Operation Silent Justice (Alien Abduction - Bloemfontein, South Africa)

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.

We have another Abduction mission, this time at a truck stop in Bloemfontein, South Africa.  Like other Abduction missions, this is training for our four rookies.

Not much else to see here, so let's get on to the mission!  Our team today is:

Our sniper and special contributor, Frost

Our medic and squad leader, Congo

Our engineer, Santa

Rookie McAuliffe

Rookie Decoster

Our scout, Shearer

Rookie Namuswa

And rookie Ahonen

The billboard makes for a perfect sniper nest, so that's where Frost heads.  She steadies aim and waits for the enemies to come.

The rest of the squad advances and overwatches.  Shearer moves to the left around the truck, Ahonen takes position inside the trailer with Santa backing her up, and the rest move up toward the convenience store.

Next turn, Shearer throws a battle scanner...

...and spots a pod of two Mutons.  Not sure if we're prepared for entire pods of Mutons, but if there's only two of them...

Frost, you have eyes on them.  Get their attention.

Congo prepares to breach into the convenience store next turn.

Decoster misses the Muton in front.

McAuliffe moves up to support Namuswa, and makes contact with another pod - two Drones and a Cyberdisc.

Well, damn.  We are not equipped to take on a Cyberdisc.

Cyberdiscs are a terrifying alien unit.  They have lots of HP (this particular one seems to have around 20), lots of armor, they can fly, they have a terrifying long range weapon, they have an alien grenade and an attack where they spin up and damage everything around them, and every turn you get only one shot at them before they clam up and double their damage reduction rating.

If I had a rocketeer, or a gunner with Shredder Ammo, or a Gauss Long Rifle for Frost, I wouldn't be seriously considering bugging out this mission.  That said, this is also an excellent opportunity to get lots of experience for my rookies.

McAuliffe kills the flanked Muton.

Santa smokes McAuliffe and Decoster, in case the Cyberdisc comes calling next turn.

Namuswa overwatches.

And, in the aliens' turn, the Cyberdisc kills McAuliffe in one hit, through smoke and cover.

At least Namuswa killed a drone that flew into his sights.

The other Muton retreats, leaving the job of wiping us out to the Cyberdisc.

Next turn!  Frost misses the Cyberdisc.

Namuswa hits it, but doesn't do much damage due to its insane amount of armor.  Seriously, this thing's like a flying Mechtoid only worse.

Santa and Decoster grenade the Cyberdisc, to no good effect.

Congo orders Santa to take a shot at the Cyberdisc.

Santa hits the Cyberdisc, but fails to damage it at all.

Ahonen goes on overwatch.

In the next turn, the Cyberdisc kills Namuswa with another resounding volley from its main gun.  The drone repairs the damage we did in the previous turn.

Frost hits the Cyberdisc from long range, for more than the Drone can repair in one turn.

Santa goes to the roof and misses the Drone.

Shearer hits the Drone, but more importantly gets holo-targeting up.

Decoster takes aim...

...and kills the Drone.  Excellent.  Now, the Cyberdisc won't have anything to repair it.

The squad overwatches.

The next turn, the Cyberdisc goes three for three and kills Decoster.  It seems as if none of my rookies can get a kill this mission without immediately meeting a Cyberdisc-orchestrated demise.

Shearer hits the Cyberdisc and gets holo-targeting up.

Santa attempts to grenade the Cyberdisc and fails to hit at all.

Congo and Ahonen score hits from below, but the Cyberdisc is still active.

Frost gets another hit, but it fails to kill.

The Cyberdisc shoots at Santa, but fails to hit him because he hasn't killed anything yet this mission.

Shearer kills the Cyberdisc, and its explosion tears a hole in the wall, revealing the Muton, which was on the verge of a counterattack.

Did I mention that Cyberdiscs explode when they die?

Anyways, Congo takes advantage of this new firing port that conveniently manifested itself right in front of her, and gets a hit on the Muton.

Ahonen moves around in preparation to flank it, and gets a hit as well.

Meanwhile, behind the billboard, Frost finishes the job.

Finally, Santa finishes out the turn by moving up and reloading.

All's quiet, so we'll take a turn to reload.

Santa, however, is ready to fight, so he'll overwatch.

Santa hears movement near the patio.

Ahonen advances, and makes contact with another pod of two Mutons.

Shearer gets a hit on the big one, and holo-targets it for good measure.

Congo, however, misses the thing completely.

Frost gets a nice hit, though.  Shame it wasn't a kill.

OK, so here's the new plan:  we have one Muton seriously injured.  If we can take out the other one, then Kozlov can try to capture it next turn.  Getting a Muton capture would be great.

Fortunately, Kozlov gets a hit on the other Muton.

However, Ahonen does not.  This makes my plan a whole lot riskier.

The big Muton runs to cover...

...and misses Santa on a 35% to hit.

The second one, on the other hand, kills him outright on a 28%.

Frost avenges Santa by finishing off the Muton that killed him.

Silent justice.

Ahonen does her part and kills the other Muton through full cover.

This was a light Abduction mission, and we lost four people in accomplishing it, one of whom was an up-and-coming engineer.  I cannot in good conscience call this a victory.

Look at all the dead.

Still, we have some promotions to work out.  Frost made Lance Corporal and gained the Low Profile perk.

Congo made Lieutenant 2, and gained Paramedic.

I also forgot to promote people from last mission, too.  Scooby made Lieutenant 4 and got Sprinter.  Sprinter adds a flat +4 Mobility, which is good for medics who struggle to get to wounded soldiers in time.

Plunder made Gunny, which means that she gets Sentinel.  Sentinel allows the soldier to fire two overwatch shots instead of one - perfect for a Covering Fire infantry.

Zilch made Tech Sergeant, and gained Lock and Load.

Geronimo made Sergeant and gained Rapid Fire, which allows him to fire two shots at the same target at an Aim penalty.

Ahonen becomes an engineer.  It'll be a long time before you make it to Santa's level, Ahonen.

We got a good haul out of it, at least.  Not worth 4 troopers, but still.

South Africa owes us a greater debt than it will ever know.

We also have some damaged gear that needs to be repaired.

If Frost is going to become another In The Zone sniper, we'll need another targeting module.

Back to the Hologlobe!

Satellites are complete!  Let's launch 'em!

One satellite over China, so that they don't leave us like Japan did.

Another satellite to replace the one we lost over the US.  Our continental bonus is restored.

We should send Nosedive to Asia, so there will be interceptor coverage once China's satellite goes online.

We only have one Arc Thrower, so we should repair these items as quickly as possible.

If there's anything this catastrophe of a mission has taught us, it's that we need better armor.  Alloy plating inserts will have to do until we can devise something better.

It's kinda depressing that the list of the dead is long enough that it needs a scroll bar.  13 fatalities so far...

Anyways, we'll need some more recruits.

Brazil wants Elerium?  Be my guest!

And, we have a Council mission.  It looks like a German politician - William Thorne, an outspoken advocate for cooperation with the aliens - has become a target for those same extraterrestrial invaders.  The Council wants him brought in alive for...  ...questioning.

Ignoring the fact that cooperation with an aggressor that doesn't really seem to recognize our right to exist seems futile at best, this man's threatened to make XCOM's existence public, and his rhetoric is making the German government question its commitment to the Council of Nations and the XCOM project.  We can't allow that to happen, which is why Strike One is going in to retrieve him.

Plunder and Zilch are our infantry on this mission, carrying the standard loadout.

Checkmate is our sniper, with the standard loadout.

Scooby is our squad leader and medic, and her mobility is good enough for her to rate a laser rifle instead of a carbine.

Boom Boom packs the usual loadout as our rocketeer on this mission.

Chilong is our engineer on this mission.  The Arc Thrower is still in the shop, so he just packs more grenades.

We're bringing Crash along as our gunner, with the usual loadout.

Finally, we have our scout, Stalker.  Standard scout loadout, nothing fancy.

Strike One has reached the mission site.

And that's where we'll leave this update for today!  Join us Wednesday for Operation Lazy Father!  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!