How to use melee without dooming the squad? [WotC]

[Devanor]

Title asks it all. Whenever I try to use the Ranger or Templar melee I trigger 1 or sometimes even 2 more pods, and due to the will system I can't have my Reaper on every single mission.

[Aranador]

Dont use melee when you dont have half of your squad's actions remaining to clean up. Better yet, use the melee first. Many's the time I've triggered more fun than expected, and have had to think carefully about how to control the situation - actually adds a lot of fun and challenge.

One of the simplest ways is to have your melees be fast enough that they can get in, and then get far enough out that the newly triggered pods have to advance to get at you.

Slightly more complex, is to have a skirmisher use 'justice' to pull in a target for melee.

And eventually, you'll be rocking so much power that you wont care about an added pod (well - until the added pod is a gatekeeper, a mech, and 2 mutons or something worse). You'll smash the first pod, chew through most of the second, and laugh as what's left fails to do anything to your parrying templar or untouchable ranger.

The raw assault firepower these classes can bring is staggering, but learning how to ue them, and not being afraid of using them, that's on you.

[talemore]

Have a fullpledged specialist with a smoke grenade and aid protocol and start praying to rngesus the next shot won't execute the soldier. Add dodge pcs to the unit and use templars pillar to cover up flanks or send in spark. Use stasis on the soldier. Panicked and mindcontrolled are usually ignored. Use skirmishers combat presence or a psionics inspire to get the soldier out of harm.

[JaegerBane]

Originally posted by Aranador:

And eventually, you'll be rocking so much power that you wont care about an added pod (well - until the added pod is a gatekeeper, a mech, and 2 mutons or something worse). You'll smash the first pod, chew through most of the second, and laugh as what's left fails to do anything to your parrying templar or untouchable ranger.

This is worth highlighting - melee is an aspect of the game that gets more practical as the game goes on as so much of your extra stuff you gain via high rank and research lets you mitigate the risk of melee... and later on, your melee weaponry ends up being pretty devastating (the Assassin's Katana is crazy powerful).

[Martial.Lore]

I have found that sometimes you have to be quite patient and carefully set the Templar up for their first Rend kill, usually by moving them up but without letting them be seen (having a squad member who can scout while remaining concealed helps, or using Gremlin Scanning Protocol or a Battlescanner also works) and then once the stage is set, let the Templar loose. As in XCOM: EU/EW knowing the disposition of the enemy is often the key to success. Same deal with setting up a Skulljack operation too.

[Stardustfire]

for me, when i field a templar or ranger (or i want to rope in with a skirmisher) , i have 2 different aproches.
1. when the enemy is at the brink of FoW, the melee moves first with only the blue action (not at least because my templars get many times lightning hands) , when nothing new is seen after the blue move the melee charges in and the rest of the team mops up the rest.
2. when the enemy is in an area where i already have knowledge of the surroundings, all none melee units start fire and the melee units mop up the leftovers.

[red255]

On commander the maps have 9 enemies and generally one reinforcement pod, or 11 enemies and no reinforcement pod.

the shadow chamber lets us know.

So we have the risk of additional pods on the map.

but also we know that there will be pods camping around the objective. so if its a 9 enemy map and we have a pod of 3 nowhere near the objective we know its probably safe to engage in melee, as the other two pods are PROBABLY over near the objective.

What I generally do is first move of the turn I break stealth, activate reaper, run my bladestorm ranger into the middle of a pod of enemy units, slashing the one with the most HPS with my katana.

the pod activates and tries to run away. the ranger slashes each of them as they attempt to do so.

any kills will trigger reaper and allow additional slashes to finish up.

if you also have unplacable he can move and slash.

if you also have untouchable he'll be safe from the next enemy attack.

So if you kill one with the first slash attack and move to cover you should be fine from the remaining 2 aliens since one will miss and the other lets hope gets killed.

ideally you'll have your reaper as an advanced scout checking for additional pods to reduce the risk of unintentional pulls, but with decent armor and untouchable and a dodge PCs you should be fine even if things shoot at you alot.

[UATUU]

Add a Barrier heal vest, combined with combat protocol, Psi's inspire or statis of set up. Also if your using a Templar and you have the change with nay squademate ability, hit that in the end and port over a spark.