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Missions 21 & 22: Davy Jones' Locker


Welcome back, everybody! We start our update today by finally completing one of our earliest story objectives and building a skulljack. I don't know about you guys, but I for one can't wait to start jackin' it.


We have a little bit of money and a lot of empty rooms, so I initiate construction of the training center. This room will let us spend ability points to upgrade our soldiers. It's also where we'll be able to upgrade the power of friendship, AKA our soldier bond levels. I don't have any unassigned engineers left, though, so it's going to take a while to build.


Sensenic has finished curing his PTSD, so he's ready to go face-to-fangs with any snake the game can throw at him. Vixen has a bit of a mental block re: The Chosen, so I put her into the vita-chamber next to cure that. Also note that we're currently working on a scanning site that will lower the intel cost of the next region that we contact. A nice way to use that ability is to leapfrog out to an expensive, far away region and then set down a radio tower, making all your future connections cheaper. Hopefully I'll be able to try that for myself soon.


Everyone is in fine form and there aren't any missions knocking on our door, so let's be a little proactive here. We have the location of another ADVENT facility; it's only a one-pointer, but we might as well take it down while we're feeling strong.


Meet your Ruler Busting squad! Spoony is on frost bomb duty and Gerad is here because he's Spoony's buddy (and because we'll probably want a sniper on the team). Spook will be using mind-powers to slow the Ruler down and Nightwalker will be scouting to make sure we engage on our terms. Inquisitor is versatile and has a number of free-action-moves that won't trigger Ruler Reactions. And a healer will be essential, although Eric 'Rooster' Allen doesn't have anything in particular to recommend him over, say, Aqua.


We drop into the map and quickly find a pod of wandering enemies. Happily, we can engage these guys without drawing the attention of the Ruler.


Let's just say that a HOT time was had by all.


Eric and Inquisitor clean up and the first group of baddies is no more.


Unfortunately, moved Eric up a little too far and he got dinged by that ultraheavy turret.


Nightwalker, thanks to his very particular set of skills, makes short work of the turret (and another identical one a little farther ahead).


Tonight, the role of Alien Ruler will be played by the Archon King! After 3 years of delighting off-Broadway crowds, he's ready to step into the limelight.


Unlike our first run-in with a Ruler, this time we are fully prepared. We start by tossing in a frost bomb to prevent the next few reaction moves.


Then I have Nightwalker toss a claymore down and shoot it. Neither of these actions break stealth, which means he stays hidden, which means no free moves for the Archon King.


We take a couple shots, then I have Gerad give Spoony an extra move via teamwork so he can freeze the King a second time.


Inquisitor uses his free electric whip attack...


...then follows it up with two shots from his rifle. I like this shot of the Archon King, still encased in frost bomb ice.

Somewhere in there I also performed an experiment: having Spook put the Ruler into stasis. This works even better than the frost bomb, arguably, because the Ruler stays put for your whole turn, giving your team a chance to reposition, reload or heal up. The only downside is that you can't do any damage during that time, such is the nature of stasis.


Anyway, eventually we run out of ways to keep the King from attacking us. He launches his version of Blazing Pinions...



...which (as someone here correctly pointed out) drop as soon as anybody on our squad makes a single move. That's pretty rough! At this point, though, the entire team was at full health, so rather than try to reposition somebody I just took another shot at the Ruler. I mean have you seen how many dang HP that thing has?


After that, the King decides he's had enough. He summons a portal to escape and I have Eric take one last shot before he flees. Honestly, that encounter went pretty well - we put a serious dent into his health. I don't know if there's a way I could have avoided taking damage from the pinions, but otherwise it was a pretty flawless engagement.


Not much else of note happens on this mission. We run into another squad of ADVENT and I let Nightwalker test out Banish on a random captain. Uh...I should probably have used that on the Archon King, come to think of it. Anyway, I'll need to upgrade his clip size if I want to do any real damage with the skill.


Normally my troops look all frazzled when their friends shoot at things behind them, but not ol' Spoony. Cool as a cucumber, that one.


Anyway, we blow up the base and leave, striking a cool pose on our way out. Gerad was born in Egypt, but you can tell he's a Texan at heart.


The danger with being proactive is that sometimes you come home to find another mission waiting for you. In this case, it's time for our next Guerrilla Op, and unfortunately some of my best people are tired and injured thanks to their encounter with the King.


Not that this squad is anything to sneeze at, mind you. But I'd breathe a lot easier if I had a specialist to do some healing, or if Nightwalker was free for scouting purposes. Starting to think I should recruit a second Reaper soon...

Note that Kurt is rocking the skulljack - will this be the mission when we put it to use?


Well this is a fine kettle of fish. First turn of the mission, as I'm sending Kurt ahead for some scouting, he runs by a group of civilians and they rat him out. Collaborator scum!


This is not an auspicious start to our mission. We've got an archon to deal with and our team's positioning is all out of whack. I send Kirin in to deal some damage, but most of the squad is still on the roof of the building where they first loaded into the stage.


Gerad puts some work in with that pistol of his. The Talon rounds he has equipped also apply to his pistol shots, enabling him to do some decent damage with Lightning Hands.


Big Sexy explodes the archon, but no sooner have we taken care of one threat than another appears on the board. Well, for certain values of threatening, I guess.


The Hunter is as chumpy as ever, but our team is still on the backfoot. Exploding the Archon destroyed a bunch of cover, leading to a wide open stretch that's hard for our team to cross safely. We're also under time pressure, so I find myself using lowly half-cover square as I advance. That doesn't work out so good for Kirin here, as he takes a shot from the shieldbearer that was patrolling with the archon earlier.


Inquisitor uses Reverse-Get-Over-Here to bring himself to the shieldbearer, hit him with his claw and then immediately shoot him. Skirmishers don't hit hard, but they do hit often.


I really should have taken a second to put Matchstick back in stealth before advancing. But I didn't, so this group of two vipers and a spectre sees us before we see them.


The vipers drop down and get behind cover, but Sensenic quickly takes care of that, leaving them out in the open.


Kirin takes out one and the other is shot by I forget who.


Except that running Kirin up to melee that snake has alerted another group of enemies! This is a major hazard when using hand-to-hand classes. Ugh.


We still haven't dealt with that spectre, either, but it is hiding behind a truck. Kurt makes lemonade out of lemons by blowing them both up.


The spectre is badly wounded, but still standing. It drops down and shadowbinds Inquisitor, which would be bad for us if it had any idea where to hide itself afterward. As it is, Olli moseys over and mows it down on his next turn.


Kirin's way out in the open after slicing that snake and there are a bunch of ADVENT goons who have his number. He parries a shot from a magnetic rifle...


But then gets hit by a volley of bomblets from the advanced MEC. Which apparently set him on fire too? Geez, old K just can't catch a break today.


Sensenic drops a frost bomb to get us some breathing room, locking down the MEC and one of the troopers.


Inquisitor finishes off the big MEC, then Kirin and Matchstick take turns slicing this ADVENT officer through a concrete and iron bar fence. Unfortunately, Kirin is still burning, so he takes an extra 2 damage. Man, this is why I hate not having a specialist on the squad. We have medkits equipped, but we can't use one without being right next to him.


Compounding things is the fact that I'm making spectacularly bad use of my sniper right now. Gerad is way behind everyone, but rather than take a turn to run him to a better position, I keep taking pot-shots with low percentages and missing all of them. Then I tried using Kill Zone, a skill that allows him to take an overwatch shot on anyone who moves inside this enormous cone of blue squares. Yet somehow, nobody managed to trigger a single shot, despite him having an area the size of Montana within his sights. Kill Zone is definitely the skill with the highest disparity between how cool you think it's going to be and how cool it actually is when you use it.


Kurt takes care of this commander for us, leaving us with one more ADVENT soldier...oh, and that Chosen guy, right. For the record, all he has done this whole missing has been to slightly inconvenience our soldiers by marking them, which forces them to move before the next turn happens. The Chosen Hunter: He's a Chump (TM).


Kirin's in pretty bad shape and also still on fire, so we take a turn to stop drop and roll. Hunkering down allows a character to put out the flames, something that I normally would have done by having a specialist heal him. At the very least, he should be pretty safe there, hunkered behind some high cover.


The Hunter finally graces his with his presence, so I decide to dump him on the floor of this building by blowing up the roof that he's standing on. It doesn't do a lot of damage, but it removes his armor and also it's pretty funny.


That last ADVENT soldier is about to thaw, so I have Sensenic take a shot at him. Good damage! But maybe not such a great idea...


Freed from his icy prison, the soldier runs up onto the Hunter's roof and tosses a grenade...


...right down to where Kirin was hiding. All the concrete pillars in the world can't save him from the blast, and our elderly pirate friend is no more. Yarr.


Kurt's pissed now, so he runs into the building to take the fight directly to the Hunter. Our Chosen friend takes extra damage from close-up attacks, which I was hoping to use our Templar friend for.


We get revenge on the man who sank Kirin's ship, then Sensenic hits the Hunter with a frost bomb. The Chosen only lose part of a turn when they get frozen, so it isn't the most effective way to deal with them. But hey, every little bit helps.


The Hunter uses one of his harmless disorienting grenades to briefly stun Matchstick. That's fine, but you know what isn't fine? Have a look at the fire burning at the top left of the screen. Right next to...


...our objective. That's right, XCOM 2 is the kind of game where you can fail a mission because the computer you were supposed to hack got destroyed in the crossfire. I've had this happen because I got a little too trigger-happy with the heavy ordnance (hard to believe, but it's true). I've also had it happen because a sectopod decided to just up and step on the damn thing. I don't honestly know how I feel about this - part of me loves that it can happen, but it also sucks to lose a mission because of random chance. In this case, I don't even know what caused the computer to break. At first I thought it was the Chosen's flashbang, but looking at this shot it seems like the structural damage was already done beforehand.


Either way, this mission is FUBAR. But we can't go home until we take care of this Chosen, so Kurt gets up close to give him another piece of his mind.


I got a little overexcited and tried to EMP the Hunter. It's not very effective!


Inquisitor finally clears out the Hunter by giving him the old ONE-


[pause to appreciate the doofy look on this guy's doofy face]


-TWO.


Well that sure was a shitshow. It really goes to show how important good scouting is in this game. If I'd had a Reaper on the team, we never would have stumbled into so many groups of enemies.


Farewell, Kirin. May you sail the purple seas in the next life, ye salty dog.

I think we'll call it a day here. We may have made some mistakes, but the fight goes on. Tomorrow is another day, and it'll be time to make ADVENT pay! Pretty catchy slogan, huh?

Here's to the man that proved that you can live the dream, even if your dream is being a gaudy pirate who is also a Knight Templar who is also an operative of a secret alien killing organization... and look cool doing so.

*Salutes*

Hahaah! Sweet revenge! That's what you get for traumatizing me! Somehow. In a mission you were not present.


Unrelated: Neat how the posters you made show up as propaganda on the missions!

RIP Kirin! You were the baddest of the badasses.

Noooooo

Also I just noticed the dialogue box talking about burgers. That's certainly a thing.

Ha ha jesus christ, Tygan, what the hell.

Mission 23: My Love For You Is Like A Truck

Hey folks! We're on the verge of something big, but we have to do one last round of table-setting before we'll get the big payoff. I've played the next three missions and I tried really hard to edit the screencaps down to a reasonable number, but I just don't think I can cram all three into a single post. Instead, I'll try to put up three quick updates in the next day or two in (somewhat) shorter posts. Here we go!


We begin by completing the third and final covert op in the Warlock chain. We can run the mission to take him down whenever we feel ready, which will be...not yet. The Warlock is, of course, the most annoying of the Chosen, so he does make a pretty tempting first target.


The weapons research gacha machine spits out a set of tracer rounds for us. These give your soldier a straight +10 to aim, which is decent, but not top tier. I usually give these to one of my grenadiers, since their aim is so bad, but it's a decent fit for a sniper too.


I send Inquisitor out on a covert op that will give him a bonus to his movement - always a plus for a character who can do melee attacks. With this, we should be able to start swapping PCS chips freely between characters. Hopefully someone will disinfect them in between brains.


It's time for a supply raid! We got zambies, so this should be a piece of cake.


No sooner do we touch down than my prediction is proven wrong. The fellow who looks like he just walked out of Rapture is an Andromedon, and you'd do well to not underestimate him. We're actually getting toward the top of the tech tree, enemy-wise; not counting the unique enemies, there are only 3 enemies that I would consider more dangerous in the game.

Actually, there are 4 enemy types that we haven't seen yet, but one of them isn't as bad as the others.


We set up an overwatch trap and drop a grenade in to deal some damage and remove a bit of that armor from the big guy. The enemies scatter and I immediately put the Andromedon into stasis so I can ignore it for a bit. Note that he's just on the other side of the tree that Kurt is hiding behind, meaning he won't be hiding for long.


There we go. Kurt was up ahead scouting, so when he's revealed we're immediately spotted by another pod of enemies. Peachy.


So, once again, we're one turn into the mission and this is the situation we find ourselves in. You may feel that this is happening a lot in recent missions - I certainly do - but part of that is that the early part of the campaign went incredibly smoothly. A situation like this in the early game means dead soldiers. But here, with decent abilities and good armor, there's a reasonable chance that we'll be able to pull through without any losses. My typical mid-campaign losses are pretty consistent with what we've been seeing in the LP lately, the difference is that I usually toss a dozen rookies into the meat grinder in the early game, rather than the 1 (one) that Tyrant Squad had to bury. RIP Smashmouth.


The odds ain't great, but on the bright side, the enemies are being distracted by the horde of zombies that's just behind them. Sometimes this doesn't help, because killing a zombie is a free action for both friend and foe, but when they miss their shots it ends their turn just like it does ours. Freebie!


Archons gonna archon.


We manage to off one of the mutons, but the other one retreats. Consider this your official foreshadowing.


After having a few soldiers lay into the Andromedon, Aquadeo takes a shot and drains the last of its health. Easy peasy, right?


Uh, not so right. When you first kill an Andromedon, it goes from being an alien in power armor to...an autonomous robot suit with a thirst for blood. And a whole extra life bar. The manned Andromedon is kind of like a muton, firing plasma shots and throwing grenades at you. The unmanned version is like a berserker, charging in to deal massive melee damage while also leaving a trail of poison slime in its wake. Just delightful chaps. On the bright side, at least the second form doesn't have any armor.


Not to be outdone by the Andromedon's resurrection act, the Archon decides to whomp Joe with its spear, thrashing him to within an inch of his life. The good news is that we have a lot of healing available to us - Aqua has his usual medkit and I gave Joe a backup one because I didn't know what else to equip on him - so we heal him right back up. The bad news is that the Archon immediately does it to him again on the next turn. Don't worry, folks, he'll be fine!


The Andromedon shell charges Kurt, throwing a haymaker in the process. Thankfully, this melee attack isn't very accurate, because it hits like a ton of bricks and I'm not sure Match would have withstood it. Note the trail of acid left by the robot as it runs - you don't want to stand there.


The team focuses in on the robot suit...


And Kurt finishes the job personally. Note the dead alien flopping around, halfway out of the suit! Fun fact: they wear them because they can't breathe in our atmosphere.


This Lost learns a valuable lesson the hard way: NEVER MELEE A MUTON.


Matchstick was down to 2 HP before killing the Andromedon, and he's still surrounded by Lost with incredibly long life bars. We heal him up and the squad gives him a hand clearing out the horde. Then we send him back into stealth so he can resume scouting operations.


DUN DUN DUN. Morgi warned me that the Berserker Queen could show up on any mission and here we are. Truth be told, I actually knew this was coming; as the Lost move around, the camera occasionally shows you things that your soldiers wouldn't normally be able to see. I could tell we were in for a fight, so I took the time to heal and reload everybody before very carefully creeping up on this group.


Queenie here comes with her own corps of Muton guards to keep her company. At first I thought she had three, rather than the usual two, and I was feeling pretty salty. But then I realized: it was the Muton that got away earlier! Diabolical. Also, bad news for us. Anyway, as usual, our opening gambit is to freeze the Alien Ruler to buy us some room to maneuver. This has the knock on effect of freezing one of the Mutons. That's good - as long as we don't attack it, it shouldn't wake up for a turn or two.


To be honest, I'm still fairly new to dealing with Rulers and I'm not 100% sure what the best way to go about it is. It seems like the smart play is to focus on them exclusively until they're dealt with, since the penalty for leaving them alive is so huge. We start taking shots, but the two unfrozen Mutons are shooting back. Kurt takes another bad hit.


Mutons may actually love grenades even more than I do; here's a particularly impressive one that destroyed a bunch of our cover.


You have to hand it to Kurt, dude doesn't flinch no matter how big - and close - the enemies get. Right now, the name of the game is inflicting as much damage as possible with the smallest number of moves. Our trusty plasma rifles are our most consistent damage dealers in that regard right now, so I have him take the shot despite the risk of repercussions. This hit is the last straw, and the Queen retreats to fight another day. At this point she has less than one row of HP left, so I'm pretty sure our next meeting will be our last!


Big Sexy with the clutch crit, leaving us with only two Mutons before we can go home.


*sharp inhalation through teeth*OK, Kurt's down to one HP, time to book it. That was way too close.


Spook has a very fun ability that lets him permanently mind control an enemy unit once per mission. Unfortunately, he's still a little green and we don't have good psi amps, so his success rate isn't very high just yet.


Now I know what you're thinking: NEVER MELEE A MUTON. But this wasn't a melee attack, it was VV using Blademaster as the Muton ran past her. Sadly, her strike misses the mark, his does too, so it's a wash.


When you can't win 'em over with mind control, win 'em over with force. Spook takes down the last 'Ton and we out.


Man, look at Match with the clean sweep of the leaderboard! Kurt's looking pretty smug as he takes it in. Sorry Joe, there's no prize for second-most-injured.


Da da da daaaah! Aquadeo is our very first colonel! He picks up Restoration, an incredible ability that heals and removes status effects from the entire squad once per mission. It doesn't even matter where your people are, the gremlin will find them and it WILL heal them.


Huh, Joe's scared of Archons now? That's weird.


Well look at that, a Chosen sabotage succeeded! In the end, the consequences are much less dire than I feared. An extra week to complete our current covert op is more of an inconvenience than anything else.


Ooh, this is one of my favorite random vests! The stasis vest will heal your soldier by 2 HP per turn after they take damage, up to a max of 8 HP per mission. It also gives them +2 max HP, so it makes them pretty survivable.


End of the month! Agent 47 is mad at us because we blew up the mission objective ONE TIME, but aside from that things went well. We're finally going to get a decent payday, as our next supply drop will worth more than 500 supplies. At last, a chance to buy some stuff!


On the bad news front, we've got a couple really nasty dark projects in the works. Not one, but two different projects that will lead to our soldiers getting captured. Captured soldiers have to be rescued by undertaking a special prison break mission and I do not like it, not one bit. Oh, also all of our overwatch shots are going to miss. Man, this month sucks.


But hey, new resistance order! This one will upgrade all of our weapon mods, and that's huge. Look forward to bigger clips, free reloads and more executions.


As Kurt will attest, that last mission came very close to disaster. It's time to finally complete one of the most important research projects in the game. This slimy mudball is going to be our best defense against my biggest blunders (a condition I call Commander Brain). The fact that I've made it this far without doing this research is honestly maybe the best proof that I'm pretty darn good at XCOM 2.


Our training center is complete! Not only can we use this to increase the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP, but we can start spending AP to get BONUS ABILITIES for our soldiers! And there's no place I'd rather start...


...than with our cowardly grenadier, Sensenic. That's right, Joan's finally going to learn Shredder!(!!!) Not only is he borderline unkillable, but now he can actually destroy armor. You know, like a grenadier does!


Joan isn't the only one getting an upgrade. Every soldier has their own personal pool of AP that I can spend, plus we have over 100 communal points to distribute. For his valor in the line of duty, and as repayment for all the broken ribs, we're going to give Matchstick Run and Gun. I also pick up:

• Implacable for Vixen (gives her an extra move any turn where she kills somebody)
• Shredder for Gerad (always take Shredder!)
• Revival Protocol for Eric
• Combat Protocol and Lightning Reflexes for Aquadeo (versatility is a specialist's greatest ally)
• Lightning Hands for Ted (no sharpshooter should be without it)

...and probably a few others I forgot about. We'll be saving some AP to spend as soldiers' purchasable abilities are revealed, but that's a pretty good start.


We also stick Aquadeo and Vixen into the friendship chamber. In three days they will emerge, less stoppable than ever before.

Now all of that was pretty great, and you'd be right to think that's plenty of upgrades for one post. But this is E3 week, and in the spirit of the great press conferences, I have One More Thing for you:


It's POWERED ARMOR, and it's available on Nintendo Switch right now!


Here's Aqua showing off the latest model. It's got curves! It's got lights! It's the only thing standing between you and 3 tons of angry Muton! And you can have this upgrade for your whole squad for only one extremely expensive payment of 300 supplies. Good thing we just got paid, huh?

Well, folks, hope you enjoyed the show. That's gonna do it for today, but I'll be back real soon with the next missions as we put the pieces in place for something big. Hasta luego; see you soon!

Kind of weird that, considering the only part left of the alien in power armor... is the armor!

*Bravely volunteers for field test!*

See? We all get there eventually. Life... uh... finds a way.

Morgi? Is that like a corgi version of Mogri?

My armor sort of looks like the medieval armor illustrations you might see for Japanese video games. That's kind of neat.

If they won't join you then beat 'em. Uh... That's how that phrase goes, right?

Can Psi Ops join in that fun or is their only option spending some "me time" in the Psi Lab?

Where's the "say a thing and a person will draw it" thread when you need it?

"Friendship Chamber!" is a fun thing to yell out loud in a gritty voice.

Aw man, things are getting intense! What's the estimated progression through the game at this point? Halfway through? 2/3 done?

That's actually the Warlock armor, which is in my character customization pool because of the ADVENT armor mod I initially downloaded for Morgi the Corgi. I accidentally assigned it to a bunch of people without realizing, because it doesn't look like the Warlock armor until you get to armor tier 2. And then I think it stops looking like it at armor tier 3 - I guess we'll find out soon. Anyway, for a hot minute we had a whole bunch of people running around with sci-fi codpieces.

Psi ops get an even better deal: by spending enough time in the psi closet they can learn every skill available to the class for free! Sadly, they don't get any skills borrowed from other classes, but they're still extremely powerful nonetheless. As for friends, I'm pretty sure psi ops can have them. But friendship is earned on the battlefield, and Spook hasn't run enough missions to get close to anyone just yet.

That's a pretty good question! We're entering the last third of the tech tree, so on that front we're quite far along. But we still have three Chosen to deal with and another 5 or so story missions left to end the game. I'd say we're maybe 60% of the way done? I expect we'll have played a total of around 40 missions once this is all said and done.

Mission 24: Jack Attack


It's part two of our three-part lightning series! Today we're dealing with another Retaliation mission, and this time the aliens bought something new to the party.


Say hello to chryssalids! I'll give any long-time XCOM players a moment to hyperventilate before I continue.

...

Now then, here's the thing. In X-Com: UFO Defense, chryssalids were a Big Deal. In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, chryssalids were a Big Deal. But here in XCOM 2? Medium deal at most. The thing is, while our delightful bug monster friends still run fast and hit hard, in XCOM 2 they don't show up until the late game, when your squad can generally deal with them without breaking a sweat. Sure, they have a point of armor now, but we have PLASMA WEAPONS. They do have one new trick, though: they burrow into the ground and pop out when you walk near them, like icky slashly little land mines. The game gives you a quick shot of the chryssalids burrowing at the start of the mission to let you know that you'll have to be careful going forward. Stepping near one will get your soldier stabbed unless you have people set on overwatch to kill the chryssalid the second it pops up.


The first enemy we actually have to deal with is this superheavy turret. I don't know why I didn't just have Nightwalker pop it, but for some reason I decided to try EMP grenading it and then hacking it.


Now that's a fine plan and all, because having one of these things on our side would make the next turn or two very pleasant, but we have a problem: there's a dark project currently active that makes hacking stuff really hard. Eric has the skulljack equipped, which boosts hacking, and even with the buff from the EMP grenade, our odds of success are lousy at best.


I might take a gamble if it was a 50% chance to take control, but I'm not going to waste a turn flipping a coin just to disable it. We have more...permanent ways of doing that.


As Nightwalker creeps forward, he spies a regular confluence of enemy pods. Not all the chryssalids are burrowed, some of them are just walking around like regular folk.


I think everybody knew how this was going to go. The classic double explosion opening takes out the entire pod of bugs, but sadly the blast doesn't catch the ADVENT troops. Now, the eagle-eyed will have spotted the car and may be wondering why I didn't explode that instead? The answer is civilians; it's never a good idea to do a bunch of damage outside your field of view when you're sharing the map with civilians that need saving.


We haven't dealt with the first group of ADVENT yet, but another has strolled into the area of operations. They haven't spotted Nightwalker yet, so he drops a claymore into the middle of the group...


...and Gerad lights the fuse.


Unfortunately, one of the buried chryssalids pop up and decides to take a chunk out of Spoony.


Spoony repays it in kind...


...but gets hit again the next round. Chryssalids:Spoony::Archons:Joe.


At this point we are surrounded by a large number of ADVENT soldiers. A lot of them are wounded, but not enough are dead for my liking.


Adding insult to injurt, one of our civilians also drops its disguise and turns into a faceless. Eric lays into it, although the giant piles of goop have more HP than a single plasma shot can burn off.


With something like 6 enemies spread across the field in front of him, Gerad once again decides to gamble on Kill Zone. How does it go?


Well. In the end, he only takes two shots, one of which misses. That means he could probably have just lined up a shot on an exposed enemy and had as much success, only without the crushing disappointment. Kill Zone very occasionally lives up to its potential, but most of the time it's a mixture of missed shots and inexplicable failures to trigger.

Give it to a grenadier, though, and then you're really in business.


Sensenic is kind of all alone, up close to the enemies, but at this point I kinda take it for granted that he can't be killed.


Oof, that's a nasty-looking hit from the faceless. They don't actually do that much damage, but the animation really sells it.


Spoony clears out the faceless for Eric. Note the psionic rift that Spook put down earlier; it dealt some damage to the first ADVENT we ran into and also exploded that car! Rift isn't nearly as powerful as it used to be in Enemy Unknown, but I like that it can trigger explosions. It also has pretty long range, though not as long as a skill he'll be picking up later.


Eric's all outta ammo, but he is packing a skulljack and that is an ADVENT commander...


HACK THE PLANET! We finally complete one of our oldest mission objectives, getting our first (and quite possibly only) kill with the skulljack in the process. Hacking the commander is a fairly...invasive process. It also gives us a chance to pick up some goodies (typically intel), although in this case it didn't pan out for us. I do like how the hacking menu pops up on Eric's arm before the body starts to get cold, though, that's a nice touch. Anyway, mission accomplished! But what's this?


A swirling vortex of psionic energy materializes on the battlefield, bringing with it...


...one of the most annoying enemies in the game! This is a codex: it's the internet given form and it's just as hateful as you would expect cased on that description. Codices have a variety of psionic attacks, including a super annoying one where they force a bunch of your soldiers to waste a turn reloading their weapons and moving away from a time-delayed rift explosion. Also, every time you hit them, they split into two new codices and teleport around the battlefield. They are just unbelievably tiresome creatures.


And that's why we aren't going to give this one a chance to do anything. Nightwalker Banishes the codex back to the murky depths of 8chan, making very worthwhile use of the single charge he gets per mission.

So now you know why I waited so long to pursue any of the story objectives. From now on, codices can appear in missions as a regular enemy type. They aren't all that dangerous once you know how to deal with them, but they are supremely annoying and there's no good reason to put up with them in the early stages of the game. It's a lot like the alien base assault in XCOM:EU - the game basically rewards you for putting off the story content until your squad is over-leveled.


Aw man, my civilians! This guy gets a raw deal and a chryssalid takes him out. In Enemy Unknown, dead civilians would turn into zombies, and if you didn't kill them quickly they would crack open and another chryssalid would pop out.


XCOM 2 cuts out the middle man by simply turning characters killed by bugs into chryssalid factories. This pile of goop here will spit out a baby chryssalid with reduced health once per turn for the next three turns. You can either wait it out, killing the weaker bugs as they appear...


...or take down its (very large) reservoir of HP to shut the factory down.


With all the regular enemies dead, our last disguised faceless shows itself and is promptly dealt with. Mission accomplished!


To celebrate their victory, the squad reissues their 1982 debut LP.


Using the skulljack may have cursed us with unlimited codices, but hey, we also get a block off the Avatar project meter! Gotta take your victories where you can.


Spoony owes his life to copious healing, so we decide to invest a little more in XCOM's health care system. Once the medkits have been upgraded, the price to build them will go up by 1 (one) viper corpse. That can be really annoying when you don't have any lying around, so I build a spare kit before starting the research - all the kits we have will be upgraded for free once it's done.


We connect to the (new) arctic, which means we have half of Asia under our sway! There's hope yet for our remaining rookies, if I can get the continent bonus we'll be able to train them up to sergeant rank at the GTS.


Chosen Hunt covert ops usually come with a certain amount of risk, but every once in a while you get a freebie like this. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I immediately send a team on this mostly-safe outing.


What the- there weren't even any vipers on that last mission, Joan! You were exploded by a robot!


Spook picks up one of my favorite psi abilties, Fortress. With this, he can literally toss a grenade at his feet and be none the worse for wear. Now, I was going to take him out of the pod to give Esha a turn to learn some new tricks, but then I saw the list of skills available to T Baum next:


Hey, you know how it's cool when two teammates are friends and one of them can give the other an extra turn once per mission? Yeah, pretty cool. Well what if you could do that to anybody on the team, multiple times during the mission? Yes sir, Inspire is here and every other ability in the game feels bad in comparison. You could give a psi op this one ability with nothing else and I would still probably take them on any mission they were available for. So clearly we've gotta get this one for Spook. Sorry Flawgic, you'll get your turn soon!


Speaking of overpowered, we finish researching the unique physiology of the faceless and our reward is this: THE MIMIC BEACON. Every one of these things that you bring in to battle is basically the equivalent of a get out of jail free card, except they're for tactical blunders instead of jail. Enemies just hate these fake XCOM soldiers and they will attack them almost completely to the exclusion of everyone on your squad, buying you a turn to regroup and thin the enemy numbers. I honestly should have built this thing the very minute it became possible to do so, so consider the last 10 missions to be me showboating.


Ooh, beam cannons! These are basically only for grenadiers, but that's not going to discourage me. Plasma gatling guns: what's not to like?

Also we built a radio relay in the (new) arctic, but that's not worthy of its own screenshot.


Hachimachi, that's a lot of knowledge! Chumpy or not, if the Hunter manages to fill that bar all the way up, we're going to be stuck dealing with a special mission that I'd rather avoid. Looks like somebody just moved to the top of our hit list! Will we be able to deal with the Hunter before it's too late? You'll find out soon, as our week of XCOM continues!

For my money, the Hunter rewards are the best, and it's not even close.

I guess that's approriate since I'm a Warlock.

Oh.. Uh, is there some different armor I should wear now?

I'm glad that I can do what makes you happy, Commander. *salutes*

Looks like I'll start having lots of opportunities to make friends soon. ... But that means I'll be going on more missions...

Maybe you can argue that you're crazy and so you're not fit to go on any more missions. I'm sure there won't be any kind of catch.

If he didn't want to go on missions, he wouldn't have chosen to be a psi op.

No rational person would argue this point, I think. However, the Warlock is by far the most annoying of the Chosen, so it's still worthwhile to deal with him first...when the Hunter isn't breathing down your neck.

Mindshields >>> Warlock, though.

Ideally, you want them squad-wide, but it's hard to justify the expenditure. Now that you have a Psi-Op, though, you grab Solace (I think is the name? the AOE brain immunity) and slap a couple on key members, maybe bring along a DE-571L unit if you managed to keep it out of the scrapyard. The Warlock goes from nightmare to joke really quickly.

Even wasting a bunch of accessory slots on mindshields is enough to annoy me, though. Look forward to that for the final mission of the game.

Mission 25: Hail to the King

Let's see if we can knock one last quick one out before the weekend! I'm going to post this first and edit it later because I'm in a rush and I like to live on the edge.


Another month, another round of guerrilla ops. I've made my feelings re: captured soldiers pretty clear, so we'll be trying to shut down this particular project with extreme prejudice. We're also starting to be due for another engineer, so the reward lines up nicely.


No Reaper today, but otherwise this is a pretty tight looking squad.


This mission features an abundance of "savage" enemy types, so expect a lot of aliens and not very many ADVENT. Our first group is just casually strolling along the top of this subway train, which is a pretty cool look if I'm being honest.


Of course you know I'm not going to let that opportunity slip by! We toss grenade up there, dealing some damage and destroying the roof. This drops them down a level, doing a bit more harm in the process. Not the most effective use of the old "destroying the floor" tactic, but satisfying nonetheless. Dropping turrets down is a guaranteed kill, so it's worth trying next time you see one on a roof.


We deal with the mudmen without too much difficulty, but Kurt has to leave stealth to finish the last one off. This becomes a problem when we run into our next pod, a group of chryssalids, and they end up getting the drop on us.


Every single chryssalid makes a beeline for Inquisitor, who is only saved by the fact that he's against a wall and only two of them can actually get into position to deal damage to him.


The squad comes to his aid...


...but we all know what they say about those that help themselves.


A little farther up, we find the objective. It is strangely unguarded?


Ah, there we go. Hacking the terminal triggers a group of reinforcements to drop in. But that's not all...


Look who was waiting for us! It turns out the objective was a little more guarded than I realized.


And hey, guess who's still afraid of Archons? Gotta hand it to Joe, though - he fights back the fear and maintains control, even in the face of the literal King of the Archons. He's actually a little calmer than I am, at this point.


The squad overwatches the group of ADVENT that drops in, but there's an advanced MEC in the squad and it only takes minimal damage in the exchange. The priest takes the brunt of the damage and puts himself into stasis out of desperation.


It looks like somebody isn't very happy to see us!


Welcome to yet another crappy situation! We frost bomb the King to slow him down and buy ourselves a bit of breathing room.


Kurt immediately gets to work on the Archon King, because clearly he don't give a fuck about royalty.


VV is equally unimpressed, landing a huge crit on our flying pal. Maybe it's just a ranger thing? I know who I'm bringing on our next facility assault mission!


The King does his pinion trick, leaving us with only a single turn to reposition before the exploding starts. But you know who has a free grappling hook ability? It's Inquisitor! He uses it to zip away from the explosion zone without triggering a reaction from the Ruler.


The pinions land in a spectacle of sound and fury, but it doesn't signify much. We take a little damage, but the bigger problem is that Vixen is knocked unconscious by the blast.


I cannot for the life of me recall why I suddenly decided that Inquisitor should be focusing on the MEC. Maybe it was to properly finish off the priest at the same time? I think that was it. We get some armor off the MEC at the same time, so I guess it's a somewhat efficient move.


Matchstick is the one who pays the price for that grenade, though, as the Archon uses its reaction to hoist him up into the sky. At first I was worried he would be abducted, but that's not how the Alien Rulers roll.


Now this right here is a perfect situation to test out our newest friend, the mimic beacon! Aqua tosses it into a tempting spot, where it draws the attention of the vanilla archon and one of the ADVENT soldiers. They waste their turn destroying it, instead of making our lives more difficult. Go mimic beacon!


Yowch, that's a nasty hit for Spoony.


Joe's Lightning Hands are up, so he takes a shot at the MEC. Look at that damage! The bluescreen rounds he has equipped affect the pistol as well as his sniper rifle.


Next, he tries to free Kurt from the King's grasp, but to no avail.


We missed our chance to interrupt the King, so it completes its move by slamming Kurt down on the concrete floor. He takes some damage and is stunned by the move.


With Kurt stunned, VV unconscious and Spoony in rough shape, now is the time to bust out Aquadeo's limit break: Restoration! His gremlin zips around the map, healing and reviving everyone on the squad. You only get one charge of Restoration per mission, but its worth its weight in gold.


Vixen is back in the action, but we've still got something of a numbers problem here.


Easy freezy! Now available in Asian markets, just look for Easy Freezy Japanesey at your local store.


Insquisitor sees a chance to finish off the MEC and takes it. That leaves the Ruler another free move, which he uses...


...to fly right past our blademaster! More free damage for us!


The regular archon comes on over and it's starting to get crowded in Aqua land.


Well hell, Joe got mind controlled. Guess I didn't kill that priest after all.


Inquisitor also takes a nasty hit, but we're about to start turning the tide here.


VV puts a definitive end to our priest problems...


...and Joe snaps out of his trance long enough to put a serious hurt on the Archon King. With that, the Ruler decides he's had enough for one day and makes a run for it. We don't manage to kill him on his way out, but we did a huge chunk of damage to him and he'll be easy pickings next time he shows up.


The squad cleans up the remaining enemies and we're go for extraction. Nice repeater proc, there.


Looking good, team! No rules, and no Rulers.


Remember how I excited I was yesterday about the psi op's Inspire ability? Skirmishers get it too! I also buy Inquisitor a Skirmisher ability that's like a poor man's bladestorm. He'll never do the same kind of damage that VV does, but I'm happy to settle for a free 6 HP attack on every enemy who comes within range. It's especially useful when Lost or chryssalids are around.


We completed the advanced explosives project at the Proving Grounds! This upgrades all of our grenades to bombs, increasing their damage and explosion radius. It also makes our EMP bombs shut down enemy units, which is super duper useful.


We finish part two of the hunt for the Hunter and them immediately embark on part three which...is also surprisingly risk-free? I don't know what the deal is here, but I'm not going to give ADVENT a chance to make things worse. Unfortunately, I need a high-level soldier for this mission and Spook is one of the only ones who isn't injured or tired right now.


The friendship chamber now welcomes Sensenic and Nightwalker. Have fun in there, you two!


Time for all the dark projects that we didn't stop to activate. ADVENT carrying a bunch of extra explosives around might worry me more if we didn't have someone on our team who could detonate them with her mind. It'll be a good month to start field-testing Esha!


This, on the other hand, is much more of an issue. I'll be sure to remember this on my next missions (ha ha no I won't). But even this is nothing compared to...


...LEFT BEHIND. Say goodbye to covert ops, because we won't be running any until this dark project is over! Or not many; sometimes we'll be able to neutralize the risk of capture, but currently there aren't any missions I can run where this is an option. What a pain.


In happier news, East Asia joins the resistance! We're only one country (and one radio tower) away from having the continent bonus I've been eyeing for so long.


We're running low on power, so I built another relay on top of our second alien power conduit. We should be good for a while with this.


New friends time! Joe and Inquisitor are now the bestest of buds (level 1).


We finish researching beam cannons and follow that up with an instant archon autopsy (try saying that five times fast). This unlocks better s-words for our rangers! I'm into it.


We get a breakthrough that reduces the cost of building the shadow chamber. Not incredibly exciting, but we're gonna have to build one eventually and I'm always short on supplies, so I go for it.


Meanwhile, in the psi lab, Esha picks up Schism, which lets her do a bit of damage when she uses Insanity (which applies status effects to one enemy). And check it out, she can start working on Inspire next!


We completed the last leg of the hunt for the Hunter. That's good! But Spook was injured on the mission and will be out for a while. That's bad!


Also, this is what every mission on this page looks like now: captures and ambushes for days. What a drag.


Month's over! We're starting to pull in a really respectable amount of supplies each month, this will really help in gearing up the squad for the big missions to come.


Venom rounds! They still aren't what I was hoping for, but these do +1 damage and inflict poison on anything with a circulatory system.


Excellent, time to get ourselves some plasma sniper rifles.


We pick up some supplies and immediately spend them all on improved gatling guns and plasma swords. With all these goodies in hand, I think we're finally ready...


...to take down our first Chosen. The Hunter has earned himself the honor of being our first target, since he's so close to filling up his knowledge meter. This is going to be a long, hard mission, but at this point I'm pretty sure we can handle it. Powered armor, plasma weapons and...


...an experienced squad that is loaded for bear. I really wish Spook was available right now, but instead we'll be making use of our new beam cannons by running double grenadiers. We're ready to put the hurt on the Hunter for the very last time. Join us next time, when we take him out or die trying!

I keep thinking the King of Archons is just wearing a sports bra.

But I'm not crazy - I really am immune to fire, poison, acid and explosions! Here let me show you. *picks up a grenade* Oh, all of you might want to step back a few feet...

Chief, I think maybe when this is all over you should consider doing something to address your addiction to explosions.

Oh man... I hope I wasn't ravely wounded again. That is not as fun as it sounds. Did I at least finish my training as a psionic motivational speaker?

You don't understand, nobody understands me!
Don't you see they're so, so... scaly, and slippery, and cold and... how can anyone not fear them?!
I knew a simple Dragon Ball magic bath wouldn't be enough.

Aw yeah, it's on now! (As long as there are no snakes that is. Please let there be no snakes... or things that may remind me of snakes, such as, dunno, robots)

Hey, could you keep it down? I might be ravely wounded here.

Mission 26: The Hunter Becomes etc etc


We're in! The team smashes through the roof of the Hunter's lair in a not-particularly-stealthy fashion. Thankfully, we've got our Reaper with us, so at least one person managed to be really quiet when they blew their C4 charges.

Might as well get settled in, because we'll be here for a while. Chosen assassination missions are long, two-part affairs that always play out in the same way. We're going to start by scouring this fairly run-of-the-mill ADVENT-type facility for a way forward.


Complicating matters is the fact that we have not one...


...but two groups of enemies patrolling on opposite sides of the room ahead of us. Neither one of them wants to come into the middle of the room, they just keep entering and exiting from their respective doorways.


I spend a few turns biding my time, hoping to either get both groups together (for some good old fashioned explodin') or to pick off one before the other can show up.


Predictably, I mess it up and we get spotted by both groups at the same time. Peachy.


Well, when life gives you lemons, make life take the lemons back explode the lemons a bunch of times. We drop in a gas bomb, followed by a regular old plasma grenade, on the four ADVENT soldiers who had the bright idea to bunch up on the right side. This doesn't kill any of them, but it softens them up a bunch and also just makes me feel better.


Our squad isn't actually in the room that is being invaded from both sides, thankfully. We are, for the most part, posted up in the room below that, meaning that both groups of enemies need to converge in the middle before they can run up on us. Gerad, meanwhile, has an unobstructed view of the central room. It's time, once again, to spin the Wheel of Kill Zone! We start off with a decent hit on a charging berserker Muton.


Of course, berserkers have a whole lotta HP, so it manages to charge through the fire and smash Vixen. Not before she gives it the old Bladestorm, though!


This looks really bad, but actually it isn't. Purifiers have incredibly poor aim and this one managed to light everything around Spoony on fire without actually hitting him.


This, on the other hand, looks pretty harmless but is in fact quite bad! One of the shieldbearers manages to put shields up on about 6 of the remaining, enemies, adding a good 30 HP to the enemy pool. Ugh.


Gerad takes another shot and AAARGH I FORGOT THEY ALL HAVE LIGHTNING REFLEXES NOW. Damn it, two weeks ago Mike was right!


But just when I was about to give up completely on my Kill Zone strategy, this happened. Apparently, a repeater proc takes precedence over Lightning Reflexes? Whatever, I'll take it! This brings Gerad's Kill Zone total up to one hit, one instant kill and one miss - actually not too bad, considering!


We're still pretty outnumbered, so it's time for Virtual Aquadeo to make the ultimate sacrifice for the team. See you time time, fake friend!


Ugh, look at all those shields.


Well, no point complaining about it. The team gets to work on whittling down the weakest of the enemies.


Along the way, Spoony gets shot. Then, in order to reposition, he has to run through the flames and set himself on fire. It's, uh, all part of my grand strategy.


It's a nasty fight, and we use up a lot of our consumables (healing, grenades, abilities) in the process, but we eventually drive them back.


Look at our boy, just shredding away! I'm so proud.

Now that our initial (two) encounter(s) is taken care of, we can start looking for the exit that will take us to phase two of this mission. The base that we are in is pretty sprawling and there are multiple paths open to us. Normally, this means I would exhaust every wrong option and fight every enemy in the place before reaching our destination.


But not today! I luck into immediately finding the right place...along with trio of archons and their andromedon pal. The worst part is that Nightwalker scouted this room from the doorway and didn't see them, but when Sensenic posted up at the other side of the same door he activated the pod and they got the drop on us.


Still, 4-v-6 isn't nearly as bad as the 8-v-6 odds we had in our last fight. Sensenic gets whacked by an archon, but he survives and we quickly whittle down the andromedon's first health bar. Fun fact: did you know that the andromedon's second form is considered a robot? We shut him right down with our EMP bomb, buying us a turn to focus on the archons.


We put a bunch of them on ice, then make with the shooting.


Just imagine another 6 screenshots of our people shooting at Archons, because that's what happened.


With that group of enemies cleared out, the squad is now free to stand on the mystic circle. Once everyone is in place (and healed and reloaded), we activate the teleporter, which takes us in...


...to the Hunter's lair. Welcome to part two of our mission! The second half of every Chosen's final mission is an exact copy of this room, which features some futuristic-looking architecture...


...as well as one of these. This is the Hunter's sarcophagus, a technomagical doohickey that keeps bringing him back from the dead. Breaking it is now our number one priority!


Before we can, though, we have to clear out the small group of enemies patrolling this place.


Along with the andromedon, we have an elite specter to take care of. I have a new technique for dealing with these guys - park VV next to them and shoot! If the initial shot doesn't kill them, the bladestorm will as soon as their turn starts. Bladestorm is the best.


A lone andromedon isn't much of a problem for our squad at this point. Check out the cool tracer rounds that Spoony is using!


The way is clear now for us to advance. When we get within sight of the sarcophagus, a cutscene is triggered and our good buddy the Hunter warps in to monologue for a bit before fighting us.


�\_(ツ)_/�


Here's how this is gonna go. First, we have to kill the Hunter. Once he's dead, we'll have about two turns to damage the sarcophagus before he is reanimated. If we don't destroy it during that time, we'll have to kill him again to get another window of opportunity. The Hunter also gets periodic reinforcements, but killing them doesn't actually get us anything; the mission ends the next time we kill the Hunter after the sarcophagus has been destroyed.


Sensenic peels off the Hunter's armor (YES)...


...aaaaaaand Spoony's repeater procs, triggering the instant kill. Did I mention that repeaters can kill any enemy in the game? Cause they sure can!


With the Hunter taking a little nap, we get to work on the obelisk. To my great dismay, you can't use Banish on the sarcophagus...probably because that would make things too easy. Instead, we pile damage on the old-fashioned way. This thing has a very large amount of health, so we'll be working on this for a bit.


In the meantime, reinforcements start warping in to cover the Hunter during his revival. Killing these guys isn't strictly necessary, since the mission will end even if they're alive, but you can't leave too many enemies running around unchecked, it's bad for your health. Gerad does some due diligence.


As does Vixen. Man, it's a total repeater party in here today. Also, do you see that big 50 on the HUD? That's how far along the Hunter is in his resurrection. Every turn that number goes up by (I think) 25, which means we realistically have two rounds to do our damage before we'll be dealing with that guy again.


Back to work on the sarc'. Mostly I just wanted to show off the sweet muzzle flash on the Reaper's rifle. Remember, violence is wrong unless it looks really cool.


More bad guys showing up to ruin our fun. Some of the early reinforcements were small fries, but it's getting harder to ignore folks like this archon. Still, I really want to max out the damage that I do to the obelisk before our window closes.


Aquadeo gets in the last hit and the sarcophagus shatters! This may actually be the first time I've destroyed one before its Chosen could respawn. Feels good, man.


Just a little aside to show off the venom rounds that Nightwalker is using. They do extra damage and will poison organic enemies. I don't think I knew that archons were organic!


Anyway, once the sarcophagus is destroyed, the Hunter reappears on the field. He only has 75% health because we didn't let him complete his regeneration cycle. There are still a few various aliens to deal with on the map, but the mission will end as soon as this guy goes down.


Sensenic opens up with a brutal hit, removing the armor (again).


Vixen follows up with a slash, which does extra damage because the Hunter is weak to close-range attacks.


And Nightwalker finishes him off with - what else? - Banish. Actually, if we're being honest, my plan was to use Banish to take him from 75% all the way down to zero...but Nightwalker didn't have enough bullets left in his clip. So we just did a little baby Banish with only 2 shots. It did the trick, though!


The Hunter reappears in front of his sarcophagus to give us an extremely bad (though mercifully short) death monologue.


BWA HA HA you're such a tool.


And that's it! The mission is over and there are 1/3 fewer Chosen left in the world. Completing one of these missions is always a bit of an ordeal, mostly because they are so long. Depending on the reinforcements that appear, it can also get a little dicey toward the end. The key is to remember that reinforcements only appear when the Chosen is regenerating. If you start to get outnumbered, let the Chosen live for a turn or two while you clean house, then you'll be in a better position to damage the sarcophagus once you take them down again.


To celebrate, we get some promotions! I give Vixen Implacable, which lets her take a bonus turn (move only) if she gets a kill. This will let her get up close on an enemy, kill it and then run away again in the same turn. High risk, high rewards: The Ranger Story.


SCORE. The best part about killing a Chosen (even more so than not having to deal with them anymore) is that you get to take their weapons. We'll need to run these through Tygan's lab before we can use them, but the payoff will be huge. These weapons will turn any sniper that wields them into a tiny god of 90s Squaresoft proportions.


Not to end on a downer, but all this killing and being shot at is taking a toll on poor Aqua. If you don't give soldiers some time to rest between missions, they can become Shaken, which is basically like being hurt. This is another way that the War of the Chosen expansion encourages you to keep a larger roster. If you pick 6 favorite soldiers and use them for every mission, they'll all have burnouts before long. Oh well, he'll be fine once we give him a chance to rest. It's not like he's afraid of snakes or anything.

Well folks, we did it! One Chosen down and the rest will follow soon. We've already got the locations for the Warlock and the Assassin, all we really need is to let the squad recover a bit before launching our next attack. The missions are going to be a bit repetitive, but we'll get some totally sweet rewards and a bit more breathing room for our troubles. Until then, vigilo confido!

Your propensity for opening with terrible engagements is somehow miraculously matched with an ability to get yourself out of them. I don't know how you keep the squad alive time after time.

Yay! I'm helping!

I am very pleased with this.

Finally, some recognition...
That's... *sniff* that's all I ever really wanted... ;_;
For you to acknowledge me, da...I mean, commander. *sob*

Wait, is that... a Berserker muton skin rug?
*ew*
Disgusting *and* in bad taste. You go, XCOM.
Vigilo, confido & ugly decoro.

True that. XD

Honestly, I think it's just that my level of focus is proportional to the amount of trouble that I'm in at any given moment. I usually play late in the evening when I'm pretty tired, so it's easy to do something dumb in the early minutes - then the adrenaline kicks in and I start paying attention. Thankfully, we're at a point when I can easily soak up a dumb mistake or two per mission thanks to our armor, the mimic beacon and (usually) stasis. The early game is much more unforgiving, although the penality for losing a low-level soldier is also lesser, so it kind of balances out. But for us to lose someone at this point will either require some serious bad luck or else a string of 2-3 consecutive bad decisions on my part.

Well, that or sheer attrition on one of the longer missions.

If you're pleased now, just wait until you get the Assassin's shotgun and your damage potential doubles instantly.

Oh man, if you think that's in bad taste, you're gonna love what happens when we beat one of the Alien Rulers!

Mission 27: That'll Teach Me


Welcome back! Last time we were triumphant in the face of adversity, ending the "threat" of the Hunter once and for all. That's super, but the team is going to need some time to recover before we can do a mission like that again. We'll be depending on our 2nd and 3rd lines for a little while until the A team gets back on its feet.


Next time we check the world map, we get a cutscene! This guy is an Ethereal, AKA Elder, AKA Sir Not Appearing In This Game. He's pretty mad that we killed one of the Chosen, and he spends a little while telling the two who remain that they suck.


"Tch"


Back in the psi lab, Flawgic has learned Inspire! Between that and Sustain, she now has everything a psi operative needs to succeed in life, so expect to see her on the next mission. In the meantime, we'll start her learning Domination, which definitely sounds like the kind of thing she'd be into.


For the first time in basically forever, we are flush with cash and don't have 100 different things to spend it on. That means we can finally add the last of our custom characters to the roster!


Say hello to MetManMas and JP. They won't be doing much of anything until we finish locking down Asia's continent bonus, but that shouldn't take long at this point.


The Proving Grounds are idle, so I decide to use them to build a WAR suit...which completes instantly. Did I get another continent bonus without realizing it? Anyway, WAR suits are extra tough armor that give the wearer another point of armor and allow them to wield a heavy weapon. For the record, that's the same category of weapons that we saw Destil use one (1) time before they got exploded.


The WAR suit is actually the upgraded version of the EXO suit, which I don't usually bother building. There are two grades of heavy weapon and the WAR suit can use the higher tier Powered Weapons, which can be super great. As usual, they're researched using the gacha system and they cost elerium cores to build. I really hope we'll get a blaster launcher, but all we can do is cross our fingers and see what pops out in a few days.


It's been feeling lonely on the Avenger without any cosplayers slicing things up with energy swords, so I think it's time to recruit another Templar. Not saying that anybody can replace Kirin, but actually that is exactly what I'm saying. Turns out this is one of the few Covert Ops available where we can nullify the threat of capture (and there's no risk of ambush), so we might as well get ourselves a new slashyperson. Ted will get a promotion out of the deal, which should help him catch up to our other snipers, too.


While we're making it rain on the Avenger, we decide to start constructing the Shadow Chamber. This is something you need for plot reasons, but it actually has some real-world benefits beyond that. I did some breakthrough research to reduce its cost, so we'll be getting this thing for pennies on the dollar. Like, 50 pennies, but still.


Now that we're rich, let's go buy a bunch of upgrades from the Guerilla Tactics School! I get the ones for Rangers, Grenadiers, Sharpshooters and Specialists, all of which are some flavor of "increased chances for critical hits". The ones for Reapers and Skirmishers aren't very useful, and we can't buy the (really good) Templar ability until we actually have one on our team again.


Duty calls! I believe you can choose to refuse council missions without penalty, but we really need that Intel so let's saddle up.


Here's our roster for today; you can tell we're scraping the bottom of the barrel because Sarah Koenig Ferguson is back on the squad. Not that she's bad, but I typically try to stick to our custom characters as much as possible. Also note that I forgot I had that WAR suit when outfitting the squad.


Our mission for today is to kill or capture this enemy VIP. Killing him is enough to succeed and collect the supplies we were promised, but if we want the intel too we'll need to bring him in alive. Doing so requires that you get someone to deck him and then haul his body to the extraction zone, like you do with your own wounded soldiers (minus the punching part).


Given that we don't want to kill the VIP, you might think I would be unable to start this mission with my customary explosion. But that would be severely underestimating my desire to explode ADVENTs! By placing this gas bomb at just the right angle, we can get 2/3 of the enemy pod without harming our target.


Our bomb goes off and we take a few overwatch shots without killing anybody. Big Sexy is in the best position to continue shooting, so I have both Esha and Inquisitor use their skills to give him two extra turns. He takes advantage of those to kill one of the ADVENT troopers for us.


My genius plan to bomb ADVENT has left us with a fairly large cloud of poison gas in the middle of the engagement zone, which is limiting our movement somewhat. But when you can't go to them, just bring them to you! Inquisitor pulls this guy up onto the roof and gives him the old one-two.


Well look who decided to drop in! That...makes things a little complicated for us.


Our problem is, as they say in real estate, location location location. That group of Archons is across the street and very high up, meaning they've got a good bead on us, but it's a lot harder for us to hit them back. And crossing the gap is dangerous when one of them gets to respond to every move that we make. This is where I wish I had one of our experienced snipers on the squad, as Ferguson doesn't really have the aim needed to hit a flying target from that far away.


Lotta this happening right now. We've got good cover, but we'll need to move some people up if we want to deal any damage.


Inquisitor takes the lead, avoiding an overwatch shot that I didn't know was waiting for him using Lightning Reflexes that I didn't know he had. Seriously, what is going on here? Is he somehow benefitting from the Dark Event that ADVENT is supposed to have? Is he...planning on betraying us to rejoin ADVENT??


We start plinking away at the Archon King, who thankfully doesn't have a lot of health left. We really did a number on him last time he dropped in.


Don't forget to use those free actions when facing an Alien Ruler, kids! Inquisitor's whiplash lands for reasonable damage and then he follows that up with two shots, one of which connects. He isn't hitting very hard, though - I haven't upgraded his Bullpup to plasma status yet.


The Archon King's weapon has Shredder, which is annoying because he is shooting everybody. So long, armor.


Thankfully, he follows this up with a boneheaded move where he flies through some burning wreckage (setting himself on fire in the process) and down to street level. There, he makes easy pickings for Big Sexy, who notches our first Ruler kill!


Now you may have noticed that this mission is on a timer. One thing that I forgot about while playing is that the mission timer stops ticking down whenever you're dealing with an Alien Ruler. Not realizing this, I was starting to worry about running out of time at this point. But in fact, we still had a healthy number of turns left on the clock.

Anyway, with two regular Archons left to deal with I decide to put one of them on psionic ice for a bit.


Enter: The Andromedon. These guys are a little ways away yet and honestly I don't want to deal with them at all, given that we've got a time limit here.


Kurt takes a hit from the other archon but gets a helping hand from Inquisitor in dealing with it. Inquisitor then positions himself next to the VIP so we can grab him and run next turn.


JESUS CHRIST. What was I saying last time?

So, uh, which combination of these just occurred? Well, honestly I did a bad job positioning Insquisitor, in that he had no cover from the side that the andromedon was approaching from. But also FIFTEEN FRICKIN' DAMAGE CRITICAL is not something I foresaw, tbh. I thought that pod was far enough away that they would be next turn's problem, but apparently I thought wrong!


I still don't want to deal with that andromedon but I also would prefer if he didn't liquify anybody else on the team, so let's freeze him for now. Big Daddy lookin' asshole grumble grumble.


Esha draws the short straw and goes to take care of the enemy VIP. Unless the game has any more surprises in store for us, she should at least live until next turn.


All of this is happening pretty darn close to our evac point, which is handy. I can get everyone out in about two turns once we have the target. Unfortunately, that's also exactly where ADVENT has decided to drop a pod of reinforcements. If we don't wrap things up really soon, we're going to be completely surrounded.


Flawgic clocks the VIP, then the team collectively books it for the exit.


Meanwhile, the andromedon thaws out and drops a HUGE ACID BOMB on everyone in the squad. God this guy sucks.


At this point, everyone is within range of the evac zone, but there's a group of ADVENT blocking the way. Almost everyone on the squad was hurt by that acid bomb, so I'm going to need a sacrificial lamb to trigger the overwatch fire before I can move the group to safety.


Ferguson takes one for the team, charging through a hail of gunfire. She gets hit once, but miraculously doesn't die!


With the trap defused, I run every last living soul back to the extraction point and get the hell out of dodge. Damn, that mission went downhill in a real hurry. The combination of Archon King, pincer attack and time limit turned up the heat in a big way. In retrospect, I should maybe have repositioned the team to properly deal with the andromedon's pod before grabbing the VIP. It didn't feel like we had time to do that, but it probably would have worked out better. Then again, we only lost one soldier as is, so it could have been worse.


Looking pretty battered, there. I was hoping to get the troops in shape for another run at a Chosen, but it looks like we'll have to wait a little longer - especially if we want a competent medic on the squad.


As for Inquisitor, he will be missed (exclusively) by me until such time as I can recruit another Skirmisher. I've never been the biggest fan of the class, but I feel like Drask here proved his worth over the course of the campaign. However, as one of the special faction classes, he's actually much easier to replace than a regular soldier - hopefully I'll get the chance before long.


We get a couple promotions for surviving the meat grinder: Kurt picks up Bladestorm and Big Sexy gets extra grenades.


For killing the Alien Ruler, we get...the body of the Alien Ruler! Which is more useful than it looks. We also get this enemy VIP in an extremely tight suit, who we will be converting into Intel using techniques that shouldn't be discussed in polite company.


Spook, who I didn't know was in the psi tank, picks up Inspire, which I didn't know he didn't have. Uh, great! We start him learning Insanity, since it'll be a few more days before Flawgic recovers and can resume her training.


We need one more radio tower in Asia to get our quick training bonus for MetMan and JP, so let's build it here! I honestly might not bother if this wasn't an LP, because these towers are getting expensive. But that's OK, I'm loaded now. Once it's done, we'll be able to instantly add South Asia to our network and then start training up our latest recruits.


Ted's back, and he brought Templar!


Our newer, more generic Templar comes with (enough points to buy) all that you see here! It doesn't look like Scorch will ever get to be a Blademaster, so she'll never have quite the potential that Kirin had in the role, but I've never managed to keep a Bladestorm Templar alive either for what that's worth. She's higher level than Kirin ever was, so we get to buy her some fun stuff like Exchange, which swaps her position for any enemy within sight. You can get up to some fun stuff with that, let me tell you. She also grabs Fortress and Sustain in order to not follow in her predecessor's footsteps. And hey, Lightning Hands!

Honestly, being able to run a single covert op and come away with a Major level character is pretty incredible. If we get the chance to earn another Skirmisher this way it'll really help bolster the (tired, injured) ranks.


Oh right, this guy. Ugh, we're still not quite ready for this mission. In particular, I really want Aquadeo back on his feet for healing duties, but it'll be another week or so before he has recovered. We can probably wait that long, but I'm not happy with how close we're cutting this.


Speaking of rest, the squad won't be getting any any time soon! But I will, since I'm going away for Canada Day weekend. See you on the other side, folks!