Vel's Guide To XCom 2 (Formerly "Stuff that works for me")

This is a basic notebook where I keep my ideas and strategy notes. Hopefully, others will enjoy it and find something of value here. If you have a question or there's something missing from here, leave me a comment and I'll get it added for you! :)

Introduction

Okay, so…since it seems that more people are reading and getting something out of this little guide, I figured it was time to whip it into better shape and get it a little more organized. Let’s start with the basics then: What XCom 2 is, and isn’t.

It’s an intriguing war game with both tactical and strategic layers. The tactics are easy enough to comprehend, but it takes practice to get them right, and the game is quite punishing if you make a mistake. Tactics are employed on the battle map, where you guide you little soldiers around and blow things up. The strategic layer is basically all the other stuff that happens between battles. You need to be good at both if you want to do well in the game.

After having put a few hundred hours playing in, I now feel as though I know enough to write something meaningful about the game, which is what the rest of this guide will actually be. I’ll step through the two major areas, and let you in on stuff that really works well for me. Maybe you’ve thought of it, and maybe you haven’t. Either way, I hope you find the read an enjoyable one.

Part One – The Strategic Layer

The real purpose of the strategic layer, besides just killing time between epic on-the-ground battles, is to get your troops ready for the next fight. There’s actually a lot to that, and the game does a decent job at modding the behind the scenes stuff that the support staff is doing. Make no mistake, you cannot win the game without the strategic layer. The enemies you’ll be facing are just too tough to handle without lots of tools and tech backing you up, and that’s what your support staff makes possible.

There are essentially two “kinds” of currency in the game. Intel and Supplies (money). It takes intel to reach out and make new contacts in other regions, and thus, expand your network. You need to expand your network because of the overarching story of the game. The aliens are working on this thing called the Avatar project, and the way you set it back is, you blow up alien facilities. Of course, those facilities are in regions other than the one you start out with, so…you need to expand, or lose the game.

Expanding into other regions generates more income for you, and you need income, because the way you get better gear for your troops is by conducting research, and building facilities on your stolen alien ship that unlock new and powerful abilities for your troops.

Obviously then, the faster and more efficiently you expand, the bigger your income, the more cool stuff you can buy and do, and the easier the game becomes, right? So here, after tons of hours of play, is the fastest way I have found to expand:

1) Day one, build your guerrilla war center. This will allow you to train rookies and make them whatever class you want, rather than leaving this up to the whims of fate (recommended: Get the “Second Wave” mod, which brings back the “not created equally” and “hidden potential” elements. Makes your soldiers all different, and gives you more to think about on this front. (Caveat: If your open bay is top row, center, don't do anything until you clear out one of the corners. Often this will see you building the AWC first, but as soon as you get one of the top corners cleared out, put the GWC there--IE, if you get the tech to start the AWC before you get the corner cleared, go ahead and start it - it's a longer build and will take more days to complete anyway).

2) Your first goal should be to get at least three engineers. Seriously, nothing is more important than this. If you have to sell your own grandma to make that happen quickly, I would recommend doing it. Eventually you’ll need more, but the first breaking point of the game is three engineers. Get them. Any means necessary, Commander.

The reason they’re so important is that engineers clear out the debris field in the lower levels of the ship. You need that stuff cleared out so you can build facilities, and you need that to happen NOW…not months from now.

In terms of clearing junk out, your first priority should be the top center box, and the one right underneath it. After that, you’re going to make a beeline down to the first and closes exposed power coil you see.

3) Your second building will be the Advanced Warfare Center. You need this to keep your troops healthy. Don’t fight it, just do it. This, and the GWar center will max your available power barring a random event. AWC should go in the top center box.

4) If your nearest exposed power coil is all the way at the bottom of the ship, it’s going to take a very long time to expand to there, and if that is the case, build a “regular” power coil in the currently unused top corner box. This will give you enough power to build a workshop and your first resistance com station, and those should be your next to builds, in that order (since your power is maxed, you literally can’t do anything but build them in that order).

5) While you’re doing all of that, you’re going to be busy, investigating stuff on the map, going on missions, and scanning for supplies. Day one, in order to give you troops something cool to use in the field, spring for two flashbang grenades, and learn how to use them effectively. See the combat section for tips on that front.

6) Research: You want Resistance Radio, like yesterday. To that end, forget offense and defense, and research alien biotech, advent officer autopsy, and resistance radio first. Yes, it’ll take most of the first month unless you get an event scientist really early. Gotta be that way if you want the mid game to be easier.

7) The MOMENT you’re able to contact new regions, stop what you’re doing and do that. That takes priority over everything else. If you beeline for the tech and make it your top priority, you can get one new region before the first supply drop, which gives you a nice kick in income.

8) You are initially limited to three regions (that’s all your native facilities will allow), and that’s fine. Make contact with two new regions (preferably on your starting continent), because when you build your radio relays next (this basically increases the income of the few regions you have, and makes contacting adjacent regions cost less intel), you’ll unlock powerful bonuses, sometimes for your squad at the tactical level, and sometimes for your game in general at the strategic level (depends on the bonus). Some of these bonuses are insanely powerful, so definitely plan on building those radio towers!

The thing is, it can be hard to find the right balance between the immediate needs of your troops and the longer range goals. In general, I do it like this: Any income earned from supply drops, I spend on the troops, right then, assuming there's something critical that they need (see below for my critical things list). If there's money left after that, it goes to the economy. Everything else from the black market and other events in-game, all goes to facilities. Of course, there's often significant overlap, and that's fine too. Just find something that works for you.

There are some specific instances where you must drop everything and pay attention to the troops, but for the most part, the economy should win out. Here are the things you must drop everything to do for your troops:

More On The Strategic Layer

Squad Size increases – the second you see that one of these is available, drop everything and beg, borrow, or steal the money to get these.

Vulture – this doubles the amount of stuff you get when the aliens drop supplies. You need it.

Rifle/Grenadier weapon upgrades (if you rely heavily on rangers and snipers, then upgrades to their primary weapons too, of course)

Armor upgrades - Duh. LOL

Mimic Beacons (when you kill your first Faceless, let your current research finish, then conduct the autopsy on the Faceless, so that as soon as you kill two more, you can build your first beacon….it’s the beacon that will save your bacon!)—then, of course, the second you get two more Faceless, drop everything and build that beacon!

Those things dramatically redraw the map at the tactical level, so as soon as you get them, you need to spend the money so your troops can start using them. If it’s not any of the stuff mentioned above, spend the money on the economy instead until you’ve built a global network with radio towers everywhere.

Once you accomplish all of the above, you’re primed to expand further. By now, your engineers have been doggedly working their way toward that exposed power coil, and once there, you build a “good” power supply for your ship.

The moment that’s done, it enables you to build a workshop in the second row, center column. That’s basically game over. The second you have it, you turn the engineer who’s staffing it into two engineers. When you upgrade it, you’ll turn two engineers into four, thanks to the magic of workshop gremlins.

Now suddenly, your game is kicked into high gear. Stuff starts happening fast. Facilities get built faster and debris gets cleared out more quickly.

As soon as your workshop is in place, you want a resistance coms station (staffed, this will double your max number of contacts)…which of course means you should get busy expanding that network again. Proving ground next, both to advance the story (skulljack) and for experimental ammo, grenades, armor and heavy weapons, all of which are insanely powerful (acid grenades are lethal to everything, including mechs, btw).

Then Psi Lab. No, you don’t need it to win, but trust me, Psi Lab. Upgraded Psi Lab so you can train two Psionics at once. Try not to take them on missions until they’re completely trained, but when they are…stand back and enjoy the show!

Finally, Shadow Chamber for good mission intel (and it pushes the story forward).

From here, the rest of the game at the strategic layer is about keeping your special project queue humming (Proving Ground), keeping the science geeks occupied, and upgrading your power/coms to keep expanding the network outward.

One of the coolest and most intense missions in the game is the defense of the Avenger, so when you start seeing the blurb about the UFO hunting for you, take time to build the defense module (and upgrade it, money permitting). Having four defense turrets helps make that fight easier. If you never see that event, you don’t need the build. Also, you don’t outright need a laboratory. Once you’re swimming in money, sure, but you can totally win the game without it, and it’s certainly not worth delaying troop equipment upgrades for.

And that’s it. That’s the strategic layer in a nutshell. Run your game like that, and you’ll be just fine.

Part Two - The Tactical Layer

I’ve done a lot of goofy experiments, so I now have a pretty fair understanding of what works and what doesn’t. I’m not going to waste a lot of time on the basics. Take, cover, for example. You know it’s not smart to leave your guys standing in the middle of nothing, so I’m not going to bother trying to drill that into your head. Instead, I’m going to tell you when it’s okay to break the rules. That’s a lot more fun.

Here then, is everything I know about abusing combat in XCom:

When Not To Worry About Cover
Most of the time, taking cover and keeping your head down is a good thing, but there are times when you should break the golden rule. Here are a few:

• Time – When you’re on a timed mission and you’re almost out of time, forget cover and run for the evac point. You may take damage, but if you don’t make it to evac, you’re lost anyway.

• Fight Finishing – When you KNOW that you’re going to end the skirmish this turn, RNG be d@mned, don’t worry about cover. Step out of cover to get that lethal, skirmish ending flank shot on the enemy and duck back in next turn. Cover don't really matter if there's nobody left alive to shoot back.

• In-bound Reinforcements: The AI will spend their first turn after arriving via drop ship moving into position. You're better off moving blue, as close to them as you can, and adopting an overwatch position, even if you're standing in the middle of the street, than moving yellow and dashing for cover. Gives you an extra shot. (Caveat: If you've only got one round left before you need to reload, and you don't have an autoloader, go ahead and dash for cover - take your last shot before reloading when you can be sure of the percentages).

• Concealed – first (blue) move. As long as you END your turn behind cover, you’re fine, so don’t worry too much if your first move is out in the open (if you are concealed). The only potential downside here is that if you accidentally reveal your position by stepping on a reveal tile, you’re screwed, so be careful.

Yes, cover is important. So is ending the fight as fast as you can. Sometimes it’s stepping out of cover if it will help make that happen a turn faster. The longer the bad guys stay alive, the more chances they have to shoot back.

Spacing
Don’t bunch your guys together. It’s fine when you’re concealed (tho again, if your cover gets blown and you’re facing aliens with grenades or area effect attacks, it could mess you up), but when the bad guys know where you are, watch your spacing. Six tiles of separation, minimum. Less than that and you invite a grenade attack.

Use The Terrain
There’s all sorts of stuff that blows up on most maps. Cars, trucks, propane tanks, mystery barrels full of god knows what. Use them. If you can maneuver your enemy to stand close to one, shoot it instead. You’re guaranteed to hit it, and boom. Mimic beacons are good for this, by the way.

Elevation Advantage
If you are higher than your enemy, you get an aim bonus and he gets an aim penalty. If you are lower than your enemy, you get the penalty and he gets the bonus. Guess which one you want? ALWAYS take high ground if it is available. Always.

Proper Scouting (concealed, no ranger)
Pick the soldier with the best move rate. He/she is your spotter. Move blue, check the area, then move the rest of the squad blue. Once everyone has moved blue, it’s decision time. If you’re on the clock, you’ve got to forge on ahead, spotter first, then everyone else based on what he/she finds. If you’re not on the clock, have at least two of your guys overwatch while the rest cautiously advance.

Proper Scouting (not concealed)
Since the bad guys already know you’re here, your main goal is to activate a new enemy unit. In order to minimize the chances of activating several, you want your spotter to move blue, activate, then run back to the rest of the squad. That way, you’re fighting on ground you already know is clear, so when you maneuver, you’re not going to accidentally activate another unit.

Scouting with a concealed Ranger
This is just awesome, because even if your squad is visible, the Ranger can just charge far ahead (taking sensible precautions of course) and locate enemy units without activating them. That way, you know where to go, which cover to take, how to approach, and can pick the time of the battle. Keep your Ranger concealed as long as possible, and reveal him/her to strike a blow that turns the tide of the skirmish, or ends the mission entirely.

Basic Ambush
Most people know how to do this, but it’s worth mentioning. Move your guys up, properly spaced out, so that everybody can see at least some of the enemy units. Open the ambush with a grenadier, who deals damage to multiple targets. They run for cover, the rest of your squad opens up, and they all die horrible deaths. Done.

UPDATE: I've been playing more with snipers - specifically, with the Gunslinger upgrades. Situationally, they're even better than Grenadiers to open an ambush with. If you can get eyes on 2 (or more) groups, and most of the troops don't have armor, you can DEVASTATE a mission with just that one unit. Have everybody else overwatch, and use the Sniper's "Faceoff" ability to open the ambush with. The soldier might not score many kills, but can do more raw damage than any grenade...of course, as I said, it's highly situational. First, you've got to get her close enough to get eyes on at least six enemies. Second, most of those enemies can't have armor, or the effectiveness drops off markedly. Even so...it's a good thing to keep in mind.

Ambushing more than once in the same mission
To do this, you need a Ranger with concealment. If you have one, give him a flashbang and a mimic beacon and send him ahead of the group. Assuming you wiped out enemy unit 1 via concealed ambush, when he finds enemy unit two, he’ll move close enough to throw a flashbang, while your troops are moving close, but not so close as to activate the enemy unit. Once you’re ready, he leads the turn with a flash bang, your troops move in and mop up the disoriented troops.

If your Ranger has the ability to go dark once per mission, then after he’s revealed and that skirmish is done, he goes dark, finds the next enemy unit, and when your troops roll in and activate the unit, he ends the turn by tossing a mimic beacon behind best available cover. This will draw the aliens’ attention, giving your troops time to kill them off.

That’s three ambushes on three groups of enemy soldiers, per mission where you start concealed. Still two even if the rest of the squad (minus the ranger) doesn’t start concealed. Not bad.

More on the Tactical Layer

Retrograde
If you get in a tricky spot and you’re getting your butt handed to you, retrograde. Basically, the optimal way of doing this is as follows: Your spotter runs out, activates an enemy unit, and then immediately retreats to the rest of your squad. Everybody else in your squad overwatches.

Enemy rushes after your unit that’s running away, and runs straight into your overwatch positions.

If they live through that, and are still overwhelming, then retreat blue and overwatch again. If someone runs out of ammo, dash (blue and yellow) back through land you’ve already cleared, so you can spend an action reloading.

This works because you have land to retreat into. When you run out of land, you have to stand and fight, but this is a great way to keep enemy stunners and grab attacks from hitting you, and it’s great when dealing with overwhelming forces. Each turn, they give chase and you continue to grind them down. Works even better if you’ve got a Captain Specialist and have taken that perk (aim and crit bonus for overwatch).

Once the enemy unit is dead, obviously you just walk back through the land you previously retreated out of, and carry on as normal.

Weapon Upgrades
Personally, the ones I want are extended clips (more bullets), autoloaders (free bullets), scopes (aim--better bullets, because they hit more reliably) and stocks (free damage - hurty bullets). There’s a continent bonus called “armed to the teeth” which gives all your soldiers a free weapon slot (so you get three at mag weapons). If you get this, you’re solid gold. Even without, if you mod your weapons with the above, you’ll do well.

The others (hair trigger and repeater) are nice, but not predictable. You can’t build a strategy around “well, if I get super lucky and execute that mech over there” whereas you can around, “this clip will double my ammo capacity. Coupled with the two free reloads, I can…” See the difference? Take bonuses you can COUNT on, not ones that may or may not work when you need them the most.

Troop Upgrades
Focus on troop upgrades (when they advance in rank) that give free actions:

Guardian (Specialist) lets your Specialist fire multiple times on Overwatch (50% chance of shooting again if he hits the first time). Specialists also have a bonus that buffs their "aid protocol" allowing the person it's used on to get a free reaction shot.

Chain Shot (Grenadier) allows you to shoot twice. Same with Rapid fire (Ranger)

Bladestorm (Ranger) is awesome when facing enemies that like to get up close and personal. A Ranger with Bladestorm and aid protocol, positioned out front to draw enemy melee attackers in can be lethal to multiple opponents at once.

Salvo (Grenadier) allows you to fire your grenade launcher AND your chain gun on the same turn.

Rupture (Grenadier) increases the damage done to the target by +3 for all subsequent attacks (including those made by other members of your squad) - not quite a free action, but nearly the same as a free grenade, in addition to your regular shot.
Those kinds of things can end a fight very quickly. Take as many of them as you can get.

Formation
Try and keep your forces in some kind of basic formation as you advance and when you fight. For me (I love grenadiers, support, and psionics), I want my guys arranged in two “layers” or lines. I want my grenadiers up front and in the center, where they can pour overlapping fire on anything that moves.

I want my two Psionics on the flanks (or rangers, or snipers, or whatever you use), and I want my two support guys in the second rank, able to shift and move to take advantage of exposed enemy positions, heal the wounded, hack stuff, etc.

Of course, when concealed and setting up a concealed ambush, this doesn’t apply…everybody takes best available cover that gives them the best shot percentages and unloads. Again, it’s all about knowing WHEN to break the rules, but as a general rule, don’t just keep your guys in one lone, strung out line where the guys on the ends are too far away to support each other. Have a fallback line. A firebreak, because when TSHTF, stuff goes sideways. Always.

Other Notes
Don’t bring just one of a given item onto the battlefield, unless you’re super careful with the guy carrying it. If he dies, and you lose your only flashbang, or medkit…you’re pretty much toast. Bring two (carried by different people) or be uber cautious. This message is brought to you by Vel’s Department of Redundancy Department.

This doesn’t necessarily apply to everything…only to the mission critical stuff. By all means, if you want to equip one guy with venom rounds, do it. But if you only have one flashbang or one mimic beacon and you KNOW you’re going to need it to complete the mission, then you have GOT to be careful with the guy carrying it.

Remember, the main objective is to make aliens dead, as fast as you can, with as little risk to your own guys. Dead aliens and live human troops = successful resistance movement. Don’t be afraid to turn down missions or evac the h*ll out of a mission if it means keeping your squad intact. The power of NO is the most important power you have.

In general, I like to focus on offense before defense, so I get mag weapons before plated armor. Either can work. In fact, if you build your proving ground faster than I have outlined here, the armor might even be the better choice, since it gives you a second slot for gear. YMMV, but by all means, experiment!

It’s worth your time to get the Metal over Flesh mod. This keeps SPARK units competitive throughout the game, and turns them into honest to goodness tanks (and full mobile cover) on the field of battle. Good stuff. Highly recommended (as is making a SPARK with Julian's voice – LOL)

For some reason, if a Support guy puts on a war suit, he loses his multiple gremlin heals, and is limited to just one. A pity.

And that’s it. Armed with this information, you can go out and retake the planet. Good hunting, Commander!

So What Happens When...

So what happens when a fight "gets away from you?" What do you do? Do you curse at the screen and reload, trying for a better outcome?

You know the kind of thing I'm talking about. You're going along, and then...your cover gets blown because you stepped on the wrong tile, or somebody misses an easy kill shot, and all of a sudden, the momentum of the battle seems to tilt in the favor of the aliens.

It happens sometimes. It happens despite your careful planning and maneuvering, and there are all sorts of things that feed into the shift in battlefield momentum. Maybe it started when you moved your range 12 Grenadier up first, rather than your range 10, which clipped two turns off of your initial advance because you wanted to keep everybody together. Like I said...could be a million different things.

What happens next though, is usually a nail biting battle.

Now, in the early game, when the momentum shifts, you end up with dead soldiers. By the late-middle and late game, you've got too many toys in your toy box for that to happen very often. It's not impossible to get killed in the late game, it's just really, really more difficult for your soldiers to die, assuming you keep your cool.

In a recent test game (and one of my favorites so far), I was testing out my first two WAR suits, and my EXO suit...so three grenadiers, fully decked out, a ranger, and two support guys, headed out to a nice, leisurely, non-timed mission to blow up an alien facility.

Everything started out okay. We came across a small contingent of troops patrolling out some distance from the facility itself, took up position and ambushed them. I think one guy managed to move two tiles from his starting position before he died. Then, off we went.

Concealed ranger spotted another group, went in and did his flashbang thing to get started...bigger fight. A gate keeper and a trio of Archons, so fairly nasty, tanky fight.

As that battle got underway, the ranger went concealed again and started scouting for the next fight.

Unfortunately, he found it. I blame the game's sometimes uncooperative move function (sometimes, you wind up on the tile next to the one you clicked on), but whatever. Bottom line, he stepped on a red tile and got found out...by an Andromedean and three Mutons. Ugh. Too much for one ranger to handle on his own, so he beat feet back to the group, bringing his angry entourage with him.

Things compounded when a couple of my guys missed what should have been easy shots back at the main battle, so some of the nasties where still up. Then, I made it worse when I dropped a mimic beacon too close to the NEXT group, which activated them, and then maneuvered around some of the incoming for better position and activated yet ANOTHER group.

Suddenly my increased mobility, combined with the small map size was working against me, and I'm fighting four groups at once. UGH.

It was less of a battle and more of a street brawl at that point. Cover was largely meaningless, because there was no "safe" direction. Sure, you could get cover against the guy you were currently shooting at, but someone was almost always on one flank or another. It was crazy.

It was also one of the most fun battles I've ever run. Very cool stuff.

Literally everyone got dinged up during the fight. Nobody came out of it unscathed, and I wound up using all three mimic beacons and the flashbang before it was all said and done. We burned through every single grenade, too, but in the end, we got it under control. Here's how:

Most of the time, you think of your squad as a group of four to six guys. They are, but they're also a cohesive unit. Use them as one. Everybody has a job, everyone does their job.

Grenadiers knock down cover and strip away armor. Support guys spend one action healing somebody, and the other either dropping a mimic, using aid protocol, shooting damaged, armorless (or mostly armorless) bad guys, or shocking the $hit out of robotics. Rangers run back and forth along the battle line, plugging gaps, pushing back the enemy, and finishing off wounded aliens.

Battles are problems. Each enemy unit is a problem to be solved. Work it out. Pick a target and eliminate it. Once that problem is "solved," move to the next one.

Learn to "solve" battlefield problems really, really fast, so you can move to the next one until there aren't any more. Then, your guys get to go home.

Don't give in, and don't give up. If you're not sure what to do, don't do anything. Just stare at it for a while. It's a turn based game, so you don't have to decide right this second. Think about it. Cycle through all your guys and see what they can do, and where they can move.

Just last evening, I was doing another test, and had the most epic early mid-game battle of my life. We were DAYS away from getting the money for Predator armor when the call came in. Defense of the refugee camp. Two berserkers, two faceless, four mutons, and I don't know how many stunners, troopers, and captains. Felt like a million, but probably 2, 2, and 2.

There were several times I thought we were just dead. The main guys were healing, so I brought in four second stringers and two rookies. TOTALLY not up to that kind of battle, and you know what?

Every second was nail biting. Every decision was an agony, and they made it through, killing everything, rescuing six (exactly six) survivors, and made it home. Yeah, four of the six were wounded, but nobody died. :) (and in a truly EPIC moment, my Lieutenant sniper took out a berserker with a pistol shot!!--there was also a particularly dicey decision that saw me run a rookie THROUGH a fire to gain position on, and ultimately kill an enemy (the medic was able to put the fire out on the following turn), but you get the idea...that's just the kind of desperate, tooth-and-nail battle it was.

Think outside the box. Maybe if this guy moves first and does this, then it will allow this other guy to do this, and...

That's how you win seemingly impossible battles. :)

Recommended Mods

I wanted to do a section on Mods, because there are a ton of really great ones out there. I'll be updating this section as I play with more of them, but here are the ones I'm using and enjoying now:

Metal Over Flesh:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=720053228&searchtext=metal+over+flesh

Love the SPARK unit, but by the late game, he starts getting left behind. This mod changes that, allowing you to spend money (LOTS of money) in the Proving Ground to buy upgrades for your robotic soldiers. Good stuff, and it certainly makes sense. Keeps SPARKS on par with your human soldiers all through the game.

Potentials:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=695216006&searchtext=potentials

Just started playing with this, but I like it so far. Basically, each of you soldiers has three "hidden potentials" (this, in addition to the free ability you get from the AWC). These can be good or bad. Sometimes, you get a guy who's a follower. He gets a small buff when he's with a group that's mostly higher ranking than he is. Bodyguards are the opposite. They get buffs when leading a squad of lower ranking guys.
Other times, you get a negative perk (afraid of aliens, or mechanized units, etc.). It's fun, and it adds another layer of immersion.

Update: Loving this mod, but it's absolutely LETHAL if you don't pay close attention to which people you add to your squad. The wrong combinations can utterly ruin the squad's effectiveness. Great stuff that really makes you think hard about how you put a squad together.

Second Wave:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=622475105&searchtext=second+wave

I was sorry to see that this wasn't included in the game itself, but was thrilled when I found the mod. Commander's Choice and Red Fog are excellent options as well (Red Fog gives you aim penalties when soldiers get wounded in the field, which also makes sense).

SMG:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=577409322&searchtext=smg

I tried the Long War mod, and honestly did not like how they broke down the classes to create more, but the SMG segment of the mod is good. It adds a sub machine gun to the weapons roster. Doesn't have a lot of ammo, doesn't do much damage, but equipping it adds +3 move to the soldier carrying it. Great as a scouting weapon.

Group Cohesion:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=660665065&searchtext=cohesion

A mod that tracks the cohesion of your squad based on their interactions with each other. Higher cohesion gives small buffs. Haven't been using it long enough to know whether I like it or not. All I can tell you is that after two missions, my squad members are considered "acquaintances" (no buff for that). We'll see, but I like the IDEA that it's tracking that kind of thing.

More Mission Types:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=647242867&searchtext=more+mission+types

I like this one because a) variety is good, and b) some of the new missions are really intense. Just finished my first, "escort a VIP from a rioting city" which was great fun. No timer to get to the VIP, but once he's secure, you've got an 8 turn countdown until Firebrand can return to pick you up.

During that mission, you get incoming waves of ADVENT reinforcements (they come at random locations, so you can't really set up and wait for them), and I got 4 new recruits (rookies), who were part of the riot in the city, and linked up with us in the field. Good fun, and really felt like a chaotic brawl, in a desperate effort to get the VIP to safety. Great stuff.

Update: Some of the alternate missions are brutal, which is great. It also has the effect of making Faceless more rare, so not as many mimic beacons. I don't like that as much, but it's a huge challenge, and great fun.

UPDATE: Found a small bug in this one. If you're on a variant of the kill/capture a VIP mission, DO NOT kill him! If you do, you get stuck in an endless loop and Firebrand never returns to pick you up. If you capture him, it works fine (I accidentally lobbed a grenade too close to the VIP, and had to re-fight the whole battle..>UGH)

Shen's Legacy:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635598252&searchtext=shen%27s+legacy

A nice collection of early to early-mid game equipment to give you a few more interesting choices to make.

A variety of gear packs: New armor styles, tattoos, face paint, etc, to give more customization options. You can never have too many of these, really.

Every additional map pack I could find, to add more variety to the terrain. All great!

I like the existing classes just fine, so have resisted the urge to play with any of the (numerous) custom classes, though I'm sure many of these are delightful. :)

Advanced Tips

Rather than adding these tips into the general section, where people who have already read the guide might miss them, I'll just make this a list type section, adding new tips to the bottom as I happen across them in my experiments. Here goes:

* Easiest way to pick up loot items: Concealed Ranger. I used to make my lowest ranking grunt go do it...these days, the Ranger just scoots over, picks the loot up, then continues to scout, and the bad guys are none the wiser.

* In an ambush in the mid to late game, you don't WANT your whole squad on overwatch. Here's where you have to pay attention to who has which abilities, including special abilities. A Specialist with Guardian, armed with a scope to increase aim and an expanded clip to increase ammo can single handedly take down an enemy unit from overwatch position. Maybe put one other guy on overwatch just in case, but this gives you added flexibility after the ambush has been sprung.

In a similar vein, I recently had a h3ll on wheels Grenadier who got Kill Zone as a special. That's just devastating. Usually, that Grenadier and my Colonel Specialist were enough to take down ANY enemy unit from ambush, freeing the rest of the team up for other stuff.

* If you use SPARKS, (esp. with the Metal over flesh mod), consider giving him Bluescreen rounds and upgrading his heavy weapon to a Shredder Gun. He goes from being a tank to being an absolute battlefield nightmare, capable of going into overdrive and taking out even boss level enemies by himself.

* Your sniper/gunslinger should always get bluescreen rounds. The ammo counts toward both her pistol AND the sniper rifle. If you take the gunslinger build, against targets impacted by bluescreen rounds, a gunslinger can fanfire for upwards of 40 points of damage, also taking down even boss level enemies, solo. Pretty impressive pistol work!

* This one's fairly intuitive, but worth specifically mentioning. You don't outright NEED either SPARKs or Psionics to win the game. The fewer troop types you have in your squads, the less money you'll need to keep them fully upgraded, and by extension, the easier you'll find the money balancing game.
On the other hand, that comes with tradeoffs. Sure, you can get by without a well trained (Colonel) sniper and ranger and still win the game (and save a ton of money on upgrades till the late game), but you're also losing a lot of interesting options. Up to you which way you wanna play it, but the more troop types you try to train and gear up, the harder you're going to struggle balancing the money needs.
From a pure cost effective perspective, the ideal would be a focus on Grenadiers, Specialists and Rangers (since both Specialists and Rangers can use Assault Rifles, that's one less piece of gear to upgrade). You can absolutely win the game with just those three, but again...you're losing tons of interesting decisions and game play at the tactical level.

* Ambushing multiple pods, simultaneously - this is strictly a late game thing, and requires two things: Patience and a non-timed mission. If you've got both, you can do this. The particulars will vary depending on your squad's composition, but here's how it typically unfolds:
Group A: Taken on by a fully decked out SPARK with a shredder cannon. He opens all three ambushes by kicking into overdrive and shredding his group. If there are any survivors, he's got two shots to take them out (give him a grenade...with the heavy weapons upgrade, he'll have lots of options: two shredders and a grenade, shredder, grenade, main gun, etc).

Group B: Grenadier (with Salvo) and a Gunslinger. Grenadier fires off two grenades to punch thru armor and soften targets. Gunslinger finishes the pod with lighting hands, faceoff, and fanfire (minimum of eight shots from these two guys, because you won't use faceoff unless you've got at least two targets).

Group C: Your Guardian specialist is on overwatch when the ambushes get opened, and softens up the pod. Psionic dominates the strongest unit, and depending on how the pod is looking at that point, your concealed ranger pops out of hiding and crushes it.

It's AMAZING how easy missions are when you can demolish three enemy pods at the same time. :)

Of course, doing it this way carries greater risk. Odds are that you won't complete the mission with a flawless rating, because someone will miss a shot and take damage in return. Even so, it's a really cool thing to try out.

More to come.
An open invitation, by the way. If you're wanting to see how these strategies take shape firsthand, friend me and watch the game as I run tests.
I'm experimenting with late game tactics now, so I'm using a pretty buff crew, but it's fairly interesting I think. :)

Additional Experiments

First, thank you, Zion, for keeping me honest! Adding this section for you. :)

Work has kept me from playing as much as I would like, but I have been playing some, and do have a few new observations to add. In no particular order:

* My most recent experiments have involved hyper-specialization. That is, collecting similar perks all under a single soldier. For instance, if you use the "not created equally" option, then it's possible to find a soldier who starts with a 14 move.

Give that soldier Ranger training and an SMG (17 move).
Later, give him/her a combat stim for movement (21 move if you use the one that grants a +4 bonus)
Also give them mobility assist struts (another +2) = 23 move.
NOW you've got a guy who can go concealed (if you take that perk - recommended) and cover something close to half the battlefield in a single turn, even on a large map!

This makes the "Lure" battle option insanely effective. You can use this sprinter unit to explore the map very quickly, finding all the enemy units so you know exactly where to go. Once cover is blown, you can also use him to activate a unit, then run back to your waiting overwatch positions, drawing enemy units to their death, without fear that they'll catch up to him before he gets back to the safety of the unit.

This allows you to fight on ground of your own choosing, and in prepared positions, rather than just rushing headlong into unknown territory. Obviously, this works best on non-timed missions, but can be used to good effect on timed ones too.

* You can do the same thing with other types of focus. What about loading your sniper up with literally EVERY aim boosting perk you can find? (or anybody else, for that matter)? Or picking one guy (Ranger probably) to be a hand to hand specialist (berserker gauntlets, berserker armor, overdrive serum, and extra HP). Or....well, you get the idea. Pick a bonus or type of ability and load up one soldier with everything you can find on that front. Leads to some interesting game play!

* SPARKS - I've changed my mind here. The metal over flesh mod probably makes them overpowered. A fully decked out SPARK in the late game can just devastate a mission. Having two on the mission makes even "very difficult" ones a cakewalk. Having six on a mission is just nuts...but they're just FUN units to play with. They can basically do everything but sniping.

* Fun way to win a mission if you're patient. Snipers + 1 Ranger. Ranger goes in concealed, spots an enemy unit, then overwatches. Snipers plink them away. They're so far away that the enemy pod never actually activates. They'll just stand around until they die. Great way to strip away enemy fortifications (gun emplacements) without wasting a grenade on them.

Even if the pod does activate (sometimes they move around, and happen to move just into detection range), you've got plenty of time to kill them, and if you also have gunslinger abilities, it won't matter if they get close - they're still dead.

* I don't use Psionics anymore. It was fun, but the bloom is off the rose for me. They take forever to train, their facility is expensive, and I like SPARKS better anyway. If Ima spend the money, I'll spend it on SPARKS. So my "ideal" squad is: 1 Ranger/Scout, 1 SPARK, 2 Grenadiers, and 2 Support (or 1 Support and 1 Gunslinger Sniper). As you might expect, with that kind of focus on heavy equipment, my battle maps are a mess by the time I'm done. LOL

* Finally, remember that your starting guys probably AREN'T going to be your A-Team. Their main job is to get promoted and get you established so you can go FIND your A-Team by hiring tons of raw recruits with the stats you want and custom-crafting your team for the finale. Sure, you might get lucky and 1-2 of the original crew will wind up going the distance, but if you look at enough recruits, you're bound to find guys you can really mold into exactly what you want them to be.

Building Your A-Team

Was talking about this down in the comments section, so I wanted to give it its own section here.

In the last segment, I mentioned that the real "job" of your starting crew was to train what will eventually become your A-Team, that you'll take on the final mission. Odds are that no more than 1-2 of your original crew will be on that team.

So what makes a rockin' team?

IMO, it's movement rate and armor.

When I start hiring new recruits (or getting them from events), I look for two things:
14 moves, and 1 point of armor.

My absolute bare minimum acceptable number of moves is 12, but those two things (move and -1 damage per attack) are invaluable to me. On timed missions, having a fast moving squad makes the mission easier. Once I've got some bench strength, I'll dismiss any soldier with less than 12 moves. I don't want them slowing me down (or, I'll use them as cannon fodder on the battlefield).

On non-timed missions, those extra movement points make the difference between being able to take a flank shot or not. I can fix a low will, and I can fix bad aim, but there's no such thing as "too many movement points" or "too much armor." The more of those things I have, the better.

As to the composition of my dream team, it looks like this:

Ranger - He's my scout and fight finisher. He takes "Conceal" so he can go dark once per mission, even if the squad is visible.
He gets an SMG (+3 moves) and a combat stim to boost mobility further (another +4). Based on my minimum acceptable threshold then, this gives me a Ranger with at least a 19 move (12 base) - if the base is 14, then he'll be a 21 mover when I'm done, and I could boost that to 21-23 with mobility assist struts if I need to.

My scout is also armed with the Hunter's Axe thru the entire game (if you do the Viper King mission, you get upgrades to keep it viable, and having an extra, no-action attack has saved my bacon more than once).

His main weapon is the low damage SMG, and it gets a scope and an auto-loader. Since this guy will spend a lot of time by himself, I do NOT want him wasting an action reloading. He also carries a flashbang and possibly a mimic beacon (although I will eventually put him in a War Suit, so the mimic goes away)
Optimal weapon upgrades:
* Autoloader
* Expanded Clip
* Scope/Laser Site/Hair Trigger (optional third) (more options here, because your Rangers will spend most of their time either alone or on the front lines, so depending on how you build them out, you may need one of these more than the other).

Support Guy - He definitely gets the "Guardian" perk, which means he spends a lot of time on overwatch, crushing any enemy who tries to move. Mostly, he gets medical perks, but I do take "discharge capacitor" at the tail end to give him a nice ranged attack. He also takes "Threat Assessment" so he can give a defense boost + an Overwatch shot to someone else.

He carries a Medkit and Bluetooth or Armor-Piercing Rounds.

He stays on the second rank, taking shots of opportunity and otherwise preventing the enemy squad from doing anything without paying the toll. As such, he NEEDS ammo, so he gets a scope and an extended magazine (in case he has to do lots of shooting while on overwatch). If I get a third upgrade slot, then he'll also get an auto-loader.
Optimal weapon upgrades:
Expanded Clip
Scope
Stock/Autoloader (optional third)

1 Spark - My Main Battle Tank. He gets a Shredstorm Cannon (Shredder Gun before that). With the heavy weapon storage perk, he can fire it twice. I don't bother with adaptive aim...I want the armor and the ability to use him as mobile cover, because I tend to blow most of the cover on the map up. His job is to go nose to nose with the biggest, baddest stuff in the game.

2 Grenadiers - If they have good aim, they get Chain Shot. If they are somewhat lacking in that department, they get Volatile Mix. Either way, they get Shredder and Demolition (I don't want to have to rely on a limited supply of grenades to kill cover and shred armor). They always get Salvo, so I can take two shots on the same turn. They also get War Suits eventually, with Rocket Launchers (or those cool plasma bombs later on).

Optimal weapon upgrades:
Stock
Expanded magazine
Scope/Autoloader (optional third)

Swing Slot: This position is either filled by another Grenadier, another Support, or a Gunslinger Sniper, depending on the mission parameters and what I'm expecting to fight. The Swing's job is to take pot shots at any exposed enemies after the Grenadiers knock down the cover.

He carries a mimic beacon, just in case we get in over our heads and need to buy some breathing room. He'll also likely have either bluescreen or armor piercing rounds (esp. if he's a Gunslinger)

Even if he's a Grenadier, he stays on the second rank with my (main) support guy.
Optimal weapon upgrades:
Stock (need him to ALWAYS be able to knock someone out of overwatch)
Autoloader
Expanded Magazine/Scope (optional third)

On the map, my Ranger stays concealed for as long as possible (I take the perk that gives him an aim and crit bonus for attacking from concealment), so when he pops out, it's to end the mission or turn the tide of a battle in a big way.

SPARK rides out front to serve as a shield and soak up damage/draw fire.

Grenadiers just behind him to keep the bad guys from having any hiding places and mow them down once they are revealed.

Support keeps the enemy from running away, or taking pot shots at any exposed positions

Ranger crushes it at the end of the mission.

In an ideal world, I want to be able to field this force twice (so double everything I just said). That way, I can conduct back-to-back missions, or have a replacement for someone who's in the medbay getting patched up. So that's it. To field my dream team reliably I need the "right" ten guys (plus a bit of padding), and two SPARKS, and once I get my economy up and running, the quest to find them begins in earnest.

My troop roster looks something like this then:
2-3 Rangers
2 Snipers
5-6 Grenadiers
4-5 Support
3-4 SPARKS

Total: 13-16 humans and 3-4 SPARKS
That's what I want on hand.

**Note - to keep things organized, I use the customization options to good effect. My A-Team, at Captain level and above, all get black armor and fedoras. LOL
The guys on the roster with less than my requisite moves all become "red shirts" (literally), getting red armor so I can tell at a glance who my "good" soldiers are, and who my disposable ones are. And of course, the rookies that don't meet the minimum threshold once I'm established get dismissed anyway.

EDIT: In my most recent game, I'm really taking my time. Have gone thru three "generations" of recruits. My first threshold was as described above (minimum move of 12). Since then, I've dismissed everyone (including Colonels) who didn't have at least 14 moves (and I've gotten a couple of fifteen movers). It's AMAZING, the difference it makes.

EDIT: For War of the Chosen, my minimum standards are different. If you're playing with a "Not Created Equal" mod that randomizes stats, you want:
* Gifted or Genius Combat intel
* Armor
* Aim of 70+
* Will of 40+

HP and Move are easy to buff (lots of missions do that). Aim is harder, because although there are missions that buff aim, you only get +2-3% at a time. Move and HP buffing missions are dime a dozen and usually quick to complete, too. If you only let your A-team go on missions, then by the time you're ready for the final battle, you can easily have your entire crew in the 18-20 move range if you want to (I find that to be excessive, as it's too easy to get tripped up and trigger enemy pods, so i'm find with 15-16).

Random Combat Protocols

This is stuff I do because it works for me. Feel free to adopt, or not, as you see fit:

* I wait to take the Lost Towers mission until I've got a six-man squad, plated armor and mag weapons. Everyone on it is pretty much guaranteed a promotion, and I make it a priority, once I hit the thresholds above - need that SPARK to start leveling up ASAP!

* I delay the Viper King mission until I have my A-Team found. Again, everybody who goes on it is pretty much guaranteed a promotion, and it's a fast way to get 5 of my 6 A-Team members from Squaddie to Corporal.

* Rangers are the first to move and the last to evac.

* In a deployment, even if you know the general direction of the target you need to be making for, send your guys out in a starburst pattern in the general direction of the target. First guy breaks left, second guy breaks right, third guy up the center, then follow with your next three squad members (moving everyone blue, then yellow).

This will help you space your guys out and push back the fog of war on the map so you can better see where you're going and what you're up against. On a small map with fast movers, you can uncover about half the map on the first turn like this. Then, if you discover multiple enemy positions, you can maneuver properly and consolidate your position as-needed to take them out (either one at a time, or both at once depending on your comfort level, the disposition of your troops, and the exact composition of the enemy forces).

* Never charge straight toward an objective. Never be in a hurry, even if you're on the clock. If you don't hack a console etc., then the worst that will happen is the aliens get a bonus for a month and you don't get the reward. The BIG reward though, is leveling your troops and bringing everyone home. That other stuff is just a bonus.

Besides, the map designers generally placed the troops with the idea that most people will take the route offered. Don't do that. Approach the target from oblique angles to get better positions.

Early game, keep your whole squad as close together as proper spacing will allow.

Mid game, get in the habit of splitting your squad into two fire teams (three and three) - so like, with my A-Team outline, I'd have a grenadier/ranger/support, and a SPARK, grenadier, swing. They're close enough to each other that they can support one another, but can also conduct independent missions. Example: You're on the clock and need to try and destroy a relay or get an item. Enemy pod is attacking from the flank.

My Grenadier, Support, Swing guy would probably hang back to engage the enemy unit, while my B-Group (SPARK, Grenadier, Support) would keep pushing toward the objective, and we'd regroup once the enemy unit was dealt with. That kind of thing.

Late game, I often break my all-Colonel squad into four groups: SPARK and Ranger fly solo, then a Grenadier/Support combination conducting operations together. These units, arrayed in this way, are more than capable of dealing with just about any enemy pod on their own, without the rest of the team. They may not come back unscathed, but they can certainly do it.

* EVAC protocol: VIP leaves the area first. Then the rookies or trainees. Then the veterans, minus the SPARK and Ranger. Then SPARK, then Ranger. You never know when another group of reinforcements might show up.

* Leveling Up Protocol:
1 Colonel (support guy with overwatch), then one of my lowest ranking guys.
SPARK/Major - then another of my lowest ranking guys
Then, if it's a difficult mission, one more Major/Captain and one more lower level guy. If it's a very difficult mission, Captain or above only.

* Upgrading Protocol:
The new troops (lower ranks) get all the best gear and latest tech first. The veterans are used to scraping for survival, so they get what's left. This increases Squaddie survivability and helps the unit level up that much faster. In the end, everybody has the best gear, but if there's' a choice to be made on that front, superior weapon attachments and better armor (war suits) go to the lower ranks first.

* Ridge Assault Protocol:
This one doesn't happen too often, but I've seen a couple of refugee camp missions where they like to start you on the far side of a ridge. To get to the camp, you have to scale the heights blind, fight your way to the other side (usually against Chrysalids or Berserkers) then start rescuing civilians.

It can be scary to scale that ridge, KNOWING hell is awaiting your troops. Here's the best way I've found:
1) locate the ladders/vines/ways UP. Move your heavies (sparks and grenadiers) to the base of each. Move your support troops (rangers, snipers, support guys) in right behind them.

2) on your next turn, heavies move blue, clearing the lip of the ridge and making room for the next guy to come up, taking cover if it's available, standing out in the open if not.

3) EVERYBODY gets a move blue to the top of the ridge to assess the situation, then either start firing (no cover) to clear the decks. SPARKS are great here, because they're mobile cover (as are grenadiers in war suits, but not as good because you have to activate the ability AND they don't have shields)

* Different Ways Of Moving The Squad
I've come to see the squad as kind of a living organism. Instead of moving everyone blue, then yellow, I've been experimenting with a different paradigm, using bread mold, of all things, as an inspiration. Here's how it works.

Scout moves blue. if it's clear, grenadier moves blue, pretty close to where the scout is. Then the scout moves yellow.

Then a third guy (support) moves up to where the scout was, and the heavy advances yellow.

In this way, the line gets "fed out" in the shape and direction I mean for it to go. We steadily occupy more tactically important ground and always have a guy with a move left who can react and respond.

While I'm on the topic of moving, the last guy with moves should never venture into new territory. If you find something nasty, or activate an enemy unit, they get to respond first. Last guy should almost always just overwatch unless there's an ongoing firefight, obviously.


EDIT/Side Note: My new favorite loadout is a Ranger in the Rage Suit. OMG is that a fun character!
In my current game, he's a fifteen base move guy with no tech needed to augment him. I gave him +4 HP via combat stims, and he's armed with:
The Fusion Crossbow
The Hunter's Axe
A War Suit with a Shredder Gun
A Flashbang Grenade

The guy can *demolish* an enemy pod by himself.
Launch the attack from cover, opening with the shredder gun. Say goodbye to at least one unit, and the rest are torn to bits.

Then go concealed again, and attack with the crossbow (big + to critically hit. Kill number two)

Then run to put some distance between him and the attackers/get them spread out, before flashbanging the survivors and rushing back in to get three attacks for the finale:
- the free rage suit attack
- throw the axe (also no action points)
- then a third, regular attack on top of that

No more enemy pod.

Both the crossbow and the rage suit attack have a chance to stun...iit's *crazy* to watch that guy in action. Highly recommended. :)

(frost bomb would be a great choice too, since that would give him the ability to freeze a heavy unit that still had armor after the shredding - and if I had more than one, I'd up the ante further with a shredstorm cannon - got that outfitted on my SPARK so I can use it twice, but as soon as I get a second, he's getting the upgrade).
His special ability is "Hail of Bullets" so he can take an impossible shot and get a guaranteed hit, too...NICE, although I'd like Salvo even better!

Team Composition Example

To put the pieces together, here's a snapshot of the team of six I took on the final mission in this most recent playthru:

* Ranger/Scout - Colonel David 'Priest' Wheeler
15 moves (14 base). Outfitted with the fusion axe, crossbow, and a flashbang, and wearing the Rage Suit, he was a BEAST on the field of battle. His weapon could not be upgraded, but had a stun % and dealt a base 10-13 damage per attack, so it hits hard.

He had two special attacks, too. Once per battle, he could use the Rage Strike, which is a 0-action attack that can also stun an opponent. Also, the "Throw Axe" attack (0-action points). So in a single turn, he could initiate 3 rapid fire attacks that could take down even BIG opponents in an enemy unit, or utterly devastate a pod of troopers.

To round out his loadout, he carried a Shredstorm Cannon as his heavy weapon, and a Flashbang. This guy could *wreck* even a heavily armored unit (by leading with the Shredstorm), by himself, swooping in seemingly from out of nowhere, dealing massive damage, and then disappearing, always lurking at the edges of the battle, waiting to strike a devastating blow.

* Spark (Spartan) - As described above, my main battle tank, with 5 points of shielding and 4 points of armor, this hulking brute could go toe to toe with berserkers, Andromedans, Sectopods, and Gatekeepers without breaking a sweat, taking them out singlehandedly.

Armed with a two-use Shredstorm cannon and a plasma grenade, when he kicks it into overdrive, say goodbye to any enemy pod on the map, without even bothering the other members of the unit.

* Heavy - Colonel Isabella (Rhino) Rojas - Decked out in a War Suit with a Plasma Bomb and plasma Grenades, this salvo, chain-shooting menace could not only move fast (13 move), but could rip down cover and blow enemy positions to smithereens in a heartbeat. Her chain gun was outfitted with a superior stock, scope, and autoloader for pain even when she missed.

* Heavy - Colonel Brad (Animal) Johnson was just like his counterpart, Rhino, but he had an extra point of movement. A force of nature on the battlefield, while she sacrificed a point of speed for an extra point of armor. His war suit was equipped with a shredstorm cannon.

* Support - "Cypher" (Colonel - forgot her real name) - A guardian, healing, high aim overwatching beast, her plasma rifle was outfitted with a superior scope, superior auto-loader, and a superior expanded magazine. She was wearing a war suit equipped with a plasma bomb, she could not only support the unit defensively, but open ambushes too, striking from range and devastating the enemy before they could respond in kind. 14 mover, too!

* Support - "Bishop" (Also a Colonel, and also forgot her real name) - Decked out exactly as described above. Another 14 mover, making Rhino (13 moves) my slowpoke.

The reason for giving my support units plasma bombs was simply that I never needed two Guardian units overwacthing for the same ambush. One was quite sufficient, so the other could take shots of opportunity during the battle and/or open ambushes, preserving my Grenadier's ammunition for softening up hard targets during firefights.

This team was utterly unstoppable on the field. :)

EDIT: After a deeper analysis of the way I fight, I'm no longer AS convinced that I need 14-move support guys. 12 would probably work for them, and help me space my guys out naturally. I definitley want as much movement as I can get for my rangers and grenadier tho...more experiments needed.

Hidden Abilities

As I continue to refine my strategy, this is something I'm coming to focus more and more on, because even though I tend to train my guys so I can use them interchangeably, they're going to have different hidden abilities, and these wind up being their main point of differentiation.

Sure, some of my Grenadiers have "Chain Shot" while others have "Volatile Mix" but at the end of the day, they're functionally the same unit...BUT! Depending on what special ability they have, it can totally redefine how I use them.

In fact, some special abilities are so good and so devastating that it's almost game breaking. This is something you should pay close attention to, and keep training new recruits just to see what special ability will emerge, then try and find creative ways of using them.

I've had a "Guardian" Grenadier, which was amazing. I've had too many troops with "Implacable" which was frankly underwhelming, and I trained a new troop to replace them and get a different ability (the abilitiy to move after shooting if you score a kill is extremely situationally useful)....it's great if you're a ranger, because odds are you're taking on a pod by yourself and you can make a hand to hand attack that leaves you out of cover, then duck back in, but for most everyone else, it's only marginally useful.

So far though, the two most devastating combinations I've found have been:

* Run and Gun on a 15-move Grenadier - the ability to open an ambush with a grenade, then move to some other part of the battlefield later in the turn and either launch another grenade or shoot their chain gun is unbelievably strong.

* Salvo on a Ranger - Imagine being able to:
- Fire a Shred Storm Cannon from concealment to get a critical hit chance (or, earlier in the game, Frost Bomb or Flashbang)
- Rage attack an opponent (stun potential)
- Hurl your fusion axe at another opponent
- Take two shots with your primary weapon via Rapid Fire
- And go concealed again

All on the same turn. What pod could survive that?

* Death From Above on pretty much anything

If you have a favorite combination, leave a comment in the comments section and I'll get it added here. Put the ability, the class it tends to work best on, and how you like to use it. :)

ADDITIONS:
More good ones:
* Conceal on a Support Guy (great for those timed missions when you have to hack something. Your Ranger and Support can head directly to the objective while the rest of the unit creates a distraction.

* Shredder on a Ranger - the one big weakness Rangers have is that they can't do much against heavily armored units. This fixes that.

Tailor Your Squad Composition To The Specific Mission Type

Here's something that, at least in my experience, most people don't pay enough attention to: Depending on the type of mission, different troops and loadouts are called for. Different *strategies* are called for.

This is how I approach the matter in general. Use it if you find it helpful:

Timed Missions - This is the main reason I like fast-moving troops (well, in addition to getting easy flank shots). Timed missions are much easier with fast troops. If you get one, be sure all your fastest-movers get included.

Snipers tend to be a relatively poor choice on timed missions, unless they're Colonel Gunslingers. Snipers are awesomely powerful units, but they really shine on maps where time isn't a critical factor. I generally don't take snipers if I'm on the clock.

Hacking Missions: Obviously specialists are more important here, because they can hack the whatever remotely, which means you don't have to get right on top of it. These are always timed missions, and I'd recommend 2 specialists for any of these.

You're also going to want to be able to bulldog your way past early map opposition, so probably 3 Grenadiers or two and a SPARK

A good (general) timed mission group, IMO, would be:
2 Grenadiers
2 Specialists
1 Spark
1 Ranger

This gives you the power to muscle past the stuff standing in between you and your objective.

If you're looking at an extraction mission, there's extra time on the clock (12 turns, rather than eight).
The above composition can work there too, but if you want to play it differently, then try something like:
4 Rangers
1 Grenadier
1 Specialist

This gives you awesome flexibility, especially in the late game, when the Rangers can pack heavy weapons and make up for their one weakness (the relative inability to deal with heavily armored units). If it's late game, you can easily make a 5 Ranger, 1 Specialist team work.

Non-Timed Missions:
Here's where snipers really shine. I like taking the following:
1 SPARK
1-2 Snipers
1-2 Grenadiers
1 Ranger
1 Specialist
(if you have the shadow chamber built, you can decide which you need more of, snipers or grenadiers)

You might be tempted to try taking six of one class, but honestly, I've found it to be a weak choice.

Since Rangers (especially in the late game) are fun, but fragile. Every class but SPARKS would benefit from having a Support guy with them, so 5 Rangers + 1 Support, 5 Grenadiers + 1 Support, etc., is almost always better than six of the same thing.

SPARKS are the obvious exception. Six SPARKS on a mission turns it into a joke, no matter what you're facing. :)

For Advent Retaliation Missions (esp. in the late game), I'm partial to:
3 Rangers
1 Support
2 Grenadiers (or 1 + a SPARK).
This is because you'll often need to space your units out quite far, and Rangers excel at operating solo.

Changes Brought About By War Of The Chosen

The first thing to say is, if you haven't gotten War of the Chosen yet, do so. Highly recommended, and it radically alters the game play.

The first big change to talk about is an added element to the story line. We learn from an altered introduction that Bradford had help from another resistance faction in locating The Commander.

This group, "The Reapers" are badazz. Easily the most powerful of the three unit types offered in the game (there are three factions you have to find and get along with - The Reapers, The Skirmishers, and the Templars.

All three have a unique unit (named Reapers, Skirmishers, and Templars, as you might suspect).

These three are heinously powerful - pound for pound better than your average XCOM guy, although each have their limitations.

All three are based on, or have traits similar to Rangers. Templars, for instance, use a psionic sword attack called a Rend as their primary weapon. It can't miss, and even better, when they kill something with this attack, they get "Focus" which they can use to do other cool things. Plus, unlike a ranger without implacable, they can hit, then get a free move to scoot back to cover.

The skirmishers are the ultimate swing unit. Armed with a light rifle, they can fire twice on the same turn if they want - or, fire first then move. Up to you. They've also got a grappling hook that basically gives them a free move to high ground, which makes them incredibly versatile and able to slip past and around the enemy to get a flank shot.

The Reapers though - these guys are a breed apart. Their main weapon is concealment. When they are concealed, they can get within two tiles of an enemy and still not be seen. Their secondary weapon is the claymore. They toss it like a grenade on move one, then they can shoot it to blow it up, causing damage to everything in the radius and....and, this is the part that makes it insane - they can do that without breaking concealment.

Basically, in the Reapers, you've got a unit that can slip past all the opposition to reach a timed objective, and along the way, utterly trash enemy units for the rest of your squad to mop up.

Oh, they can also detonate cars, fuel tanks, and other things that go boom on the map, have them cause double damage (12 points), and still not break cover. So yeah...they're insane. I love them. :)

(as an example - in my latest game, my one Reaper took out two whole "pods" of enemy units by herself, while the rest of the squad hung back and waited...Claymore weakened them, and then...she hunted (you can take a perk such that if you score a kill with your Vektor rifle, you ALSO don't blow your cover...so you wound them, then you stalk and kill them one by one).

New facilities to build, and they're important. In fact, the resistance ring and training center are probably the two most important facilities in the game, because they've changed the way you contact new regions. They have to either be adjacent OR you have to have conducted a covert operation in them, which is what the resistance ring allows you to do.

The reason the training center is so important is because your troops can now become friends and form bonds. When that happens, you can train them as a unit in the training center for some really cool, surprisingly powerful and useful bonuses. Well worth doing from pretty much day one.

The resistance ring will offer you all sorts of missions, but the ones that matter are the "hunt the chosen" missions, because that's what increases standing with the three factions you're working with, and that, in turn, allows you to select more bonuses (you can change your faction bonuses every month - these are rather like continent bonuses, except more flexibile - and you can still earn continent bonuses, btw.

Your expansion will be slower. You'll have less money from regions (an effect of the chosen), but more ways of GETTING money (more goodies seem to appear on the map, and stay longer, and covert missions frequently revolve around gathering loot, supplies, influence, etc. all of which can be turned into cash as needed).

Your troop promotions will be slower in terms of getting to Colonel, becuase you don't get "Wet Work" from the GWC any more, but it's cool. Again, with clever use of the resistance ring, you can still make it work.

The best part though, is that you can give your guys buffs by spending command points earned in the field. You know how your guys got the fun hidden ability, thanks to the AWC? Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore. Instead, you can pick your own. In fact, earn enough points, you can pick several for each member of your team.

It's awesome. it's insane. It gives you the power to create totally game-breaking combinations of units, and it's TONS of fun. :)

More later. Ima get back to playing.

Fun War Of The Chosen Experiments

So I've been playing around with character building in War of the Chosen. LOTS of fun potential and possibilities here! Basically, you have an almost infinite ability to customize your A-team (and your second and third stringers, to a lesser extent) into exactly the force you want.

In my most recent playthrough, I've been playing with all sorts of fun combinations. I started with a few basic principles in mind:

* Once a soldier becomes a Colonel, if it's available, he gets blast padding (if I already know he's going on the A-Team, then he gets it as soon as it's available)

* Everyone who has it as an option gets Run and Gun (it's CRAZY when 5-6 squad members can all do this)

* As many people who can get "Shredder" get it

* On deployments, I try to keep bonded friends deployed together, and ideally, will deploy three sets of bonded friends so they can support each other more effectively

* I try to "stack" my ability perks. In other words, you get lots of covert missions that give +1 HP. Rather than spreading them out, I've been putting them all on the same guy - in my case, a Grenadier decked out in a War Suit with Blast padding (so three points of armor). He's a tank. A monster. And he can Salvo and Run and Gun, which makes him doubly deadly.

Obviously there are some limitations re: stacking. After you get to 100 aim, will, or hack, it's more advantageous to start spreading the love to other soldiers. After you get to 15 base move, it's more advantageous to start building a second soldier's movement up via covert action, etc. But hit points...I'm going to see just how tough I can make my tank Grenadier.

One of the biggest changes from a tactical perspective that War of the Chosen introduces is the notion that certain soldiers can perform 4-5 actions a turn.

Normally, they get their two, but if you're deployed with a Skirmisher who has Command Presence, he can give +1 action to anyone he can see. A level three bonded soldier could get +2 actions from his bond mate, which means that if you pair up say, Grenadiers/Rangers with Support guys, who are normally on the second rank, they can spend an action giving one to their frontline counterpart and still overwatch or heal something. This allows your front line, massive damage dealers to have even more flexibility.

I've also given one of my Rangers the Rage Suit again, and I gave him Salvo from the Training Center, and the Fusion Axe. So on a single turn, when deployed with a Skirmisher and a Level 3 bond mate, he can:

* Find two enemy pods close together (six enemy soldiers)
* Open his attack with a shredstorm cannon, stripping armor (1 ap) and killing at least a couple
* Charge in and perform a Rage attack (zero AP) (that's a third dead or stunned)
* Throw the Axe (zero AP) (four)
* Run and Gun to reposition
* Fire his primary weapon (which also shreds armor) (five dead) - This would normally end his turn, but then:
* Get +1 AP from Skirmisher, fire his primary weapon again (killing the sixth and last member of the pod)
* Get +2 AP from his bond mate, go concealed and still move twice to continue scouting for the rest of the sqaud, or, if there's another enemy unit in range, can go ahead and open the attack on the NEXT unit with a flashbang/mimic beacon and let the rest of the team have some fun too!

Of course, he's ALSO got both Reaper AND rapid fire, so he could, depending on the shape of the battle, wait for a Grenadier to soften up some additional targets, then go in and polish all of them off too!

That's the kind of crazy stuff that War of the Chosen makes possible.

So far, I've only gotten 2 Reapers, but I'm thinking that it would be fun to run a six Reaper squad. Just keep everyone concealed for the entire mission and take every unit on the map out without ever becoming visible....

Other WotC Observations

Still loving the game, but the more I play it, the more I realize how fundamentally it has changed things. Here's a roundup of stuff I've noticed that has become markedly different in my games:

* Snipers have basically been rendered obsolete. There's just nothing that an XCOM Sniper can do that a Reaper can't do better. You just don't need them.

* Rangers are now my core unit type. Grenadiers have been replaced as the go-to unit type. I still (usually) want one grenadier with me on a mission, and having at least one support is a must, IMO, but honestly, the other classes just can't keep pace with the Templars, Reapers and Skirmishers. Rangers have enough flexibility that they can, so my troop roster usually winds up looking like this:

2 Reapers
1 Skirmisher
1 Templar
8-10 Rangers
4-5 Grenadiers
4-5 Support
1-2 Snipers (I don't dismiss them, I just raise one to Captain and then bench them)
2 Psionics
2 SPARKS

This gives you enough guys that you can keep two full sets ready to deploy, plus run covert missions, plus give you some padding to account for troops out of action because of negative trait removal, injury, etc. - Note that this force is ~ double the size of the one I'd typically build in the original game.

* A lot of facilities that were super important just aren't anymore. I doubt I'll even build a Resistance Comms this game - if I do, I'll only build one. So far, I'm in contact with 9 regions and I don't have one yet. There are other ways to boost that number. Same thing with a workshop. I regarded it as essential in the original game, but honestly, there are so many ways to GET scientists and engineers now that the Workshop feels like a waste of money, avenger power, and a build spot.

The new critical buildings are: GWC, Resistance Ring, Infirmary, & Training Center (in that order, IMO), with the other stuff being built if and as needed. Labs are actually fairly good (and there are mods out there that make them even better), but if you're going to build one, then for maximum benefit, build it on day one.

* In the Resistance Ring, you'll find that you sometimes accept covert missions for the main reward (Intel, Resources, an Engineer, etc.) ,and sometimes, primarily for the troop perk. Both are crucial, but in practice, I find that I spend more of my time focused on the troop perk and figuring out which of my guys I want to send on that mission to get the buff.

In general, Rangers get first priority on move and dodge buffs, specialists get first dibs on aim and hack buffs, and Grenadiers get first dibs on Will buffs, although this is situational, and I'll often drill down and give the will buff to whichever member of the squad has the lowest max will at the time.

* "Improve Combat Intelligence" missions are SUPER important. Send your A-Team members on these early and often until they're all "Gifted." This gives them AP's faster, which means you can buy more fun bonus abilities.

* The Avatar Project is basically a non-issue. You've got three different ways of slowing down the counter (blowing up facilities, missions in the ring, and a faction order card that will reduce it by one block a month, guaranteed. All three combined, and you'll just never have to worry about it, so no time pressure.

EDIT: Yeah, after this latest runthru, it's basically a Ranger game, with the other unitls hanging around to provide specialized services. The Rangers and the heroes really steal the show though.

In my latest game, I've got a "Core Group" rather than an A-Team. These guys don't (necessarily all deploy together, although they have). Instead, based on what type of mission it is, I'll load in the appropriate, highly specialized troops:

* My "Hero Units" (2 Reapers, 1 Skirmisher, and 1 Templar)
Templar got movement perks so he can keep up with the Rangers. His weapon can't be modded.

As snipers, the Reapers obviously got aim buffs, and their Vektors got extended ammo clips and autoloaders to save actions. Since they get in close, their rifles don't really need scopes. They get Repeaters instead.

Mox (The Skirmisher) gets an extended clip, an autoloader and a hair trigger (added combat flexibility)

XCom Units:
Specialist:
Variant A: Wearing Warden Armor, with both "Hail of Bullets" and "Guardian" this is the ultimate swing unit - capable of killing multiple enemies on defense, or making the "impossible shot" on offense if we just absolutely need a hit.
Usually oufitted with a Medkit and Bluescreen Rounds. Rifle is modded with a scope, expanded magazine, and an autoloader
Hack Skill is 200+

Variant B: This variant is designed to move with the rangers, so her movement is 14, and she's got the "Run and Gun" perk, mostly so she can set overwatch after dashing, but also sometimes to get a flank kill shot. Outfitted as above, but also with Blast Padding since she tends to be in harm''s way more often.

Grenadier: Tank
This guy has 20 HP base, and blast padding. When combined with a War Suit, he's as armored as I can make him, and can stand toe to toe with just about anything. Even better? He's got a 48 dodge, too, so he only rarely takes full damage from attacks.

His Chain Gun is outfitted with an extended magazine, a scope, and an autoloader

Ranger: Assassin - Once I kill the Chosen assassin, this guy gets her stuff. 14 movement, Warden Armon, Mimic Beacon and a Flashbang, his job is to distract and disorient, and then kill.

His perks: Run and Gun, Reaper, Rapid Fire (for those big opponents), and Shredder
His weapon cannot be modified (Chosen weapon)

Ranger: Beast - This guy gets 16+ moves, and is outfitted with the Rage Suit and the Hunter's axe. He's the multiple attack per round guy. The heavy weapon slot is filled with either a shredstorm cannon or a plasma blaster.
Perks: Salvo, Run and Gun, Blast Padding, Reaper
His weapon is modded with an extended clip, an autoloader, and a hair trigger/laser sight (he gets in close, so no real value to having a scope)

Ranger: Stealth - this is my sneakiest unit. With the serpent suit on, this guy can move 16+ spaces at a go, and Frostbite makes a neat zero-action attack. His main job is not to fight, but to observe, although he can fight, and he's armed with a fusion blade and the Disruptor from the other chosen, so he can hit pretty hard when he does.

Perks: Run and Gun and Shredder are the keys here. Blast Padding too! Armed with a standard grenade and an extra medkit to tend to wounded rangers in the field.

Ranger: Avatar - This one is decked out in the Icharus armor. His base move is 14 but that seldom matters given the suit's other properties. His main job is to muck with the enemy's defenses, appearing unexpectedly on a flank to crush it.

Armed with a flashbang.
Perks: shredder, blast padding, hail of bullets, death from above - he seldom does his killing with his sword, preferring to take high ground)
Weapon: Scope, extended mag, autoloader
Uses a plasma rifle rather than a storm gun

So...when a mission comes up, I'll take a look at the threats (Shadow chamber) and the sitreps, and start seeing which of the "rock star units" would be the best fit for that mission, and then, fill in the gaps with my other, supporting units. But these guys are the keys to victory on the field.

Stuff That Tends To Get Overlooked

In time, I'll flesh this section out more, but there are two things so far that I definitely wanna put here, and they're really important.

One is movement.
Here are the times you want to move your guys:
1) You're looking for something (a computer to hack, a general, keeping an eye on a wandering patrol, a place to plant X-4 charges, etc).
2) You're in a crappy spot and under fire
3) A Squad mate is in a crappy spot and is under fire and you want to help
4) To gain a better firing position on an enemy unit
5) You're escorting something (or someone) to evac

If none of those conditions apply, don't move your unit. He's fine where he is. There's nothing to be gained, and a lot to potentially lose by just "moving your guys" because you can. Think about what else you could do (reload, overwatch, aid protocol, hack, or use some other special ability). Moving should be an option of last resort.

The second thing is Hunker.
Most people don't use Hunker, and there are times when you should.
If you don't want to give your position away and you're not concealed, hunker is a good choice.
If you've got a unit who's by himself, or is the "tip of the spear" and likely to be under fire from two or more enemy units, don't shoot, and don't overwatch, find the best cover you can and hunker down.

When you do, you'll get a cover bonus, your dodge score will go up by +50, and if you're on fire, hunkering will put it out. It's a great option that doesn't get used often enough. Try it. You'll like it. :)

Here's something else. Keeping your troops healthy.

Ask most people what they'd prefer, Dodge or more Hit Points, and most people would say most hit points, which, IMO, is the wrong answer.

Don't get me wrong, hit points are great, and there's no such thing as one of your units with too many HP, but that's a grossly inefficient way of giving your guys the means of hanging longer in a fight.

Damage prevention ultimately comes down to not getting hit in the first place. Adding more HP simply makes you better able to take a punch, but it does nothing to address the core problem.

To address the core problem, you need two things: Armor and Dodge.

Armor acts as a neg to damage. So if an attack would normally do 6-8 points of damage to your guy, and you've got two points of armor, assuming no shredding is involved, then that attack is going to do (6-8) - 2, or 4-6. Nice. Don't forget to thank Shen for the armor!

Dodge is the ability that helps you take grazing shots for partial damage (one half to one third damage from what I've been able to tell). So let's say you've got a really high dodge score (north of 40-50).

Now that 6-8 attack is likely to be in the range of 2-4, thanks to dodge (if it hits at all).

At that point, if you've got a couple points of armor, you may not lose ANY hit points from the attack.

So how much armor can you get?

Well, many of your guys will be able to take the blast padding perk at some point, via the training center, so that's 1 point.

A War Suit provides +2 points, which would give anyone in your squad so configured 3 points of armor, two if they're just wearing Warden Armor.

If you wanted, you could add a plated vest as your optionall equipment, which would give you another point, so we're now looking at 3-4 points of armor for just about everyone in your squad, and if/when they get the "Second Wave" mod working for War of the Chosen, you can scout for new recruits that start wtih a point of armor, which puts your max at 4-5 points of armor, depending on whether you're wearing Warden or War.

At that point, with a good dodge score, you're almost never going to lose actual hit points anyway, because few attacks are going to make it past both your impressive reflexes and your thick armor, which means you'll be able to hang in the fight for as long as is needed.

Random Side Note - The more I play WotC, the more heavily I'm relying on Rangers as my go-to troop class. I've already virtually replaced Grenadiers by putting some of my Rangers and supporting troops in heavy armor, mounted with rockets/shredders/plasma bombs, but now I'm also thinking maybe I could replace Specialists too.

In my current game, I think I'm going to go back to the proving ground and make some more armor. Here's the loadout I have in mind:

1) Snake Ranger (stasis vest and talon rounds or some type of grenade) (storm gun/sword) (run and gun, reaper)
2) Icarus Ranger (stasis vest and bluescreen rounds) (warlock disruptor gun/sword) (death from above/serial)
3) Beast Ranger (Shredstorm cannon and stasis vest) (storm gun/hunter's axe) (run and gun, salvo, reaper)
4) Ranger (Stasis Vest and a Flashbang or Mimic Beacon) (storm gun/sword) (run and gun and salvo)
5) Reaper (stasis vest) (Vektor Rifle/Claymores)
6) Psionic (stasis vest and bluescreen rounds) - Plasma Rifle/Psi Amp - Alt configuration, put him in a war suit with a plasma bomb and ditch the bluescreen rounds for this unit). Or keep them and ditch the stasis vest, with a plan to keep the Psionic in the back and out of harm's way for the most part).

With six stasis vests, that's 48 points of healing, which is more than a Support guy with 4 heals could provide (32HP). Of course, you'd lose access to Aid Protocol and Revival, but...you'd have an extra hard hitter...will experiment with it and see how it goes.

RESULTS: Situationally effective. You need the Shadow Chamber so you can review what you'll be fighting. For instance, bots LOVE blasting me with AOE attacks. Gatekeepers LOVE hitting multiple people with Gateways. That kind of enemy, stasis vests are great.

Enemies like those awful assassin things...not as good, because if you can't kill it the turn after it Shadowbinds one of your guys, then you NEED Revival Protocol, so...kinda worked, and kinda not. Specialists aren't as easy to replace as Grenadiers.

New Mission Types Explained

War of the Chosen introduces a number of new mission types, and some of them can feel pretty brutal until you learn the "tricks." This section will help speed that process along.

The Lost - Your basic zombie street fight mission. Expect to face 24 - 60+ on a mission, sometimes with Advent forces shooting at you, and sometimes not. The zombies can be a (minor) help, because they will sometimes target Advent troopers, but if they can see you, 75% of the time (or more) they'll pick you to chew on, rather than Advent.

The main secret to these missions is to take your time. Don't get in a hurry, and don't spread your guys out too much. Keep your gun loaded. Don't overwatch unless you KNOW there's a zombie or two lurking right around the corner that might hit one of your exposed people. If you're thinking about overwatching, reload instead. If your gun's full, hunker.

Oh, and keep your Blademasters out front. Rangers OWN zombie missions. If ever there was a mission that cried out for maxing out armor, this is it, because the zombie damage per attack tops out at four. If you can manage four points of armor, and you're not facing Advent, you should be fine. (new experiment idea: Six rangers with blademaster, 4 points of armor, try to win the mission without ever actually attacking).

If you're facing Advent forces, plus Lost, empty your clip into the zombies, saving your last bullet for Advent forces. The more explosions you make on the battlefield, the more swarms you'll have to face. I like blowing stuff up. I fight lots of zombies. LOL


Supply Crate Missions - I used to hate these until I learned the secret. Advent doesn't pick up their first crate till you blow your cover. Use that to your advantage. Scout the area, find the main enemy groups, locate the crates, and plan your attack. Instead of focusing on frantically trying to get the crates, focus on killing the bad guys. When the last one dies, you get all the crates that haven't been picked up yet. Kill them quickly and you make more money. Sure, if you're like right NEXT to a crate, obviously flag it, but don't go out of your way to do that. Just kill stuff quickly.


Rescue Soldier Missions - The first one of these you get is right at the beginning when you rescue Mox from prison. It lulls you into a false sense of security, and you might be thinking that all the rescue missions will be easy. They won't be.

If one of your soldiers gets taken, you'll eventually be offered a mission to break them out of prison. I THINK you have to defeat the Chosen who captured them in the first place for the mission to trigger (like, defeat them at their stronghold) - I say this because I had two majors and a colonel captured, and I waited 3 months for the rescue mission to appear, to no avail. The very month after I smashed the first stronghold tho, I got a rescue mission. Coincidence? Maybe, but it certainly didn't feel that way.

Anyway, the secret here is to stay hidden. The second you get bogged down in combat, things get exponentially harder. If you get busted, end the fight QUICKLY, and use your bonus concealment.

The proper way to execute the actual jailbreak is this:
You've got a three man team. One guy is the spotter, standing by the door.
Two guys approach the jail cell, and preferably, one of them is a specialist, who can hack the door without raising the alarm.
You should not hack until you've got both your action points.

Specialist hacks, other guy moves blue to get next to the captured soldier and pick him up. That way, both guys can still move yellow toward the door. Base security level increases to five.

Next turn, when everyone has all their action points again, don't waste time. Beeline for the door and call for Evac when everyone can GET to the evac point that turn, because the base goes on high alert and you do NOT want to be there two turns after that happens. Things get complicated quickly.

Save the Resistance Force Missions - This is a variation on the Haven Retaliation mission, and they're super easy. The game basically tells you where to go, and while you're moving there, the resistance fighters are busily cutting down the alien forces you'll be fighting. They miss a lot, and they do some crazy stupid things, but they actually make a difference.

Here, the secret is to go slow, stay organized, and approach with a plan of attack. IE - Watch what the resistance fighters are doing, pick an enemy flank, and crush it. Don't just move your guys haphazardly in the general direction of the objective. Close in on a flank and wreck it.

EDIT: TOTALLY loving the new game, but as I've mentioned before, it's changing my force composition preferences. Without the metal over flesh mod, I'm back to using Psionics, so my "dream team" in this new game is:
* 3 Rangers (one wearing each of the special armor suits made from Valen's failed experiments)
* 1 Reaper
* 1 Psionic
* 1 Specialists

Snake Suit Guy gets flashbang or mimic beacon + talon rounds. Helpful if he has the Salvo perk and Run and Gun. Armed with storm gun and sword

Icarus Suit Guy gets mimic beacon or standard grenade + talon rounds (standard grenade if attacking a facility, because he can fly up to the roof to gain position and knock out a turret when he arrives) - Armed with the Assassin Chosen's Weapons

Beast guy gets a shredstorm cannon, plus talon rounds. MUST have salvo to be at his most effective. He's also carrying the Hunter's Axe, rather than the standard sword. Armed with a storm gun/shotgun andn the axe.

The reaper has tactical rigging and carries bluescreen rounds.

The Psionic and Specialist are both decked out in heavy armor, preferably carrying Plasma Bombs (which, taken together, basically make up for the loss of the grenadier). They also have Bluescreen Rounds. One of these will have the Warlock's Disruptor, in lieu of the standard rifle.

Snake Suit and Reaper are my primary spotters, tho it's nice that four of my six squad members can go concealed if and as I need them to. This gives me tremendous stealth, and my Specialist can send in the heal bot from range, so she can hang back, well away from the front line and still provide support.

This crew can hit so hard and so fast that they seldom take damage, and if they do, it's incidental damage. The Rangers all have dodge scores north of 40, so even if they get caught with no cover, odds are that they won't get too dinged up.

With this crew though, you don't ever do a "traditional ambush" with everybody on overwatch. It's a waste of their potential. Reaper opens the assault on the first two pods, and often takes them out all by herself (claymore + hunting while the rest of the squad hangs back)

Once she's out of Claymores, then it's Beast's turn. He opens with the shredstorm, and can either Reaper, Run and Gun, or Rage Strike/Axe Throw the rest of the unit into oblivion. That's three enemy pods down, and four of my six are either still concealed or can go concealed again.

The fourth pod, we can handle in a more traditional manner, with our Support/Psionic opening the ambush with a plasma bomb, and the Rangers mopping up after.

Along the way, the Psionic can take point on any pod with an interesting/strong enemy unit (Andromidan!), opening the ambush with mind control, taking one of the big enemy units off the board and putting him to work for us.

I've yet to encounter ANY mission type that this crew couldn't just demolish.

Boss Fights (Rulers and Chosen)

So I've gotten a few questions via email about both of these, and wanted to put something formal together for the sake of completeness.

Surviving both of these can be a little daunting. Here's a basic rundown on what I've found to be most effective:

For the boss Aliens (Viper King, Berserker Queen and Archon King), it all comes down to the Alpha Strike.

You've got to deal so much damage on that first hit, that you force them to retreat (a good Alpha Strike may wind up killing the Viper King, but probably not the other two - you can almost always count on facing them at least twice before you get them).

The Alpha Strike is very similar to a traditional ambush, but there are a couple of important differences:
1) The King is your target. If the King is grouped with other aliens, he's going to move first, but ideally, you'll be able to arrange your ambush such that he's the only alien you'll be shooting at initially.

2) Open the ambush with someone who can salvo, so you can get another shot in.

3) Most of your troops should be on overwatch. The exception is anyone who has zero-point actions they can take that will turn the tide, or a big one-two punch attack they can make in lieu of an overwatch shot. For instance, my Rage Suit Ranger didn't get put on overwatch. After everybody else did their thing, he was able to Rage Strike the Archon King (stunned him, too!), axe throw and deliver a rapid fire shot from his storm gun, which was WAY better than just a single overwatch shot. So keep an eye out for those kinds of opportunities. If you can deliver more damage by not having a soldier overwatch, do what's going to deal the most damage.

Once you see him summon the gateway, if your next shot won't kill him anyway, don't bother. That's when it's time to turn your attention back to the OTHER aliens who are probably shooting at you. The main point is - your goal is to either kill him fast, before those Ruler Reactions have time to add up and really hurt you, or to hit him so hard that you drive him off fast, so you can finish the job on your next encounter.

Chosen fights are epic contests that are basically broken into two parts: The Warmup, and the Main Event.

The Warmup is designed to make you fritter away resources so you don't have as much to work wtih for the main event.

Don't fall for it. Count your heals and your grenades. Allow yourself no more than half of each to get to the Ascension Chamber, and make yourself stick to that. If you're using more than half, then you're not ready for the fight.

The only exception here are Reaper Claymores. The final battle is very fluid, and Claymores will be hard to use in it. Use 'em up on the way in, but horde your grenades and heals (unless the Chosen you're fighting is immune to blast damage - know thine enemy!

The main battle is broken into two parts: Round one and Round Two (you've got to beat each Chosen in the arena twice before you can call them dead). They'll be summoning allies to fight you.

Don't fall for it.

When the Chosen is visible, everyone should do what they can to target him or her. Even if that means letting the Chosen's allies take pot shots at you from exposed positions. Try to minimize that, of course, but stay focused on the Chosen. Only shoot at the reinforcements if there's just no way you can get to a firing position on the Chosen. If you've followed my earlier advice on soldier mobility, that won't happen very often.

That's true both when you're fighting the Chosen and when you're hitting the Sarcophagus. Don't be distracted by the minions who are shooting at you. Ignore them. Take their damage and fix it later. You do NOT want to face the Chosen three times, and that's what you'll have to do if you don't blow that thing up, so keep shooting at it until you destroy it, no matter what else is going on around you.

Oh, and the Sarcophagus takes added damage from Bluescreen Rounds and can be targeted by Rupture, Chain Shot, and Rapid Fire. Use all of the above. If you have people with salvo, lob grenades at the Chosen's minions to whittle them down, then take your shot from your main gun on that Sarcophagus!

If you can get to the main battle with at least half your consumables intact, and you stay focused on the primary objectives, you'll kick alien azz. :)

Pro Tip:
Reapers make it ridiculously easy to kill boss aliens. Consider:
2 Reapers, each with the Highlander perk, and Sting, so 2 Claymores each, and the ability to take one shot that's guaranteed to keep them in shadow.

Reaper A tosses two claymores at the Archon King. Reaper B detonates. Armor gone, 12 hp of damage.

Next round, Reaper B tosses his two claymores and Reaper A detonates. 16 hp of damage.

Next round, both Reapers take their Sting shot, ~16 more HP of damage, for a running total of 44, and the boss alien hasn't responded at all since he can't see the person shooting at him. The tankiest alien in the game is more than a third dead before the fight even starts.

It gets better. If you have a reaper with a superior expanded magazine and Banish, let her open the ambush. That's seven shots (you can park her close enough to get a 100% hit chance), at around 7hp each, for another 49 HP of damage before the King can even respond. (Running total is now 93HP. Basically, if 1-2 overwatch shots hit, he's toast.

It gets even better.
If she's got tactical rigging and bluescreen rounds, you only need two claymores, so one Reaper can get the job done, solo.

Round one, drop both Claymores.
Round two, detonate.
Round three reload, then Banish with seven shots.
That's 16 + ~96 = 112HP of damage before he can react. First overwatch shot that hits finishes the job.
You could even do all that in a single round if she's with a level 2 bondmate and has an autoloader, but at that point, you'd just be showing off. ;)

Playthrough Notes

Just needed a place to keep some observations on the latest playthrough. I'm creating a spreadsheet to keep track of my troops this go. There's just TMI to keep in my head, and the spreadsheet is helping.
Very simple to create. Soldier name, class, rank, hp, aim, will, dodge, hack, armor, weapon mods, and notes, where I keep track of fun/cool abilities they have.

For me, the most important abilities are: run and gun, salvo, shredder, lightning reflexes, rapid fire, chain shot, serial, reaper, holo-targeting, rupture, hail of bullets, and volatile mix. I want to keep track of everyone who has those in some combination, because soldiers who have them are important to building my A-Team. Basically, everybody in my core group needs to have several of these, stacked together.

Specifcally, I'm looking for rangers and specialists who have the grenadier perks, and a grenadier who gets run and gun (because he can pick up most of the rest of those).

I DO want one Grenadier in my core group, but he's gotta have several of the perks I'm looking for. Will groom 3 to start with, probably pick up more over the course of the game, and keep an eye peeled for the "right" combination of skills.

Thinking that I'm NOT going to allow soldier bonds to form until I know who my core group is, because I want them bonded with each other, not with lesser members of the corps. Preferred bond pairings are: specialist/ranger, specialist/grenadier, ranger/ranger

Laid back, female UK English voice number 4. I must marry her just so I can listen to her talk. She can whisper "Impressed yet?" or anything else she wants in my ear, anytime. LOL

My core specialists (two) must have blast padding!

My core rangers need either shredder or salvo, and preferably blast padding too (4 of these). Turns out this isn't a hard requirement after all. I've got a ranger with Rupture and she's AMAZING. The extra damage is just as effective as shredding, and Salvo turns out to be fairly situational. I do want my rangers to have some cool ability that impacts armor and makes hard targets easier to kill, but I don't much care what it is at this point. I can work with most anything.
And a Ranger with both Serial and Reaper is...wow. yeah. That's amazing.

Core Team:
Main Group: 4 Rangers, 3 Specialists, 2 Grenadiers
Secondary Group: Reaper, Skirmisher, Specialist, Ranger, Grenadier
Tertiary Group: Everyone else (1 XCOM Sniper, who will get chosen weapons, and thus, be farily useful)

So need 14 AWESOME guys, who will get most of the perks and upgrades from covert missions, then...the rest.

**Icharus armor does NOT work as advertised. Using the jump function DOES, in fact, trigger overwatch fire.

I've also developed a new tactic. Since I'm taking Ranger-heavy squads these days, I'm calling it the Ranger Ambush. It works like this.

The first ambush works like they usually do: Everyone's concealed, drop a bomb on the enemy unit, everybody else shoots and kills it. Now everyone is visible.

So my 3-4 Rangers immediately go concealed and strike out toward the objective together.
They will collectively ambush the second target, leaving my Grenadier and Support guy in the back, waiting until they get the all-clear signal.

The Rangers are arrayed with one slightly ahead of the others, all taking concealed positions and best available cover.

The Ranger closest to the new pod opens the ambush, and since he's concealed, and I've taken Shadow Strike, he gets a massive aim and crit chance, which means he usually cripples what he's shooting at, if he doesn't kill it outright (which ranger I use depends on what I'm facing - they've all got different skills and perks, so if I'm fighting a Sectopod, then it'll be the guy with Rupture or Shredder. If I'm fighting a big group, it'll be the guy with Salvo, etc.).

He takes his shot and gets revealed, but the other rangers skulking nearby remain hidden.
Since he's closer, the surviving aliens rush to flank him, but the other rangers are far enough away that they're not revealed when the enemy moves. Now the bad guys are in close, and the Rangers' weapons are devastatingly effective.
One at a time, they open up on the survivors using their best attack or combination. By the end, I've usually got at least one Ranger who's still concealed, and he serves as the advance scout for the rest of the mission.
Those shots taken from concealment are just devastating, especially when you can get off 2-3 of them back to back. There's no pod out there that can survive that.

I've also expanded my list of specialty rangers to incorporate more of the exotic equipment. I now have:

Beast: Rage suit and Hunter's Axe. Even if he doesn't have salvo, he gets a shredstorm cannon and is armed with a flashbang or talon rounds, depending on the mission (flashbang if I'm expecting psionics or troopers, talon rounds if I'm expecting big, beefy opponents where the extra damage from crits really matters).

Valkryie: Icarus armor and the disruptor rifle because it's better at range. Armed with bluescreen rounds and a frost bomb in case I run into something I need to slow down till I can mop up the rest.

Fang: Serpent armor with a padded vest beneath to get some armor cover. Armed with the Assassin's weapons (Katana and that crazy-good rifle).

Killshot: Armed with the crossbow and bluescreen rounds. His job is to either attack a big opponent from ambush and kill it in one shot, or mop up the toughest walking wounded. He also carries one of those cool things that lets him go concealed an "extra" time in case he needs to make a quick escape.

Buster: Wearing a War Suit and armed with the standard storm gun/sword, his heavy weapon is a plasma bomb and provides the artillery support on ranger heavy missions when we don't have a grenadier with us. Usually equipped with talon rounds too, so after he sets off the bomb, he can get up close and personal with the surviving enemies. Barring that, then just an extra grenade for additional light artillery support.

Where the hero figures are concerned, I've found that the best configurations are:
Mox: Expanded Mag and Auto-loader so he doesn't have to waste one of his two actions reloading and can shoot twice more often.
Usually gets a grenade and AP rounds so he can freely ignore most armor and hammer the crap out of opponents.
If he gets an extra weapon upgrade slot, he gets a hair trigger for free actions, making him even more versatile on the battlefield. He's just got such a wide range of abilities that the hair trigger really opens up the field of possibilities (wrath, justice, whiplash, command presencne, etc.), but the standard bullpup is seriously weak and needs both the mag and the autoloader to come into its own.

Dragunova: Her gun suffers the same problem as Mox's so she also gets an expanded mag and an auto-loader. Since she usually fights in close, she doesn't really need a scope, although I will add one if I get an extra slot.
Giving her a grenade with tactical rigging is a waste of a slot, so always either give her bluescreen rounds or AP rounds. Then she's virtually unstoppable.

If she has a superior extended mag and a full clip, she can take down a sectopod BY HERSELF with Banish....(even if she doesn't have shredder or something to get rid of the armor - if she does, then it's even easier)

Final Observations

UPDATE - March 2018
Stil playing on a fairly regular basis, although these days, I'm only using three mods:
1) "I'm the Commander Here"
which allows you to "re-spec" your soldiers' bonus (off-class) abilities you can learn in the training center so you can customize them to your liking. I LOVE that it costs you 2ap to change, which doesn't make it a straigh up giveaway.

2) Not Created Equally
Mostly so I can get rookies that start with a point of armor, tho for some reason, when you enable armor as a randomized stat, you can get up to two points of armor. It's rare, but if you're willing to spend a few thousand bucks on Rookies, you can get your entire A-Team with two armor at the start, which gives them 5-6 max (Blast Padding, War Suit, Plated Vest if you felt like it). That, plus a Dodge score of 40+, and they're Gods on the battlefield.

3) Commander's Choice
Since you get two Reapers, XCom Snipers are basically useless. I'll train one (and I don't care if he's only got one point of armor, so long as his other stats are decent) and eventually give him the Hunter's weapon which makes him (barely) useful, so I use Commander's Choice in the early game to keep from getting innundanted with Snipers I'm going to dismiss anyway. Just makes the game less annoying.

For me, the entire game is about the Resistance Ring now, and from turn one, my mission is to find and develop the A-Team, which consists of a total of ten members:

2 Reapers
Mox
3 Rangers
3 Support Guys
and 1 Grenadier

That's the team I want for the final missions. Usually I'll put a team of 1 Support, 1 Ranger, and 1 Reaper on the "take over the radio tower" part of the mission (a solid three man team) and my favorite configuration for the final battle is:
2 Rangers
2 Support
Mox
1 Grenadier
But Dragunova is awesome for the final mission too...just depends on how you want to play it.

Whenever possible, my A-Team members go on Resistance Ring missions, so all the rewards wind up getting stacked on that collection of ten guys, and by the late game, their stats are just heinous. I also make sure that A-Team members only form bonds with each other, usually it's something like this:
Ranger - Mox
Ranger - Support
Ranger - Grenadier
Dragunova - Support
2nd Reaper - Support

I'm finding that more and more often, I'm making regular use of Aid Protocol, too. I take the "Threat Assessment" perk, and it's a great way to get an extra overwatch shot (use the first action to dole out an Aid Protocol on their bondmate, then go into overwatch themselves, or heal, or whatever)

XCom AP's ONLY get spent on the A-Team, and only after they've bumped their Combat Awareness up to Savant (they don't get to spend any of their native AP's till then either).

I keep the Hunter Chosen alive for the whole game, but kill the other two ASAP (IMO, the hunter is the weakest of the three, but by keeping him alive, I get more big "Defend the Ship" battles and +5 to +10 AP's every time he shows up on a random mission).

Most of the time, my first A-Team member ISN'T in my starting collection of rookies, although about one game in three, I'll wind up with 1-2 2-armor guys, which of course makes everything easier.

All A-Team members wind up getting most, if not all of their perks (since I'm only spending XCom AP's on a select group, I can go crazy with it and basically give them everything, so my three support guys have all the healing AND all the hacking perks, plus their off-class perks too, all the rangers have both Rapid Fire and Reaper, etc..

That, combined with the fact that they've got unholy stats by the end game just makes them unstoppable. My fully decked out rangers can basically demolish an entire pod of enemy units by themselves.

My preferred loadouts are:
Ranger (Rage Suit/Hunter's Axe/Storm Gun (Superior Laser Sight, Superior Hair Trigger, Superior AutoLoader) - Talon Rounds

Wearing a War Suit with a Shredstorm Cannon and carrying Overdrive Serum as his option slot, he's the brutal meelee fighter. I make sure he's got "Salvo," and more than the rest, he can make good use of the "Implacable" perk. When combined with "Reaper" he can basically move across the entire map and kill just about anything that moves.

Ranger (Icarus Armor, Arashi, Katana) - He gets AP rounds in his option slot. This is the unit that controls the battlefield, and I make sure he gets the "Death From Above" and "Serial" perks, which is the ranged version of Reaper. From high ground, which he can get at will, he can demolish anything in line of sight.

Ranger (Serpent Armor, Storm Gun, Sword) - He gets talon rounds as his extra equipment. Gun is outfitted with Sup. Laser Sight, Extended Mag and Auto Loader. Fast and stealthy, he can get exactly where I need him, freeze opponents, grapple, etc. Good, versatile fighter.

Grenadier - War Suit/plasma bomb. With Salvo, Holo Targeting, Run and Gun, etc., he's a walking mobile artillery platform. Extra slot is usually Bluescreen Rounds, since he's merrily shredding whatever armor I'm facing.

Mox - I don't usually take wrath (the attack where you pull yourself TO an enemy - too situational, although if I've got the points, I'll snag it too). His gun gets sup. scope, extended mag, and auto loader, and he carries a spare grenade and AP rounds, giving him the flexibility to plink away at stuff the grenadier hasn't stripped armor from. Mox is easily the most versatile soldier in the game, and is absolutely indespensible. Fun use for interrupt if you have it is to activate the Battle Lord perk, then every time the bad guys do anything, Mox gets to respond, just like the rulers do.

Dragunova - Bluescreen rounds. I make sure she has the shredder perk (actually, the whole A-Team gets that). Sup scope, extended mag, autoloader. Her main strength is her ability to blow stuff up on the map without revealing her position, tho the 2 howling (homing) mines and Banish are nice finishing touches. Not nearly as versatile as Mox, but easily one of the most powerful pieces on the board, assuming a map with generous amounts of stuff to blow up.

Support guys all get medkits and bluescreen rounds. They fixed the war suit bug so they can all wear war suits and get their max heals, and they carry plasma bombs. Guns are outfitted with sup scopes, autoloaders, extended mags.

So with my standard A-Team (2 Ranger, 2 Support, Mox, Grenadier), that gives me:
Heavy Ordinance:
4 Plasma Grenades (3 Gren, plus Mox)
4 Plasma Bombs (3 Sup + Grenadier)
1 Shredstorm Cannon

Ammo:
3 Bluescreen-equipped squad members (2 support/grenadier)
2 AP-equpped squad members (mox and 1 ranger) -- Serpent Suit ranger usually goes on the first mission
1 Talon Round (1 ranger)

Healing:
8 Heals
2 Aid Protocols I can recycle as needed

Everybody has 5 points of armor (cos of course they all get Blast Padding), at least a 40 dodge, 100+ aim, and 15+ movement, so by the final battle, we OWN the battlefield, and the guys can get pretty much anywhere they need to be.

Oh - and everyone gets "hail of bullets" so they can make trick shots that shouldn't hit - very handy for that final battle!

More Random Combat Tips

Squad Movement
In general, I've found that it works best to deploy Rangers on the flanks and out front. They tend to get the most movement perks, so wind up out front anyway. If you give them conceal and Phantom, they'll start every mission concealed, even when the rest of the squad doesn't, plus have an "extra" conceal they can take during the mission.

If you bring two Rangers per mission, that gives you a total of four conceals. Used well and wisely, you'll have spotters for the whole of the game.

Also in general, move everyone blue before moving yellow. If something unexpected is revealed, you'll have more choices re: how to respond to the threat.

RARELY should the last guy in the squad move into unexplored territory. If, God forbid, he triggers an enemy pod, they'll get two moves against you. Bad news.

"Blink!"
This is a fun attack that rangers can get. If you have the Shadow Strike perk, when you fire on an enemy from concealment, you get +25 aim and a +25 crit chance. If you're not using your Rangers as spotters, you can blink (go concealed) then immediately fire. Especially helpful for taking down Andromedeans and Archons, who are sometimes notoriously hard to hit.

Aid Protocol
One of the best, and most underappreciated abilities in the game. If you have taken "Threat Assessment" you can give any squad member a free overwatch shot, in addition to providing a defense boost.

Note that the overwatch shot may be taken while it's still your turn, too! Here's how:
You've got a ranger who's moving out front. You're reasonably sure he's GOING to trigger an enemy pod, and for whatever reason, you're all out of conceals.

Before he moves, have a support guy toss Aid protocol on him. He moves, triggers the pod, and gets his free overwatch shot when they move on reaction. HANDY!

Bait
This is handy if you've got one of the perks where you get a free "extra" soldier to accompany you (either an Advent turncoat or a volunteer from the resistance - or both). Use them as canaries. Prepare positions just behind your canary, then send him forward to activate the enemy pod. They move closer to respond, and you unload on them from prepared overwatch positions.

Bond Points
If you bond support guys (who should mostly be in the back ranks) with Rangers, and the Rangers find bad guys, then their support bond-mates can give them an extra action (or two), meaning you can end the fight that much more quickly. For this reason, Specialists should usually be the last units you move yellow - if something is found, and they are with a bond mate, they can give up action points to better respond to the threat. Even if they're not bonded, you've still got aid protocol, overwatch, and other cool, useful abilities that can change the tide of the battle.

Oh, and...it takes half of forever to get them trained, but a six psionic squad is FUN! You can create your own army of mind controlled minions, let them do the heavy lifting, and sit back and watch the aliens kill each other. As fun as it is, five psionics + one Specialist is a more effective combo. :)

Combat Awareness is THE most important stat in the game (and armor is second). Everything else, you can improve in the Ring. Get as many genius-level troops as possible so you only have to improve them once (preferably with armor if you're using the mod). You can fix the rest.

Abusing the Resistance Ring

So, I flat out LOVE the Resistance Ring. IMO, it's hands down the most important facility in the game now.

The habit I've gotten into is to build the GWC on day one, and hold my remaining cash until the game progresses to the point where I can build the ring. In fact, I've even started delaying building the infirmary, on the thinking that once I've got the ring built, I can find the Templars and use that base for faster healing until I've got the funds and power to support an infirmary of my own.

Resistance orders are so powerful that I'm also in the habit of upgrading my ring facility before building anything else, so my entire early game, all I've got is a Ring facility with a Holo Planner and a GWC.

It took me several games experimenting with it, but for my play style, that's the best play overall (I had one game where I had some really crappy starting orders, so I didn't upgrade the ring, but that was the exception, and not the rule. MOST of the orders rock).

So my general build order is: GWC, Ring, Upgrade Ring, and then build a power plant on a coil for the +10 energy boost. Only then do I build the Infirmary, Laboratory (labs are more important in WoC because they make breakthrough research more likely), and then the Training Center.

What comes next depends on how the game has progressed to that point. If I've picked up some resistance contacts via events or orders, I'll do the Proving Ground next, otherwise, I'll build one Resistance Comm station (and staff it) to expand my reach.

All that as a preamble for abusing the ring. It comes down to ABH - Always Be Hiring. The only exception is the first month, when I don't recruit new troops, because in my experience,you always get at least one "Rookies" event to investigate, so that takes the place of hiring.

To abuse the Ring, I've broken my troops down into categories.

My thresholds are: I want armor, and people with high combat awareness. The cream of the crop will also have an aim above 65, and a will 40+, but there's some flexibility here - those things can be addressed with Ring missions, and time is a bit of a factor, so I'll accept a soldier with an uninspiring aim/will for the sake of speed if I'm not finding what I'm looking for.

Soldiers with no armor, who have only standard, above average, or gifted combat awareness get Red Shirted. I literally change their armor color to red, and I tend to play fast and loose with these guys. If they die, I don't lose sleep over it. Ultimately, they're either gonna all be dead or I'll eventually dismiss them. They NEVER get XCom AP's, but if the manage to earn enough on their own, they can have some spiffy bonuses. They also don't get any gear (so no weapon upgrades or combat stims)

Soldiers with armor who are standard or above average also get red-shirted, unless they have 44 will or better. I'll collect six of these to become my Psionic Corps (since they don't get training center abilities anyway, I don't really care about their combat intel - here, I'm looking at aim and move). They get purple shirts, of course.

Decent, but not great soldiers get tradititional olive green armor. These are the troops that provide bench strength until I can hire/dismiss enough troops to get only awesome ones. Some of these may survive to the late game, but only if they become exceptional as the game grinds on. As much as possible, I'm looking to retire any average or sub-standard troops and replace them with exceptional ones.

Soldiers with armor who are gifted and above become my "contenders." They're not guaranteed a slot in the A-Team I'm building, but they're at least in the running. These guys are my blue-shirts. They will make up the bulk of my bench strength. These guys DO get gear and stims.

The BEST Blue Shirt becomes my first Black Shirt - He (or she), along with Mox, is the target for the early Ring rewards, and he/she gets all the "Improve Combat Intel" missions until he reaches Savant level, whereupon he'll spend his generous sums of AP, and take from the XCom pool as needed (Mox and my two Reapers can also draw from the shared pool).

My A-Team roster is bigger than the final six, and includes:
4 Rangers
3 Support
and 3 Grenadiers
(plus Mox and Dragunova), so an even dozen who will be identified over the course of the early/mid game as members of the A-Team, put in black armor with fedoras so they're easy to spot. This will be the crew I select from when putting together the team for the final missions, and these guys divvy up the ring rewards, and will take turns leading the grunts on various missions.

Occassionally, I'll run a very difficult mission with nothing but A-Team members, but for the most part, they're the leaders, and operate solo, or with their bond mate, leading grunts into battle.

Month two, I'll spend $100 on new recruits (21 days between drops, 5 days to train a new recruit, and if I get lucky and all 4 of my newbies are keepers (rarely happens), I can keep the GWC busy for 20 days - of course, as your income increases, your level of hiring should be increasing too, except on big upgrade months (beam weapons, predator armor).

Sadly, most of your new recruits will wind up getting dismissed immediately. I'm fine with keeping the "Red Shirts" I start with until I can retire them one way or another, but I don't need endless legions of red shirts. I'm looking for the cream.

While I'm certainly fine with sending red/blue shirts on ring missions, they always take up the "filler" spots - never the reward spot, which results in those rewards being highly concentrated, and because I'm focused on finding Gifted, Genius or Savant troops (actually found a savant rookie once!), they tend to generate tons of AP's anyway.

Always take every "improve combat intel" mission that comes your way, even if it leaves you under strength for a mission while they're gone - a red shirt or two might get killed because better soldiers were unavaialbe to support them, but...it is war after all.

Always take every "gain ability points" mission for the same reason. You're gonna need a LOT of AP's to build your team of superheroes.

Once you've identified your "dirty dozen," start systematically improving their stats. My minimum thresholds are 100 aim, 40 dodge, 50 will, and 15 move, but once all of the A-listers have that, I'll happily keep buffing well beyond that point.

If you start the game with the rapid excavation order, it essentially makes it one difficulty level easier, because you're swimming in early game resources. That's why if there's time for it, you want to take every "new resistance order" mission you're offered, so you have more to choose from. They're INSANELY powerful, and they stack (so if you get an order that doubles AP's earned, and you get another one that gives +25%, both values apply.

Using Reapers

Reapers in shadow are one of the toughest units in the game to use well and effectively. In a lot of ways, I think they're misunderstood (Reapers out in the open are meh).

On paper, they're snipers, but good GOD, if all you're doing is plinking enemies with them, you're not getting as much out of them as you could be.

Let's take a look at what they can do:

The Reaper's main weapon isn't her Vektor rifle, which is woefully underpowered in its stock configuration, and it isn't the claymore - it's concealment. Shadow.

The Reaper can walk right past enemy units undetected. That's badass.

The default claymore doesn't do much, so as soon as you can, you'll want to take the Shrapnel perk. This makes it a genuine threat, and of course, the Reaper can detonate it without breaking concealment. This kills weaker targets outright, and softens up bigger ones to be hunted.

Reapers operate best on their own. If you have one in the squad, let her lead the way by a wide margin.

When moving a Reaper who's in concealment, don't bother with cover. Enemies take cover, and if you try to do so as well, you may stumble right onto one. Just brazenly walk down the middle of the road or through a field. The aliens you're stalking are likely to be adjacent to cover, so if you avoid it, you minimize your chances of being detected.

One of the most valuable perks you can take for the rest of the squad is "Target Definition."

Once you "paint" a target by putting eyes on, he's visible even after you walk away, or the target wanders off. This makes you a slow-developing "Location Scout." You can survey the battlefield, mark all the targets, and the rest of the squad knows exactly where and how to move.

The reason Target Defiition is so good is this: Once you can SEE an enemy unit, you know exactly what their LOS is, and how close you can get to them (you'll see exactly where the "red tiles are" - something you have to guess at if you can't actually see the units in question). This is pure gold. You can advance with near perfect confidence (near perfect because civilians are NOT painted, and in an urban setting, it's still possible to stumble into one of them while you're advancing, so you do have to be at least a little cautious).

Hunting: This is where the Reaper really shines. Your abilities work beautifully in tandem and make it possible for you to wreck entire enemy pods by yourself.

The other big perk you want in your arsenal is "Remote Start."

As you know, there are tons of things that blow up on most maps, and interestingly enough, the bad guys are often parked near them.

It will cost you one ammo to remote start something, but again, you don't break cover when you do so. Explosions caused by remote start do twice normal damage, and have double the usual radius. This can easily destroy all but boss-type enemies, and recycles every other turn, so you can use it...a lot (and you should).

So if you have a Reaper in your squad, let everybody else hang back in cover and wait. Let her scout the battlefield for you and do as much damage as she can. As Dragunova says, "it requires patience," and it does, but the results are well worth it. By the time your Reaper is done, if there are any enemies left alive, all your other troops will have to do is handle cleanup.

Hunting works like this: Some bad guys are tougher than a "remote start" explosion or claymores can dish out, damage wise.

Once you've identified a squad, open the hunt with a remote start if possible. This kills off all the small fry, and leaves you with the biguns.

If there's a bigun left, your next trick will be to observe him and see if he takes cover near another explosive. If he does, punish him again with the same trick. That will kill all but the REALLY biguns (Codex, Sectopod, Andromedan). If not, you've got two choices:

First, you could break out a claymore. You never want to drop a claymore with your second action. You want to drop it and set it off the same turn, in case he moves.
If a claymore would be overkill though, use Sting. That gives you one free shot where you're guaranteed not to break cover, and if that's enough damage that your NEXT shot would kill him, do that, and save your claymore for the next group.

Once you get the "Highlander" perk, you've got two claymores to work with, so counting remote starts, you should easily be able to demolish 3-4 enemy pods, and when you run across a REALLY big badguy (and he's the only unit left standing), reload your rifle (you DID give your Reaper a superior extended mag, right?) - and banish that sucker.

On the right map, a Reaper can take every single enemy down, by herself. They're amazing.

The Easy Way To Win The Chosen Attack The Avenger Battle

Lots of people have asked me questions about this one - it's a big set-piece battle with lots of moving parts, and if you're not careful, it can easily get away from you. Here are the keys to winning it in style:

1) Don't divide your forces. This might be tempting, because there are two gun emplacements (with two guns each) hammering the Avenger, plus the big cannon at the back.

Forget dividing your forces - just make straight for the cannon. The first turn is key. Nominate one of your soldiers to be the white rabbit. He, or she, will draw the leading enemy units toward the avenger. Use heavy ordinance to blow the crap out of any cover directly in front of the Avenger's loading ramp. The last time I fought it, there was a freaking building right in front of me and I had terrible sight lines.

I sent a Ranger toward the building, (white rabbit), which activated the leading enemy pod - they took up positions in the building, and my grenadiers rained death down on them, doing damage and conveniently destroying most of the building.

2) You should have at least one, preferably two Reapers on the defensive team. They'll swing wide around any obstacle that's there and beeline for the gun emplacement that's between you and the big cannon. Their job is to paint the little guns for the quad turrets next turn, and to decimate the second wave of the Chosen's attack force.

3) Build the Defense Matrix, staff it, and upgrade it so you have quad turrets. Secret: The turrets have squad sight. ;)

4) Once the grenadiers knock the cover down, the quad turrets open up and mop up the leading edge of the Chosen assault force. Your troops calmly march over their bodies, sniping any wounded. That ends turn one.

5) Turn two, your Reapers open up by claymoring the guys loitering around the little gun emplacement. That activates those units and they rush out, right in range of your defense force, who can engage them, while the quad turrets silence the little guns. At this point, the battle is basically over.

6) Reapers race toward the big gun to put eyes on it. The rest of your troops organize to deal with the second third of the attack force (there are three groups - Gun A, Gun B, and Big Gun). Anybody who can conceal for the river crossing should do so. Send them over first to establish a beachhead, then send everybody else over. That should activate the enemy units, but your concealed guys will devastate them, esp. supported by heavy ordinance.

7) While you're organizing for the river crossing, Reapers arrive within LOS of the big gun. One reaper remote starts the truck that's pulling it, dealing 12 damage to the battery. Quad turrets finish it off on turn four.

Fun fact - there's ALWAYS (literally, every time I've fought that battle) a tanky group of aliens within the blast radius of that truck. The unit gets activated and moves into the blast radius for when the quad turrets blow up the battery - 32 points of damage kills the entire pod.

8) Cross the river to deal with gun group B. This is a straight up brawl. Don't worry about cover, tho take it if you can. Just kill the aliens as fast as possible. Turrets knock down the other pair of little guns.

9) There's one more pod left, the other half of the battery guard - go find it with your squad intact, crush it, and of course, deal with the Chosen whenever he/.she appears (obviously when the Chosen shows up, all attention should shift to killing him./her, even if it means leaving aliens alive to shoot at you).

That's it. Seven, maybe eight turns and you're done. ;)

My "Dream Team" for defending the Avenger is something like:
2 Reapers
3 Rangers
3 Grenadiers
2 Support Guys w/4 heals each

Your guys are almost certain to get dinged up during the battle, though I have gotten lucky and done it flawlessly once, but between the Chosen and the river crossing, you should expect to take at least a few hits, so between that, sniping and aid protocol, your support guys will be busy.

For those who love flawless victories, here's how you win this one without taking any damage at all:

First, understand that it requires patience. :)

Second, you'll want to use most of your A-Team, assuming they're not busy (when you know the attack is coming, just plan on keeping them home)

Third, you're going to break the rules, and instead of armoring yourself to the max with war suits, you're going to use Predator armor on everyone BUT the Grenadiers (those three still get War Suits) to give you an extra equipment slot, and give EVERYONE a refraction field, so everybody can go concealed at least once (this will give your maxed out rangers a total of three concealments (they'll start concealed, be able to go concealed again on their own, plus they'll have a refraction field equipped).

For the opening gambit, reapers take position in the cover that's mucking with your sight lines to spot the enemies.

Grenadiers use their rockets if possible to knock down cover and activate enemy units. If they can't, then they move up (which may activate enemy units), and blow big chunks of the building up to give you better sight lines. Quad turrets kill most of the first group on turn one. Nobody else moves, except to take the closest cover.

Second turn, concealed rangers take up positions in what cover remains directly in front of the Avenger's loading ramp, and go into overwatch. Reapers advance on Gun A and use a clalymore to damage the unit there. Turrets open up on the two Guns belonging to Gun A.

Enemy unit is activated by the claymore and heads for the Avenger. Rangers take concealed shots on turn three, ending them. If there's anything left, your grenadiers and support guys can polish off the walking dead.

Third turn - Reapers move toward the big gun. Rangers will spend this turn killing off the remains of that group, with your other troops helping as needed.

Fourth Turn - Reapers paint the big gun. Quad turrets blow the generator up. Rangers use their second conceal to cautiously advance (obliquely) until they put eyes on the groups (two pods) guarding Gun B. That gives you a clear indication of where and how to advance your grenadiers and support guys so that everybody makes it into cover across the river.

Fifth Turn - Reapers race toward Gun B, Rangers lead an ambush on Gun B, OR, you can wait a turn (it's not a timed mission), until the Reapers can rejoin the group and let them open the ambush with another claymore. Either way, this fight's basically done in one turn. Turrets hammer the last two little guns, and your squad destroys the aliens guarding them.

Then everybody advances toward the final group, with the Reapers and concealed rangers (who still have their refraction fields to play with), leading the way.

Fun With Gear

Since my preference is for troops with armor (using the not created equally mod), I'm increasingly steering clear of armoring my guys to the max. I still put Grenadiers in War Suits, but I'm increasingly happy to just let everybody else wear Warden armor. I'm only giving up a point of armor, but my best troops all have high dodge scores and blast padding anyway, so they're by no means lacking in defense.

The main reason is that it gives me another equipment slot, and I've been playing with the new gear a lot more. Far and away my favorite piece of gear is the refraction field, which gives the person using it a free concealment. It, like overdrive serum, is a one-shot item, so you never have as many as you'd like, and can't just use them on a whim. Still, they're a tremendous amount of fun.

Anyone with the Shadowstrike perk can make tremendous use of them, which is fun (that perk gives you +25 aim and +25 crit chance when you attack from a concealed position).

Sustaining spheres are...meh. I mean, they're a cool idea, but honestly hard to use well and effectively. Same thing goes for proximity mines. WHEN you can make good use of them, they rock, but I would be leery of carrying them on every mission, because more often than not, they're just going to sit unused.

Having experimented extensively with venom and dragon rounds, I'm not sold. I want enemy soldiers DEAD, not dying, because a dead alien can't shoot back, while a dying one can. That said, I tend to sell those off and keep Talon Rounds (my favorite, given my Ranger-Heavy playing style), AP rounds (who doesn't like ignoring the first six points of armor!?), Tracer Rounds (for those red-shirts who have hopelessly bad aim - it at least makes them useable, and then later, can buff a decent soldier's aim), and of course, Bluescreen rounds, which are just all around handy, since robotic units are quite common.

Ultrasonic lure is fun because it turns all the zombie missions into a "fish in a barrel" kind of situation. A great way to train low-ranking guys. They're all guaranteed a promotion, and with heavy armor, even the few that wander in close aren't likely to cause any real damage.

All of the experimental armors are good, btw. I like Plated Vest best, for the extra point of armor, which makes my red-shirts and other, lesser troops a bit more protected and useful, but all of them have their place, especially once you've built the Shadow Chamber and can custom-tailor your loadouts for what you know you'll be facing.

That, I think, is the most important lesson. Pay attention to those force projection numbers, and allow them to guide the thinking of your loadouts and the composition of your team. If you know you're gonna be facing armor-heavy units, then plan accordingly (bluescreen, ap rounds, extra armor for your own troops, because in general, things with armor can also shred--there are obviously exceptions to this), and the composition of your team (ex: if you know you're going to be facing codexes, you want fast movers (rangers) who can chase teleporting units down. If you know you're going to be facing a Gatekeeper, you're certainly gonna want bluescreen rounds and at least one medic with restoration, in case he gets a "summon gateway" attack off on you before you kill him, which is likely to damage several squad members at once.

When gear matters most though, are on non-timed missions, which allow you to really develop your strategy. When you're on the clock, it's got to be about what's the most practical and prudent thing. When you're on a non-timed mission though, you can treat it much more like a hunting expedition.

The Wild Hunt

This ties into the Boss Fight section I did earlier. I've been refining my approach, and the last playthrough I did, I think I've found the method that works best.

Here's how I took down two of the three big aliens (as you'll see in the description, I screwed up the hunt for the Archon King and didn't get him on the first try, but polished him off with a crew of Corporals, led by a Captain, next time we met him).

All of these fights basically play out the same way. I encountered the Berserker Queen first, and took careful notes on that fight, so this will be the most detailed description. I'll outline the other two, but know in advance that they all play out fundamentally the same way.

First, I don't go after the alien rulers until I've maxed out my offensive firepower. Storm Guns, Plasma Rifles and Beam Cannons, and I send my A-Team after them, so I've got lots of special perks to play with. What I really want, before fighting these battles are double actions, so salvo, rapid fire, chain shot, etc.

On my first hunt, I drew the Berserker Queen. That's good. I like that, because the Rage Suit is my favorite of the armors.

The hunting expedition included:
2 Reapers
2 Rangers
1 Specialist
Mox

Everyone wearing Warden armor. 1 Reaper had bluescreen rounds (The other had not unlocked their gear slot yet),

Mox had AP rounds and a grenade.

Specialist had a Medkit and Bluescreen rounds.

Both rangers had Talon rounds and a refraction field.

For this hunt, we also had "Bob, from the resistance," thanks to a resistance order that gave me an extra guy. He didn't participate materially, but was present for the hunt.

Reapers split off, pairing up with a Ranger, and each pair approached the facility from different directions, painting all the targets so we could see what we were up against (target definitiion meant that all remained visible for the rest of the battle so we could keep tabs on their locations), while everyone else hung back and overwatched.

With a clear picture, we focused on a patrolling pair of Spectre traveling with a Codex. Ranger 1 opened the ambush with a shot that killed a Spectre. Mox and the support guy took care of the other two, and the Ranger immediately re-concealed (free conceal, via Phantom used). Three team members visible (counting Bob, from the resistance), so they hung well back while the rangers and reapers went hunting the Berserker Queen.

You can only put one homing mine on a target at a time, so the reapers took turns with this, planting a homing mine, then shooting at it (Sting). That stripped armor away and the first health bar, plus a bit.

Then both reapers dropped Claymores, while one of them shot at the claymore (which doesn't reveal position), so that's another sixteen damage. No response but an angry growl from the Queen.

Next turn, my reaper with the superior extended clip re-loads and banishes (reveal). Berserker charges forward, but is too far away to do anything. Reaper re-conceals.

Ranger unloads with a rapid fire shot, killing it, then re-enters concealment.

One enemy squad down, Berserker queen down, and we've still got four hidden units.

Next up, an Advent Captain and an Elite stunner. The reapers followed them around the map and detonated stuff when they were standing next to something explosive. By the second detonation, both were dead.

The last pod was a Gatekeeper and two of those spindly aliens that are vulnerable to melee. Easy fight.

Ranger got as close as she could, rapid fire with blue screen rounds (And she has the shredder perk). Second ranger opened up with a rapid-fire shot for the kill. Mox charged in and took care of the two wounded aliens (whiplash and a shot from the bullpup).

There was still a turret left, but we didn't bother with it. By that point, we were at the back of the facility, so we just walked over to the place where the charges were to go, and then evac'd out.

Both rangers HAD refraction fields, but as it turned out, we didn't need them (because both had been leveled to Savant CI, and had both Phantom and Shadow Strike...had that not been the case, we'd have used them for sure). Fun battle tho. :)

Hunting the Viper King
Here's where I began to understand the true value of the Refraction field. After the first battle, I realized I needed a way to give everyone concealment, so my loadout changed accordingly.

Reaper 1 still hadn't unlocked his gear slot, so he got nothing.
Reaper 2 still carried Bluescreen rounds
Mox carried AP round and a Refraction field
Specialist carried Medkit and a Refraction field
Both rangers carried Talon rounds and a Refraction field.

This is huge. Both Mox and my Specialist could attack from ambush then re-enter concealment, and my Rangers had a total of three conceals.

As it turned out, I didn't need it. The Viper King is almost ridiculously easy to beat.

There was a squad of 1 Elite Officer, 1 Elite Stunner and 1 Elite Purifier standing between us and the King (discovered after the Reapers finished scouting the hunting ground).

We took up positions and Mox opened the assault, blasting the Purifier (and blowing him to smithereens, damaging the other two units). Overwatching Specialist killed the stunner and wounded the officer. One ranger broke concealment to finish him off.

Then the entire squad re-entered concealment (well, the three units that had broken cover).

Viper King fight was short. Reapers placed a homing mine and three Claymores, then detonated. Massive damage (30 points and armor gone). Rapid fire shot from ranger, and he was down.

(to be continued)

The Wild Hunt (Continued)

Hunting the Archon King
I had really been looking forward to this one, and I got in a hurry (same loadouts as before).

This facility was very well guarded. On the way in, we encountered an Andromedan, traveling with two Spectres. While the reapers were scouting the rest, I figured we could get some target practice in, so we merrily jumped the pod with the two rangers, Mox and the specialist. Probably would have been better off to give Mox bluescreen rounds, because after the Ranger opened up on the Andromedan, there was no armor to worry about). It took all four units, but we killed the three before they could shoot back, and everybody took concealment again.

Reaper 1 swung left around the facility and encountered an elite officer and an elite priest. Again, detonations followed by a kill shot finished them off.

Reaper 2 swung right around the facility and made it to the back, where he discovered the Archon King sitting atop the facility in the rear, with a Sectapod, a stunner, and a shield bearer guarding the place where the X-4 charges go.

In my excitement to let the hunt begin, I dashed Reaper 1 into position. Had I moved blue then yellow independently, the Sectapod wouldn't have seen me, but my dash path caused me to pass through his LOS, and he saw me.

At this point, I figured I was in trouble. My reaper was exposed to the Archon King AND a Sectapod, plus a stunner and a shield bearer.

I wasn't worried about the shield bearer. I knew he wouldn't shoot on his first turn, but the big guys...they could easily kill my exposed Reaper, so the next several actions had to be planned with great care.

No one else had moved, but Reaper 1 was out of actions and exposed.

My Rangers, Specialist and Mox were all on the far side (front) of the facility and WAY out of position. What to do?

Reaper two dropped a homing mine and a claymore on the archon king, but was then out of actions and unable to detonate them. He's done.

Specialist used one of his two actions to put Aid protocol on Reaper 1 (Dragunova). The thinking was, Archon King would move first, she'd shoot him, and a hit would detonate the homing mine, which would set off the claymore.

Specialist was bonded with Ranger 1 (level 2 bond), so used his last AP him an extra move. With three moves at his disposal, he could get into firing position on the archon king (and he's concealed). I activated run and gun, and used all three AP's to gain fire position, but I did not take that action just yet.

Ranger 2 could not reach the archon king from where she was, so she set her sights on the Sectapod. She had the shredder perk, and I knew she could really put a hurt on him. She activated run and gun and got into fire position behind cover, unloading on him with Rapid fire, which stripped away all armor and put a serious dent in him.

Mox was a level 1 bond mate with the other ranger, and gave his first AP to her, which gave her another shot. She ALSO had taken "chain shot" so could fire twice again (four shots in the same round). That was enough to destroy the sectapod, so one big enemy down, but I was still very worried about Dragunova.

Ranger 1 took his rapid fire shot on the Archon, hitting both times and detonating the homing mine and claymore. MASSIVE hit, but now, all I've got left is Mox, with one AP.

Mox used his last point to activate combat presence, giving my specialist an extra AP, which allowed him to transfer it to his ranger bond mate, who took a chain shot (I gave both rangers chain shot AND rapid fire) on the Archon King. Both hit again, and he summoned the gate.

On the enemy turn, the stunner made for Ranger 2, but between armor and dodge, she only took one point of damage. Shield bearer did exactly what I expected him to do, and by the next turn, both units were dead.

So that hunt did not succeed, but it was easily the most exciting and nail biting of the three!

[Erwin_Von_Braun]

Serial on snipers is most useful given the appropriate circumstances.

[az9577]

So, I have a little change to your "Wild Hunt" section. I know you said you don't like the DOT rounds (Stiletto, Venom, Acid, Dragon), but here's the thing. You get all four of those on a Ruler, it's four points of damage for every turn they take. Which means that every time they react to one of your moves, they take four points. Every. Single. Action.

[gaydadexplosion]

you could boil this entire elongated guide into one sentence: run all rangers and you'll never lose

[FusedGod265]

WIN THE MISSION NO DEATHS ONLY THE WOUNDED AND THE GRAVELY WOUNDED!! But we win and they live to see another game. Its alot of trial and error.

[FusedGod265]

lol i just stick to the easiest way to get through this game which is saving and loading. Ive lost only 1 soldier sadly she will be missed lolol.

[Aulephia]

7) I'm aware, after browsing through the Steam forum for a while, a lot of people do not play this way. Please remember that being pointlessly rude does not help, and if you have an opposing point of view, we don't have to agree at any cost. But if you want to talk about something I said, go ahead. Just don't be a jerk.

I know someone is going to be that guy and take a look at my playtime. This is not the account I started playing XCOM on, so don't give me shit for not playing enough. I've beaten the game on each difficulty level at least once. I feel like that lets me have an opinion on all this.

Also, I apologize for posting so many comments, to anyone who wants to read the rest of them. I hadn't realize how much I'd typed and what the Steam character limit was- I didn't intend to eat up this much space. Sorry.

[Aulephia]

6) I disagree with your philosophy of "lose the mission, not your soldier". Which, given my playstyle, is pretty weird, but I've found that Alien boosts can be horrifyingly powerful. For instance, the Dark Event where every ADVENT unit gets an extra armor point is absolutely the worst, and I will always stop that if I can. Maybe your guy gets hurt this mission- if you *need* to sacrifice someone for the objective, or there's a chance they'll be killed, send in a Grenadier. They can take the most punishment, and even if they die, they're not the most useful of the units. The thing here is yes, you're taking a single casualty, maybe two or three. They'll heal, though. If you let the Aliens get a boost, though, you might have to take two or three times as many casualties in what would normally be an easy mission.

[Aulephia]

5) I prefer an open fight, one or two pods at a time. Advance cautiously. Your metaphor about crawling forward as a single organism is exactly what I do for every encounter: put people where they can do their thing and help the team, and never, never, never leave anyone behind or overextend. If you can set up overwatches or abilities based on where the cell is/where you expect them to move (it isn't hard to predict, after a while) it's almost like setting up an ambush. Free kills. After a while, you begin to learn where cells are likely to show up. In a lot of maps, there's always going to be that one pod off to the side or hidden in the building, regardless of how many patrols there are. Figuring out where they are before they find you lets you get out of a potentially bad situation before you've even started the match. Scroll around as much of the map as you can before the round begins, taking in the terrain and places for spawns, and try to predict what the aliens are going to do.

[Aulephia]

4) If I picked one soldier to save out of the team, it'll be one of the snipers almost all the time. They've got the most ability combos with each other and with other classes, and I can no longer count the amount of times they've saved my ass. I honestly haven't the faintest idea why people think the Reapers make them completely outdated- the pistol is a far more powerful weapon than people give it credit for, especially with Lost swarms.
With this composition, the Spider Suit is always great for the sniper, and the other suits... Having each character do a specific job, *but also being able to do someone else's job if they need to* is ridiculously useful. This is what most of my items go towards as well, as a matter of fact: I am the insane man who almost never uses mimic beacons or decoys.

[Aulephia]

Sorry for spamming the comments.
3) The Grenadier is great at opening up cover and sometimes giving me an escape route (there was never a wall there, I don't know what you're talking about), and he can also use holo targeting to be a minor support when I just need to get off shots. The Specialist is a godsend against any robots (and there's always at least one or two), and they can spend the rest of their time helping out their teammates. Both the Ranger and the Grenadier are my go-to pod triggers- Ranger can GTFO, and the Grenadier can take a hit if necessary. If I had to pick one soldier I'd willingly lose, it'll usually be the Grenadier, because they don't actually do a lot for me- cover shredding is cool, but isn't usually necessary.