"They call him 'the Lieutenant.' Supposedly he's a 'Nam vet; nobody knows his real name, what rank he held or if he even served in the US Army - or any army. No one even knows if he's got a permanent address. He knows every NATO weapon better than you know your own phone number, that's for certain. You can't sneak up on him - and if you try you're lucky if you get off with just a broken jaw. He's getting some sort of task force together, real hush-hush; something about 'the Big Enemy'..."
***
With some of the modern terrain I've finished this year, it was about time I got another modern game on the table, and I decided to go with Snarling Badger's "Majestic 13" - and rather than continue with the team I started back in January, I decided to start fresh. In truth, I felt like I'd given myself the game on easy mode with my previous team - two rocket launchers and a light machine gun made short work of monsters and the base upgrades I'd collected meant that special missions would be heavily slanted in my favor.
The new team is "The Last Liners" - a group of ordinary (for a given value of ordinary) citizens who have gotten involved in the fight against the villainous alien invaders of FORCE. Led by the Lieutenant, a veteran of the ongoing war against FORCE. Having survived horrors that butchered the rest of his previous team, he went underground and recruited his own agents, off the grid, to continue the good fight for humanity and the Earth.
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| Left to Right: Becky, Hank, the Lieutenant, Maria (in back), and Sarah-Jane |
Catching wind of something slithering into a run-down trailer park, the Lieutenant activated his team. It was time to prove themselves!
Arriving in the trailer park was a monster known as a Terraformer, a hulking entity that warps and degrades the landscape around it, turning stone into mud and rusting steel with its very presence. I'd previously fought the Terraformer back in February 2024, with my first team. The Last Liners' secondary objective will be to collect tissue samples from pieces of terrain the creature comes into contact with.
The Last Liners deployed in cover, scattered across the board. The Terraformer failed to spot any of them, and wandered towards the center of the board as the Lieutenant clipped it with a shot from his M-16, ducking into one of the trailers to avoid its alien gaze. Becky collected a tissue sample off the trailer the monster had slithered over, while Hank and Sarah-Jane chipped away at the Terraformer's hit points. Unfortunately, Maria found herself in the creature's line of sight as she took a shot at it.
The Terraformer pummeled her again and again with its pseudopods, though she resisted the stunning side-effects of the creature's touch. Spitting blood, she grinned defiantly. "Is that the best you've got?"
The Lieutenant took a shot at the monster, and scored a Critical Hit, doubling his damage - but also granting the monster an extra activation, which it used to continue clobbering Maria. On her activation, she darted over towards Sarah-Jane and her med kit, and Becky ran to get line of sight on the creature before calling down a drone strike. The monster lashed out again at Maria before getting bathed in fire.
At the start of Turn 3, I rolled FUBAR and it came up "Sudden Storm" - reducing all visibility to 12" for both the Last Liners and the Terraformer. Maria ran from the monster, luring it away from Sarah-Jane and into range of Hank's LMG; unfortunately for Maria, Hank rolled a critical hit in shooting the Terraformer, granting it a bonus action that resulted in Maria being put out of action.
Fortunately, though, this dealt enough damage to put the monster "In Extremis" - from here on out the monster would get an extra action but take 2D6 damage every time it activated.
Enraged, the Terraformer charged Becky (the next nearest team member), lashing out with its pseudopods; unfortunately she did fail her save and became Stunned on top of taking a lot of damage. The Lieutenant ran towards her, med-kit in hand, but the Terraformer struck her again and she failed two saves; even if I rolled all 1s for damage, it still would have been more than she could take, and she went out of action as well.
Hank and Sarah-Jane both opened fire on the monster, and it finally collapsed, dying in Turn 4. Victory for the Last Liners!
I always feel like Majestic 13 brings out the best in my terrain set ups; maybe I should start using the game's terrain layout charts for other games as well. I took the opportunity to put some of the more amusing and less-serious terrain pieces I'd done this year on the table, in the form of the alligator-infested swimming pool and the giant inflatable gorilla holding an "All Stock Must Go" sign.
I was really impressed with how well the Last Liners did; even with two characters going out of action, they scored two critical hits on the monster (versus the last time the Terraformer was on my table, in which it rolled FOUR critical hits against my agents!) and managed to call in the drone strike fairly early on in the game. If I manage to kill the monster, it's usually in the fifth and final turn of the game, so killing it on Turn 4 today was pretty cool.
Continuing on into the post-mission part of the game, I rolled to see if and how Becky and Maria survived, and both of them came out just fine, with no lasting injuries, psychological trauma or alien parasites from their time on the battlefield. Even more impressive, I managed to successfully requisition two new pieces of gear; the Last Liners fall under the category of "The Dispersed," in game terms, which gives them some advantages in deployment, but penalizes them on bureaucracy rolls to requisition new gear. So now the Lieutenant has a Scanner, which will make it easier to detect hidden threats, and Sarah-Jane has a fancy new scope on her rifle. Unfortunately, their efforts to requisition an upgrade to their base, in the form of an Internet Monitoring Station, were lost in bureaucratic red tape.
Everyone also scored enough experience points to buy an improvement in one attribute; the Lieutenant boosted his Combat ability, Hank his Fortitude, Becky her Acuity, Sarah-Jane her Fortitude, and Maria her Combat ability.
All in all, a really good game and an evening well spent. Looking forward to the next one!
Figures Acquired in 2025: 231
Figures Painted in 2025: 164
