Majestic 13: Operation Shockwave

 Greetings readers! I had today off work for Martin Luther King Jr Day and it was too cold to want to venture outside - the wind chill put us at -7 Fahrenheit, or a breathtaking -22 C! So I got the table cleared off and set up for a game of Snarling Badger's "Majestic 13." As a reminder, this is a solo/co-op game where squads of 5 agents belonging to various secretive organizations attempt to take down a single much larger, much more destructive alien monster, a la the video game X-COM. I realized after my last game that I'd goofed and given my original team, Keel's Killers, entirely too much gear. Rather than reboot the Killers, I decided I'd start a fresh team, using the Foundry "Mercenary Fire Team" I painted earlier this month. And thus the brutally efficient "Force Discreet," founded and funded by the armaments manufacturers of the world, were statted up and set to work. This is a short battle report because the game went very quickly - and I am very tired, having had a bout of insomnia last night. 

I bought the "Battlefield in a Box" escarpments you see next to the road yesterday,
and was eager to see them on the table.

Their first battlefield would be amidst forested hills along an isolated stretch of highway, near a long-abandoned cabin that was once fortified as a survivalist's compound. Their secondary objective was to collect some fragments of the drop-pod that had been used to deliver the monster, for study and reverse-engineering. And as for that monster...they'd be fighting a Yvenian Shocker, a creature that can absorb and channel electricity, delivering destructive blasts of energy that can blind its targets.

3D printed figure from MarketMagiqueMinis on Etsy.

The team quickly spread out, with Javier drawing the monster's fire early on, being struck by electricity and temporarily blinded. The team's commander, Anna-Maria, and her second-in-command Ortiz poured fire into the creature with a rocket launcher and heavy machine gun, respectively. The other team members - Javier, Emilio and Pilar - did their best, sniping at the Shocker with automatic rifle fire and Pilar's grenade launcher. The old cabin collapsed in on itself, though fortunately no one was caught in the destruction.

the blood splatter on the porch denotes this was "Dangerous Terrain" even before it collapsed.

Ortiz and Anna-Maria successfully collected the samples of alien tech, fulfilling their secondary objective, and the whole team continued to fire on the monster, killing it on turn 4.

In the aftermath, the team successfully requisitioned one suit of ballistic armor (given to Ortiz), and added a Weapons Depot to their base, adding +1 to all weapon damage going forward.

But wait, there's more!

Because the game went so quickly, I had time to reset the table and roll up a second mission. Keep your eyes peeled for a second AAR tonight...