Inspired by @kinpatsusamurai‘s The Batrep, I’m returning to Snarling Badger Studios’ Majestic 13 with a little more narrative flair. We return to our running tale of an overwhelmed planetary defence force, and the questionable Space Marines who have been dispatched to help(?) them repel the forces of Chaos, namely a band of Night Lords who have been carving gouges into the arterials of the Warp all across the planet and calling forward monstrous, hulking Daemons and Chaos Spawn. While the planet suffers death from a thousand cuts, the Imperial Guard and the Blood Ravens work to try and slow the bleeding. The game’s been moving along steadily over the last few months, and there have been some ups, some downs, some wins, and some pretty devastating losses. Our crack team of expert Daemon-hunters seems to be finding their footing, all the same, and are almost ready to take on the second half of the game, titled “Phase 2,” and it promises to be an even wilder ride than the first Phase of gameplay.

We took on a possessed Necron construct and a Chaos Spawn in a munitions depot, taking one of these down more briskly than normal and nearly felling the second before a tactical retreat at the end of the game. The Blood Angel captain assigned to guide planetary defences, with had more restraint and measure than the opportunistic Blood Ravens, scavengers by nature, saw an opportunity all the same in the near-ambush that they had repelled. Reports had reached him of incursions by not only the kind of Chaos Spawn and Daemons that kept planetary defenders pinned down, but also of Helbrutes and other Daemon Engines making vanguard attacks on critical targets. And so, with the cooperation of the Techmarine Martellus and the Voxbreaker Cerion, the trap was laid. An old Promethium Refinery which could serve as a critical boon to the defenders’ energy infrastructure was “reactivated,” a prize that surely the bloodthirsty Night Lords could not pass up. The gambit paid off, destroying a Helbrute and doing enormous damage to the Lord-Discordant directing it before he was forced into a retreat at the hands of Mantis’ beefy-arms and close-quarter heavy weapons.

With this confidence, Sergeant Athineus and his Battle Brothers believed themselves capable of handling anything the Night Lords threw their way next, and perhaps that infectious sentiment reached the Guard, too. Overconfidence, however, is often more perilous than no confidence at all; when the Night Lords struck next, they did so with heavier weapons and greater numbers. What was intended as a surgical counter-strike turned into a siege, where the planetary defenses suffered heavy losses, and where finally, recovering what assets they could, the defenders were forced into a withdrawal. The light of hope burns on for this world’s survival so long as but a single Guardsman or Battle-Brother draws breath, but even as it burns more brightly and more strongly it seems the shadow of Chaos, like a dark, suffocating curtain, falls down over that light to snuff it out. Only time and the resolve of these defenders will tell if the light is strong enough, ultimately, to finally burn all the way through it.

Narrative aside, having a fantastic time with this game. We recently wrapped Game 7, so there’s two more to go before we hit Phase 2, and the game still seems to be throwing no small number of curve balls our way. Kinpatsusamurai, as always, kills it with the terrain setup every time, and the set piece for the second game of this trio blew me away. I’m eager to see how the game changes in its second half; Majestic 13 remains a fantastic casual, miniatures-agnostic skirmish game from Snarling Badger Studios and I definitely recommend it.