XCOM 2 SG - It Continues?

[Jowy]

Playing a Legendary campaign on the side. Just completed my first Retaliation mission without casualties, but one soldier is as good as dead.. 47 days in the infirmary!!

So far the only casualty was on the very first mission, where you now face a third pod that has a Sectoid in it. It mind controlled one of my rookies and I had to put him down myself  

E: Next mission one grenade wiped out my squad of 5, RIP that campaign.

[Dreylin]

I have ran that in my single player game, can anybody remember how it appears on the map so we don't accidentally start it?

I just ran it, so I can confirm that it's a bunch of skulls on poles. It's fairly difficult to do accidentally; the 5day scan for Vahlen is a big giveaway, as is the fact that Bradford insists on coming along on the mission...

[WarriorKnight]

Retaliation Mission:

T1 - XCOM



Time to move out. Lewwyn scouts out the map since she's the only one in concealment (rescues a civilian enroute). The rest of the squad takes cover. We have 3 pods and a faceless to deal with, hopefully we can deal with the pods before we find the faceless (as long as the pods are down, we won't need to be pressured about the artificial timer).


T1 - Alien

WK shows that she's ready for business, killing a trooper with an overwatch shot:



1 Sectoid left in this pod, which takes cover. We also learn of a pod further NE:




T2 - XCOM

Situation pre-turn:



I know as long as none of the dudes can be flanked, the Sectoid will reanimate the trooper. It's also only in low cover so I can afford to just fire at it and hope for the best.

Jowy 71% - miss...
WK 51% - miss...  
Dreylin 59% -


Max damage crit! Sectoid is down. 2 more pods and a faceless to go.

Lewwyn meanwhile rescues 2 more civilians on his journey to locate the next pod. Don't want to break concealment yet.


T2 - Alien

The next pod ends turn in a very convenient spot for us:



OK pic is bad, but they are very close to Lewwyn and miraculously not in range of any other troops so it doesn't trigger. We aren't in a great position to take advantage of it but we have to before they inevitably get triggered.


T3 - XCOM

Dreylin 73% Squadsight snipe -




Pod triggers of course, but the officer chooses to move right next to Lewwyn. This breaks her concealment, but it does allow this:



We get the crit, and the officer is down. It drops loot, which we pick up immediately.



Since we're missing shots left and right, I burn a WK grenade and a Combat Protocol to guarantee the kill on the remaining trooper. 1 pod to go!




T3 - Alien

Last pod is revealed to be even further NE.


T4 - XCOM

We regroup and start heading to the last pod. We rescue 1 more civilian enroute.


T4 - Alien

Another civilian dies. The game takes a minute to load Bradford telling us something about losing civilians left and right, which steals a minute of my life I'll never get back.


T5 - XCOM

Keep moving NE. Not much pics here because nothing is happening. I have plenty of time (having killed 2/3 pods in 2/7 "turns") so the slow move and overwatch approach is the strategy I'm adopting.


T5 - Alien

Jowy triggers an overwatch shot, but misses again despite the bolt caster apparently being a more accurate weapon...

It's another trooper and a sectoid. They take cover (and I apparently forget to take a pic of their positioning). Still no faceless though, if we can kill the last pod without triggering it it'll come running straight to us and we'll have the distance to gun it down before it reaches us.


T6 - XCOM

As with the 1st pod, my main target is the trooper. The sectoid will reanimate a dead body before attacking, and with the last pod activated the artificial timer in gone.

WK 56% - miss
Jowy 70% -


Finally get a kill with the bolt caster.

Here's the situation:



Lewwyn still has a grenade, so I plan to remove its cover with that and plan to finish off the flanked Sectoid with Dreylin. However, the sectoid disappears from my field of vision after blowing up the cover, for some inexplicable reason. I know it'll only reanimate, so I just put Dreylin in overwatch.


T6 - Alien

Disaster:



Oh crap, we got ambushed by the faceless. Strangely enough, I didn't move any units in that direction this turn so I'm confused why it didn't trigger last turn. But no time for hypothetical scenarios, it's in range of Dreylin and Jowy! Dreylin does get an overwatch shot in, but it's not enough to stop it.



It misses Jowy, thank god. But Dreylin almost dies from the hit.

Thankfully the sectoid reanimates a corpse as predicted. Another shot would've been brutal.


T7 - XCOM

Cleanup is actually rather trivial after a disasterous turn. Jowy has a 100% to kill the faceless with the bolt caster. As for the sectoid:



Mission complete. (I never did end up using the axe even on the last sectoid, although if we has blademaster I'll admit it would've been an awesome choice. Dunno if that would still be as good as phantom though...)



So close to a flawless mission, alas... Retaliation missions are meant to be tough so I'll take it in stride. Shame we've lost our best sniper for quite some time, but Jowy dodged the attack so it could've been a lot worse.

Checklist for next turnset:

Finish contact with West Asia maybe (top priority if we can finish it before Supply Drop, low otherwise)
Train a sniper to replace Dreylin in the short term
Rookie rumor maybe?
Purchase Squad Size 1
Start Advanced Warfare Center after supply drop completes?


Do we put the Adv. Exp. Magazine on WK? I think the new sniper could use the standard Exp. Mag for now, since we might want to specialize him for pistol combat if we can.

[WarriorKnight]

Playing a Legendary campaign on the side. Just completed my first Retaliation mission without casualties, but one soldier is as good as dead.. 47 days in the infirmary!!

So far the only casualty was on the very first mission, where you now face a third pod that has a Sectoid in it. It mind controlled one of my rookies and I had to put him down myself  

E: Next mission one grenade wiped out my squad of 5, RIP that campaign.

Everything on Legend is twice as expensive or takes twice as long as Commander. The medical recovery is absolutely brutal, any soldier that gets injured before you can staff an engineer in the advanced warfare center is basically dead. Same goes for scanning/base construction, it takes an entire week to basically do anything useful.

I never did finish a Legend/Ironman game, but I gave it a few attempts when Jowy started his SP game. Sadly I couldn't really get off the ground. The furthest I got was when the aliens had Mutons/MEC's. I failed to hack a surveillance tower letting all pods know my location, and I was swarmed by 3 pods against my understrength squad. Needless to say my squad was wiped, and I couldn't really be motivated into going through everything again so I gave it up.

Best of luck if you're trying Legend/Ironman Jowy. You're going to need it.

[Jowy]

[Jowy]

There's a new patch out. No-one knows what they changed yet, apart from including controller support.

[Dreylin]

Interestingly, I had Jack Jowy show up for hire in my SP campaign last night - as a Ranger. So I guess it's just the models that are preserved, not the classes. (I couldn't justify the cost, so he's stuck in the HQ shop until the end of the month....)

[Dreylin]

Here's where we stand, right?

Roster:
- Jowy
- Dp101
- Lewwyn
- Jkaen
- Dreylin
- WarriorKnight

Once we have the first round done, do we circulate in the same order or just "grab it" again?

[Dp101]

I'm still busy for a couple more days, Jkaen could you please take this next?

[Jkaen]

will try tonight, depends on how easy it is to get back home with the tram crash