XCOM 2 - War of the Chosen

[Dreylin]

I think I'll have to run a few more to fully form an opinion on the new Retaliations. As you say, it'll be interesting to see how it's balanced going forward in terms of number of enemies and how the Resistance weapons scale. They were doing 2 damage - or 3 on a Crit - which adds up quickly on 4hp Troopers and 5/6HP Lancers, but not so well against the Sectoids, so enemy type will play a part as well. For what it's worth, Long War 2 had an approach to Resistance weapons upgrades where once you had researched two additional weapons techs (there are 5 tiers), there was a percentage chance for each fighter to have the class below. i.e. Assault-Laser-Mag once you have Mag then some fighters will be equipped with Lasers.

Also, if the Advent continue to exclusively target civilians over Fighters or XCOM, then they'll still be able to mow through them pretty fast.

[Dreylin]

Alrighty, time for our Monthly rewards:


And now we start to unspool the rest of the gubbins:


Advent Dark Events and Chosen Plans; I wonder if the unmet pair have hidden plans that will activate as well?

And we have end of month responsibilities with the Resistance:


I chose the Concealment Timer card since the max Lost HP I've seen up to now is 4 and with the conventional weapons upgrade, we should hit that minimum with all our guns. (although thinking about it now, I wonder if that counts for Pistols as well?)

And we get to choose a Covert Action mission as well:



It will be important to make certain there are higher-level soldiers available at all times (or just at end of Month?) to meet requirements of these. The Assassin hunt also required a Sergeant, and we have plenty of Intel right now, so we'll go and fetch Mox then.

This is getting crowded!


Supplies pour in and we finish clearing another chamber. I decide to go for the Resistance Ring next as there seem to be some good perks available:


Oops, I thought cutscene overload was finished...




Phew, maybe it's over with now?

Covert Action completes and opens our next mission:


Note the "SITREP"; I expect to see negative ones later...

[Dreylin]

We prep a squad:


I feel that Buskirk should be on the mission after running the Op to find it. He takes Long Watch and becomes Yuris125 (see Ref, only the "best" agents are issued with hotpants! ). Jason "Panic" Moreau becomes Mardoc.

Cue:


Play the music while I Montage this:








Presumably the 2-radius detection on the Trooper was due to the low Alert level.

Right, everyone in position for the Hack:


In retrospect, I'd probably take the cache of Supplies, but I had expected some delay on the call for Evac (a.la. LW2). We do have to carry the bastard though:




Not a shot fired!



(I think kill counts will spiral out of control with The Lost involved)

Worf Mox is in tha Hawse:


Another bonding option becomes available. Looks like Kelly has better options:


But Mardoc doesn't.

Make is so:

Glad you approve Dr. Tygan...

[Jowy]

Must.. Avoid.. Spoilers..

I hope you enjoy the expansion Dreylin, let me know later if it's any good ^^

[yuris125]

Shots are for those who can't do cunning

Also yay hotpants!

[AdrienIer]

I don't have time to play the expansion yet, so I'll be following this with interest ! Count me in for the death row.

[Mardoc]

Inspired by Sunny RefSteel:

Dear Diary,

Today was my first day as an official Resister!  

Resistancer?  Resistron?  

Man, they need a better name for us.  Something like X-Commandos, like in this old game I've just managed to get running on the Avenger's mainframe.  Anyway, I was busy working on that when Kelly came by.  Man, she's quiet!  I was just working on the config files when suddenly there's this hand on my shoulder.  Lucky for me, I was still working on the command line, so she thought it was related to Shen's research or something.  She said something about needing a hacker for a mission.  I tried to explain that it's Cracker, not Hacker, when you're breaking into things, but she just rolled her eyes.

So we went off and sneaked around this weird base place.  Kelly kept telling me and Yuri where to go, where to put our feet, I almost felt like I was some sort of secret agent or something.  Like, I could barely even notice myself,  I was so sneaky!

Then we were at a door, and she said she needed me to open it.  It was just a little keypad run by a basic ADVENT microcontroller, barely any more sophisticated than an abacus.  I thought I saw something about some phat l00t in the attached database, but Kelly told me to stick to the job, so instead I just opened the door as quietly as I could.  

She ran in and grabbed this guy.  Said we were done, so we just ran back to the Skyranger and left.  

Not sure why I had to carry this gun with me, it was such a pain to keep it from banging on the keyboard.

Anyway, we got back and Kelly tells me 'you did good, Kid, I like your style!  I'm going to get the Commander to make you my pet hacker'.  I gotta teach her the difference between Hackers and Crackers.  Just after I figure out how to get Nethack running on R2...

- Bertrand Mardoc

[haphazard1]

Also following this one and enjoying the look at the new material. If you need another warm body, sign me up for the resistance.

[Dreylin]

Back to the GeoScape and another POI shows up:


That makes 3 mostly-untouched 7day POIs, a half-finished Contact, the Reaper Base and Oh, this one too:



It has a comment something like "Build faster", but I don't even get a chance to move before:


Sounds like it would be a perfect place to take a Reaper with remote detonation promotion but she's still Tired. So I'll take Mox instead:


Taking a look at potenital bonds, he has very high compatability with the newly-promoted Specialist who went on the Op to free him so we'll bring her along as well.

Welcome AdrienIer:


That leaves us with this squad:


Kelly & Mardoc have slight impairments left from the previous mission, but she's the highest ranked soldier available. Given the prevalence of High Explosives on the battlefield, I round out the team with myself rather than either of the Grenadiers. I also invest 25supplies to build a Smoke Grenade which I will probably only use when I think it's a Flashbang.  I'm so bad with these things. I also intended to switch the Scoped Sniper Rifle over to Dreylin, but I think I may have forgotten.

[Dreylin]

Another new mission type, Hunt the Commander (makes sense for a Dark Event counter-mission):


We start on the side of the map; roughly in the middle and there are a couple of screens worth of distance either side.

A new map type with a chasm in it:


And we get our notification about Bonds:


Not sure about the "close proximity" effects, but they have a free action(?) to grant the other an additional action.

Moving forward immediately grants us visibility on a 2-man pod:


Mox Grapples up onto a roof and the rest edge forward in cover. I'd rather not trigger them immediately until I have a better lay of the land.


The Sectoid moves out of sight behind the building - which of course means that my next move triggers the pod


With a Sectoid on the loose, Mardoc starts having flashbacks to when he was Moreau and every Sectoid was poking around his head. Kelly's on it:


As the Sectoid dies I get a pop-up saying "Melee vulnerability" ... yeah, I guess that's a side effect of walking around nude!

Mox flanks the Trooper to death:


So now we're revealed and Advent set an evac timer:


We'd better start moving towards the other side of the map to try to intercept ... hello!


Dreylin has no shot so positions himself for next turn:


Kelly gets a shot off from low cover, so Mardoc covers her with Aid Protocol:



Adrien can't get an angle for a shot, so takes overwatch and - oh he ran off:


But not too far, nice shooting!

Timer's off, now it's just clean-up. We reposition along the edge of the chasm before moving down. Mox shows off his horizontal grappling skills:


A pod wanders in under the drop:


It includes a new "Priest" unit, but we'll have to wait for a future meeting before we get to see what they can do:



Meanwhile Mardoc is taking a look at a neaby security tower:


Nothing worth the risk over here.

The final pod comes down the alley looking for the General's body:


The Sectoid takes cover behind a very flimsy fence. Mox applies explosives to remove the cover and Dreylin gets the kill shot:


The Lancer is in high cover in the pool. I try a couple of 40% shots, but then flashbang him for a turn. He misses his shot at Mox, so Mox serves up some Justice:



I'm still not certain whether the percentage chance is to land the grapple or the subsequent hit (it connected here), I suspect it's the former since the pull out of cover is a lot of the power in the move. I feed the kill shot to Adrien:




Priest autopsy opens and we get ... actually that seems like quote a lot of Supplies!



I think I must have missed this intro on the previous Bondings (I may have done them directly from the post-op promo screen) so that's a bit more info than I had:



Also some promos:



Dreylin gets Lightning Hands and Adrien Combat Protocol (I don't think it's time for a Medic yet).

Also, Mox is a Genius:


Took the flexibility option here. The Cone of Fire option at the bottom looks interesting, but that costs 25AP and I don't feel a need to save up for it right now.

Unless the Skirmisher HQ serves as a substitute I've still no access to the Black Market, so there might still be some rails to go...