It’s been a while since I last had this save file in my hands. It was for mission 4 (over here) and I wasn’t really prepared for XCOM 2’s many many dangers… Yeah, it truly has been a while and I now have had the chance to play more XCOM 2 and I naturally (to keep things “real”) didn’t play any more XCOM 2 at all and only read the other people’s blog post… and quite frankly, I have no idea what’s going on.

Before we get into the mission and everything I did during my turn, check out Naithin’s post here to see all the participants and other blog posts if you missed any… and I’ll have my full play session as a video right here in case anyone’s wondering what I exactly did. All the details. All the blood. I’m a newbie after all. 

First up, we changed around some stuff rule-wise so we do the base stuff at first now and then do our missions, giving the next person more time to organise their next mission and plan the approach of the Avatar Project. As far as the story is concerned, I have no idea what is going on anymore but nobody ever cared about the story anyway. This is war! Or rather we had a war, lost it, and now we’re back in war? Alien War 2? Something like that?

At the base, I decided to pass the time a bit by scanning for supplies until some of our projects were completed. I then crafted an item, paid my respects to Owl who passed early on, and checked out the ongoing projects. Our Comms were at Max-Capacity so I had to wait until the Radio Station was all done. In the end, it worked quite well, with the Radio Station getting done after a few turns only. One of our main goals is to stop whatever the aliens are doing… To do that, we need contact with the other zones of the world. Since they had stuff brewing in Asia and since I had yet to make contact with South America in order to get in touch with Africa, I just decided to save some extra steps and only make contact with Asia so far so that we can get into an ADVENT mission and save the world. Also, one of our missions said that we’d have to use the Skulljack on an ADVENT Officer… which is difficult. You’ll see later. Anyways, I scanned away to pass some time to get supplies and finish that Comms-Thingy and suddenly ADVENT missions popped up everywhere. It was as if Oprah had them prepared for me under my chair already and I was already wondering where they were. Either way, we went to East Asia for the contact only to then realise that we could have gone to the mission in New Mexico anyway… Whatever. We now have restored contact to East Asia, so that’s good, right? There’s an ADVENT site over there as well, so… we had to go there anyway! For now, we went on for Operation Ice Tooth… but we had to do something very important before that…

And that’s Fashion! Just like the others, I, too, have a character in the game: A Sniper called Lizz “Magi” Winterfield that turned out to be a real killer. Our squad consisted of Red, Endalia, Magi, Rakuno, and a specialist that we started to train at the end of Mission 4 aka my post. A random name and everything! I noticed that you can customize your characters a lot more than I thought, so I figured I should upgrade our weapons and recolour my armour. Being bisexual, I decided to go for… Purple and pink… I believe there was a dark blue in there somewhere, too, but since I could only choose the main colour and an accent colour for the armour and the weapon, I stuck to purple and pink since that works the best, I guess. I think in-game it should be Pride Month, too. Even with an Alien Invasion, LGBTQIA+ celebrations are important. Since I’m a lich, I had to find a cool name for Magi’s weapon, too, and I decided to go for “Dagon” since my headshots would let the enemies sleep by the fishes. :) Yup, super creative. Either way, I had way too much fun with this. My headcanon shipped Magi and Red btw because… Oh jeez, look at Red’s character but uh… I’m not sure if Red would have been fine with it and maybe it was just a one-sided headcanon… I also had some other in-game ships but let’s not get into those… and… I wanted to bring along Naithin into this mission since he hasn’t scored a kill yet but sadly he’s wounded and can’t participate. “Woe is me” or whatever. The “fashion souls” thing I had to go for lasted for about nine minutes btw. If you don’t wanna see me have fun, skip to 22:12 in the video. :) But I ended up making a change and bringing along Paeroka so that we’d have another blogger and specialist on board, able to hack through the transmitter relay!

Anyways, the mission’s main goal was to destroy an Alien Relay within a set amount of turns. There was also an Alien transmitter relay that needed to be taken care of as well as a bunch of units. Rakuno was equipped with the Skulljack in order to melee that ADVENT Officer. My only issue was that I didn’t know what an ADVENT Officer looked like. Oh well. Hence, we headed right into it: Destroy the Relay, destroy the transmitter (optional), get the skull jack going (maybe next time?), and neutralize all targets (hooray! bloodshed!). The mission was clear, the time limit annoying. We had 8 turns to destroy the relay as the Data Transfer would be completed otherwise.

8 Turns left:

First up, I pushed forward with Red to the left side of a building to scout for some enemies, only to confirm our suspicions. None of them seemed very ADVENT-Officer-like but whatever. I’m sure we’d find him eventually. Magi moved onto a building’s roof and hid behind some full cover to take aim at some more enemies. Endalia followed Magi up there. Rakuno went to the right, trying to scout more enemies. Pae went to the right as well, getting ready for a potential flank.

7 Turns left:

Pae pushed forward first. Rakuno decided to move back again and support Red. Red decided to just launch a frag grenade onto the enemies as they were lumped up quite close. It would also be better to ambush them and catch them off-guard while we have the advantage instead of them getting the jump on us later! The frag nearly killed one of them, slightly injured the big guy, and killed two humans that were randomly standing there. I’ll refer to “Magi” as Lizz from now on btw because me talking about my character is weird. Lizz gets another kill on one of the injured aliens, finishing off what Red has begun (again, my ship kinda works?). Endalia moved forward position herself a bit closer to the enemy but still on high ground. 

6 Turns left:

At the beginning of this turn, we spectated the remaining alien falling back. Pae moved forward in pursuit but stops to hack the relay transmitter that we had to take care of. Sadly, we fail a 48% chance and alert everyone on the map. Luckily, that didn’t do anything to us. :) Lizz moves forward, too, hitting the fleeing enemy with a poison bullet through the revolver for four damage and a DoT! As Red moved forward, we spotted ADVENT units. I mistook the big threatening robot for the Officer when it was “clearly” the small timid guys. Anyways, Red launched a frag grenade, dealing damage to the enemies there, destroying a wall, and opening up the relay that we had to take care of. Endalia then finished off the ADVENT soldier that was now in the open while Rakuno moved ahead, pushing forward to support Red. 

5 Turns left:

The alien that Lizz poisoned earlier left into the shadows but was one hit away from death. No cure in sight! Red took a hit early on from one of the soldiers, taking three damage but the armour he was wearing mitigated some. Sadly, he went into a panic, randomly moving forward and missing a round of bullets on the enemy. Hence, I made Pae send out a drone using the AID Protocol to support Red and give him some good advice and take care of his needs as well as 20 defence. Then Pae moved forward to another spot to get more cover. Lizz did 1 damage to the robot with the revolver while Endalia did a good chunk using her sniper rifle. Red and Rakuno were still under fire. At last, Rakuno pushed forward to the robot guy to use the Skulljack on him.

4 Turns left:

The poisoned enemy died. The robot didn’t like what we were doing and moved ahead, dealing a lot of damage to Rakuno and taunting. Rakuno then just went up to his face and… and… The Skulljack doesn’t work! That’s not the officer! Oh no. So, now Rakuno was damaged, out in the open, and on top of that, in front of a giant robot ready to crush him. We had to save him. Hence, Rakuno did a last effort to deal as much damage as possible, launching a grenade at the robot in front of him. That’s right. In Melee-Range. What a mad lad. Anyways, the Robot was shot in the head by Lizz who moved ahead and took care of him using her revolver. Rakuno was saved for now. Red had to move in as we were running out of time and as we needed someone to destroy that relay. Sadly, Red was immediately spotted by a snake and some other enemies, much to my surprise since I’ve only read about the snakes so far. I haven’t actually seen them in-game yet! Endalia, at last, aimed at a distant alien, dealing some good damage in the process. Pae moved forward, taking cover near the target’s building. 

3 Turns left:

The snakey boy decided to take a lick of Red since he’s that much of a snack and bound him, letting out a soft “Lero Lero Lero Lero Lero” in the process. I remembered that someone had to deal with the snakes before but I forgot what to do against it, so I… you’ll see. Rakuno, meanwhile, nearly got hit by enemies while he was standing around doing nothing. An alien resurrected another soldier. Pae moved ahead and since we were running out of time and since the aliens had the advantage here with all the cover and walls and stuff around them, Pae wanted to level the playing field and destroy some of the enemies’ cover, potentially taking care of the snake in the process. Red took some damage from the friendly fire but he wasn’t bound anymore, giving Lizz and option to miss her shot at an alien. Red took revenge himself, spraying his minigun across the reptile’s face, dealing 9 damage and killing the creature. Endalia then reloaded and moved ahead to prepare for the next round. Rakuno dealt 7 damage against an alien inside, neutralizing it in the process. The Zombie that was resurrected previously then smashed Red’s face in… killing him in the process. The ship never was meant to sail after all but whatever. 

2 Turns left:

We gotta destroy the relay first before we can mourn, though. Pae then killed one of the remaining aliens. Lizz moved in and then shot the pistol at the relay, dealing 3 damage. Endalia then sniped the stationary target, the relay station, for 4 damage. Rakuno then moved in to shoot at that last alien, completely missing but at least destroying some of its cover in the process. 

1 Turn left:

The alien shot its shot and missed Rakuno completely. Some of the walls cracked down giving Lizz the perfect opportunity to destroy the relay with a good 7-damage-hit from Dagon, the Sniper. Poggers! Pae didn’t have much choice but to move to the side again and keep overwatch in case the alien flees. Better safe than sorry. Endalia then aims again and hits the alien through the wall for another five damage. Rakuno then finished it off with a good spray, dealing 8 damage in the process and getting a kill.

The objective was completed. We completed it in 8 turns, killed 9/9 enemies, and while it is a bummer that Red died… it can’t be helped really. I mean, I probably could have had him retreat backwards and then I could let someone else finish off the snake but I’m not sure if Red would’ve survived due to the Zombie and two other aliens still being around. Also, if the snake didn’t die, it would have killed him, too, and all of this wouldn’t have mattered if the relay survived at the end of the day. So, I had to make a tough decision and decided to not save scum.

We left a heartfelt message for Red’s memorial and passed on the save file to the deadman himself, Rambling Red. I wonder how he’ll deal with his sudden death. Hope you enjoyed this post.

Cheers!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well.