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.
Today, we have another Abduction mission in Germany. We seem to get a lot of those in Germany.
Anyway, this is the Observatory map, which is one of my personal favorites. It has a few decent-sized buildings with a surprising amount of verticality, and enough line-of-sight blocking obstacles to make maneuvering interesting.
Anyway, onto the mission! Our team today is:
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| Patreon rookie Oliver Albright |
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| Our leading infantry, Zilch |
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| Medic and Patreon contributor Lynne Triplett |
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| Gunner Carlos Miraflores |
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| Rookie Rosalie Giraud |
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| Engineer Vitaly Kozlov |
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| Infantry and Patreon contributor Marshall Reeves |
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| and our sniper, Checkmate. |
Nothing fancy this first round. We move up to the building, preparing to breach in the next turn. Albright and Triplett set up to flank around the back of the observatory.
Our breach reveals nothing in the room. Giraud and Miraflores take the window, Zilch and Reeves prepare to breach the observatory, while Albright and Triplett continue to flank. Checkmate positions himself on the corner in case something tries to jump at us from the courtyard.
Miraflores hears movement coming from up ahead.
Next turn! Zilch and Reeves breach the observatory...
...and contact! Three Floaters, one of which pissed off for parts unknown.
Reeves point-blanks one of them for three damage...
...and although he was able to flank it, Albright failed to hit on an 83%...
...leaving Triplett on cleanup duty, which she performs with aplomb.
Everyone else moves up to support the infantry, and Checkmate skulks around the outside, looking for more targets. The rest of the squad overwatches to pin that Floater down.
The Floater overwatches in turn...
...while its buddy goes to the roof and takes a potshot at Checkmate. Fortunately, it missed.
Checkmate returns the favor and takes four HP off the Floater.
Kozlov runs up and tries to kill the Floater point-blank (literally standing underneath it), and somehow fails to hit. Great. Kozlov's out of cover at point-blank range to an enemy with an elevation advantage. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Meanwhile, Albright has a bright idea for taking out that Floater in the observatory: If he uses his HE grenade to blow up the Floater's cover, then someone else can shoot it.
The grenade only destroys the telescope, but it's still enough for Reeves to get the kill.
The rest of the squad overwatches, in case the last Floater does something stupid like jet inside the observatory.
No, it just takes its point-blank shot at Kozlov...
...and hits but does not kill! Kozlov, fall back!
Rookie Giraud can take care of it from here!
Meanwhile, Triplett secures more Meld for us as she makes her way into the other storeroom.
Zilch moves up to get a firing solution on the Floater that almost killed Kozlov, only to make contact with another Floater pod.
...and Zilch utterly failed to his his target.
Meanwhile, Reeves overwatches to make maneuvering a hazard for the rest of them.
One of the Floaters launches itself into the air for parts unknown...
...while Reeves hits another Floater on overwatch.
Next turn, Miraflores finishes it off with his machine gun...
...giving Reeves a moment to reload.
Giraud claims another Floater kill...
...while a pod of Drones blunders into our line of sight.
Zilch bags one...
Checkmate checks off the second...
That flying son of a bitch flanks Checkmate but misses its shot...
...and Miraflores kills the third Drone.
Triplett sprays medkit juice all over Kozlov's wounds.
Checkmate takes cover and shoots back, nearly killing it...
...and Zilch gets the kill on overwatch!
And with that, the mission is over with only one serious injury! Op success!
Promotions for everyone! Welcome back!
Kozlov got promoted to Lance Corporal and gained the Smoke Grenade perk, which gives him a free smoke grenade on missions. This will stack with Smoke & Mirrors and Packmaster later, which are critical perks for a tech support engineer.
Triplett also got promoted to Lance Corporal, and unlike Kozlov she won't be spending the next month and a half getting her brains fitted back into her skull. Speaking of which, she gets the Field Surgeon perk, which reduces wound and fatigue recovery time after missions, which is critical for keeping the fatigue spiral at bay.
As a Lance Corporal gunner, Miraflores gets the Covering Fire perk, which allows reaction fire (from actions like suppression or overwatching) to trigger on all kinds of different actions, not just movement. The enemy had better not need to reload or shoot while they're in his overwatch box.
Reeves is also a Lance Corporal now, and he also gets Covering Fire. I like overwatch infantry for their ability to be a terrifying denial force at Gunnery Sergeant level. I'll take crit spam infantry too, but they need to have a high enough starting aim to justify it.
Giraud is a scout! Good, we need a lot of them because they seem to keep dying on me.
Checkmate makes Sergeant, and get the Sharpshooter ability, which gives him a +10% crit chance
period, and also +10% aim against targets in full cover. I like this perk on snipers.
And, we got a pretty decent haul, to boot. That was a good mission.
Germany is pleased with our work, too. We got more money and another panic decrease in Germany.
Finally, Patreon rookie Oliver Albright joins Reeves as an infantry. I think I'll build him into a crit infantry, just for diversity.
Also, if the flood of Patreon contributors coming any day now is going to hit anything, we're gonna need more rookies. The ones we have left are mediocre at best.
So, back to the Hologlobe!
More SCOPEs! Yay!
More Sectoid corpses for South Africa! Yay!
More UFOs coming to kill us all! Ya-
.........
.........
.........
Okay, maybe not "yay!"
Dutch, take it down!
Nearly lost Dutch there, and I'm not sure he even hit it.
Finish it off, Hound! Let slip the dogs of war!
Well, that was embarrassing.
France wants Sectoid corpses. Take 'em!
India wants more corpses. I shudder to think what they might be doing with them all...
...and we have a Council mission. Portent, to be exact. This will end in tears.
Portent is the first in a series of Council missions introduced in the Operation Progeny mission pack introduced with Enemy Within. I won't say any more than that because I don't want to spoil the plot of that particular thread, but I can tell you that someone attacked a French military convoy, and they may have had alien help.
So, we should send our best troops on this one. There's no better shot in the XCOM program than Rokhan "Checkmate" Khalil, especially since we now have enough SCOPEs to give him one.
Joining him in the long-range support role is Kaori "Crash" Yamazaki, who is packing a Light Machine Gun instead of the usual SAW. The LMG is a Long War weapon that packs more punch, carries more ammo, and gives the gunner a limited Squadsight buff. However, you can't move and fire it in the same turn, and like with the SAW, you can't steady it for better aim. Still, given the sort of map that Portent is on, I think we'll need it.
We're bringing Triplett on this one, as well. We can always use a medic, and although her loadout is unremarkable, it is also tried and tested.
Infantry Edmundo Garza joins us on this one, packing the usual infantry loadout.
Same with Reeves. I haven't really developed much on the way of technology at this point, so we don't have any of the fun toys yet.
We're bringing Giraud along as our best (and only) scout. Smoke grenade for instant cover if needed, and a battle scanner to get a better view of what's ahead.
Greta Basso's loadout is unchanged, but I figure we could use an assault on this one.
And finally, we have Barbara Ulrich, our engineer, whose job is to make sure that we have enough smoke grenades and things that go boom.
Strike One has reached the mission site.
And, that's where we'll leave this update for today! Join us tomorrow for Operation Silent Gaze! 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! With that, I hope to see you next time!
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