Majestic 13: Operation Hot Flash

Hot town, summer in the city

Back of my neck gettin' dirty and gritty

Been down, isn't it a pity?

Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people lookin' half dead

Walkin' on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head...

"Will you turn that crap off? I hated that song in '66, and I hate it now. And given what we're up against, I don't think it's very funny, either!" The Lieutenant reached forward between the front seats and snapped the car radio off. 

"Bullshit," Becky rebutted. "What were you in '66, like two years old? No way you were old enough to complain about the music. Besides, it's my car, I'm driving, I call dibs on music." She went to switch the radio back on. The Lieutenant swatted at her hand.

"Sidewalk's not gonna be the only thing hotter than a match head if we don't take this Helion Beam-Chaser down and fast. This thing carries heat around it like Maria here carries Chanel No. 5!"

Maria glared at the older man. "Listen here, old man, you got me killed last time, you can sit and breathe my Chanel. And it's No. 18, puto!"

As the argument grew heated, Hank thumped his fist against the headrest in front of him. "Eyes on the road, people!" He barked. Becky's eyes snapped forward and she spun the wheel hard. The car jumped the curb and slammed into the side of a pawn shop.

"Roll out, Last Liners!" The Lieutenant snapped. Sarah-Jane struggled against the airbag, grateful for her medical kit.

***

In under the wire with my second game for February! The Last Liners are back, with the first mission post-run in with the soldiers of FORCE. We're back to a standard mission this time around, facing off against a Helion Beam-Chaser; a physically frail (by M13 monster standards) creature that can fire blasts of superheated energy that potentially blind its targets, and radiates enough heat that anyone ending their turn too close to it takes damage. For their secondary mission, there's a pair of alien tech tokens on the table; I needed to move figures into contact with both of them. And complicating matters, the Last Liners had a "Rough Landing" - everyone started the game already injured. 

The batlike creature screeched and flapped from its perch atop the Chinese restaurant, coming to rest atop the pawn shop; it had spotted the Lieutenant, and spat two quick bursts of plasma at him. The Lieutenant cursed, ducking and rolling behind the ramen shop's sign to avoid the fiery blast. Chambering a round, he sighted down the barrel and squeezed the trigger; ichor spurted as bullets raked the creature's thin frame.

With the creature distracted and out of cover, Hank II darted forward, not bothering with his folding tripod and giving the beast a burst of machine-gun fire. As he did so, Becky and Maria II made contact with the alien tech remnants left behind by the creature's delivery.

the blood splatter marks potentially dangerous terrain; Maria was fine!

Screeching, the Beam-Chaser caught sight of Maria II and belched forth more boiling energy, fusing bricks into glass where the bolts impacted.

Flapping awkwardly away from the pawn shop, the Beam-Chaser landed on the pizza parlor and bathed Hank II in great gouts of alien fire; the firefighter's coat he habitually wore shielded him from some of the blast, his eyes tightly shut against the dazzling white energy.

Hank II stopped, dropped and rolled towards cover before springing to his feet. "I shoot back, motherfucker!" He yelled, blazing away at the monster. Round after round buried itself in the beast's flesh.

Now that's a nice damage roll!

The Lieutenant, Becky, Maria II and Sarah-Jane kept up the fire on the beast, moving across the table and even jumping rooftop to rooftop to get a better bead on the Beam-Chaser. Its glittering yellow eyes narrowed and an indescribably cruel smile writhed across its fang-lined muzzle. Launching itself into the air, it landed next to Maria II on the roof of the pawn shop. The reddish fur on its body bristled as the air around it began to shimmer. An intense wave of heat rippled outwards from its body, catching four of the Last-Liners within it; only Hank II was effected, stunned by the suffocatingly hot air.

"I got ya, kid!" The Lieutenant yelled, jumping down off the electronics store and darting towards the dazed firefighter, medical kit at the ready. While unable to assist in shaking off the Stun, the Lieutenant patched up Hank II enough for him to recover his senses on his own and move out to line up another shot. 

Becky called in a drone strike on the creature, while Maria dove for safety, eager to get away from the monster's incredible body temperature.

Scrambling to the top of the gas station, Sarah-Jane lined up a tricky shot; the creature was in cover (meaning she'd be rolling twice and taking the worse result), and she held her breath as she pulled the trigger...

The creature wailed, its blood steaming and evaporating as fast as it could ooze from its wounds. "It's entering Extremis! Come on, we can finish it off!" The Lieutenant called out. 

Precisely as he said this, the skies opened up, a torrential rainstorm beginning. 

Rain steamed and sizzled around the creature as it flapped off, landing awkwardly and crouching behind the sign on the fireworks stand. It yelped, unexploded fireworks on the roof bursting from the heat of its body, peppering it with explosive material. It opened its mouth wide, and sprayed Becky with superheated plasma, the actinic glare blinding her.

The Lieutenant moved forward, throwing his rifle to his shoulder. Between the pouring rain and the sign blocking the shot, he missed; the Beam-Chaser hissed and attempted to crawl over the sign - only to suddenly screech, back arching in agony as it vomited boiling blood. The Extremis damage finished the creature off, and it crashed heavily to the wet pavement. 

An INCREDIBLY good roll for Extremis damage!

As Becky blinked her vision back, the Last Liners converged, watching the Beam-Chaser self-immolate. The Lieutenant clapped her on the shoulder. "Listen, soldier...Becky...I'm sorry about what I said earlier. You were right, driver chooses the music. Play whatever you want on the ride to debriefing."

Becky glared at him, spots still dancing in her vision. "Ride? Old man, in case you missed it, my car's totaled! You're paying for the Uber! And beer!"

***

I think this is the smoothest game the Last Liners have had yet; nobody put out of action, so no rolls on the injury and survival charts, and we killed the monster at the start of turn 4! 

Rolling into the post-game, everyone got a boost; the Lieutenant, Becky and Sarah-Jane all raised their Fortitude, while Maria boosted her Dexterity and Hank II had some XP banked from the previous game, meaning he was able to boost his Combat ability twice. 

Attempts to requisition stimulant shots and flashbang grenades failed, but I did get my base upgraded with a Spy Satellite Link; now, when I roll Bureaucracy as part of mission generation, I can reroll after I get my first result if I don't like it. 

The team's rating has risen to 5. 

What's next for the Last Liners? We'll find out in March. 

Two More Majestic 13 Monsters

 Not much to show volume-wise this week; I've painted two additional monsters for my roster of Majestic 13 enemies. As usual, these are 3D prints purchased from TableTopTradesman on Etsy.

First up we have a tall, gangly humanoid with long arms ending in tentacles, and an eyeless (?) face made up of squirming tentacles. All very Cthulhu-y, I built up the main body color via a base coat of Reaper "Cloudy Gray," followed by a wash with thinned down "Nighthaunt Gloom" from Games Workshop. Once that was dry, a heavy drybrush of Reaper "Aircraft Gray" (a very pale blue-gray), and a final drybrush of 70:30 White/Aircraft Gray. The hands were gone over with GW "Baal Red" Contrast paint, then drybrushed with Vallejo "Fire Orange" before getting a red glaze that I ran further up the arms than the Baal Red. I hope I've successfully conveyed "the pigment on the creature's arms fades from red to gray" versus "this guy's wrist-deep in gore."

The next figure was marketed as a "Dire Bat" but those sure ain't bat wings! The frills running down the arms looked more like fish fins to me, and that design choice was why I bought it; if it had been a standard issue giant bat, I probably would have skipped over it while shopping for M13 boogums. I took inspiration from the kaiju Gyaos, a batlike monster as well, from the 1995 movie "Gamera, Guardian of the Universe," and went with a reddish brown palette.

The inside of the mouth was undetailed, and I painted it with a yellow-orange glow to suggest a breath-weapon ability. 

Overall, these were fast, easy paint jobs that only took a few minutes at  time to work on. I've got maybe two more of these 3D printed figures to tackle at some point, and I've received the "Zombicide: Invader" monsters I'd bought off a friend on BlueSky:

These guys have so many nooks and crannies that they're absolutely going to need to wait and get spray-primed on a warmer day. I do have them assigned to profiles in Majestic 13, however, so if need be I might talk to a buddy of mine with an airbrush and see if he'll airbrush some primer on to these for me. These figures are already accounted for on my tracker, but it's time to updated the painted side:

Miniatures Acquired: 52

Miniatures Painted: 74

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 1

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0

Majestic 13: Special Mission #1, "Ambush!"

 It's been on my mind lately, and I haven't done any gaming yet this month. If I want to continue meeting my goal of a minimum of 2 games per month, I need to get rolling, so I unpaused the "Last Liners" campaign for Majestic 13, and set up for the next mission. As noted in the last game, this time around it's a Special Mission. These occur any time your team level is a multiple of 3, and represent the alien overlords of FORCE catching wind of your team's successes and deciding to remind you of how weak humanity is in the face of their technological superiority. 

Called in on a mission, the Last Liners deployed in a sticky, humid forest glade. Expecting a monster, they instead found themselves facing a squad of six alien humanoids fully encased in shimmering, iridescent armor and carrying powerful energy weapons. 

I didn't take a lot of pictures during this game, to be honest, and having played it before (two years ago almost to the day!), it's not a terribly exciting game. It's a lot of moving back and forth between cover points and taking pot shots at the FORCE troopers.

The big points this time around:

I managed to successfully Call for Aid on the first turn, choosing to request a drone strike against the FORCE troopers. I needed to roll a 6 or better on a D20 for the drone strike to successfully hit its target. I rolled a 4.

I did get lucky, and while every member of the Last Liners was injured during the course of the mission, only one was put Out of Action; Maria failed her save against a grenade, getting blinded and taking damage, and then was immediately hit with another grenade, failing her save again and taking enough damage to take her off the table.

The Last Liners managed to successfully take down three out of the six FORCE troopers within the time limits of the mission; so not exactly a successful mission (it technically counts as a failure per the Majestic 13 rules), but not as bad as it could have been! 

Rolling into the post-game process...

Maria died of her injuries, but Majestic 13 doesn't let good soldiers rest for long. A clone, Maria II, was decanted, and seems entirely normal, unlike the enhanced clone, Hank II, that was produced after the last game.

The team is now rated at Level 4.

The team successfully requisitioned a laser sight for Becky's pistol, but failed to get a second pistol for her. They also failed to get a Spy Satellite Link for their base. 

I have just a few days left to get my second game for February in, so I'll be rolling up another mission for the Last Liners soon. 

The Ever-Glorious Workers' and Peasants' Red Army

 I've reached the point where I've kind of run through everything I expected to get painted during the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, and now I'm rummaging through what I've got sitting around primed to keep the momentum going and paint down my lead pile to some extent. There's been some really excellent "Back of Beyond" figures painted this year by some very talented painters, and it inspired me to dig out some of my own Copplestone figures and join the Interwar Central Asian fun.

I'd previously painted most of my White Russians, so I pulled out a unit of Bolsheviks, along with a Commissar and one of the charming "Bolshevik Heroines" figures.

I decided to try changing things up some with my painting, inspired by the "Back of Beyond" painting guide by Mark Hargreaves that came out through Caliver Books last year. I've used a lot more washes than I usually do on these, mostly Army Painter Soft Tone. I probably could have pushed the highlights a little higher, but overall I think they "pop" well on the tabletop at arm's length.

Tunics are Reaper "Desert Stone," washed and then gone back over with the base tone; trousers are either "Shield Brown," "Uniform Brown" or "Jungle Moss," done similarly. Rolled greatcoats are either "Stormy Gray" or "Shadowed Stone," to represent the vagaries of different dye lots. 

The Heroine's trousers are Army Painter "Woodland Camo," while the commissar's black leather jacket is Reaper "Coal Black" highlighted with "Midnight Blue," which was also used for all the boots. 

I think the washes were definitely worth it, especially washing the skin tones with GW "Reikland Fleshshade." Figures like the commissar are so characterful that they really call out for that extra step. I've got another dozen Bolsheviks on my table awaiting their turn - all wearing their greatcoats, so should be even faster to paint up. 

I did purchase a few figures this week - a friend on Bluesky shared some photos of figures he'd painted up for the board game Zombicide - or rather, it's spinoff, Invader, which sets players against swarms of alien gribblies instead of traditional zombies. The figures he'd shown were all "Abominations," supersized nasty brutes that immediately put me in mind of Majestic 13 (which I'm overdue to play again). I'd made mention that I might want to look for these figures to paint myself, and he was kind enough to offer to sell me spares he had in his leadpile (or in this case, plastic pile). We came to a mutually agreeable price, I PayPal'd him the money and they're now on their way to me.

So time to update the tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 52

Miniatures Painted: 72

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 1

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0

Modern Africans Completed and New Acquisitions

 Time to upload the next bunch from the Painting Challenge here. These are some figures from The Assault Group, from their "Modern Africa" range; a collection of militia with light arms (supported by one guy with an RPG) and some "Wild Geese" style mercenaries with Ak-47s. These join General Mutende's warlord army, visible here.

This bunch, mostly carrying pistols and SMGs, are a militia unit in Wars of Insurgency, relying on bodies more than accurate shooting to accomplish General Mutende's goals. I might go back in and do some freehand on the gray T-shirt the man in the middle is wearing. 

Next up are the mercenaries; I'm seeing these guys as General Mutende's personal bodyguards.

And a shot of General Mutende and a LMG-armed soldier with them:

I'll need to get the table cleared off this weekend so I can do a group shot of the entire force. 30 figures overall. Not too shabby.

I also had a few new goodies come in this week. First up, North Star announced that they likely wouldn't be reprinting their Colonial Africa ruleset "Death in the Dark Continent" when the current stock sells out, and having flashbacks to the FOMO I felt when "Congo" suddenly went out of print, I ordered a copy. Colonials are an area near and dear to my heart though I haven't painted any in a very long time, and I'd like to have a well-regarded ruleset handy if I ever get an opportunity to paint some up again.

And secondly...I'd been on the lookout for a 28mm scale Daimler Ferret Scout Car for a bit to accompany my UN Peacekeepers. I wasn't seeing any STLs that I liked, and Patrick Miniatures' only offered theirs in an already-printed version that shipped from Germany. Empress Miniatures offers one in resin and metal, but I'd be ordering from Australia and wasn't sure I could stomach the cost of shipping and such. I was going back and forth, waffling, checking eBay, checking and rechecking Empress Miniatures' US distributor...and then found out that Sloppy Jalopy (who I believe are now out of business as their website is down) produced a Daimler Ferret Scout Car in 1/56th scale. And Sally 4th in the UK had exactly one in stock!

Naturally, I figured out after I'd received it that with the current currency conversion between Australian dollary-doos and US dollars, even with shipping and tariffs and what not buying the Empress Miniatures' Ferret would have been close to $15 cheaper. Oops. Always do your due diligence! At least now I'm aware if I want to add some of Empress' Jazz Age Imperialism and Russo-Japanese War figures to my Back of Beyond collection. 

So let's update that tracker:

Miniatures Acquired: 48

Miniatures Painted: 60

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 1

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0

Acheson Creations Centrosaurus/"Monoclonius"

 I've been sitting on this figure for two weeks, dying to show it off, but I couldn't until it had posted as part of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge "Toy Story" Bonus Round. The theme was to paint something relating to toys from your childhood, and for me that meant dinosaurs! I was 6 when Jurassic Park hit theaters, and didn't get to see it for a few years but I had all the toys. But before Jurassic Park, there was another dinosaur toy line I was obsessed with.

Released in 1988, Tyco's Dino-Riders had a short-lived tie-in cartoon series and a comic book series released by Marvel Comics. In the toys' lore, the heroic humanoid Valorans and the evil, half-humanoid, half-animal Rulons were battling in the distant future; a ship of Valorans tried to escape the Rulon invasion of their homeworld using the Space-Time Energy Projector to travel through time. Unfortunately, they dragged a Rulon battleship with them, and the S.T.E.P. device malfunctioned, hurling both spaceships back to the Age of the Dinosaurs. 

Here, the Valorans used their psychic powers to befriend the dinosaurs they met, while the Rulons used mind-control to enslave them. Thus, both forces continued their battle, aided by the power of dinosaurs!

I took a look through galleries of the classic toys, dredging up 35-year old memories of which toys I had - and which ones would be interesting to paint up! Frankly, a lot of them were extremely dark olive drab - the T. rex was such a dark green it was almost black! Fortunately, one that I remembered owning did have an attractive splash of color to it. Say hello to "Monoclonius."

This is a Centrosaurus from Acheson Creations; it comes in two pieces, with a resin body and metal-cast head. It has an integral "rock" base that all four feet are touching, despite the galloping pose; I've glued it to a 50x75mm 3D printed base, which has been further gussied up with flock and some plastic "school diorama" plants I got a couple big bags of off Amazon a few months back. 

But wait, I hear you say. Centrosaurus? Didn't I just say Monoclonius? Bear with me, I'll come back to that.

Monoclonius was part of the first series of Dino-Rider toys released in 1988; part of the Rulon faction, it came packaged with the Rulon Sharkman "Mako" and had a simple action feature; the head and tail were linked and moving one back and forth moved the other with it. 

Unlike the dark olives and muddy browns of much of the line, Monoclonius had a dark green body, fading to a lighter shade on the legs, and a splash of bright turquoise on the face. While I wasn't up to the challenge of scratch-building Mako and his weapons platform, I could absolutely copy this color scheme.

So, to address the relationship between Centrosaurus and Monoclonius - they're most likely the same animal. The name "Monoclonius" was assigned to extremely fragmentary remains in the 1870s, possibly remains from multiple different species jumbled together. Some "Monoclonius" remains are probably Styracosaurus, others might be Einiosaurus, but the most likely candidate is Centrosaurus; all three are medium-sized relatives of the more famous Triceratops, lacking the long brow horns but having other ornamentation and long straight- or forward-curved nose horns. So while Centrosaurus was technically named *after* "Monoclonius," and normally the first name would be the one given precedence, because the fragments of "Monoclonius" are so small, and so "we can't really differentiate this from other animals," that Centrosaurus is the name given priority.

Up until the late 1990s, there were still scientists arguing for Monoclonius to exist alongside Centrosaurus as separate animals, but as of 2025 the consensus seems to be that it just isn't it's own species. And this happens sometimes with paleontology. So while "Monoclonius" might no longer exist as a valid animal, it remains a valid part of my childhood toy box.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with how this turned out, especially the nose horn. And it was fun to go through the list of Dino-Riders figures trying to remember which ones I'd had as a kid! I've already factored this one into the tally below.

Miniatures Acquired: 47

Miniatures Painted: 47

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 1

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0

This Place is a Pigsty!

 Gina got me this 3D-printed pigpen, as well as a few other pieces of small pre-modern terrain, last year for my birthday, and this piece has sat unfinished for several months. Yesterday, I picked it up and said, "Whatever it takes, let's get this done." Since it was already half-done, I can't count it towards my entries in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, so it can go straight on to my blog here. The glue is still drying on the flock, but I'm pleased with how it turned out - funnily enough, a lot of my "I'm not happy with how this is looking" that led to it being put on the shelf was resolved with a quick wash of Army Painter Strong Tone and drybrush of a light gray on the boards of the fence. 

Not a whole lot else to say about this one - once the glue holding the flock down is totally dry, I might put some shrubbery behind the stone hutch or along the back fence. Come warm dry weather, I'll hit it with a can of spray varnish and then apply some gloss to the area the pigs are wallowing in. 

I think I can count this towards "Terrain Painted," not "Scatter," since it's technically a building and on a base. I'm not going to count the pigs towards my figure total since they're incorporated into the terrain permanently. 

Miniatures Acquired: 47

Miniatures Painted: 47

Terrain Acquired: 0

Terrain Painted: 1

Scatter Acquired: 0

Scatter Painted: 0