened fire, gunning down Officer Rosina and sending Angela barreling into the Smoke Shop to avoid getting hit. 

Lords coolly returned fire, sending Marciano ducking for cover and killing Fat Paulie.

Officer Williams, an ordinary beat cop caught up in the action, took out one of the gang's hitmen as he darted amidst trash piled up next to the pawn shop.

Sgt. Baker spotted the Viper as he circled around the gas station, and ran forward with a shout - and got shot for his troubles, getting knocked down, knocked back and disarmed in the process. Before he could stand up, another hitman on the ramen shop roof sprayed lead downwards, killing him and Officer Taff.

Lt. Lords closed in on Joey the Viper, delivering a shot that knocked him down, stunned him and wounded him. He was quick to get back on his feet and scurry for cover behind a dumpster.

Meanwhile, Officer Beck retreated into the Smoke Shop to guard Angela.

Joey the Viper dashed around the building and shot at Lt. Lords, disarming her. "Well, well, well, little lady," he chuckled. "Looks like I've got you beat."

The hitman atop the Ramen Shop fired at Mr. Fibbs, stunning him; the Dellamorte family would want him alive for more appropriate punishment - letting him just die wasn't anywhere near sufficient.

The demon, finally accomplishing something, swooped through the air and launched itself through the front window of the Smoke Shop to try and seize Angela - only to get immediately blown away by Officer Beck. With a screech, the demon collapsed into ash, banished back to Hell.

Lt. Lords ducked for cover behind a cinderblock wall, and then rolled behind the car parked behind the pawn shop. "Enough of this," she growled, and charge at Marciano, delivering a double-fisted punch to the jaw that knocked him out cold. Officer Williams raced around to cuff the gangster.

Angela Dellamorte was safe and ready to testify, and once he was patched up, Mr. Fibbs would be too. And Joey "The Viper" Marciano was in custody. It was a damned good day for the forces of law and order!

***

So that played out very fast - I think only about 40ish minutes start to finish. I had fun with it though, and I think I got a decent handle on the rules; I didn't do much of anything with interactive terrain (though I did have brick piles on two buildings to throw bricks at each other, plus vehicles that could be hot-wired), and Joey might have gotten shot one more time then he really should have been based on his traits. The activation and reaction mechanism, designed to recreate the frenetic back and forth of a martial arts movie, I feel like I got that down really quick. 

It's definitely a game that focuses on the Protagonists - in this case Lords and Marciano - and everyone else (the Extras) are mooks who are mostly there to get in the way, or fail their activation rolls so that the turn passes to the next player. Here, they accomplished a few things against each other but a lot of them mostly just stood around or only had enough actions available to move once and end their turn. 

Overall, I'm glad I picked it up and looking forward to playing more of it.

.45 Adventure Part 2 -This Time With An Opponent!

 Over the weekend I got a visit from Dave, a buddy of mine from Rochester (not to be confused with Dave, my 3D printing guy, here in Buffalo), who I've been running roleplaying games for for probably the better part of a decade. He's been incredibly generous with gifting me books over the years, and he expressed interest in trying out a skirmish wargame for the first time. He's got a taste for the old pulps, and actually played the Green Hornet in a Pulp Cthulhu game I put on some years back. So it was a no-brainer to get out my painted Green Hornet and Kato and use them for his first pulp wargaming experience. 

We played the same scenario I previously played solo, and played it twice, since the game went quick (though still a learning experience for both of us). The first game ended in a draw, with the Hornet and the DiMarco gang each taking one ledger off the board - and Kato being beaten to a pulp by gangster brick shithouse Fat Paulie! 

The Hornet goes through the pockets of knocked-out Perfect Tommy.

The second game went better, with the Hornet scoring a solid victory, claiming both Ledgers and having much, much, MUCH better rolls when firing his knockout gas gun at the gangsters. 

Dave had a great time with it, and even better, he felt inspired by it - he's struggled for years with both inspiration and fear of failure at the thought of running his own RPG games, but this gave him an immediate sense of "I can do this." He was kind enough to gift me a PDF copy of the second edition .45 Adventure rules, and even offered to have them printed and spiral bound for me. He also requested if it would be possible to play the Shadow in a future game, so this is not the end of our pulp gaming. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 167

Figures Painted in 2025: 150

.45 Adventure - "Shootout in the Park!"

 It's been delayed a few days due to just having busy evenings, but I finally got the table cleared off tonight and set up to test drive Rattrap Productions' ".45 Adventure (1st edition) using one of the sample adventures in the book - "Shootout in the Park!"

In this thrilling installment, the Green Hornet and Kato are in hot pursuit of "Little" Bobby DiMarco and his henchmen, Perfect Tommy and Fat Paulie. Little Bobby was fleeing the Hornet with an armful of ledgers detailing bribes made to various public officials. As they crossed the park, the ledgers were fumbled - and now both the Hornet and DiMarco are trying to find them. 

It's a gritty '80s reboot of the Green Hornet, with Uzis instead of Tommy Guns.

The Hornet won initiative on the first round, and everyone began spreading out to investigate the six clue markers spread across the table (laid out after I took a picture of the setup!). Pretty soon, clue markers were flying off the table - two revealed police snipers that took ineffectual pot shots, two were duds, and Fat Paulie stumbled across one of the ledgers without realizing what it was.

Confronting Little Bobby, the Hornet fired a soporific shot from his gas gun, which the mobster backpedaled away from. 

Meanwhile, Perfect Tommy and Kato converged on the clue marker hiding the second ledger.

The Hornet dodged away from DiMarco's bullets, right into the ham-sized fists of Fat Paulie. With the Hornet distracted, DiMarco dashed after the ledger that Fat Paulie had overlooked. 

While the Hornet eventually managed to duck out of the way long enough to give Fat Paulie a faceful of knockout gas, and Kato pummeled Perfect Tommy into giving up and fleeing the battlefield, leaving the ledger behind. Unfortunately, it was enough time for DiMarco to flee with his half of the ledgers.

With only half the information needed to bring to DA Scanlon, the Hornet was forced to concede that this adventure had been...a draw!

***

I'm calling that a really successful test play. There were a few things I found myself having to adjudicate because they either just weren't covered in the rules or the text was unclear. All in all, I think the game only took about 45 minutes; I'm excited to put this on on Saturday for my friend Dave, who's a Green Hornet fan. 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 167

Figures Painted in 2025: 150

WIP: Pool's Closed

 The mood struck me to start working on a bit of modern terrain again; I think this might be becoming a "hobby home" for me, something I can just always get stuck in with and putter for a while and have a smile on my face while doing it. 

This week I got out a piece my wife got me for my birthday - an above-ground swimming pool from Bad Goblin Games. The product photo on the website adds an alligator and UV resin "water" and I knew I wanted to do something similar. I'd gotten a pair of crocodiles from Wargames Foundry, and dug one out and got it primed and painted this week, with a coat of gloss varnish; they're a bit smaller than the one in the product photo but that's fine. I figure any crocodile in your swimming pool is a problem. 

The pool was sprayed white inside and out, and then I masked off the outside and sprayed the inner surface a bright blue. I gave a tan drybrush to the bottom of the outside and applied some Reikland Fleshshade as "rust" around some of the mechanical bits. 

After that was all dry, I started adding layers of UV resin. The first layer had a bit of GW "Athonian Camoshade" mixed in, a dark olive green shade. The second layer I mixed a bit of OOP GW "Waywatcher Green" glaze into the resin, which is a brighter green; once this layer was spread out but before I cured it, I put the crocodile in. The third layer also had some Waywatcher Green mixed into it, and was poured around the crocodile to help submerge him. 

I'm thinking I'll do one more layer of resin - I'd really like to have the crocodile mostly submerged. Then maybe apply some washes or glazes to really sell the algae-scummed look. 

This has been a really fun and really quick project; I'm now half tempted to get another swimming pool from Bad Goblin and make a "clean" version! Maybe see about getting a 3D printed pool floatie to have on top of the water in that version? 

Figures Acquired in 2025: 127

Figures Painted in 2025: 124

Majestic 13: Operation Acid Reflux

 It's been a few months since my last game of Majestic 13 from Snarling Badger, and I decided this week I'd get the table cleared off and and play a game this weekend. A big part of that decision came in the form of a complimentary 3D printed "Giant Plague Toad" (totally not a Nurgle beast, scout's honor) I received from an Etsy seller, TableTopTradesman, earlier this week that immediately struck me as an excellent monster for Majestic 13.

Unfortunately, last night I had to take my wife to the Emergency Department at our local hospital following an accidental over-ingestion of medication. While she was discharged after a few hours, neither one of us slept much (or at all, in my case) afterwards, so I'm more than a little foggy-headed and prone to slight nod-offs currently. Naturally, this is the best possible state to be in when playing a game and writing an after-action report. 

The Force Discreet were once more deployed to a wilderness battlefield, this time to oppose a creature called an Ichor-Spitter. These creatures are capable of flight, ignoring terrain penalties on movement, and can spit powerful acid. 

Left to right: Javier, Pilar, Ortiz, Emilio, Anna-Maria

Secondary objective was a medical supply pickup - each of those neon green radiation symbols marks a piece of terrain with a supply point on it. I got a little hosed in two different ways with this mission:

1. Rolling for bureaucratic foul-ups as part of the mission generation, I got "Drop Zone Confusion," meaning my team deployed in a randomly-selected board quadrant. 
2. Rolling to see which terrain pieces on the table would be Clear, Difficult or Dangerous terrain, I rolled abysmally. Almost every hill and forest, plus the bridge and cabin, were Difficult Terrain, meaning movement was halved moving over them. One hill was Dangerous Terrain, meaning figures would potentially take wounds trying to cross it. Trying to obtain secondary objectives just got twice as difficult. 

Rather than do a full play-by-play since my brain's packed to capacity with cotton right now, I'll just touch on a few highlights:

• In my mentally fogged state, I was looking at the "Phase 2" profile for the Ichor Spitter (in Majestic 13, once your team has a certain number of victories under their belts, the monsters upgrade to a second, more difficult unit profile) for the first two turns, meaning it was hitting my operatives more easily than it should have and the negative side-effects of its attacks were harder for them to resist.
• The Ichor Spitter caught four of my five operatives in an "Acid Spray" blast, wounding and blinding half of them because they'd stayed clustered together pouring firepower into the monster instead of spreading out. 

• On turn 3, I rolled for the game's FUBAR mechanic, came up positive, and rolled on the results chart. A randomly-determined terrain piece, in this case one of the escarpments along the riverbank, collapsed, injuring any figures (human or monster) within a certain radius. Only Ortiz was in range, and I rolled almost minimum damage; I think he only took three points of damage from the collapse.
• Javier got caught in one Acid Blast too many, and was reduced to a steaming puddle on the forest floor.

• Ortiz scored a critical hit with his light machine gun, dealing an exceptional 34 points of damage to the monster in one go, which was enough to put it into its "In Extremis" state - every monster in Majestic 13 has an "In Extremis" threshold, where if it's reduced below a certain hit-point total it gains an extra action, but also takes extra damage as its body consumes itself with violent rage to fuel that extra action. 
• On Turn 4, Pilar successful performed a Call for Aid, calling down a drone strike on the Ichor Spitter and finishing the terrible beast off.

I didn't really accomplish the secondary objective of collecting all three medical supply drops; I got one, but the Force Discreet really is spec'd around pouring as much damage into the enemy as possible, and everything else is a bit of an afterthought. 

In the post-game:

• While Agent Javier did die of his wounds, he was successfully cloned and Javier Jr. will be ready to join the team in the next game. 
• The Force Discreet filed requisition requests for two Medic Kits and received one. Requisition requests to add a rapid response helipad to their base were also denied and/or lost in the bureaucratic maze. 
• Ortiz and Pilar used accumulated XP to improve their Dexterity scores, while Javier Jr. put XP carried over from Javier-Prime to improve his Combat score. 

Next game is a Special Mission, pitting the Force Discreet against the shadowy puppetmasters dropping these alien monsters on Earth. 

Additionally, in the aftermath of last night's Emergency Department adventure and my willingness to sit up all night making sure Gina didn't experience a seizure or cardiac troubles relating to her accidental overdose, Gina asked me to fill a shopping cart with miniatures she could buy for me. I had a coupon for 30% off from Etsy seller TableTopTradesman (see the top of this post), so I picked out enough gribbly 3D printed monstrosities to get us free shipping and we placed the order. So soon enough I'll have another five twisted brutes on 40- or 60mm bases ready to try and gnaw through the Force Discreet. 

Time to update the counter:

Figures Acquired in 2025: 127

Figures Painted in 2025: 123