Having delighted us with the infernal battle-royale of Reign In Hell and it’s sci-fi sequel, Space Station Zero, Adam Loper and Vince Venturella brings things back to Earth for their third miniature agnostic wargame, Majestic 13. Those of you who, like us, spent much of the 1990s WANTING TO BELIEVE will have already figured out we’re in alien infiltration territory here, and indeed Majestic 13 sees you face off against an insidious extraterrestrial empire, FORCE, who seem hellbent on anally probing their way to galactic domination.

Thankfully the game’s titular super secret organisation -a motley collection of soldiers, scientists, machine gun toting priests and more- are here to put a stop to their schemes or, just as likely, die horribly trying. So yes, it’s essentially XCOM - the miniatures skirmish game, which is no bad thing, so please excuse me as I put Pretty Hate Machine on too loud and go disappoint my parents to really nail that 90s vibe. 

Anyway, in Majestic 13 you command a  5 person team and, much like Space Station Zero, the game is mainly geared towards solo or co-operative play. If you do just want to play it as a one off skirmish game that’s totally doable too, with two teams facing off against each other in a ‘training exercise’ but the real meat of the game lies in its campaigns where you must hunt down and destroy a variety of disgusting space bugs. 

Creating your unit is simple enough. Each team member has 5 stats that generally start at 2d6 + 5, you assign them to one of the 13 factions - each comes with special abilities or bonuses, allocate them a special skill from the list of Advantages and dole out some high powered weaponry and fancy equipment. Depending on your faction some of your team may have access to psionic abilities, it all pretty simple but still enough to be able to create a unique interesting team.

Each mission then sees your team, or teams, tasked with taking down a particularly horrific alien that is out and about, spreading its goo all over town. Generally speaking there’s just one intergalactic terror per team, so we’re looking at a super low model count game, played out on just a 3 foot by 3 foot map. That there’s just one alien adversary per scenario should also give you an idea of how nasty these things are, and the game features 26 different ichor dripping, spine ripping creatures to face off against.

Once it all kicks off things get messy pretty fast. Each model gets to move and perform one extra action per turn, such as shoot, climb or aid their team mates. Shooting, for example, is a fairly simple matter. You check line of sight, roll a d20 and, with the addition of that model’s combat stat, try to equal or exceed the alien’s Defense stat. Should you succeed you deal whatever damage their chosen weapon happens to do, and deduct that from the alien’s, often, hefty total. 

The alien’s actions are determined by a simple but effective AI system and each has their own range of fun abilities and attacks with which to eviscerate you with. Adding to the chaos are in-mission FUBAR events which inject a random element, such as hapless civilians or the arrival of another alien. Survive all that and in-between missions you can recover from injuries, clone new soldiers, develop your base, wrestle with bureaucracy to acquire new tech and then do it all again. Last long enough and you’ll catch the attention of FORCE and must face off against one of a number of increasingly nasty alien bosses, before finally surviving an out assault on the Earth. 

It’s fast, furious and honestly all a lot of fun. It may lack the more developed narrative campaign of Space Station Zero, but it’s still another solid little skirmish game to add to the shelf, especially if you’ve been looking for an excuse to kitbash models of Mulder and Scully tooled up with rocket launchers.

Game Design: Adam Loper, Vince Venturella
Published by Snarling Badger Studios

This feature originally appeared in Wyrd Science Vol.1, Issue 5 (Dec '23)

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