Majestic 13: Operation Wrong Turn

 The morning was silent save for the lapping of water against the bow of the boat and the creak of the wooden oars as Hank guided them across the river. Even the insects were still and quiet. A family of campers had gone missing on this isolated spit of land, and Majestic suspected the machinations of FORCE behind it. 

The Lieutenant reviewed the mission briefing on the tablet.

"Initial satellite imagery suggests we're up against a 'Poisoned Lasher' today," he said quietly. "Big toad-looking thing that'll grab you with its tongue and retreat someplace quiet to eat you. We're short Maria today, so we need to really be on our A-game if we want to gig this frog."

The tiny drone in Becky's hands whirred to life, lifting off gently and bobbing as if politely acknowledging the Lieutenant's statement.

"I think with this little baby we'll be just fine," Becky said, allowing herself a smile. "A little extra firepower never hurt."

"We're here," Hank said, even as the Lieutenant and Sarah-Jane stood to drag the boat on to shore.

*** 

 The Lieutenant prodded the tattered remains of the campsite with the barrel of his rifle.

"Something's not right here," he muttered. "There's no mucus. Dossier says the Poisoned Lasher's handiwork is immediately recognizable by the quantity of mucus it produces."

"Boss...?" Becky hazarded as a hissing chitter echoed from the nearby woods.

 "Shit!" The Lieutenant barked. "That's not a Lasher! We were given bad intel! Spread out!"

 With a shriek, the Warping Crawler shimmered out of existence, rematerializing right on top of the Lieutenant. He fired blindly into its abdomen and took off running. 

 "I'm on it," Hank barked, moving into position and squeezing the trigger on his M249 SAW, not worrying about trying to stabilize the heavy gun. Ichor spurted as round after round punctured the creature's exoskeleton. 

"Alright little fella," Becky cooed to the drone even as she made a mad dash north towards the woods. "Show us what you've got."

The remote in her hands chirped as the drone locked on to the monster. With a smile she pressed the "fire" button. The targeting drone swooped out of the way as its larger cousin arrived, dropping an incendiary munitions bundle down the Crawler's back before returning to its launch pad.

 Snarling in pain and fury, the Crawler dematerialized, reappearing between the Lieutenant and Hank - close enough to drive a pointed claw at each of them. Hank rolled out of the way but the razor-edged limb sank into the Lieutenant's shoulder.

 Sitting calmly, almost meditatively atop the riverside billboard, Sarah-Jane lined up her shot; the sniper bullet tore a hole through the creature's elongated, flanged skull, causing it to squeal and flail. The monster teleported away, carrying the Lieutenant with it; rematerializing atop a nearby ridge, it began to gnaw on him. As he tried to wriggle out of its grip, it speared him with another spiky limb, keeping him pinned. He managed to fire into the creature's belly, but couldn't escape.

 Hank fired a burst into the creature's back and took off running towards the dilapidated cabin. From the woods, Becky smiled and thumbed a request into the burner phone. A second drone streaked across the sky with a fiery payload.

 Chemical fire sprayed across the monster's back, its bulk shielding the restrained Lieutenant from burns. The creature squealed and teleported again. 

[The first Drone Strike was courtesy the team's new "Drone Control Pod" addition to their base, the second was their usual 1/mission "Call For Aid."]

Reappearing at the river's edge, the monster continued to try and stuff the Lieutenant into its bladed mandibles. 

"Oh no you don't," Sarah-Jane said flatly, squeezing the trigger and sending another round deep into the monster's chest cavity. Oozing ichor, the creature teleported again, reappearing in a nearby copse of trees. The variety of bullet-holes in the monster's body were actively spilling steaming fluids as the creature entered Extremis. Enraged and in agony, it finally managed to cram the Lieutenant down its gullet before teleporting again and seizing Becky.

 The Crawler tried to teleport away with her to consume, but the exertion was too much for its overtaxed systems. It rematerialized atop the bluff overlooking the river, sank its fangs into Becky and promptly collapsed, tumbling over the cliff into the swirling water below.

 ***

Wow, this game took me by surprise today. The monster died at the top of turn 3. That has never happened for me before. I know there's extra XP given if you accomplish it, but I didn't know it was really doable. Having the second drone strike made a huge difference, plus Sarah-Jane scored a critical hit both times she activated. Because the Crawler is classed as a "Monstrosity," It activates again whenever it's hit with a critical hit. So both hits caused it to take an extra action and technically resulted in the Lieutenant getting eaten, but the second hit also caused it to take bonus Extremis damage. 

Rolling into the post-game...

The Lieutenant died of his injuries. After 13 missions, the old sunovagun bit the big one. Fortunately, Majestic was able to decant a fresh clone of him, so he'll be back for the next game, all shiny and scrubbed-pink looking. 

Hank had enough XP banked to raise both Acuity and Fortitude, while Sarah-Jane and Becky each raised their Combat ability. The Lieutenant, being a fresh clone, did not garner any XP. 

The team's requisition for a prosthetic arm for Maria has finally gone through and been approved! And additionally...

***

The Lieutenant - the new Lieutenant, he supposed - walked towards the Last Liner's hideout, his stride a little firmer than it had been in the past few months. Clonal vigor; it would wear off in a day or two, the scientists said, but for now he'd enjoy it. He pushed open the door.

"Hey, it's the Lieutenant!" Maria cheered, a beer in each hand. "Or is your rank now '2nd Lieutenant'?"

Hank groaned, and Maria shook her head. "Hey, it's okay, it's okay! I'm allowed to make clone jokes!" 

"Yeah, but can you make good ones?" Hank replied as he tossed a beer to the Lieutenant. "How's it feel to have a first beer all over again, boss?"

Even Sarah-Jane, normally so taciturn, had to laugh. The Lieutenant bit the cap off the bottle and raised it in toast. Everyone raised theirs as well. 

"The higher-ups are real happy with us right now," he said. "Let's keep that momentum going, and keep kicking alien ass, all right?" 

The team cheered. 

"In fact," the Lieutenant continued, "I sweet-talked them into a little present for the team. Hank, son, your arms getting tired lugging that SAW around?"

"What you got, some ultralight Retech'd version?" Hank asked, leaning forward excitedly. 

"Step outside and see," the Lieutenant said, gesturing out the door. An unmarked truck was backing up towards the hideout. The Lieutenant stepped up and pulled open the loading doors.

"Wow," Becky said, staring into the dimly-lit interior. 

"What is that?" Maria asked, eyes gleaming in excitement.

"It's beautiful," Hank added.

"Brand new, top of the line powered hardsuit," The Lieutenant said. "Complete with attachment point for anything up to and including light artillery. Slip this bad boy on like a set of long johns and it'll carry your gun for you, son."

"I GET A MECH SUIT!?!" Hank exclaimed.  

Last Two Zombicide: Invader Monsters Complete!

Having finished flocking the bases this morning, I can count these last two "Zombicide: Invader" monsters complete and ready to see action in games of Majestic 13 - indeed, one of them's destined to appear in the next game! 

First up, the "Widowmaker Abomination," a spidery thing with long, spiky legs. It's meant to sit on a clear acrylic post, but the gent who sold it to me couldn't find the base to go with it. 

 Not the end of the world! I wound up cutting off the back legs, drilling the legs and body, and using bent pieces of paperclip to reattach the legs at a different angle, allowing it to stand stably without the post and to tilt it back slightly, raising the head and front set of limbs into a more active position. 

 A little greenstuff to cover the gaps where the legs re-met the body and the fill the peg-hole in the belly and it was ready for priming.

 I kept the paint job simple - prime white, go over with GW "Nighthaunt Gloom" contrast paint, then a heavy drybrush of Reaper "Aircraft Gray." The spikes on the back and the two tentacles at the end of the body were given a little bit of a green glaze to break up the gray. 

 All in all, I'm really pleased with how this one turned out, with the repositioned legs working great - it stands just fine even without the base, all four feet on the ground, which to me is a sign of a job well done. 

The second figure didn't need any conversion; this is the "Shadow Abomination" and it reminds me very much of the "Aliens" action figures I had as a kid in the early 1990s, loosely based on the 1986 James Cameron film. Most of the Xenomorph figures in that line were molded in colored metallic plastic or black and given a heavy drybrush of colored metallics. I decided to follow that look here.

 Over black primer, I drybrushed the figure originally with Reaper "Gunmetal Blue," and when that wasn't quite what I was looking for, went over the entire figure with TurboDork "Let Them Eat Cake," a colorshift paint that varies from dark blue to plum based on the angle the light's hitting it at. I only gave it a single coat so the colorshift isn't too apparent, but it definitely yielded a deeper metallic blue color that I like a lot.

 The tubes connecting to the throat were given a base coat of Reaper "Dungeon Slime," followed by a wash of GW "Biel-Tan Green," highlighted back up with "Dungeon Slime" and finally glazed with GW "Waywatcher Green." The tongues are Vallejo "Warlock Purple" washed with GW "Druchii Violet."

 I think after this I only have 3-4 more monsters to paint for Majestic 13, which is a pretty good feeling! 

While I was at it, I finished a pair of Northstar Robots, originally released for the game Rogue Stars, to use as Destroyer Drones in future "Special" Missions against the aliens who are dropping these monsters off on Earth.

 These were dead simple - spray black, heavy silver drybrush, then going over the panels with contrast paint for a colored metallic look; on the left uses GW "Baal Red" and the right uses Army Painter "Magic Blue" speed paint. I think the blue worked out a lot better than the red but no complaints about either one of them. Picking out the eyes on Vallejo Scorpion Green completed the look. 

So that's four more for the completed side of the tracker, things are looking good...except a buddy of mine found a stash of old Wargames Factory plastic zombies to give to me. Once I receive those from him the red side will be jumping...

 

Miniatures Acquired: 184

Miniatures Painted: 168

Terrain Acquired: 2

Terrain Painted: 7

Scatter Acquired: 8

Scatter Painted: 10

 

Majestic 13: Operation Nightmare Fuel

 The final round of "debriefing" - interrogation, really - had barely concluded when the Lieutenant's burner phone chirped. He stared dumbfounded at the message.

"They've already got a mission lined up for us," he said incredulously. 

"Are you kidding me?" Becky whined. "I haven't even washed the antiseptic spray off me after the fourth round of 'checking me for alien implants' and they want me back in the field? My skincare regimen's totally shot!"

"What are they sending us out after?" Hank said quietly, an intense look in his eyes.

"Gzurn Shadow," the Lieutenant replied slowly. "Nasty bastards, nearly totally invisible at night. They'll blind you without even noticing you. Rumor has it these things'll eat an entire M13 squad and the only evidence it was ever there is that it leaves no trace of its presence behind."

He laughed hollowly. 

"They want us to collect tissue samples while we're at it."

"You know what this is?" Maria snapped. "This is workplace retaliation. Someone call HR."

"Whatever," Sarah-Jane said, her voice neutral and empty. "Let's kill the lousy thing and get it over with. Don't give the higher ups any more reasons to suspect us of anything."

*** 

The fireworks stand I got from Black Site Studio feels like a mandate to play a game on the July 4th weekend and have it on the table, so I set up my next game of Majestic 13. Fittingly, I rolled up a monster that looked challenging and a fairly nasty result on the mission bureaucracy table - "Amongst the Enemy," which meant the monster would be deploying after my team and within 6" of two of them. And to top it all off, I got a FUBAR result at the beginning of the first turn - "Civilians" were on the table! 

 

The Gzurn Shadow slithered out of the darkness beneath the billboard, and leapt across the alley to tackle Maria, its dark tentacles flailing and striking her blind. Striking again for good measure, it vanished into the night, reappearing in an alley across the street.

 Hank leapt across the divide from the shoe store to the TeeVee Shak, and sprayed the alley with gunfire - and missed! Maria struggled and failed to clear her blindness, feeling her way down the ladder from the roof of the pizza place and towards the street. Becky and Sarah-Jane both fired on the Shadow with minimal success. 

 With a howl, the Shadow hurled itself up on to the TeeVee Shak roof, engulfing Hank in its tentacles and blinding him.

 The Lieutenant closed in, taking a running leap from the roof of the OTB parlor on to a passing truck, before firing at the creature and missing; it retaliated with an area of effect ability, forcing the entire team to save versus blindness and damage, with the Lieutenant failing. 

 So right at this moment, three out of five agents are blind...

Maria managed to shake hers off, and raced down the street in the direction the creature was heading; Becky followed the monster as it squirted on to the roof of the Urgent Care. 

 It wasn't long, however, before the creature was on the move again. While the Lieutenant couldn't shake his blindness, Hank did and ran towards the creature's latest hiding place.

 The Shadow came boiling out at him, hitting him and unleashing its area of affect ability, blinding him and Maria.

 And the creature was off again.

 It was quickly making a nuisance of itself, as the Lieutenant continued to struggle to clear his vision. Hank and Maria cleared theirs, but couldn't find the creature.

"We're here tonight with a visiting alien monster..."

"Hey girl, you see something tall and twice as ugly as shit run by here?"

The team began to have a lot of trouble putting eyes on the Shadow, with it disappearing between buildings and blending into the shadows. Once spotted, it let loose with its area of effect, blinding Becky as she collected a tissue sample from the fireworks stand.

 The team managed to put enough hurt on it, chipping away bit by bit, that the Shadow went into Extremis, becoming far more aggressive and dangerous - and putting Maria and Hank out of action!

 At the end of the fifth turn, it all came down to Sarah-Jane. As long as she successfully hit the creature with her sniper rifle and didn't roll minimum damage, she'd kill the Shadow. 

 

She lined up the shot, and... 

 

Oh, no. The Gzurn Shadow limped off to menace another day as the Last Liners withdrew to salvage what little OPSEC they could.  

***

"Oh dear, Lieutenant, this is disappointing. But perhaps we allowed ourselves to get our hopes up too far over your past successes? After all, one's luck does run out, sooner or later, doesn't it?" The blond man pursed his lips and tapped his pen against the blotter on his desk.

"We're lucky we got off as easy as we did," the Lieutenant growled. "By all rights that should have been a meat-grinder. The damned monster was in our DZ waiting for us!"

"Yes, it is... interesting, isn't it, that you managed to escape with so little lasting harm done to your team? Other teams have, as you know, disappeared entirely when confronted with a Gzurn Shadow. And yet your team, save for Maria, escaped with only superficial injuries. Some might find that fact suspicious, Lieutenant."

"Where is Maria?" The Lieutenant demanded brusquely. 

"There were some unusual readings on her EEG. She's being held for further study for the time being; once we clear up those little discrepancies on the print-out she'll be free to go."

*** 

Well, that could have gone better, though to be fair when I saw the "Amongst the Enemy" bureaucracy result I was expecting much worse! Did I kill the monster? No. Did I complete the secondary objective? Also no. Rolling a "1" on the last shot of the game, which could have made all the difference, smarts some, for sure. 

Hank recovered from his injuries without issue, while Maria has a "Questionable Injury" and is going to miss the next game.  

Only the Lieutenant, Sarah-Jane and Becky had enough XP, between what they'd banked previously and what they earned this game, to trade in for ability score increases. The Lieutenant boosted Dexterity again, while Sarah-Jane and Becky raised their Acuity by one. 

I tried again to requisition a targeting HUD and got denied, and tried to requisition power armor for Hank now that I've got access to Phase 2 gear, and that also got denied. But I do have a drone control pod for the base now, which gives me opportunities to spot and call in drone strikes on monsters that I don't have direct LOS to, which is nice.  

So what's next for the Last Liners? Next mission's taking them out into the wilderness again... 

Two More Monsters for Majestic 13

 Completed two more monsters for my stable of boojums for Majestic 13 this morning, and well pleased with both of them.

First up is a "Mother-in-Law Abomination" from the board game "Zombicide: Invader," which - I have no idea why it's called that. Some of them - "Stomper Abomination," "Shadow Abomination" more or less make sense and tell you something about how it operates. Is this one going to nag me about not having a good enough job to support my wife? 

 I mostly followed the board game art for this one, though I added a bit more red glazing to the carapace and I changed the tongue color to a vibrant, alien green. 

 This was mostly done with Army Painter speed paints over a white primer coat; two coats of "Ancient Honey" for the yellow armor, and a coat of "Goddess Glow" for the pinkish flesh in between. The red glazing was my trusty old pot of GW "Bloodletter" glaze. The tongue was Reaper "Dungeon Slime" glazed with GW "Waywatcher Green," and the little teeth and the two claws on the tail are Reaper "Yellowed Bone."

 

The second one is a 3D print I got from Etsy - the figure is called an "Adolescent Dark Young," and I got it from TranscendantalPrints, who I've ordered from before. He changed the resin he's using for his prints, however, and I was less happy with what I got in this batch than I was with previous orders, and the figures in that order required some extra curing and cleaning compared to previous figures I'd gotten from him. 

 

The Dark Young is a monster from the Cthulhu Mythos, a waddling, tree-shaped creature on hoofed legs capable of grabbing and crushing multiple people at once in its tentacles. I had this one printed at 50mm tall, and largely painted it based on how the monster's traditionally depicted in game art.

 

Over a white primer coat I painted Army Painter "Dark Wood" speed paint over the entire figure, and once dry I drybrushed with Reaper "Desert Stone." Over that, I gave it an all over wash of GW "Athonian Camoshade." I added another drybrushing of "Desert Stone" over the body and legs, leaving the crown of tentacles untouched, and then glazed the tentacles with GW "Waywatcher Green."

 

After that, I painted the interior of the mouth with Reaper "Dungeon Slime" and applied some "Waywatcher Green" to emphasize the interior texture before picking out the teeth in Reaper "Yellowed Bone." I like how the interior of the mouth almost seems to glow.  

I've got three more prints left to paint from this order, and they're designs I'm really excited for; I'll probably give them one more once-over with isopropyl alcohol and a UV light to be absolutely certain they're totally cured, however, before I try painting them. Getting sent uncured resin has been a recurring problem for me with ordering 3D printed figures; these weren't the most egregiously bad (I ordered a set of printed scenic bases that went straight in the trash because they were so soft I was leaving fingerprints in them) but it's been happening so frequently that I expect these are going to be the last 3D printed figures I buy.  

 

Miniatures Acquired: 184

Miniatures Painted: 144

Terrain Acquired: 1

Terrain Painted: 7

Scatter Acquired: 8

Scatter Painted: 10