Operation Silent Gaze (Portent - Nice, France)

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 a Council mission in Nice, France.  This one's a special one, as it's the first mission in the Operation Progeny pack, Portent.  Strike One is responding to an attack, seemingly by humans, on a French military convoy.  The reason why we're involved is because the attackers apparently had alien help in knocking this convoy over.  So, Strike One's mission is to secure the site, look for survivors, and as usual, eliminate all hostiles.

Our team today is:

Infantry Edmundo Garza

Sniper Rokhan "Checkmate" Khalil

Scout Rosalie Giraud

Medic and Patreon contributor Lynne Triplett

Assault Greta Basso

Infantry and Patreon contributor Marshall Reeves

Engineer Barbara "Kitten" Ulrich

And our gunner, Kaori "Crash" Yamazaki

The second Garza even thinks of stepping forward, we make contact!  It's a pod of one Thin Man and two Seekers.  Thankfully, neither Seeker cloaked, otherwise we'd have to wait until they attacked us before we could take them out.

Garza lands a hit on the far one...

...and Reeves takes some HP off the near one.

Triplett gets eyes on the Thin Man, but misses it.

However, Giraud kills the near Seeker.  Brilliant!

Meanwhile, Crash sprints for the roof so she can move to position next turn...

...and Kitten takes out the other Seeker.

Basso moves up to be relevant in future turns...

...while Checkmate takes a potshot at the Thin Man.  He doesn't kill it, but he does wound it nicely.

Basso finishes off the turn by overwatching, for good measure.

During the aliens' turn, the lone Thin Man sensibly finds better cover.

Also, a couple of its friends show up.

Next turn!  Kitten lobs an AP grenade in the Thin Man's last known position, to no effect.

Meanwhile, Checkmate hits another Thin Man but again, fails to kill.

Kitten and Triplett move up the flank in search of Thin Men, and we found the one that had scarpered off.  Would've got a flanking shot too, if we had anyone who could shoot it...

Also, one of the Thin Men spit a cloud of acid at Crash.  This is not good, because Acid debuffs aim severely, and if you do anything other than hunker down, you take damage from the acid.

The flanked Thin Man runs to cover...

...and in my turn, Kitten finishes it off!

Garza completely misses his target...

...and Crash hunkers down to keep from taking acid damage.

Checkmate misses the Thin Man again...

...and everyone else overwatches.

Garza reloads...

...while Reeves misses the Thin Man.

Crash has to hunker down again...

...and Kitten takes out a Thin Man with an HE grenade!  One down, one to go.

Giraud runs the other Thin Man's overwatch with remarkable grace and poise...

...giving Basso the opening she needs to go in for the kill.

"Go ahead.  Make my day."

"Do you feel lucky, punk?"

It's confirmed.  These people were killed with bullets, not ravening plasma bolts of deliberate death and dismemberment.

Reeves advances and reloads.

Basso goes to the roof of the second building, and makes contact with pod 3.

I forgot that Crash was still covered in acid, and so I moved her up without thinking.  Good thing she didn't panic.

Garza moves up to support Basso and accidentally draws overwatch fire from a Thin Man.  Thankfully, it missed.

Garza did not, however, and almost killed it from an elevated position.

 

Giraud spots a survivor...

...and draws overwatch fire trying to get to him.  Good thing she's a scout, right?

Crash needs to hunker again.

Finally, Basso moves up, preparing to drop down on the Thin Men from above, when she sees this freaky sight...

...and then promptly reduces the Thin Man to a cloud of acid with one blast from her shotgun.  "Hasta la vista, baby!"

I really like the idea that Greta Basso is a huge action flick buff.  I'll have to keep doing this.

Meanwhile, Checkmate lines up a shot on another Thin Man clear on the other side of the map, and gets the kill.

The last surviving Thin Man in this pod overwatches...

...and goes for Giraud as she sprints for the survivor.  Between Lightning Reflexes, Overwatch, range, and Red Fog, there's no way it was going to land a hit.

Basso drops down in the only place where she won't run through an acid cloud, and misses her target completely.

Fortunately, Giraud was nearby to turn that Thin Man into a statistic.

Checkmate reloads his sniper rifle in preparation for the next half of the mission.  Did you honestly think that XCOM would give you a "search for VIPs" mission and end it when you find them?  How silly.

Speaking of which, a couple Thin Men drop down out of nowhere behind my sniper and gunner.  Checkmate makes quick work of one of them.

Crash flushes the other Thin Man, to no discernable effect.  That thing has two people flanked!  Kitten, we've got you some 'nade bait!

Somehow, and I can only assume that this is due to bizarre alien biology, this Thin Man can apparently see and shoot through brick walls and asphalt roofs.  Fortunately, it missed its overwatch shot on Kitten as she sprints to the roof to blow something up.

Fittingly, this Thin Man returned to space riding on a pillar of flame.

Everyone else moves back to escort the survivor to the Skyranger.

Another Thin Man and a Sectoid drop down behind my sniper and gunner.  Some more Thin Men dropped behind us on the other side of the map.

Reeves hits the Thin Man...

...and then misses it...

...leaving Triplett to get the kill.

"Can't touch this!  Doooo-doot-doot-doot-doot-doot-doot-doot-doot-doot-doo-doo! Can't touch this!"

Kitten whacks the Sectoid for three damage...

...and Checkmate starts it off on a promising career of nitrocellulose-fueled acrobatics.  8 of 10 for the dismount!

Meanwhile, Garza covers the rear with some overwatches.

Another Thin Man drops in.

Garza misses the one Thin Man he has eyes on.

Reeves moves up and reloads.

Crash demonstrates the value of a gunner with Squadsight, and flushes a Thin Man from beyond visual range.

Meanwhile, the survivor books it for the Skyranger.

Moving to reengage, Basso trips some overwatch fire, but fortunately is not hit...

...and goes, "I'm gonna pump you up!" before painting the wall in a truly hideous shade of Thin Man.  Greta Basso - action movie buff and creator of modern art.

To make sure that both of them survive the next turn, Giraud pops a smoke grenade.

Garza overwatches again, which may well end up being as ineffectual as usual.

The Thin Men advance...

...right into Garza's crosshairs, and he still manages to miss completely.  Good job, Garza.

One Thin Man overwatches while its buddy takes an ineffectual potshot at Garza.

The Thin Man that Crash flushed earlier shows its face again, this time to shoot at Basso.  It missed completely.

Garza needs to reload again.

Meanwhile, Crash finishes off the Thin Man with another flush.

Giraud shows off her bullet-dodging skills...

...and her target-missing skills, too.  Well, we pay you to dodge bullets, not shoot them.

However, Reeves gets the kill instead.

Kitten and Garza continue to fail to hit this Thin Man...

...but Giraud flanks it for the kill!

Op success!

And, we get a boat-load of promotions for our team!  Excellent work, everyone!

Garza is promoted to Corporal and gets both the Opportunist perk and the nickname "Trips."  Opportunist removes the aim penalty for overwatch shots and also allows them to score critical hits.

Reeves gets promoted, too, and mirrors Garza's progression, getting the nickname "Bonzai."  It really ought to be spelled "Banzai," but I'll fix the spelling at some point when it's convenient.

Triplett gets promoted too, and gains the Revive perk and the nickname "Vixen."

Giraud makes Lance Corporal and gains Holo-Targeting.  Holo-Targeting gives the rest of the squad an aim bonus if they shoot at the same target that she did.  She doesn't even need to hit, either!  Isn't technology amazing?

Basso makes Corporal, and gains the Aggression perk, which will make it easier to score critical hits the more enemies she can see.  Also, she got the nickname "Caper."

And Kitten made it to Sergeant, where she gets the Repair perk.  Repair is a Long War perk that improves the Arc Thrower's chance of success significantly, and it also gives her more Arc Thrower charges.  Tech support engineers absolutely need this.

We got a pretty decent haul for this one, too.

Well, I think we know what the "silent gaze" part was for - it's the look the survivor will have on his face after the Nigerians are finished with him.

Anyway, we got some more cash, so let's blow it on more toys!  A targeting module is a Long War small item that gives a small boost to critical hit chance.  It's an all-around good choice for snipers, gunners, and assaults.

Uncle Sam wants weapon fragments?  Okay!

Back to the Hologlobe!

Oh, good!  The Research team has finally invented laser guns!

 

Let's have them work on Xenoneurology, so that we can build Arc Throwers!  Things are going great!  Looks like the next couple weeks are going to be a piece of-

...shit.

Well, the aliens have started openly attacking civilian populations, and we're going to Shenzhen, China.  Presumably, there's a Foxconn sweatshop factory that needs saving or something.

Regardless, this is about the people the aliens are deploying Chryssalids against.  So, we're sending our best in to save as many of them as we can.

Leading this mission is Plunder, with the standard infantry loadout.

Scooby is our medic on this op.

We're also bringing ol' Boom Boom on this one.  We'll need her rockets.

Zilch is our other infantry.

Long Shot is our sniper.  In addition to her skills as a sniper, we could use someone who speaks Mandarin.

We don't have many options for assaults, but at least Saleh has CCS, which will be invaluable if Chryssalids run up toward us.  I want an alien trophy so he doesn't panic, and a flashbang for slowing Chryssalids down.

Miraflores is back as our gunner.

Finally, Kitten is our engineer.  Packing more flashbangs, smoke grenades, and AP grenades for killing things, she will be invaluable on this mission.

Big Sky has reached the terror site.

And, that's where we'll leave this update for today!  Join us tomorrow for Operation This Will End Badly Dark Sleep!  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!