Operation Vengeful God, Part 2 (UFO Landing Site, Canada)

Gentlesophs, I am your host, the Kid With A Pen, and welcome to XCOM:  War Interminable - my playthrough of XCOM:  Enemy Unknown, with the Enemy Within expansion, the Operation Slingshot DLC, and most importantly the Long War mod.  Links to all of these can be found on the "What is XCOM:  War Interminable?" page below this post.

Last time on XCOM:  War Interminable:

Strike One went to a UFO landing site in northern Canada, bringing along some new technology to test in the field.  After defeating a Mechtoid pod with ease, they made contact with multiple pods just outside the UFO.  Our gunner, Kaori "Crash" Yamazaki, was killed in the fighting, and the Seekers keep coming.

And now, the thrilling conclusion.

Zilch kills the Seeker he can see, and then reloads.

Klein gets up close and personal, and kills the Seeker strangling Plunder with his Close Encounters shot.

He then takes a shot at the Thin Man nearby, and misses.

Plunder misses the Thin Man as well.

Plunder, like Zilch, needs to reload.

Checkmate kills the Thin Man.

Vixen heals up Klein.

Ahonen grenades the Muton, in a misguided attempt to destroy its cover.

Vixen misses the Muton.

Hilariously, the Muton is covered in acid, and attempts to retreat while taking burn damage.

Klein reloads his minigun.

Checkmate finishes off the Muton.

Contact!  Another pod of Seekers.

The Seekers dart right into our ineffectual overwatch trap.

Plunder's two shots bring down a Drone that had tagged along with the pod.

Zilch misses a Seeker.

Checkmate kills a Seeker.

Ahonen reloads.

Klein misses a Seeker with his Close Encounters shot.

However, he kills another Seeker that he had a much better chance at hitting.  I took the first shot mostly because a 68% chance to hit on a free shot seemed pretty good to me.

Vixen reloads.

Geronimo pops Run and Gun...

...and rapid fires a Seeker.  The first shot is a hit.  The second shot is not.

Finally, Zilch misses a Seeker.

On the aliens' turn, a Seeker takes a shot at Klein and misses.

On my turn, Vixen hits a Seeker.

Geronimo needs to reload...

...as does Zilch.

However, thanks to Lock and Load, Zilch hits and kills a Seeker with his last remaining action.

Checkmate misses the Muton.

Plunder and Klein reload.

Plunder leads the squad in overwatch.

The Muton suppresses Vixen.

A Seeker appears, and gets caught in several overwatches.

Plunder manages to kill the thing before it finished decloaking.

In my turn, Checkmate reloads.

Thanks to Lock and Load, he gets to take a shot at the Muton, but it misses.

Klein gets into Close Encounters range of the Muton, and hits it quite nicely...

...until he freaks out due to the Muton's Intimidate ability.  Come on, Klein!  You're bigger than it is!

Vixen misses the Muton.

The Muton runs away.

However, it didn't run fast enough.  Zilch gets the kill.

Next turn!  The squad advances, and Vixen reloads.

The squad prepares to breach.

Klein's on point for this breach, but he needs to take a moment to reload.

As the squad advances, Vixen goes on overwatch.

Next turn, the squad breaks into teams and prepares to breach the engine compartments of the UFO.  They all overwatch.

Zilch hears movement.

Plunder throws the door...

...and no contact in the #2 engine compartment.  Plunder's team prepares to breach the central compartment.

Vixen's team also makes no contact in their breach, but Vixen hears movement after they get into position.

Next turn!  Both teams clear the central compartment, and prepare to breach the bridge.  Overwatches all around.

Geronimo throws the door, and contact!  Two Outsiders.  One of them runs out of the bridge, while the other stays by the console.

Well, Geronimo manages to flank the first Outsider and kills it with a couple Rapid Fire shots.

Klein rips the other Outsider a new one.

Vixen goes for a pistol shot to weaken it so that Ahonen can attempt a capture, but she kills it with a critical hit.

Op Success.

Crash is dead, but we got a ton of promotions.

Plunder made Master Sergeant, and gained Extra Conditioning, which gives her bonus HP depending on what armor she's wearing.  If I can get her into Titan armor, she'll rival MEC Troopers in sheer tankiness.  The bonuses to Aim, Mobility, and Will are nice, too.

Zilch made Gunny, which means that he gets Sentinel.

Ahonen made Corporal, and gains Smoke and Mirrors, as well as the nickname "Vita."

Klein made Lance Corporal, and gained Shock-Absorbent Armor.  What SAA does is it reduces damage taken from sources within 4 tiles by 33%.  Perfect for the Marauder on the go.

We got a really good haul on this one, too.

That said, the damage done to Crash's Phalanx armor and her Alloy Plating inserts is a harsh reminder of what the gains we made on this mission cost us.

Back to the Hologlobe!

UFO contact over the US!  Bring it down, Dutch!

Dutch engages the UFO, with mixed results.

Dutch had to back out of that one.

I sent Judge up after it, and he brought it down, no trouble at all.

So, we have a UFO crash site in Oklahoma, it looks like.  Let's get the squad together.

Leading this mission is our medic, Congo.  She's packing the new standard loadout, which is exactly the same as the old standard loadout except for the Phalanx armor.

Trips and Patreon contributor Oliver "Rascal" Albright are our infantry, with the new standard loadout.

Bull is coming along on his first mission since getting shot in the head on Operation Devil's Paramour.  We learned an important lesson about the minigun and its two-shot capacity on the last mission, so Bull is packing high-cap mags instead of a targeting module.  I'd take drum mags if I could, but MEC Troopers (even Valkyries) aren't afforded them.

Chilong is coming along as our engineer, with the standard engineer loadout.  Arc Thrower for capturing aliens, HE grenades for blowing things up.

We're taking a couple rookies on this mission - first up is PFC Ha Nguyen, of Vietnam.  Nguyen has Phalanx armor for survivability, a laser carbine and SCOPE so she can hit things, and an AP grenade just in case.

The other is PFC Roksana Forrughi of Iran.  Forrughi is toting the same kit as Nguyen, although she's carrying an HE grenade instead for cover destruction.

Thinking that a woman with special forces-level training coming from the Iranian military unusual, Bradford did some checking on her background, collating information from sources and methods.  From what he was able to gather, she's a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, but from there it gets fuzzy.  Best guess says that she's part of their elite foreign operations unit called the Qud - an organization designated by the US and Canada as a terrorist organization, but that still doesn't answer the question of how a woman got into a death squad that's based on upholding strict adherence to a particular interpretation of 7th Century Islamic law.

Still, we'll take all the help we can get against the aliens, no matter where they're from.

Finally, we have Caper coming along as our assault.  Standard loadout for assaults on her.

Strike One has reached the crash site.  Touching down.

And that's where we'll leave this update for today!  Join us Monday for Operation Final Shield!  Remember, you too can join the fight by going to https://www.patreon.com/user?u=177434 and subscribe today!  Every subscriber gets to have a rookie named after them!

Can't subscribe to my Patreon campaign, but still want in on the program? Go here to see how you can get in: http://xcomwarinterminable.blogspot.com/p/join-fight.html  With that, I hope to see you next time!