Andy's Long War

On Advent’s first turn Wildcat spotted two sentries lead by an officer. 

Luckily, they didn’t spot us so the group was able to move West a bit with Deanna and Panzer both taking defensive positions and going on overwatch. Ben, being a sniper, could take a long range shot as long as Wildcat could see the enemy. She took down the first sentry before they even knew we were there.

The remaining two scrambled. Deanna missed her shot but Panzer hit the officer, killing it.

Only the sentry was left. Juggernaut launched a flash bang and it missed us on its turn. Juggernaut was close enough that he was able to run over and get a point-blank shot, although this pulled him pretty far to the West and it took him a few turns to catch up to the group.

Wildcat pushed forward to the warehouse--still in concealment--and caught a glimpse of some Advent through the window.

A viper, a stun lancer, a sentry and a trooper were all waiting for us, but they hadn’t seen us yet. Most of the group was pretty far away, so we spent the turn just moving up.

Next turn Advent walked into a smaller room of the warehouse towards the South, closer to us. Wildcat ran around the edge to keep an eye on them.

Deanna took up a position behind a forklift and went on overwatch. The rest of the team once again dashed to get closer. Ben ran up onto the roof in the hopes that she could take advantage of her higher elevation bonuses.

As luck would have it, Advent decided that now was the time for a breath of fresh air. They came out of the door right into the middle of my group. Deanna got a shot off and hit the snake for five damage. They spotted Wildcat who also got a reaction shot but missed. She was revealed, but it hardly mattered since we had reached the warehouse.

Juggernaut moved to flank the trooper and took it out. 

Ben had a clean shot at the viper form her spot on the roof and got the kill. She used her bonus action from Death From Above to reload, keeping the door into the second floor of the warehouse shut for now.

Deanna took a 55% shot on the stun lancer inside the building. If she missed, she would have several bonuses on her next shot, but she didn’t need them: The lancer went down on her first shot.

Wildcat closed things out by running in and slicing the sentry.

Panzer looked around and found nothing to do, so she just moved in and went on overwatch. We got lucky with the enemy placement and our overwatch, but Dark Carnival did an exemplary job this turn. Everybody played their part and took out the four advent soldiers like alien-demolishing clockwork.

With the smashing out of the way it was time to focus on grabbing. The team ran in and found no new Advent while they looted the boxes in the warehouse.

We got back to the evac well before reinforcements could arrive.

The mission was flawless, with only one shot even being fired against our soldiers. With only seven enemies on the map, this wasn’t too surprising. We should burn 25 intel on every mission!

MVP: Everybody

Dark Carnival really worked as a team on this one. I couldn’t pinpoint any one member as leading the charge.

Promotions

Xhosa “Wildcat” Masango reached sergeant and learned Cutthroat, making her blade even deadlier against organic foes.

Lauren “Panzer” Kelly reached staff sergeant and learned Demolition, allowing her to take a special shot that destroys cover.

Back at the Base

We only had 14 hours to respond to the retaliation mission in East Africa, so we didn’t have much time. I did take a moment to pop Juggernaut back into Officer school so he can better learn how to command Dark Carnival.

After that, we assembled an all-star team from Doom Dressage and Dark Carnival, with Whinny acting as the commanding officer of the group.

Doom Dressage, with support from Dark Carnival went out to East Africa to keep our haven safe and save as many resistance members as possible. We’ll see how it goes next time!

Early on we found a small Advent pod as well as a drone.

The ambush went well and we were able to take out all four on the turn we broke concealment. After that Kibwe Owusu, a shinobi who had just finished his Guerrilla Tactics School training, acted as our scout.

While scouting out the area ahead of us, he found a  stun lancer and a sentry. 

The rest of the squad was revealed, so if they moved up, the Advent would get a chance to scramble. Franzen moved as close as he could and went on overwatch. Mansoor moved out and Franzen shot down the sentry when they dashed.

The stun lancer ran on its turn and Gold Hawk took it out with her suppression fire.

The next mini ambush was on a pair of vipers, once again spotted by Owusu. Franzen went on overwatch again, but this time, Top Notch had a shot. He had taken a position on the edge of the building we had started by. He and Franzen both connected and took out one viper.

Gold Hawk suppressed the remaining viper while Ezra moved up to kill it next turn. It shot at Mansoor but missed.

A drone flew in but the team made quick work of it and Ezra ran up to get his point blank shot.

It connected and even did critical damage, but the viper lived by one. Mansoor finished it off with a frag grenade.

Owusu moved up again, but this time he was spotted by a fairly large pod: An officer, a sentry, a gunner, and a trooper.

Half of the team had already gone and Ezra was badly exposed. Gold hawk stunned the officer and the sentry with a flash bang although this proved to be a bad allocation of resources because Owusu cut down the sentry and Whinny used Command to give Ezra and extra action, which he used to kill the trooper (using run-and-gun and fortify).

We dealt with half of them, but that left the gunner and the officer with no negative effects. The officer marked and shot Ezra. and the gunner landed a hit on Mansoor from half way across the map. Mansoor can’t catch a break; it seems like no matter where he his or how many other soldiers are closer, Advent is always shooting at him.

Mansoor’s hit wasn’t trivial either. It went straight through his armor and left him bleeding out on the ground.

Ezra and Owusu spent the turn mopping up the two Advent soldiers and Whinny stabilized and healed Mansoor. The remaining soldiers reloaded and over-watched. We needed to regroup for a second.

Luckily, we were able to get into the holding cells with minimal further incident. The only other enemy we found was a drone guarding the cells.

As we made our way back, though, reinforcements started coming in fast. The first one took a few turns but after that it was every other turn.

We were ready, and took them out, but Advent was making it clear, that 24 turns didn’t mean 24 uninterrupted turns. By the time we had 10 turns left, the reinforcements started arriving every turn. Luckily we were at the evac point and got out.

It was a good mission, although with less than 24 hours to protect the haven, we really needed a flawless mission. Not having Ezra will be a real shame.

MVP: Kibwe Owusu & Ezra “Magic Man” Schrage

These two worked together to deal point-blank death to everything in their path.

Promotions

Raquel “Gold Hawk” Sanchez was promoted to sergeant and learned Hail of Bullets, allowing her to occasionally take a shot that will use most of her ammo but which is guaranteed to hit.

Kibwe Owusu reached lance corporal and learned Blademaster.

Mahmoud Mansoor reached corporal and learned Protector, giving his flash bangs a bonus use. He earned the nick name “Target Practice” in honor of propensity to attract fire.

Back at the Base

The pressing issue was the haven under attack. We had less than a day to respond and only six healthy soldiers. As we learned form our last retaliation mission, Advent does not mess around with these. We needed a full set of eight experienced soldiers.

Before we dealt with that, we did name a new recruit: Ted Smith. Ted is the recruit currently training to be our first psi op!

Back to the crisis at hand we couldn’t take the retaliation mission with who we had. This is why I decided to spend 25 intel to boost the infiltration level of the smash-and-grab that Dark Carnival was doing. When they get back, we’ll put together an all-star team and keep the haven in East Africa safe!

Yosef has the Every Vigilant ability, allowing her to go on overwatch at the end of any turn where she spends both actions moving. As such she is an excellent scout. She ran up and spotted a small pod to the North.

There was a good sniping spot that Ben could take but it would leave her exposed to the West, so Juggernaut went over to scout it from a safer spot first. Good thing he did, because there was another enemy pod to our South West.

This put us in a spot. A few of our units had already spent their actions and would likely be spotted on the enemy turn. Furthermore, these two enemy groups were on either side of us. If they both became altered, we would be flanked.

The pod to the North was much further away, so it was my hope that they would wander off, possibly before the pod to the south moved. At any rate, I put as many of my people as possible on overwatch, positioning the ones that had not already moved on the Eastern side of cover to protect them from both groups.

Before either pod got to go, a new pod entered from the West, almost equidistant from the other two.

The Southern pod (a mech, a sentry and a drone) spotted us as predicted. Deanna, Panzer and Ben all fired on the mech, taking it down.

We got lucky. The pod to the North must have wandered away because they did not hop in. The sentry and engineer from the West took up positions and Yosef got a reaction shot off on the engineer, dealing five points of damage and killing it.

With the pod to the North not in the equation (for now), and a relatively successful round of reaction fire, we were left with only three enemies: a drone and two sentries. Noam started things off by running towards the sentry who was threatening to flank our group from the rear. He delivered a deadly blast from his shotgun.

Deanna missed the drone with her first shot but took it down with her second. Yoseff could have moved on the remaining sentry, but she was the furthest North of any of my soldiers, and as a result, moving her at all risked waking up the enemy pod in that direction. I opted to have her reload and go on overwatch instead. Panzer suppressed the sentry.

The sentry attempted to shoot Juggernaut but missed.

Back on our turn, Noam used run-and-gun to clear the distance between himself and the sentry. This woke up the pod to the North who scrambled for positions. I figured this was likely, but our squad was now in a much better position to handle the drone, officer and trooper waiting for us.

Noam shot the sentry he had moved on and the rest of the team thought about the best way to deal with these new foes to the North. Ben started by taking our the drone.

Yosef dashed to a spot the would put her in a flanking position when she went on overwatch at the end of the turn. Deanna moved up and missed her shot. Panzer suppressed the officer and Juggernaut launched a flash bag at the trooper.

Another drone flew in to replace the one we had just destroyed. Then the officer ran straight at Yosef. The ranger was caught off guard by the aggression but still landed her reaction fire, dealing three damage to the officer. Not enough for a kill, though, and the officer took a nearly point blank shot on Yosef which luckily missed. The trooper also fired at her and missed.

The next turn was a comedy of errors. X-Com is a game about mitigating randomness and the phrase “That’s X-Com Baby” had become synonymous with 99% shots missing. When considering just how many turns will happen in a typical campaign, sometimes the player is going to roll a one five times in a row. This turn wasn’t disastrous and I’m sure I’ll have worse, but man did Dark Carnival miss some shots on this turn 4 of this mission.

It started with Yosef missing her first shot against the officer right next to her. And then missing her sawed-off shotgun shot as well.

This seemed fine, though, because the officer only had three health. Deanna moved up and spent the last of her ammo on a 97% Walk Fire shot. No dice.

I hadn’t planned on her having to focus on the officer but Ben aimed her sniper rifle... and missed. This officer was meant for great things.

Noam had no chance of hitting the officer and went after the drone right next to him instead. Miss.

Juggernaut was our last hope and took an admittedly low chance shot on the officer. If the 97% shot couldn’t do it, his 45% certainly wasn’t going to. 

Finally, Panzer used suppression on the officer, knowing better than to throw good bullets after bad. The team took six shots and connected on zero.

This, of course, meant that the officer was beginning its turn right next to Yosef. It was suppressed, but at that range it didn’t take much. The officer connected, dealing four damage to Yosef.

The drone hit Noam for two damage and disoriented him.

On our next turn, the fog seemed to lift and my soldiers were able to hit things again. Yosef started things off, killing the officer on her first action. She used her second action to heal herself with the medkit she brought with her. Since they were going in without a specialist, I was especially liberal with medkits when equipping the squad.

Juggernaut used Focus Fire on the drone to give Noam a better chance of hitting it and to bypass the one point of armor that the drones have. It worked. Despite his confusion, Noam took down the robot.

Juggernaut attempted to kill the trooper with a frag grenade but the Advent survived by one. The rest of the team didn’t have shots or had to reload so the trooper went into the next turn without any kind of penalties.

A rocketeer and drone entered form the North. The trooper decided to join them, retreating in that direction and going on overwatch.

Noam used his Lightning Reflexes to tease out the overwatch fire from the trooper.

He had no good shotgun targets but had a clean shot on the rocketeer with his arc-thrower so he tried to knock out the dangerous Advent. No luck though, as the jolt from his stunner went right over the enemy. As she often does, Deanna moved in and finished the job.

Yosef shot down the drone and Panzer suppressed the trooper once again. This was enough to disrupt the trooper who spent his turn reloading and missing a shot on Noam.

Ben moved up a bit to holo-target the trooper and Deanna missed her second Walk Fire shot of the mission. However, Yosef was able to land the killing blow.

From here it took several turns, but we ran up, opened of the van to get the scientists out and then worked our way to the North side of the large building. We used the ladder to get on the roof and backtracked across the map to the evac point on top of the gas station.

No new enemies showed up and we were gone before reinforcements could arrive. A few of my soldiers took a few hits, but nothing grave, and we came back with a new scientist ready to help out in the lab.

MVP : Deanna “Magic Girl” Bennett

As usual, Deanna kept the heat on Advent the whole time. Even with a few missed shots, she was my goto for mopping up hard to hit enemies.

Promotions

Four this time around!

Hadassah Yosef was promoted to corporal and learned Covering Fire, improving her overwatch. She earned the nickname “Pinto.”

Ben “Chief” Serviss was promoted to sergeant and learned Lone Wolf, giving her better aim and defense when she is far from the group.

Deanna “Magic Girl” Bennett reached staff sergeant and learned Executioner, making her even better at hitting enemies at less than half health.

Noam Malcah reached corporal and learned Close and Personal, increasing his critical chance at close range. He was given the nickname “Coyote.”

Back at the Base

Although not everybody was ready to go back out, I decided that it was worth it to send the healthy members of Dark Carnival on a smash-and-grab mission that would expire in three days. We always need new supplies and a team of five could still reach full infiltration. I did swap in Wildcat who isn’t usually in Dark Carnival for a squaddie because with such a small group, we need our best.

This month we got a supply drop that actually had supplies thanks to being forced to take the rebels in East Africa off of intel.

We finished making contact with South Africa before flying over to pick up the goods.

Right after that we got word that Advent had launched another retaliatory strike in East Africa. They could probably tell that we were getting close to liberating the region and wanted to do everything they could to punish our people there.

We had 24 hours to respond, so I decided to launch Operation Bone King, helmed by Doom Dressage, a bit early. If everybody comes out safe, we will be able to turn right around and send them to protect the haven.

See you next time ad Doom Dressage attempts to rescue another scientist!

The whole squad moved up to ambush the next turn, with most hanging out by the skylight on the roof. Franzen went on overwatch because of his Ever Vigilant ability.

On their turn, the Advent soldiers unwittingly helped themselves by walking out of the back of the building. A drone flew in to replace them.

Most of my troops were unable to see the officer or sentry, but because the drone had flown close, they could not move without being spotted either. It was what it was so Top Notch, Solar and Mansoor all went on overwatch and Paul spent his first action shooting at (and missing) the drone. Mansoor and Solar worked together to take it down and Top Notch landed some non-fatal damage on the officer.

 Ezra ran down to get closer to them but missed a shot with his arc-thrower. Gold Hawk suppressed the officer and Wildcat stayed put, not wanting to reveal herself just yet.

On their turn, the officer ran and was shot down by Gold Hawk. The sentry missed a shot at Solar but was still able to go on overwatch.

Ezra ran right through that overwatch with his Lightning Reflexes. He put himself in a good position to shoot the sentry and Top Notch made it better with a holotarget.

The team moved up with a few going on overwatch in case new enemies showed up. We were getting close to the large building that housed the cells. From inside the building, we were spotted by another pod: two sectoids and a viper.

Only Franzen got a shot off, but he managed to hit one of the sectoids for four damage.

Solar ran down and attempted to remove the cover from the aliens still in the building with his wildly inaccurate wrist rocket. As one could guess, it missed, but I used it precisely because a miss would more than likely still catch one of the sectoids, and it did, killing the alien that Franzen had hit.

Ezra dashed up to have a better place to attack from next turn. Wildcat also moved, sneaking around to the other side to make sure that nobody else was waiting for us over there.

A few of our people missed shots and Gold Hawk suppressed both enemies.

On their turn, the sectoid raised a psi-zombie and the viper mysteriously passed its turn.

Ezra began our turn by showing a casual disregard for his own wellbeing, running right next to the sectoid and leaving him exposed to both aliens. When he found no other enemies waiting inside the building, though, he shouted to Wildcat who broke her concealment to surprise the viper with a blow to the head.

With the viper out of the way, Ezra took his point-blank shot on the sectoid.

Over the next turn and a half we moved units up and got ready to spring the prisoners. Wildcat had the best hack stat of the group and the highest mobility so she was the natural choice to open the doors. The building had a funny setup and getting to the holding cells actually required going around the whole thing, so even though they were just on the other side of the wall, the actual movement distance was high.

She got there and tested her computer skills. With only a 26% chance, she succeeded and secured us a small collection of alien alloys in addition to freeing the prisoners!

The other unusual thing about this building is that the the holding cells were not adjacent. Two of the other prisoners were in a cell on the West side of the building (we had unlocked them via the Eastern cell). I took a small risk and had those prisoners run out. There was an enemy waiting for them, but it was just an Advent drone.

Both prisoners on that side were able to jump from a second story window down into the lobby near our soldiers in less moves than it would have taken our people to get to them. X-Com went on overwatch to deal with the drone when it came through.

More than just the drone came for us. Two troopers ran in from the West as well. Luckily, Franzen was in a perfect spot and killed one of them immediately.

Gold Hawk got the other.

Although a few people had missed their shots on the troopers, Solar had not yet taken his reaction fire and so when the drone came through, he was still able to shoot it down.

And that was it. Reinforcements were still a few turns away and we had an easy path to the evac point. Everybody came home without so much as a scratch on them.

MVP: Xhosa “Wildcat” Masango

(seen here collecting loot from the body of the viper she had cut down)

Wildcat only scored one kill this time, but it was a kill that counted for a lot, and her scouting allowed our soldiers to be sure that they would only be fighting one group at a time. Her successful hack was just icing on the cake.

Promotions

Easy missions are great, but they don’t always result in the most experience. Only Paul “Mirror Beard” Franzen received a promotion. He is now a sergeant and he learned Cool Under Pressure, granting him a bonus to reaction shots.

Back at the Base

One of the new recruits had a solid latent psionic ability, so I pulled out the previous rookie training in the Psionics Lab and put him in instead. The other rookies went to the Guerrilla Tactics School for training.

I spent some time with Doom Dressage, picking the soldiers for it and customizing up a few of the ones who seemed under-dressed. All in all, this may be our most powerful squad with some of our oldest and most experienced members.

I sent Doom Dressage out on their first official mission, Operation Bone King, to get us another scientist and to discover a lead on the liberation chain in East Africa.

Solar went to go be a haven advisor in West Africa, replacing Willems who was still injured.

All of the soldiers were out so we had some time to take care of other items on the map. First up was a weird glow we had detected.

The glow turned out to have 41 intel inside of it! We used the new information to start contacting South Africa, once again maxing out our resistance contacts.

Our scientists finished with the officer autopsy and we got started researching advanced laser weapons so that our heavy gunners, snipers and assaulters could enjoy the futuristic weapons as well.

Before long we were ready to launch Operation Steely Fear! I’ll see you tomorrow as another specialist-free squad attempts to prevent our second Dark Event for the month!

Kim started things off by hopping down into the small alley between where we landed and the building just ahead of us. She spotted nothing. Noam, our newest ranger, followed this up by dashing from our roof from the next were he spotted an enemy pod to the North West.

The pod consistent of a trooper, a stun lancer, an engineer and a new enemy: an Advent Mech. The mechs are robotic units that are easy to hit, but heavily armored--and capable of dealing a surprising amount of damage. This one only had two armor, but it was still a formidable machine. Now was not the time to launch the assault so I moved the rest of the team up, keeping most on the rooftops so we could attack next turn.

On their turn, the Advent soldiers and the robot walked right towards us. We were ready for the ambush. First, Juggernaut used Focus Fire on the mech. It increases aim slightly, but it also allows shots to bypass one point of armor. Ben and Yosef went on overwatch and Deanna lit them up, focussing on the robot.

She connected hard and after Ben and Yossef got their shots, the trooper and the mech were down. Both foes dropped loot too.

The team still had a little under half of their actions for the turn. Deanna took her second shot but missed the engineer. Noam ran up to get a point-blank shot on the stun lancer. In the process he was spotted by a pair of sectoids. He still took his shot and killed the lancer.

Kim sent some aid ptotocol to Noam to keep him as safe as possible and Juggernaut launched a flash-bang at the engineer and one of the sectoids.

Unfortunately, aid protocol does not provide mental protection and the one of the sectoids used its psychic ability to strike fear into Noam’s heart, panicking him. The other sectoid landed a 17% shot and dealt a bit of damage to Kim. Nothing she couldn’t shake off.

Ben started the turn by trying to kill the engineer with her sniper rifle but missed. Deanna took the challenge and killed the Advent soldier on her first shot.

Kim sent her revival protocol to Noam to calm him down. Noam grabbed full cover and threw a flash bang at the two sectoids. Deanna used her second action to go to the edge of the roof and discovered a drone. Kim and Juggernaut went on overwatch hoping to catch the drone as it flew towards us.

It did just that and Kim landed a shot, but she only managed to damage the bot.

It flew to Noam and zapped him, knocking him unconscious. One sectoid missed and the other went on overwatch.

Deanna was not to be stopped on this mission and immediately took aim at one of the sectoids, bringing it to two health. She killed it with her second shot.

Yosef took out the drone.

I assumed that Noam would be up and about next turn so Kim opted not to use her second and last revival protocol. Instead she moved up and threw a flashbang at the remaining sectoid. Everybody else moved towards the North and the truck with the data.

The sectoid oped to stay where it was, going on overwatch.

Our next turn started and Noam was still unconscious. We only had six turns until the container detonated--destroying the intel--so we needed to get going. Noam would have to rejoin the waking world. Kim sent her last revival protocol to wake him up.

Deanna kept up the fire and hit the sectoid for five. Ben tried to finish the job but missed her 85% shot, spending the last of her ammo. These things happen. Deanna spent her second action and the last of her own ammo to use Walk Fire, killing the sectoid. Deanna had personally killed about half of the enemies we had encountered thus far.

Noam moved up towards the truck and was spotted by an officer, a trooper and a sentry to the North West.

These new units were far from our people on the roof. Rather than risk an aggressive maneuver, Noam spent his second action seeking full cover. Juggernaut did what he could, launching a flash bang even though the officer was the only one it could reach.

Luckily, Advent missed their shots, but both the sentry and the trooper ended their turns in overwatch. We were far from where they were and both Ben and Deanna needed to reload. Furthermore, any attempt to close the gap would result in a serious amount of overwatch fire from non-disoriented units.

After much deliberation, I gave Noam the order to take the risk and run the gauntlet. Kim sent him aid protocol and he activated run-and-gun. He got himself ready and took off in a full sprint towards the officer. The sentry and the trooper did their best to keep up but Noam dashed right through their fire, coming out clean.

He ended on the other side of the truck without a scratch and took advantage of his flanking shot on the officer.

The rest of the team was now free to move up except for Ben who reloaded and steadied her weapon, staying where she was on the roof. Yosef threw a flash bang at the sentry to try and keep Noam safe.

On their turn, the trooper retreated to the truck and and the sentry shot at Noam but still couldn’t connect.

On our turn, Ben finally got a hit and took out the sentry.

We were mopping up these units but we only had four turns until detonation and a lot of space between us and the package. Noam took out the sentry although it left him exposed to any new enemies that came in form the North.

Deanna moved up and found those enemies. A sectoid and a viper were waiting for us just to the North of the truck.

Especially with the viper’s high aim stat, it was not safe to keep Noam where he was. Juggernaut used his officer Command ability and gave Noam an extra action, which he used to get full cover.

On their turn, the sectoid panicked Deanna and the viper spat poison, hitting both Noam and Deanna. Strangely, both were immune to its effects.

Three turns until detonation. Ben shot the sectoid, dealing damage, but not enough to kill it. Yosef, having no viable shots, spent her turn dashing to get closer to the action. Noam positioned himself by the truck, going on overwatch to catch anything that slithered onto his side. If need be he could hack the package next turn--or so he thought.

Everybody else ran to get closer. Nobody besides Ben had a solid shot on either alien.

When the aliens got their turn, the sectoid raised a psi zombie. Given its low health, this was fine. The viper, as predicted, moved towards us. Noam got his reaction fire and landed a hit, but did not take the snake down. The viper used its tongue to grab and restrain him.

Two turns until detonation. We also got word that reinforcements would be landing this turn. Things were getting hot.

Yosef had a clean shot on the viper and so began her turn by killing it, freeing Noam.

Noam could have easily run up to kill the sectoid... if he had any ammo. Instead, Juggernaut spent his last grenade, launching it over the truck and dealing three damage to the sectoid. The immediate threats were all dead but we needed to secure that data next turn as well as plan for reinforcements.

Kim was the best candidate to get the intel and ran up to a spot that would allow her to reach it the following turn. Everybody else went on overwatch.

The Advent airship flew in and dropped off an engineer and a another mech.

All things considered, this was a pretty manageable group. The team was nearby and was able to take good shots on the enemy. Deanna weakened the mech, and gave Yosef the chance to get the kill, but when she missed, Deanna finished the work she had started.

Kim ran into the truck and hacked the package, disarming the detonator (one turn left) and for the first time in this entire campaign, we got the reward!

Juggernaut killed the engineer and things were quiet.

Although the time got tight at the end, the mission was a solid one. Only Kim sustained injuries and they were minor. Especially after our failure to defend the haven, it was good to have a definitive win.

MVPs: Deanna “Magic Girl” Bennet and Noam Malcah

It was too hard to pick this week. Deanna racked up the kills like nobody’s business, accounting for far more than her share, and Noam showed a bravery and willingness to take risks for the team that was best highlighted by his dangerous run on the officer that prevented an entire turn from being wasted without moving (and given that we disarmed the intel package the turn before it detonated, that extra turn was crucial).

Promotions

Noam Malcah reached lance corporal and learned Lighting Reflexes, which would greatly reduce the danger the next time he decides to run through overwatch fire.

Stephen “Juggernaut” Smith reached 2nd Lieutenant and learned Bluescreen Bombs, allowing his flash bangs to affect robotic units.

Hadassah Yosef reached lance corporal and learned Ever Vigilant.

Back at the Base

The first this we did upon getting back was sending a few choice members of Crash Bandicoot out on the network tower mission. Jennings, the officer of the squad would be recovering for nearly a month, so it felt like an opportune time to send some people on a long infiltration. It’ll be a hard one and they are not my most advanced soldiers but I can’t sit on this one. I equipped them as best as I could and sent them out.

Dark Carnival turned right around and went on another mission to prevent another Dark Event. Operation Steely Fear turned up nearly 10 days ago with a weirdly long timer. It was time to go take care of it.

The Psi Lab finished construction so I hired a new recruit and began training our first psionic warrior.

Soon after that, Whinny, the horse medic, finished his officer training and it was time for a new squad!

Most of the future members of the squad were out infiltrating so we’ll assemble that one when they get back.

A few potential missions came up. We’ll asses those when we have more troops ready to move out. In the meantime, we finished contacting New Brazil so we now have four active regions.

Soon after that, Operation Starving Hawk was ready to go, so we launched it half a day early. See you next time as we try to round up a few new recruits!

A small group of rebels were defending the uplink. They did not have military training, but had taken up arms to help defend the haven anyway. I had command over them for this mission. They were equipped pretty haphazardly, with three shotguns and one assault rifle. All had a flash bang and a frag grenade, which would be useful.

On X-Com’s side, we had Crash Bandicoot, fresh off their last win. To bolster them, we also had Dane and Arthur Willems (who had been advising the haven in West Africa). The full list was:

Gunnar “Whiskey” Olsen, combat specialist Sandra “Werewolf” Kennedy, ranger Jesus Sanchez, gunner Jane “Puppo” Friedhoff, sniper Dane “Anime” Costsonas, assaulter Arthur Willems, technical Fred “Law” Jennings, specialist and officer

We landed fairly close to the building housing the data tap. Only about two turns dashing stood between us that the uplink we need to protect. Of course, I new that it would not be that easy: These missions typically have serious enemy pods on the map, and they have a tendency to converge, having been alerted to the location of the data tap. Still, it seemed like a small boon to be so close. It would ultimately not matter.

I started by moving one resistance member to the edge of their building to peek out towards the South where X-Com was to see if they could spot any Advent. Nothing yet. Wanting to spot check from the other side as well, Dane moved North (and a little to the West), taking full cover behind a billboard. We found our first pod to the East, just between the rebels and my soldiers.

The pod did not contain any advanced units, but it was no joke either, consisting of six Advent soldiers. They took cover closer to the rebels and most of my units could not take cover and land solid shots on them, but we did what we could.

Willems was able to get closest but the shots still were not good. I decided to see what the resistance could do. The rocketeer in the Advent group in particular scared me. If allowed to take a regular action, it could easily kill all of the rebels and damage the data tap or do massive damage to my soldiers, some of whom would need to take cover near cars that could explode. These concerns were alleviated when one of the rebels threw a flash bang at the rocketeer, the sentry and the trooper.

Sanchez suppressed the remaining Advent soldiers and Whiskey ran to a position where he would be able to flank next turn, putting him nearly at the Eastern wall of the map. The other soldiers and rebels mostly took pot shots that missed.

I was feeling good about how contained this group of Advent was when their turn started. Before these ground troops could go, though, they got got reinforcements from the East. We were trapped between the Advent soldiers we’d been dealing with and a new group consisting of two sectoids and a viper.

Things got worse once the existing soldiers were able to take their turn. The gunner ran through the suppressing fire unscathed and returned with his own area suppression, pinning down several of our troops.

The officer made a very bold decision and ran adjacent to Dane, but shot at Willems, connecting for seven damage. The disoriented trooper took a 10% shot on Willems as well and got lucky. Willems was hit and was on the ground bleeding out. Upon seeing this one of the resistance members panicked. I can hardly blame her.

And with that, we started our second turn.

I decided that I needed to focus on eliminating the original Advent soldiers before moving to deal with the new aliens to the East. It would be tricky though. We were right between the two groups and almost any cover for one would leave us exposed to the other.

If we could remove the sentry to the north, the resistance members with shotguns would be able to (more) safely approach the rocketeer and the trooper. Jane had a good shot but decided to firm it up with rapid-targeting. Luckily, she was in a spot that afforded cover from both groups facing us. She landed the shot, taking the sentry out in one hit.

One rebel moved to a flanking position but missed his shot. Another one came up and took a much more difficult shot, but managed to land a critical, killing the rocketeer and allowing us to breath a tiny sigh of relief. Well done Aya Shazad!

Whiskey ran into a flanking position as planned, putting him flush up against the Western wall of the map. He landed his shot, but the gunner survived at one health. We were not landing kills at the rate we needed to to keep up with Advent and keep the device safe. 

Still, he managed to remove the gunner’s area suppression. This allowed Werewolf, who had been one of the targets of that suppression, to move and flank him. She dealt the last point of damage easily.

By moving her West, I knew I was taking Werewolf out of the equation for dealing with the sectoids and viper, but there was simply no way to leave soldiers in in the middle. Anybody who could potentially deal with either pod next turn would get ripped to shreds on Advent’s turn. Werewolf is reliable so it hurt to take her away from that front, but I was counting on her reliability to spearhead mopping up the remaining troopers on this side.

Dane took the easy kill the officer had given him by running adjacent. Dane was in one of the few spots that did actually afford cover from both sides, wedged between a car and a lamp post.

Jennings moved West to flash bang the viper and one of the sectoids. Sanchez ran to join him and laid down suppressing fire on the other sectoid. Only the trooper to the North was left without some kind of penalty. Willems was still bleeding on the pavement.

I was less confident this turn than I was last turn, but before I was able to see what the aliens would do, they were joined by more reinforcements. This time, three vipers and a trooper joined from the North, immediately taking positions inside or directly adjacent to the small building housing the rebels and the data tap. 

There was absolutely no way I could get X-Com there to deal with them before they dealt the necessary 18 damage to destroy the data tap. As if to drive this point home, two of the vipers got free reaction shots, killing the panicked resistance member and dealing five damage to the data tap.

Things were ugly and at this point I knew it would take a miracle to keep the data tap safe. There was some hope for the remaining resistance members and X-Com soldiers, though. 

I miscalculated Jennings cover and the trooper who had dropped Willems was able to move in order to get a flanking shot on him.

Even when disoriented, Vipers have good aim, and the one near Jennings saw his opportunity.

We now had two soldier bleeding out. Worse, Jennings was the officer and the medic of the squad. Although other soldiers (most notable Whiskey) could stabilize our people, only Jennings had the revival protocol needed to get them on their feet again. Luckily nobody else was harmed during the alien turn.

I called Sky Ranger. If we could kill the remaining aliens and save the data tap, great, but I didn’t want my soldiers losing their lives for nothing if things got any worse. She would arrive in three turns. Although we ultimately did not use the evacuation, it was good to have it ready.

One of the resistance members did what they could to protect the data tap, throwing a flash bang at all three vipers from the roof of the building.

Dane used run-and-gun to start dealing with the aliens to the West. His odds on the Viper weren’t great so Jane helped out with a holo-target, having no good shots herself.

Dane landed the shot, taking out the viper!

Whiskey considered stabilizing either of our two downed soldiers, but decided to prioritize securing the board and tending to them next turn. He sent aid protocol to Dane who was fairly exposed to the two sectoids and then fired at the trooper, killing it.

Jane moved to a spot that was better for taking shots on the new vipers and which was also adjacent to Willems. Her hope was that she could stabilize him next turn. If not, he would die.

Sanchez suppressed the remaining sectoid and Werewolf spent her turn dashing. If we were to have any hope of completing our mission, we need more than just the resistance members fighting those vipers by the uplink.

This hopeful move on her part was rewarded with immediate defeat. No new enemies arrived, but the three vipers near the uplink all took shots on it, destroying it.

The trooper there hit the rebel on the roof for three damage, causing him to panic.

Back on the West side, Dane was mind-controlled by one of the remaining sectoids. He seems to get mind-controller a lot.

The rebels didn’t react well to their device being destroyed. With the mission already a failure, our only remaining objective was to kill the aliens that had invaded the haven. One resistance member immediately ran into the building and scored a point blank kill on one of the vipers.

Another was just as eager, but had less luck, merely grazing her viper for two damage.

This left both of them very close to the vipers.

Sanchez threw a flash bang in order to stun the sectoid and break the mind control.

As Dane shook of the psychic control, he ran up and delivered a shotgun blast to the sectoid that had attacked him, damaging but not killing it.

Whiskey, however was able to help. He spent his first action stabilizing Jennings remotely and then sent his gremlin right back out to deliver a combat protocol jolt to the sectoid, killing it.

On Advent’s turn, both of our resistance members found themselves bound by the vipers that were so close to them.

Luckily, nothing else of note happened.

Our next turn started (this was only our fifth one). The rebel on the roof shook off his panic and was ready to help his friends. He ran down and took a shot at the closer of the two vipers. He only managed to land a grazing shot for one damage, but it was enough to make the snake release its grip on his friend.

This prompted a chain reaction of rebels shooting snakes and freeing friends. The just released rebel took aim at the other viper, dealing five damage and freeing the resistance member. She took cover and threw in a frag grenade, killing one viper and leaving the other at one health.

Whiskey finished off the snake with his last combat protocol.

Back on the other side of the map, Dane closed in on the last sectoid and killed it with a critical hit.

Jane stabilized Willem and we were left with a single trooper.

Over the next two turns, we managed to kill the trooper as well as the reinforcements that landed. By turn seven, the mission was over. The Advent that had attacked the haven were dead, but the data uplink was destroyed and one resistance member had given her life to defend it.

This was certainly not as bad a loss as it could be, but we’ll be feeling the effects of this one for a month. The rebels in East Africa were all switched to recruitment and supply gathering, being unable to gather intel for a full month. Jennings is out of commission for 22 days while he heals. He is the commanding officer and medic of Crash Bandicoot and not having him available will greatly hinder the squad.

MVP: Gunnar “Whiskey” Olsen

We didn’t win, but X-Com fought well. Being pinned between three enemy pods was a nightmare scenario, and they still managed to come out in (mostly) one piece. This was largely due to Gunnar Olsen. He ran into the fray ready to score flanking hits on the early Advent troops and then pivoted to keeping the squad breathing after Jennings was taken out. Even while hanging back to stabilize our soldiers, he provided the last few points of damage on two different aliens with his combat protocol.

Promotions

We still had one! Jesus Sanchez was promoted to corporal, learning Lockdown and getting the nickname “Lunchbox.”

Back at the Base

We didn’t do much before it was time to launch Operation Half-Eaten Prince.

In the few days we had, we did manage to make contact with New Brazil. We’ll finish contacting them next time we have some free time.

See you next time when go on a mission to gain some intel as well as preventing a dark event. Hopefully it’ll go better than this one!

Jane moved up to get full cover where she could take a pistol shot and discovered a turret on top of the train. We were waking up a lot of the map and only two soldiers had moved.

Jennings took cover and hacked the turret to shut it down for a turn. Thomas ran up and took out the drone with her shotgun, leaving werewolf to go on overwatch.

Whiskey grabbed full cover and sent aid protocol to Werewolf as she was only in partial cover. Jane used Gun Slinger to take a pistol shot at any of the Advent troops if they moved.

Sanchez used area suppression on the officer and a trooper and we were done with turn one.

The officer attempted to shoot at Thomas, but was taken down by Werewolf before it could pull the trigger. One trooper went right to overwatch and the other took a shot at Thomas but also missed. Jane got her pistol reaction shot and hit the trooper, bringing him to one health.

Whiskey started his next turn by using Interference to take away the trooper’s overwatch. Werewolf moved up to flank the unharmed trooper and then harmed him.

Thomas ran up but failed to connect on the damaged trooper. Jane and Jennings missed as well. Whiskey sent his gremlin to use combat protocol on the turret, destroying it.

Sanchez suppressed the remaining trooper. This was enough to keep the trooper off its game, and it missed when it fired on Thomas.

Thomas responded by running to the full cover just in front of the trooper and getting the kill.

Jane grabbed some loot from the officer and everybody else stayed tight, moving up as a group.

Our next turn was quiet as well. We moved up with most of the team going on overwatch and a few people reloading. On Advent’s turn a drone flew in from the North and was immediately shot down by Werewolf.

Thomas kept moving up and she found another pod: an officer and drone. Jane took out the drone right away and the rest of the team thought about how to handle to officer.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to be done from our position. Sanchez suppressed the officer and everybody else went on overwatch.

Before the officer could go, he was joined by a sectoid, a gunner and a sentry who had been waiting in the train by the computer.

The officer missed his shot on Sanchez, but nobody connected with their reaction fire either.

Amy Thomas used run-and-gun to get in between the officer and the rest of the Advent pod. She landed a critical on the officer, killing it.

Jane dashed onto a trailer to the West to get a better elevated position for next turn. Sanchez laid down area suppression on the sentry and the gunner. Whiskey summoned the Sky Ranger which would arrive in 4 turns and then threw a flash bang to disorient the gunner and the sectoid.

Jennings fired at the sectoid and hit for four damage.

On Advent’s turn, all fire focussed on Thomas, and even though they were suppressed and/or disoriented, the aliens landed two shots. She was bleeding out.

We needed to take out some of the Adevnt before we could safely stabilize Thomas, so Jane used rapid-targeting on the gunner. She took her own shot on it and did four damage, but not enough to get the kill. Whiskey used combat protocol to finish the job.

Sanchez suppressed the sentry.

On their turn, the sectoid raised a zombie and the sentry hunkered down.

Jane took a shot at the sectoid but missed.

Whiskey ran up and stabilized Thomas. This left both of them exposed to the sectoid in the train car.

Jennings used revival protocol to get Thomas back on her feet and she immediately ran into the train to take out the sectoid.

Thomas was still only at one health and in just partial cover so Jennings used his second action to give her aid protocol. Sanchez reloaded and kept the suppression coming.

It wasn’t enough. The sentry shot through the suppressing fire and the aid protocol and connected with Thomas. She was down and bleeding out once again, but she wasn’t dead yet.

Sky Ranger would be there in one turn and the network would shut down in two. We needed to kill this sentry, get to the computer and go. Whiskey ran up and took a flanking shot on the sentry, killing it.

Jennings moved into the train car so the next turn he could hack the computer and either pick up or stabilize Thomas. Everybody else moved up to the evac point.

No more Advent showed up so Jennings hacked the computer, and as usual failed to get a bonus by just a few points.

We were ready to go so Jennings grabbed Thomas and the team roped up to their ship.

We obviously came under a lot of fire, but everybody made it out and we got what we came for.

MVP: Amy Thomas

Amy made her squad and her profession proud. As an assaulter she will often come under fire, but in this mission she got far more than her fair share, and managed to survive, even when shot below her HP twice.

Promotions

Gunnar “Whiskey” Olsen was promoted to sergeant, and learned Medical Protocol. Even though he is more focussed on combat and hacking, gaining an extra use of his medkit and being able to deploy it remotely is simple too valuable.

Jane Friedhoff reached corporal and learned Damn Good Ground. She earned the nickname “Big Shot” but it will be changed to “Puppo” at the first opportunity.

Amy Thomas also reached corporal and learned Close and Personal. She earned the nickname “Unstoppable” for her tenaciousness.

Back at the Base

Not much to report here. We launched this mission early in order to have soldiers ready to go defend the haven in East Africa. The retaliation mission had 22 hours and Dane was 9 hours away from finishing his Advanced Warfare Center training so we waited for that and then took everybody we had to defend the Haven. This included pulling Arthur Willems from being a haven advisor in West Africa. Not everybody was technically a member of Crash Bandicoot, but it would have to do!

See you next time for Operation Summoned Grave, as we keep our havens safe!

On our first turn, Solar got things started by moving up, where he immediately spotted and engineer, a trooper and a drone to the North West.

Ezra and Paul Franzen both moved up to position themselves for an attack next turn (or in Franzen’s case, on Advent’s turn since his Ever Vigilant ability allows him to enter overwatch at the end of any turn in which he spends both actions moving).

The rest of the team went on overwatch after a small move except for Top Notch who couldn’t reach any good sniping spots without alerting Advent. Instead, he steadied his weapon for next turn.

On their turn, the Advent pod was joined by an officer from the West. The drone moved and spotted us, causing the whole pod to scramble. 

Our aim was true and most of the overwatch shots connected. The officer, the trooper and the drone were all shot down and we went into our next turn facing just one engineer who had taken cover in a nearby building to our North.

The clock was generous, but it was a forced retreat mission, meaning that when it ran out, any remaining solders would be left behind. We needed to keep moving so I wanted to deal with the engineer quickly. Franzen moved up to get a better spot but woke up two troopers and an Advent turret.

Solar has the Shredder ability, allowing his shots to destroy armor, so he moved up to take aim at the heavily armored turret. Top Notch helped him out with rapid targeting on the turret and Solar took the turret out with a single hit.

Franzen spent his second action moving up onto a small Advent guard post. His overwatch at the end of the turn would put one of the troopers in a flanked position.

A few of our soldiers missed their shots, so Whinny threw in a flash bang to keep the engineer off guard (and unable to use his own grenades) and Gold Hawk laid down suppressing fire on the two troopers.

On Advent’s turn, another drone flew in from the North. The engineer moved to reposition but got caught in Franzen’s overwatch fire. The two troopers fired on Franzen and Mansoor, but both missed. The one that Franzen had been flanking moved, but Gold Hawk missed her reaction shot.

That trooper had taken up cover inside the building. Unfortunately for him, it was a spot that Ezra could easily get to.

Now we had one trooper and a drone to deal with. Franzen moved to get a flanking shot on the other trooper but woke up a large pod in the process.

A drone, an engineer, a trooper, and a gunner ran in from the building housing the VIP. Franzen was pretty far up from the rest of the group and was the only one with eyes on this new group. There wasn’t much we could do to subdue them this turn. Rather than retreating, Franzen took the flanking shot and killed the trooper. Whinny did what he could to keep Franzen safe by sending aid protocol.

Most of the team dashed up, with a few taking position on the guard house that Franzen had been on. They couldn’t do much this turn, but next turn they could hop in. Whinny spent his second action to temporarily shut down the drone closes to Franzen. Turns out we can succeed in a hack when our odds are 100%.

On Advent’s turn, shots were fired at both Franzen and Mansoor, but nothing hit. We were in the clear and could start fighting back!

The last few turns had been busy, but we were making good progress on our objective and taking out a lot of Advent in the process. The VIP was nearly in sight, but there were five enemies standing between us and our target.

Ezra used run-and-gun to dash through the building and get closer to the action. In doing do, he discovered another turret on top of the building. He had originally moved up to fire at the gunner, but with the turret in the mix, I decided to hold off on having him use his last action until I could see how the rest of the turn shook out.

Solar attempted to use his wrist-rockets to damage the enemy and take out some cover. It missed spectacular, destroying nothing but a nearby car.

Franzen spent both actions firing at the nearby drones and managed to destroy both of them.

Top Notch climbed onto the Advent guard post, finally getting some elevation and threw a smoke grenade to keep Ezra safe. With concerns about the turret slightly alleviated, Ezra fired at the gunner, killing it.

Gold Hawk suppressed the engineer and Mansoor dashed up to join Ezra in the smoke so he could land a grenade on the following turn.

Advent’s turn began with one of the fallen troopers being reanimated into a psi-zombie. This meant that there was a sectoid out of our visible range that had already been woken up. The turret managed to shoot through the smoke and hit Ezra for three damage. The trooper went on overwatch and the engineer missed.

I’m beginning to think that I should give my snipers armor piercing rounds. These turrets are tricky. Because they have two armor, any damage dealt to them is reduced by two (unless I am able to shred it first). Top Notch had a good shot on the turret, but it was likely to only do a minuscule amount of actual damage. Ezra could run up and take a point-blank shot on the turret, but the psi-zombie was blocking the ladder. Ezra still moved, drawing out the trooper’s overwatch fire. His Lightning Reflexes kept him safe.

This got him close enough to the engineer to take a point-blank shot, killing it.

It also got him close enough to the mystery sectoid to reveal it, along with a stun lancer and a drone.

Mansoor threw a frag grenade up to the turret to remove some of the armor. Top Notch followed up with a shot from his sniper rifle, but missed. Whinny sent some aid protocol to Ezra and a few of our people went on overwatch.

The psi zombie was the first Advent unit to move. Gold Hawk took it out, but I couldn’t help but wish that her overwatch fire had gone towards a bigger threat. Franzen’s overwatch came in useful, though, as he took down the stun lancer as soon as it moved. The sectoid used its psionic abilities to panic Ezra. The Advent forces that fired missed, but the drone shot a helpful beam to the turret to repair it: an ability of theirs that I had forgotten about.

Whinny started the turn with some revival protocol to get Ezra’s head back in the game. Freshly invigorated, Ezra climbed the ladder to the roof and destroyed the turret with hit shotgun.

Mansoor moved up to grab some loot and to lob a flash bang at the sectoid and Top Notch took out the drone.

Franzen dashed again to give himself the best possible overwatch shot on the trooper and the sectoid and Gold Hawk suppressed the trooper.

On their turn, the trooper reloaded his weapon and hunkered down, not ready to face the forces arrayed against him. The sectoid fired at Franzen but missed.

Solar had been steadily moving up as either he or Mansoor were likely candidates to be the one to carry the VIP back. He used his flamethrower on the sectoid and although he did damage, he did not set the alien on fire.

Ezra attempted to finish the job with a frag grenade but the sectoid was left at one health. Whinny sent aid protocol to Franzen and everybody else missed their shot. Gold Hawk kept the trooper suppressed.

When the sectoid got its turn, it shot Solar, doing three damage.

Given the sectoid’s resilience so far, Top Notch decided to help everybody by using his rapid-targeting on it. Luckily that was enough for him and he took the sectoid out from across the map with his sniper rifle. That left just the trooper, which Franzen was able to deal with.

Solar ran in to knock out the VIP and carry her out.

We had a few turns before reinforcements arrived so we started to hoof it back towards the evac.

When reinforcements did land a few turns later, we were ready.

An officer, a sentry and a gunner hopped out. Our initial overwatch fire took down the officer while the sentry and gunner scrambled for cover. 

Ezra ran up and took out the gunner.

We were not able to kill the sentry that turn, but we did leave it at one health. When it tried to shoot at Whinny, Franzen was granted reaction fire and took it out.

After that we had a enough turns to reach the evac. Reinforcements were due on the turn we left, but we never had to see them.

Despite the larger number of enemies, the mission was flawless.

MVP: Paul “Mirror Beard” Franzen

The defensive ranger build is not always as exciting as the more aggressive route, but when it works, it’s fantastic. Paul’s ability to spend both actions to move around the enemy and still go on overwatch was invaluable when combined with his strong reaction shots. He kept a lot of our people safe by killing the enemy as soon as they fired on us.

Promotions

We had a few!

Ezra “Magic Man” Schrage reached sergeant and learned Fortify, which he can activate to greatly increase his defense for a turn.

Jan “Top Notch” Meyer also reached sergeant and learned HiDef Holo, increasing the effectiveness of his holo-targeter.

Sideny “Whinny” Payne reached staff sergeant, learning Field Medic, an ability I’ve been looking forward to that grants him additional uses of his medkits.

Mahmoud Mansoor reached lance corporal and learned Rapid Deployment, letting him occasionally launch flash bangs and other defensive grenades without spending an action.

Back at the Base

By bringing in that VIP, we learned the location of the East African regional nerve center. This is where Advent is organizing their forces (and blasting out propaganda).

There is no timer on this mission, and it is a hard one, allowing a squad of only four. We should take it soon, but I need my people to be a bit more ready first. Once we raid the regional nerve center, the location of the Advent base in the region will be revealed and we will take in a much larger squad for the assault.

In the mean time, It’s time to get our third squad going! Whinny went in for officer training. While he learns about command, the rest of his team is going out on Operation Starving Hawk to round up some new recruits.

No specialists on this one, so they’ll need to play it safe.

There is still time on Operation Steely Fear, so I’m going to wait for one of the other squads to come back before we take it on to prevent a dark event.

Right after I sent out Operation Starving Hawk, though, we got word that Advent was retaliating in East Africa. The haven there was under attack! We only had 24 hours to respond, so I launched Crash Bandicoot early. Hopefully they will stay safe and that squad can turn right back around and save the Haven.

See you next time for Operation Hellborn Doom.

The rest of the squad couldn’t do much. All of the good cover was more than one move away. Most of the team dashed for a better shot next turn. Juggernaut and Kim, our new specialist, stayed a little further back on overwatch along with Ben who went on pistol overwatch.

On their turn, the aliens spotted us, which was to be expected. Ben got a shot off but she missed.

Dane ran up to attack the sectoid and got a critical, but it wasn’t enough and left it at one health.

Deanna tried to deal with the sectoid by taking a normal shot, which I expected to miss. After that she took a Walk Fire shot, which had even better odds thanks to her Locked On ability giving her a benefit on consecutive shots at the same target. Unfortunately, this one missed too.

Ben dashed up to the roof to have a better sniping shot for next turn. Because of her Death From Above ability, it was far better for her to land kills from an elevated position. On Chen, rather than breaking his concealment, moved along the roof to scout. 

Panzer suppressed the sectoid and Kim sent aid protocol to Dane. There wasn’t anything else we could do about the trooper.

On Advent’s turn, new forces came in from the North: another sectoid, a stun lancer and a gunner.

The original sectoid ran and Panzer shot it down. The trooper retreated and took a long range shot on Panzer, connecting and dealing four damage.

The new sectoid also got a free action and used it to mind control Dane. Since the alien was in full cover, we’d need to use a flash bang to get him back.

At the start of our next turn, Ben took a shot at the gunner but missed. 

On Chen moved up in order to flash the sectoid (and the gunner), revealing himself in the process. But before he had the chance to throw the grenade, he was spotted by another pod. An officer and two sentries entered the fray.

On Chen threw the grenade, disorienting the gunner and the sectoid, releasing the alien’s control over Dane’s mind.

Deanna fired at the stun lancer, but missed. Dane used run-and-gun to sprint all the way out to where the original trooper had gone to the East. I didn’t want this one trooper to wind up flanking us, and at the same time, sending Dane out in that direction meant that Advent would have to worry about our attacks coming from both sides. He took out the trooper easily, dealing a staggering 12 damage.

Panzer moved up a bit and suppressed the stun lancer. Kim & Juggernaut spent their turns dashing to get closer to the action next turn.

The stun lancer was nothing if not predictable. It ran towards our people and Panzer dutifully shot it down.

The officer moved down from the roof and shot at On Chen, connecting for three damage. One sentry went right on overwatch, but the other one also fired at On Chen and missed. It still got to end its turn on overwatch. The dazed  sectoid managed to hit On Chen as well, bringing him to just one health. The Advent gunner tried to finish him off, but the disorientation prevented him from landing the killing blow on our new shinobi.

With two sentries on overwatch we were locked down. Moving at all would incur a lot of reaction fire. On Chen started the turn by healing himself with the medkit he was carrying. Ben tried to take out one of the sentries, but missed again.

It was a shame, because without that sentry, Dane could have snuck around. Instead Dane reloaded and shot his arc-thrower at the sentry. The device hit for its full effect, completely incapacitating the sentry for the next turn.

With the sentry to the East off overwatch, Juggernaut was able to hug his cover on the road leading up to the building just enough to be able to launch a grenade without coming into the firing range of the other sentry.

He used his Rapid Deployment, allowing him to launch the flash bang as a free action; I had a plan for one of his new officer abilities The sectoid, gunner and sentry were all disoriented and we were free to move without being fired upon.

On Chen took the opportunity to run in and cut down the sectoid.

This left him out of actions and badly exposed to the gunner and sentry. This is where Jugegrnaut’s extra action came in. Juggernaut used Command to give On Chen his last action, allowing the shinobi to move to full cover while still remaining close to the action.

Min Ji Kim missed her shots, but we did get this picture of her looking menacing:

Deanna dashed again, setting herself up for flanking shots the following turn and Panzer put the sentry and the gunner under an area suppression, although she did not have enough ammo to take reaction shots on both of them.

The officer was unaffected but it was a risk we needed to take.

On their turn the officer marked On Chen and took a shot, but missed. Thank god we had gotten him into full cover. The sentry, confused, spent its turn running around. The gunner hunkered down.

On our next turn, Ben once again kicked things off by taking aim at the sentry to the East. This time she connected, killing it and getting an extra action from Death From Above, which she used to reload.

Juggernaut moved up and used another officer ability, Focus Fire to make the officer easier to hit. This was all the instruction On Chen needed to take out his sword and run in. He jumped through the window of the building, taking cover inside while slashing at the officer, killing it.

Deanna finally got to take advantage of all of the running she had been doing and used her shot-gun point blank on the gunner.

There wasn’t much we could do about the sentry this turn, so Kim sent aid protocol to Deanna and the rest of the team went on overwatch. Ben moved up to the edge of her roof to be in a better position to move forward. We still had to grab the loot we had come for.

On Advent’s turn, the sentry dashed and Kim got the kill with her reaction fire.

Since the enemy was light on the ground, I assumed that this was the extent of their forces and started moving all of my units up as far as possible, with the higher mobility soldiers going for the storage containers near the back of the (large) building. We did this for two turns before discovering that we were not at all alone on the map.

A pod consisting of an officer, a gunner, a sentry and a trooper found us on their turn and scrambled on the opposite side of the building, some taking position on a second floor balcony that looked into the building.

We got lucky by having them discover us on their own turn rather than running into them. Although my people were spread out and not all of them could do much, everybody had their two actions and could stay safe.

Not everybody in Dark Carnival was far away. The sentry had no idea that it had taken up a position only a few tiles away from the door Dane was hiding behind. A fatal mistake.

Panzer was able to move up and lay down suppressing fire on the remaining three soldiers.

Everybody else missed or had to spend the turn moving to a more useful place, but at least all of the Advent left were pinned down. Kim sent some aid protocol to Panzer to keep her safe while she protected the rest of the team.

The gunner hunkered down, the officer fired at Deanna and the trooper fired at Dane, but both missed thanks to Panzer’s fire.

The next turn, Juggernaut burst threw the door into the lobby that Advent was looking down onto and exhausted what was left of his arsenal. If we could kill these units this turn with as few of our units as possible, there was a good chance we could get the loot and get back before reinforcements arrived, so there was no reason to hold back. He used Rapid Deployment to send a flash bang in immediately followed by a frag grenade. The three enemy soldiers were wounded and stunned.

Deanna used Walk Fire to pick off the trooper.

On Chen ran into to cut down his second officer of the day.

And Dane used run-and-gun to deal with the remaining sentry.

The room was secure and we were free to grab the loot. After that, we high tailed it back to the evac and managed to reach the extraction point with two turns before reinforcements arrived.

This was a damn good mission. A few turns looked dicey but the team held together and pulled through beautifully (and from a player perspective, I had to think long and hard about nearly every decision; always a treat).

MVP: Dane “Anime” Cotsonas

Dane kept the fire coming. With his new mobility, he was able to control the map, and his arc thrower allowed him to be useful, even when he couldn’t move. Dane is the MVP of this one, but every member of the squad lended their expertise beautifully to this operation. Dark Carnival is off to a great start.

Promotions

Three promotions this time around (On Chen is in the back of the above image).

Ben Serviss reached corporal, learning Damn Good Ground and earning the nickname “Chief” which may be subject to change.

Min Ji Kim reached lance corporal and learned Revival Protocol. She is slated to be the medic of this unit.

On Chen also reached lance corporal and learned Blademaster. He landed all of his sword attacks today, but an extra 10% hit chance will go a long way in the future.

Back at the Base

We got a lot of loot for this one.

And that money is going towards a brand new Psionics Chamber!

Pretty soon we should be able to field some mental warriors out in the field!

Two of the rookies finished training at the GTS so I popped two more in. Unfortunately I realized that that put us at 0 potential new recruits, so I’ll have to find more to go into the pool.

Dark Carnival got ready to ship back out with a few of the newly trained squaddies in tow and shipped off for Operation Half-Eaten Prince. We spent the last bit of remaining money on a laser rifle for Squaddie Yosef.

Not long after sending them out, Operation Cold Apollo reached launch time.

This will be a touch one. It’s the third step in the liberation chain and Advent will throw what they can in our way. See you tomorrow for that one, but first, here is a shot of Whinny staying fit:

Although his path was nearly identical to Pawlak’s, it crossed a few new tiles, and that was enough for three different pods to spot us. By the time they all scrambled we were looking at a sectoid, two sentries, an officer, and two drones.

To make matters worsw, one of the troopers had spotted Pawlak, causing her to lose concealment. Nearly all of them had flanking shots on both of my soldiers (who had exhausted their actions for the turn and would be unable to seek cover). It was bad.

Kong moved down to the second floor of the roof but was only able to catch two units at most with a flash bang. Still worth it. The sectoid and the officer became disoriented.

Jane used rapid targeting and took a shot at one of the sentires, killing it. She did not have cover but was far enough away that it most likely would not matter.

Werewolf moved next to Kong and aimed at the sectoid. She managed to hit, but only did three damage. Whiskey used Combat Protocol to take out one of the drones.

Before doing so, he sent aid protocol to Sanchez. Of the two soldiers in danger, Sanchez had more units closer to him. It was a tough decision, but I believed he had less chance of surviving the turn than Maria. As a side note, Sanchez has rotten luck: This was his second mission, his first being Operation Ice Walker, where Alex Thompson died.

The aliens began their turn. The remaining drone fired at Pawlak and missed. Then the sectoid shot at her and hit, but only for one damage.

Then the sentry ran to within a few spaces of her and took his flanking shot.

It was a critical hit and she died on the spot. The aid protocol may have saved Sanchez’s life but it may have cost Maria Pawlak hers, directing the bulk of the enemy fire to her. The other units fired at Sanchez and missed. We were one turn into the mission and had already lost a soldier.

The next few turns were hardly heroic, with shots being missed all around, but they were not (terribly) damaging either. We had time and so played a defensive long game, being unwilling to lose another soldier. At this point, I knew that most of the forces on the map were already right in front of us.

Kong launched a grande, damaging the sectoid and the sentry. Sanchez went on full time suppression duty after coming back up the the relative safety of our roof. Jane made the whole space more secure throwing a smoke grenade, obscuring our soldiers with red fog. Whiskey shot at the drone, damaging but not destroying it.

On their turn, the drone spent both actions to fly right to us, doing nothing else, making it a contender for mission MVP. The sectoid ran and was killed by Sanchez. The sentry got closer to us and went on overwatch and the officer marked Kong and then shot her threw the smoke for five damage, leaving her at one health.

On our next turn, Jane moved up, still out of range of the sentry’s overwatch, and took cover for the first time. She used her pistol to take out the drone below.

Kong needed to get to Whisky for a heal, but the sentry’s overwatch was making that difficult. Whisky had the best ability to remove the overwatch and so used his final Combat Protocol to send his gremlin to jolt the sentry, killing it.

Kong ran into the building and hunkered down. She could be healed next turn. Sanchez kept the suppression fire up, now focussed on the officer and Werewolf missed her shots. The officer was in high cover and made for a difficult target.

The officer moved, drawing reaction fire from Sanchez before firing back at him. Both missed their shots.

The officer had run to the West and Werewolf decided to follow him. Whiskey and Kong met on the roof for a heal. Nobody managed to hit the officer, but Sanchez reloaded and kept up the suppression.

On the officer’s turn, Werewolf’s overwatch shot missed but the officer missed as well.

On the fifth turn of the mission, we were still dealing with this officer. Werwolf continued to close on his position and managed to hit him for four damage. 

Sanchez kept suppressing, and to really make sure the officer couldn’t dash away Whisky tossed in a flash bang.

Finally, on turn six, a full five turns after the officer had entered the fray, Werewolf was able to score a point blank shot on him.

It was a rough start. We had presumably dealt with most of the enemies Advent was going to throw at us, but we had lost a soldier and then had to spend a long time on clean up duty. If the mission clock had been anything other than wildly generous, we would have been in trouble.

Most of the squad reloaded and moved up a tiny bit or went on overwatch. Whisky attempted to hack a nearby tower. The result of a failure was enemies being altered to our location, but that was fine. Whoever was left represented a small group and it would be better to fight them now rather than when reinforcement arrived.

As usual, we failed the hack by a tiny margin.

We continued to move up towards a car dealership. The evac point was on the roof of one of their offices. While making our way over we were spotted by a sectoid and two troopers. Kong immediately launched a grenade, doing damage to the sectoid and one of the troopers as well as blowing up the car that the alien had taken cover behind, killing it.

Jane and Whiskey and both took shots and the troopers and missed. Werewolf went on overwatch and Sanchez suppressed one of the troopers.

On their turn, the non-suppressed trooper ran towards us and was taken down by Werewolf’s reaction shot.

The remaining trooper would take us three full turns to kill. We kept missing and it kept retreating. Luckily, it was taking us towards the evacuation point. Finally, we managed to deal the three damage necessary to kill it with two coming from Jane’s pistol and another two from Werewolf’s Walk Fire. A three turn group effort to deal three damage to Advent’s weakest unit. Not exactly the stuff songs are written about.

On the next turn we got the scientist to the evac point. Reinforcements were coming that turn. Nearly everybody could get out, but Sanchez was one tile out of dash range, so the whole team stayed, going on overwatch.

An officer and a trooper arrived, right next to us.

The entire team proceeded to miss their reaction shots against this nearly adjacent foes. Sanchez was the only one to land his shot, and luckily he killed the officer.

We reached the evac point next turn, and Kong tossed a grenade at the remaining trooper as a parting gift to a mission nobody was looking forward to telling their friends about.

My streak of flawless mission is over for now. Not a total disaster, but even beyond Maria Pawlak’s death, there wasn’t a lot to be proud of here as we spent multiple turns dealing with individual foes.

MVP: Jesus Sanchez?

Hard to call anybody an MVP here, but Sanchez landed a few shots and at least kept our enemies pinned down while we missed our shots. The drone that flew right to us was definitely up for consideration.

RIP: Maria Pawlak

She served well, and was faultless in her own demise. I wavered on who needed the aid protocol at the end of that first turn. It’s impossible to know what would have happened if I’d given it to her, but she will be missed.

Promotions

There were two.

Sandra “Werewolf” Kennedy reached sergeant and learned Center Mass.

Jesus Sanchez reached Lance Corporal and learned Center Mass as well.

Doing more damage with guns in invaluable.

Back at the Base

There was a nearby point of interest that rewarded us with a reprogrammed Advent mech to use if/when a haven comes under attack. The Avenger flew over to grab it.

Jennings finished his officer training and we created our second squad, named after what I have to assume is his favorite game.

Since this was only our second squad, it was easy to once again round it out with a good set of people.

I’m sure the third one will get trickier, and I may ultimately have to pull some more experienced soldiers from Crash Bandicoot or Dark Carnival, but we’ll deal with that later.

While I was waiting for 24 hours for Jennings to finish his training, we were hit with a flurry of missions, most of which I will be ignoring, but three seemed highly relevant.

Operation Hellborn Doom, which I wound up sending Crash Bandicoot out on, had 6 days left and offered some intel, which we need.

Two other missions that will counteract dark events came up. I want to take both, but I have a bit more time. I ignored another three that we cannot logistically take on.

We need to do Steely Fear, but with 16 days, one of the other squads can take it after returning from their mission.

Half-Eaten Prince has a little less time, but can still wait until Dark Carnival comes back from their smash-and-grab mission. No need to waste time, though. Dark Carnival is launching 12 hours early. See you tomorrow for Operation First Hydra!

As luck would have, it, on the alien turn, the drone flew away to the West and two sentries walked towards us, accompanied by a trooper.

They were still a ways away. I could have done the ambush that turn, but instead I moved my units up again, overwatching a few. If Advent happened to spot us, we would still get the reaction fire, but if not I could launch a devastating ambush next turn.

I got lucky. They kept walking towards us and somehow failed to notice Paul and Solar just a few yards away. Solar and Sanchez went on overwatch and Paul launched the attack. Whinny and Ezra held back to make sure we wouldn’t be totally vulnerable if the ambush didn’t go as planned.

All three landed their shots, and the full pod was down. The drone, hearing the commotion flew in. Ezra took a shot at it, damaging but not destroying it. Paul, being a ranger, hadn’t ended his turn when he attacked the sentry and so used his second action to take down the drone.

After that, we had a few quiet turns. We grabbed the loot the sentries had dropped and cautiously moved up towards the building. There was no rush because of the long timer so I kept the group together and with full clips, overwatching most of them at the end of each turn as we moved inside.

We crept through some type of office space until eventually we were at the door to the back area, where the holding cells were located. Paul heard something through the door, so I made sure everybody was as close as possible before we kicked it in. At the start of turn 7, Paul opened the door and found nothing. Sanchez moved in and confirmed what he had heard.

Across the room, a viper and a sentry were waiting for us on top of a set of stairs. They immediately scrambled, flanking Sanchez.

Our crew was close and ready to deal with it. Ezra ran in and took out the viper with a shotgun blast.

Solar took aim at an explosive barrel that the sentry had foolishly taken cover behind. The blast sprayed acid around the room but took out the sentry.

With the room secure, Whinny was free to move in and hack the door to the cells. With a 90% chance of recovering some intel from the hack, I finally felt good about our odds, but the streak of failing our hacks was not to be broken. The bar came up just to the line but ended on the wrong side.

Someday we’ll get a reward from one of these hacks, but not today. Next turn we were ready to stat the evacuation. Rather than moving through the part of the building we hadn’t explored, I opted to go back the way we came as it would allow me to keep the group closer together.

We spent a few turns moving before we encountered two stun lancers and an officer on the North side of the building.

Solar, who had been the one who spotted them attempted to use his wrist rocket to damage the officer and remove its cover. For once, the weapon stayed on target, but it did little, only destroying cover that didn’t matter.

Franzen dashed up. His Ever Vigilant ability allowed him to go on overwatch if he spent his whole turn moving, so getting in a better position to take that shot was his main priority. Sanchez used her area suppression to keep the officer and one of the lancers pinned down.

Ezra used run-and-gun to get close enough to disorient the far lancer with his arc-thrower and Whinny used aid protocol on Sanchez to ensure that her suppressing fire wouldn’t be interrupted by damage.

The far stun lancer made a break for it and was taken down by Franzen.

The officer and the other lancer both moved but Sanchez did not connect on either of her reaction shots. The stun lancer went for Solar but missed and the officer took higher ground on a second floor roof looking into the building. From that spot he marked Sanchez.

Stun lancers rarely get the chance to attack a second time. Ezra was standing right next to him and so reloaded before scoring a critical point-blank shot.

Franzen ran up to the roof and dealt with the officer.

After that we were able to guide the prisoners to the evac point without issue. Another flawless mission and a few new recruits for the havens and X-Com.

MVP: Ezra “Magic Man” Schrage

Everybody did good work on this one, but Ezra’s point-blank kills made the whole operation much smoother, freeing up soldiers to move and handle other tasks without half the squad taking shots at a viper or other foe.

Promotions

We got a few, including some nick names!

Raquel Sanchez reached corporal, learning Lockdown, increasing the aim of her reaction shots. She earned the nickname “Gold Hawk.”

Paul Franzen also reached corporal, learning Covering Fire, allowing any activity to trigger his overwatch shots. He earned the nickname “Mirror Beard”

Patrick “Solar” White reached sergeant and learned Shredder, allowing his gun to destroy armor.

Back at the Base

Back at the Avenger, we started by finishing our scan of a nearby airstrip, rewarding us with an additional maximum number of contacts, something we’ll take advantage of once we have more intel.

The next mission that came up, Operation Cold Apollo, was the next step in the liberation chain for West Africa. We had to take it no matter what, but luckily we had soldiers ready to go and the mission had an 8 day clock. We would need to capture an enemy VIP, and if we brought them in alive, we would be rewarded with another resistance contact slot.

The baseline enemy activity was light-moderate so I decided it would be worth it to over-infiltrate and try to get it down to at least “light.” I was still able to take a squad of seven, equipping silencers on most of the weapons.

While waiting for Operation Dragon Tower to reach full infiltration a few new missions popped up, but I opted to skip them.

After a few days, Dragon Tower was ready to go. See you next time for that one.

On our first turn, Dane spent both actions to dash up and scout the area, spotting an officer and a trooper to our North East. Nabil moved into a sniping position on top of a nearby building.

Everybody moved up to ambush next turn, but the trooper and officer walked off to the East. In their place a drone flew into range. Definitely a less exciting target for an ambush.

Deanna moved up, still staying out of the drone’s sight and managed to spot the trooper.

The drone was probably going to spot us when it moved, so I wanted to launch the ambush this turn. Since Deanna could see the trooper, Nabil could fire on it, Her base aim stat of 79 is no joke! Deanna and Dane went on overwatch. By targeting the trooper first, my hope was that that pod would scramble before the drone, allowing Deanna to use her overwatch on the officer. Chances were, though, that the officer and the drone would survive, which is why I left Panzer and Jennings to provide defense.

The squad made X-Com proud with an ambush that went better than I could have hoped. Nabil landed her shot (94%), and as I’d hoped, the officer moved first. Deanna took her reaction shot with her shiny new laser rifle and took him down in a single hit.

This freed Dane up to fire on the drone when it moved. He connected and both small pods were taken care of. With nothing else required of them, Jennings and Panzer moved up and went on overwatch.

We didn’t find any new Advent force son the next turn and were able to move towards the building. The structure had a large lobby with a series of smaller rooms behind it that contained the cells. As we got closer to it, Jennings moved up to take cover against one of the walls and spotted a new enemy pod on the far side of the lobby. They, of course, saw us too and scrambled.

I mentioned earlier that we encounter some new aliens on this one and here they were: not one, but two new enemies. There were two Advent stun lancers: a highly mobile unit that nearly always opts for melee attacks, doing damage and often knocking units unconscious. They’re easy to kill once they attack since they are so close, but their hits can be devastating. They were being lead by a viper, a serpentine alien with a solid aim and a long distance weapon. They also have the ability to spit poison and to use their frog-like tongue to grab units and constrict them. I was expecting to see the stun lancers soon. I wasn’t expecting a viper to come with them just yet.

We were a little spread out (my mistake), and the enemies had taken cover at the far end of the large lobby, so most of my units were unable to do much this turn. Panzer managed to find the one space within her move range that gave her a line-of-sight on the viper. This allowed her to use area suppression to pin down the viper and one of the stun lancers. Suppression is especially strong against lancers as they tend to run towards X-Com on their turn.

Nabil took out the other lancer with a lucky shot. It dropped loot but I didn’t expect to be able to grab it before it expired. Having no good shots, Dane used his arc-thrower to make sure the already suppressed viper was disoriented to boot.

The rest moved as best they could and went on overwatch to try and catch the stun lancer if he ran towards us.

Before we got to find out, two new troopers entered the fray just outside the East side of the building. In doing so, they teased out Jenning’s overwatch shot, which missed.

As predicted, the lancer did run towards us, although we’ll never know who he was going for because Panzer shot him down before he had gotten even halfway to us.

On our next turn, Jennings was in a good spot to start dealing with the troopers, so he moved up and took a shot, bringing one of them down.

As he did this, he woke up a drone that had been flying around above the building. Nabil had started the turn with no good shots, but the robot had flown right into her aim. She took it down in one shot.

We still had one trooper and the viper to deal with. I considered having Dane use run-and-gun to clear the distance and point-blank the viper, but doing so would have exposed him to a flanking shot from the remaining trooper. Instead, I had him move up, take cover behind a pillar, and throw a flash bang through the window to keep the trooper off its game.

Panzer kept the bullets coming, once again laying down suppressing fire on the viper. Deanna spent her turn running up to join Dane to get a better shot next turn.

The viper risked the reaction fire and slithered towards Dane and Deanna. Panzer did her job admirably and landed her reaction shot, but it was not enough to bring down the snake. The viper grabbed Deanna, and began to constrict. This ability disables the soldier and deals damage every turn. More importantly, though, while Deanna was in the viper’s grasp, other Advent could shoot at her freely as she was without cover.

The trooper, even disoriented saw the opportunity and moved into the building to shoot at her. Luckily, even with Deann fully exposed, his confusion caused him to miss.

Perhaps he was eager to shoot at Deanna while she was vulnerable or perhaps the effects of the flash bang were clouding his judgement, but by moving in to the lobby, the trooper left himself exposed to Jennings, who was still outside along the wall. He moved up, grabbed the loot the first trooper had dropped and killed the second one, single handedly dealing with both units in that pod.

Dane moved up and took a close range shot at the viper with his shotgun, killing it. The alien dropped Deanna and she didn’t miss a beat, scooping up the loop it had also dropped almost as soon as it had released her.

As long as Deanna was on pick up duty, I had her run over and grab the loot from the two stun lancers, which was about to expire. This appeared to be it for the aliens. Nabil reloaded, having exhausted her ammo with three consecutive kills. Panzer did the same, having expended a lot of ammo on suppressing fire.

We spent a few turns moving to the prisoners. Most of the squad hung back. The evac point was behind us and enemy reinforcements would be coming soon. Deanna and Jennings went to hack the cell and free our people. The hack failed to get any additional rewards but it did unlock the door.

Over the next few turns, I moved the squad towards the evac. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get everybody to our exit before reinforcements arrived, but I wanted to be as close as possible. I had Nabil go up to the evac point as it was elevated and offered her a good vantage point. Everybody else stayed together.

About two turns before we could reach the evac point, we got the update that reinforcements will be landing that turn. The whole team went on overwatch, but the aliens landed somewhere we couldn’t see. We cautiously kept moving and managed to get out before spotting them. I wonder how long they kept looking for us after we left.

Despite the new foes, it was another flawless mission (the viper’s constriction only did armor damage to Deanna). We’ll have to be vigilant in the future now that vipers have joined the opposition, though.

MVP: Aya Nabil

She may be new, but with an aim stat of 79, she chose the right profession. Even as a squaddie she did the work of a senior officer (three shots and three kills) and I’m sure she’ll only get better. I mentioned her achievements on twitter earlier today and Ben Serviss asked to be her, so she’ll be changing her name, but keeping her signature plaid (and her ability to shoot aliens).

Promotions

Quite a few on this mission!

Aya Nabil/Ben Serviss was promoted to lance corporal and learned Death From Above. I tend to take my snipers in the holo-targeter direction, but her aim is simply too good to not giver her abilities that will compliment it.

Deanna “Magic Girl” Bennet reached sergeant and learned Center Mass, causing her to do extra damage with guns.

Fred Jennings was promoted to corporal and learned Field Surgeon, reducing the wound recovery time of any soldier on a mission with him. He also earned the nickname “Law”

Dane “Anime” Cotsonas also reached sergeant and learned Killer Instinct, giving his run-and-gun the additional bonus of increasing his crit chance by 50% for the turn.

Of the three prisoners we busted out, one joined on as a rookie and two went to one of our havens to help out.

Back at the Base

Juggernaut finished his officer training! It’s time to build our first squad. In Long War 2, you can put units in squads to make it easier to send the same soldiers out together on missions. Why would you do this? Officers confer certain bonuses to other soldiers on missions and these bonuses go up the more times a soldier serves with the same officer.

Juggernaut took inspiration from his favorite band when naming the squad.

About a day later, the two rookies who had been training in the Guerrilla Tactics School finished and graduated as squaddies in their assigned classes. I added them along with some of the more established soldiers to round out Dark Carnival.

I have to imagine that squaddie Kim on the far right was happy to be a part of that team. 

Almost as soon as it had come together, Dark Carnival got its first mission.

I went wide, including the whole seven member squad. This was a smash and grab mission so I wanted to make sure that I had a lot of hands to grab the goods. I also took the time to equip some personal combat sims, which I had neglected to do earlier. The most important of these was a superior speed sim I gave to Dane, increasing his lackluster 14 mobility to a strong 17.

Here’s hoping that our favorite grenade tossing juggalo will lead his squad to victory.

Soon after that, Operation Northern Peak was ready to launch. See you next time for that mission.

We landed with concealment to the South East of our target. On our first turn I tentatively dashed a few units, but when they found nothing, I let the entire team follow suit, putting Top Notch on the roof of a nearby building so he had a better sniping position.

On our second turn, we spotted a drone. It seemed like a waste to break concealment to take out a single drone, but I know from experience that trying to move around them as a squad can burn up a lot of time and sometimes result in dealing with a fight on two fronts. With the number of enemies on the map being so low, it seemed like the better option was to bite the bullet and take out the drone. I overwatched a few soldiers just in case, but Top Notch had the situation under control.

No new Advent discovered us on their turn so we were free to keep moving forward, although without concealment.

Our objective was to the North West, and there was some good cover in that direction, so after sending Whinny and Raquel in that direction to investigate and finding nothing, I started moving the team, dashing in order to cover the most ground. Unfortunately, in one of these moves, we ran into Advent soldiers to the East.

Most of my people had already used both actions dashing, including Ezra who was completely exposed to the two troopers and the sentry. Top Notch took aim at the sentry but missed. Paul had one action left and rather than staying exposed opted to run to the top of the small Advent guard post nearby. Gunnar used his aid protocol, but Ezra was still very exposed.

On their turn, the trooper hit Ezra for 3, destroying his armor and doing one additional point of damage (which weirdly was not counted in the mission end report). Luckily the other trooper missed and the sentry overwatched.

Top Notch started the turn by using his rapid targeting to improve everybody’s chance of hitting the sentry. Nobody else would have to try, though, because he landed his shot, taking out the sentry (and removing the overwatch).

Being a ranger, Paul could have taken two shots from his cover just above the two troopers, but he only had about a 50% chance of hitting, so instead he ran in to get point blank shot with his assault rifle on the nearest Advent trooper.

That left just one trooper in cover. I wanted us to get moving since this skirmish was pulling us East, away from our goal, so I had Ezra use run-and-gun to throw a grenade, killing the last trooper.

The remaining team members moved up, but ended their turn in overwatch. No need to get caught unawares again, especially with as many as half of the enemies on the map already dead and eleven turns left on our clock.

On our next turn, Whinny moved up and spotted the objective. Top Notch was still on top of the building near where we landed, and so reloaded and moved to the edge of the roof to not be as far from the rest of the team (although he was still two turns dash away). Whiskey moved up as well and he and Whinny started shooting at the relay. Ezra and Paul ran to reached the rest of the group. Sanchez went on overwatch.

This was when two different enemy pods discovered us, presumably representing the remaining Advent forces on the map. To the West of the small church building housing the relay, an officer a sentry and a trooper arrived while on the roof we were spotted by a sectoid and a sentry who took up positions inside the building near the relay.

The officer got a free shot on Ezra but missed.

Paul was still to the East and after moving had no good shots so he tried to take out some of the sectoid’s cover with a grenade. No luck. The wall next to the alien was destroyed, but that wouldn’t help us. Still, it dealt two damage. Top Notch holotargetted the sentry and steadied his weapon for a better shot next turn. As it happened, our specialists were in the best spots to attack. While I typically use them last in order to make sure aid protocol goes to the right people, I ran them up to get flanking shots.

Whiskey took out the first sentry, dealing critical damage and Whinny did the same with the sentry inside the building.

With our specialists out of commission for the turn, the remaining soldier needed to play defensively. Ezra flash banged the officer and Sanchez suppressed the wounded sectoid.

I had not counted on the trooper--who had been unaffected--being bold enough to abandon his officer, but he did. By running to the West, he had a flanking shot on Whinny, which hit.

Luckily it was not a critical. Whinny’s armor was destroyed but the shot only did one damage beyond that. The sectoid raised a psi-zombie (didn’t know they could do that while suppressed!) and the disoriented officer missed.

On our turn, Top Notch took advantage of his steady weapon, taking aim at the trooper and bringing him down.

The officer did not move so Whiskey still had a flanking shot on him. Since he didn’t need to reload or move, Whiskey started his turn by sending aid protocol to Ezra in case he decided to do something risky and spent his second action firing at the officer. He managed a critical hit, but the officer survived with one health.

Paul didn’t have a great shot, and missed both times when he fired at the officer. Sanchez opted to cut right to the chase and threw in a grenade, killing the officer.

Ezra, perhaps feeling confident from the aid protocol, ran up to the sectoid through the whole in the wall from Paul’s grenade and into a spot with no cover. From this position he delivered a deadly blast from his shotgun.

From there we were free to call Sky Ranger and open fire on the data relay.

To my surprise, in the final report, it listed zero wounded soldiers even though Ezra and Whinny both took hits that went one damage past what their armor could absorb. I’m surprised, but I’ll take it!

MVP: Jan “Top Notch” Meyer

Meyer spent most of this mission in the spot he ended his first turn in. From that vantage point he provided aim bonuses as well as kill shots nearly every turn.

Promotions

We have three today!

Raquel Sanchez reached lance corporal and learned Center Mass, allowing her weapon to do one additional damage.

Paul Franzen also reached lance corporal and learned Ever Vigilant, allowing him to automatically enter overwatch if he spends both actions running. I’m going to try to and push him in a more defensive, overwatch focused direction.

Ezra Schrage reached corporal and learned Close and Personal, making his point-blank shots more likely to crit. He earned the nickname “Magic Man.”

Back at the Base

Before Operation Hell Dance was ready to launch, we did a lot on the Avenger.

We launched two missions, Operation Norther Peak and Operation Dragon Tower, would bring in new rebels and an engineer respectively.

With most of the team out on missions now was a perfect time for us to use that new intel. We made contact with Western Europe, bringing a third region into contact!

That maxed out our contacts, so we’ll need to build resistance coms soon. Onboard the Avenger, we finished our sectoid autopsy and stated researching psionics. The engineers finished clearing another room and are now directing all efforts towards clearing out one of the exposed power coils. I don’t think I’ll have the resources for some time, but the sooner I can start training rookies as psionics the better.

See you next time for Operation Hell Dance, easily the best mission name so far.

A few members of the team had exhausted their actions, but most hadn’t gone or had only moved once. Solar got things started with his wrist rocket. As usual, the thing missed its intended target, the sectoid, but managed to veer off towards the trooper, killing it.

Amy Thomas used run-and-gun to get up to the sectoid and throw a flash bang, disorienting it and getting her ready for a flanking shot next turn. Deanna damaged the drone and Werewolf went on overwatch, destroying the drone as soon as it moved.

The sectoid went on overwatch. On our turn, Dane took care of that with his arc thrower and the remainder of the team moved up. Most everybody missed, although Deanna managed to hit the alien for about half of its health.

On its turn, the sectoid returned fire at Amy, destroying her armor and dealing one damage. A small hit, but as she only had three health to begin with, it mattered. Without her armor she would not survive another hit like that.

Since she had been the one to come under fire, it felt right to let Thomas take the kill. She ran up, positioning herself against the wall of a small graveyard near the advent building and took a point-blank shot.

The rest of this turn and the next were spent moving up and making sure everybody had a full clip before we entered the building.

When we did kick in the door, we were surprised to still find nobody. We cautiously moved into the entry room, waiting until the next turn to enter the main area where we would almost certainly wake up some enemies. This was where our last smash-and-grab mission had nearly gone south, with pods having clear visibility across the large open room of the building. After moving, we did hear the sound of a pod nearby.

Deanna moved in and revealed a sectoid accompanied by a trooper and a sentry, out in the yard on the other side of the building. Amy used her impressive mobility combined with her run-and-gun to dash across the entire space to take a flanking shot on the sentry. Unfortunately in the process she also found an officer and drone waiting for us just outside the building near our side.

The new enemies were a problem for the rest of the squad to deal with. Amy took her shot and the sentry was done.

Although she had healed back up to her full three health, she was still in some danger from the sectoid and trooper. She was in full cover, though, so I hoped for the best.

Dane and Kong worked together to pin the officer, both taking point blank shots.

Solar ran up to the window on the inside of the building and got ready to assist Amy next turn. The other members of the team tried, but failed to take down the drone.

On the alien turn, the drone missed, the sectoid raised a psi-zombie (all things considered, this was better than it taking a shot or mind controlling anybody), and the trooper fired at Solar, destroying his armor but not dealing damage.

Solar started our next turn off with some fireworks, using his flamethrower on the sectoid, which caught on fire. However, burning did not seem to break the alien’s concentration and the psi-zombie remained. Gotta hand it to that alien training.

Deanna moved in and took out the trooper. By now, most of my soldiers were in the main room, surrounded by the loot we would have to collect. Amy took a shot at the psi-zombie but those things have a lot of health and it stayed standing.

On their turn Advent wasn’t able to accomplish much. The burning sectoid ran into the building and the psi-zombie spent the turn moving to Amy.

On the next turn, Solar finished off the alien he had set ablaze and we got to work collecting the Advent supplies. Taking advantage of Amy’s high mobility I sent her to grab the furthest crate. Everybody else took what they could and ran towards our exit. A few turns later we got home with four turns to spare.

MVP: Amy Thomas

This squaddie put in work. With 17 mobility she was able to clear a lot of the map in a single move in order to get in close with her shotgun. She didn’t let her relatively low health stop her for a minute.

Runner Up: Patrick “Solar” White

Solar found himself on the front line a lot in this mission, and put in more than enough work with just his gun. His more pyrotechnic skills were just icing on the (smoldering) cake.

Promotions

Only one this time.

No surprisingly, Amy Thomas reached lance corporal, learning Electroshock, the ability that Dane has been using to disorient enemies with his arc-thrower.

Back at the Base

The haul from this mission was impressive. The elerium crystals in particular allowed us to start producing laser riffles, which we’ll start to need soon. I built a total of three and saved the remaining supplies.

A mission came up, Operation Hell Dance. Great name aside, the reward was some resistance personnel and rookie so I decided to take it, but only sent a squad of five. If another mission comes up I want to be able to go for that as well. I gave Deanna one of the new laser rifles to try out.

A few days after that, Operation Hidden Gasp was ready to go. See you next time when attempt to destroy an alien relay.

It was a good team, with lots of defensive options, although it was lacking in aggression with no assaulter or shinobi. The lack of a shinobi was especially noticeable as we did not land with concealment on this mission. We did, however, have a huge clock for this mission just like the last one. The 22 turn timer meant we could take our time.

On his first move, Whinny stumbled upon a large pod: two troopers, an engineer and a sectoid. They scrambled by some statuary to the West and the rest of the team decided how to best handle it.

Advent was fairly spread out so a flash bang or area suppression wouldn’t be able to hit more than one. One of the troopers had taken position behind the ad to the south in the the image above, which offered him a flanking shot on Whinny. This being unacceptable, Smith used the one damaging grenade in his kit to take him out.

The engineer was the next obvious target, so Meyer used his holotargeter to help the squad get a hit on him. The support paid off and Gunnar landed a critical hit on the engineer. The remaining trooper and sectoid would have been too hard to hit that turn so Kelly suppressed the trooper and everybody else moved to get better shots next turn.

On the alien turn, Whinny became mind-controlled by the sectoid. The trooper fired at Sidney as well, and connected, but only enough to destroy his two points of armor. Nobody could get close enough to land a solid shot on the sectoid, so Franzen threw in a flash bang to sever the psychic connection.

Gunnar moved up for a better angle on the trooper and was rewarded with a kill. Freed from the control, Whinny ran up to the roof and shot at the sectoid, dealing four damage. 

Panzer kept up her strategy and once again used suppression, this time to keep the sectoid pinned down. It paid off: the sectoid made a break for it and was caught by Panzer’s reaction fire.

With that out of the way, we were able to spend a turn or two moving towards the evac point, being careful to keep the scientist cover in the back. We encountered two sentries right in the middle of our route. Whinny was able to take out one and the other retreated to the North.

On our next turn, a sentry and drone spotted us from a building to the West of our route. Panzer and Meyer broke to the West to take them out.

This is why my troops were too spread out when in the same turn (meaning that Panzer and Meyer had already spent their actions) Gunnar encountered a huge pod to the North East. In addition to the sentry that had retreated earlier there was an officer, two troopers, and a gunner.

Presumably, this was the extent of enemies on the map, so we could give this one our all, but with most of my team on the other side of a building to the South West, there was little we could do this turn. Gunnar had woken them up and as such was the closest. He retreated to better cover. Whinny sent some aid protocol to him. Everybody else would have to move in next turn. Five enemies with no negative status effects is a lot more than Ilike to end the turn with, but thanks to his retreat, they would all at least have to move before getting line of sight on Gunnar, who was in high cover and had aid protocol.

The aliens started their turn by having the officer approach and mark Gunnar. The gunner and one trooper overwatched. The other trooper fired on Whinny (surprising!) but missed. The sentry spent his turn dashing.

Back on our turn, we had a chance to start pecking away at this force. They had two overwatched soldiers to the East that were preventing my people from moving. Meyers started his turn by taking a 45% shot on the gunner and connected! Gunnar sent his gremlin to deliver a jolt to the other trooper, not killing him but removing the overwatch.

The three Advent to the West (the officer, the sentry and a trooper) had lined themselves up such that a single flash bang or area suppression could hit them all. Rather than choose, I did both, all but guaranteeing that that group would accomplish nothing on their turn. 

The trooper that Gunnar jolted was the only Advent not impaired in some way so I got nervous when rather than keeping a safe distance he ran right into the middle of my troops to take a flanking shot on Whinny. Luckily he missed and was easily dispatched on my turn. The three disoriented and pinned down Advent didn’t do much. One tried to dash away, getting caught in Panzer’s reaction fire and going down. The other two, upon seeing this, wisely decided to hunker down.

These two were fairly entrenched, being hunkered down in cover. We stayed defensive rather than wasting ammo on 15% shots. The squad moved up to flank next turn and Panzer kept the suppressing fire coming. Both Advent soldiers fired at Meyers and both missed.

On my next turn, the mop up was easy as Meyers had spent last turn steadying his weapon (increasing his aim) and Whinny and Gunnar were both able to move into flanking positions.

With Advent taking out, we had a few turns before reinforcements arrived. More than enough to get everybody to the evac point.

Whinny was the only one who got hit during the mission, and even then, it didn’t get past his armor. I want to relish these flawless missions while they are still happening.

MVP: Jan Meyer

Jan did a lot of damage this mission, both with his sniper rifle and his holo-targeter, nicely walking the line between support and aggro.

Runner Up: Sandra “Panzer” Kelly

Kelly spent more turns than not laying down suppressing fire. It is hard to imagine that we would have come back without a scratch if not for her keeping our enemies pinned under her cannon.

Promotions

Promotions for everybody! New ranks across the board and a few new nicknames as well!

Sidney “Whinny” Payne, reached sergeant and learned Medical Protocol at last. He would finally get an extra medkit and be able to administer it remotely.

Sandra “Panzer” Kelly, also reached sergeant, learning Shredder, which will allow her attacks to shred armor. This was a hard pick as Hail of Bullets is often a critical skill, but until my weapons get better, armor simply causes too much of a problem.

Stephen Smith, was promoted to corporal and learned Protector, getting a bonus use of a defensive grenade in his kit. He earned the nickname “Juggernaut.”

Jan Meyer, was promoted to corporal and learned Damn Good Ground, giving him an increased height advantage. He earned the nickname “Top Notch.”

Gunnar Olsen was also promoted to corporal and learned Interference, another way to allow him to disrupt overwatch with his gremlin. He earned the nickname “Whiskey.”

Paul Franzen reached squaddie and became a ranger.

Back at the Base

Right after getting back from Smoking Empire, I sent a group to start infiltrating on Operation Hidden Gasp.

I managed a few things back at the base, but the big news is that the Guerrilla Tactics School finished construction. I right away recruited two new rookies and began training them there as a specialist and a shinobi. I also purchased the officer school upgrade. I’d like to introduce you to our first officer: Stephen “Juggernaut” Smith!

Now that we have an officer, we can start taking advantage of the squad system in Long War 2. By having the same soldier serve under Smith, they can all get bonuses.

We also finished our research on laser weapons, but unfortunately we have no elerium crystals to build any yet.

Before long Operation First Snake was ready to go.

See you next time!

We spent the first two turns moving before Solar spotted a hostile pod.

On their turn, this group of Advent moved East, away from us. Right away, we encountered another pod to the North, this one consisting of a sectoid, a trooper, and a drone. We were still concealed so we could choose who to try and fight if I positioned the soldiers in the right way and avoided waking up both pods.

We opted to go after the original pod and so hugged the cover to the south and East. The pod to the north turned and walked away so on the next turn we were ready to begin.

Nakano started the ambush with a grenade. Kennedy and Patrick were on overwatch to take pot shots as the enemy scrambled.

The trooper went down and the sectoid was left at one health. The engineer was undamaged, but ran towards us, all but daring Dane to run in and attack it, which is exactly what he did.

On the alien turn, Jennings was mind-controlled by the sectoid, but with so little health left, it was an easy task to kill it, severing the mind-control. I planned to take advantage of the long clock for the mission and use the remainder of the turn to reload and collect the loot the sectoid had dropped, but it wasn’t meant to be. While moving up two tiles to slightly better cover, Solar encountered the pod that had been to the North.

The enemy was a bit far from us so my focus was on shutting them down rather than dealing damage. Dane used his arc-thrower to disorient the sectoid. Solar laid down suppressing fire on the trooper, and Jennings hacked the drone, shutting it down for a turn. Hitomi fired at the drone but didn’t connect.

On their turn, the stunned sectoid still managed to hit Jennings, who seemed to be drawing all of the sectoids’ attention on this mission. The hit was minor, though, and only managed to take away his armor and do one more point of damage.

On our next turn, Kennedy was far from the action, but everybody else had managed to close some of the distance before taking their defensive action last turn. 

Dane used run-and-gun to point-blank the sectoid, failing to kill it, but leaving it with just one health. Even from a distacne, Kennedy was able to use Walk Fire to deliver the last point of damage, although she was now emty and would have to reload.

As Dane was still the most exposed, Jennings sent some aid protocol over before firing at the drone, once again leaving the enemy at one health. That last point of health was becoming a frustrating theme to the mission. Hitomi fired again at the drone but once again missed her shot and solar continued to suppress the trooper. Since we had very little in the way of time constraints, it felt better to play defensively.

On their turn, the trooper and the Drone both missed.

The trooper had opted not to move due to the suppressing fire, but this meant that Dane was close and he was able to move in to score another point-blank hit with his shotgun. Only the drone was left. The squad had been pulled pretty far West in this encounter but we needed to move East to get our VIP, so I had Jennings move in that direction before turning around to shoot down the drone. The other members of the squad either spent their second action dashing or reloading.

After another full turn of moving, we were spotted by an officer and a drone. They scrambled to the East side of the building we had entered (the one holding the VIP in the back).

Nakano started things off by launching a grenade at the officer. It didn’t destroy his cover but it did bring him down to... one health. Kennedy had a good angle on the drone and spent her first action firing at it, bring it down to... you guessed it: one health. With her second action she took out the officer using Walk Fire. Despite the frustration of always being one short for the kill, it was hard to deny that my soldiers were rolling well this mission, reliably connecting on 60% hits.

We managed to take the drone out and moved up towards the VIP’s cell. Upon kicking in the door to the main room, we found no Advent so Jennings was free to move in and hack the door. We unlocked it, but no further reward was achieved through the hack.

The team made a dash for the evac point, but we weren’t going to be able to outpace the incoming reinforcements, so the turn before they arrived, everybody took cover and went on overwatch.

The officer and trooper that came out were unprepared to say the least. The entire squad opened fire and the encounter was over before Advent even finished moving.

We got the scientist to the extraction point along with all of our soldiers. Minimal injuries with Jennings being the only one who even took a hit.

MVP: Dane “Anime” Cotsonas

Point-blank shot after point-blank shot kept us moving with a steady stream of damage.

Runner Up: Fred Jennings

Our specialist was a jack-of-all-trades on this mission, providing aid protocol, hacking drones, and providing more than his share of successful shots.

Promotions

Only two today. As the soldiers get more experienced, we’ll see fewer and fewer mission where a bunch of people get promoted.

Hitomi Nakano reached Corporal, learning Heavy Ordnance, which allows her to carry an extra grenade. She also got the nickname “Kong.”

Sandra Kennedy also reached Corporal, learning Covering Fire, which greatly improved her overwatch stats. She earned the nickname “Werewolf.”

Back at the Base

We finished digging up some supplies in the avenger and started building a Guerrilla Tactics School in the empty area! This will allow us to train rookies as a specific class and to train soldiers as officers.

I sent a somewhat unbalanced, but hopefully large enough squad out on a mission named Operation First Snake.

Most of my soldiers are out on missions or recovering, so I switched all of the rebels to the Recruit task until we have some free soldiers and I can put them back on Intel. While waiting for the next mission, we managed to recruit a new rebel in East Africa. The system works!

Then, a new mission came up that will give us some much needed intel. Even without the rebels gathering intel, there’s a good amount of time on it. I need the intel so I decided to launch our next mission, Operation Smoking Empire a bit early.

See you next time for that one!