Xcom 2 : Tales from the battlefield

[cathou]

As you know if you playXCom, the game is full with little stories that you make as you play. As Commander, you see heroism, horrors, luck and pain on a daily basis. Please come ehre and share with us what story you have seen unfolding on the ground. Honor a dead member of your team, give medals to the bravest or just share funny story about your XCom members.



I'll start myself with ?ric "the last survivor" Gauthier. a French heavy soldier. ?ric first act of bravor was in a mission where the team had to securise a computer from Advent forces. half of the team was down, and ?ric just gunned down what the team believed to be the last Advent soldier. but near the computer a lancer and an officer came out of the shadows. both team member rushed on the spot to protect the data. ?ric teammate wound the lancer, While Eric missed his shot. then the lancerknock out the team member, and ?ric had to move to kill it. However that move had to expose him from the officer. ?ric did his movement, and killed the Lancer. The officer tried to shot eric, but missed a point blank shot. ?ric was in a good position to fire back, but he was out of ammo. he jump behind a counter and recharge. the Officier choose to ignore him and shot the computer, trying to destroy the precious data. ?ric then charged the officer and shot him in the face. ending the mission.

the next mission ?ric was in, the team had to get a corrupted VIP. the team moved quickly enough to the VIP, fighting a sqad of snakemen without real damage. ?ric entered the room where the VIP was. and saw an Officer with two shieldbearer. ?ric shot the officer, the other team members killed a shieldbearer. the next turn Eric knock the VIP down and since he was out of ammo took him on his shoulder and rushed out of the room. but in the next room a Codex an elite soldier and a MEC appeared. the team regrouped, killed the officer and badly wounded the Codex. How ever the Shield bearer buffed everyone. ?ric runned at the end of the room, while the others got covered, killed the elite, and barely killed the shieldbearer. the next turn was to be a slaugther for the aliens. then a civilian near ?ric reveal itself as a faceless. he moved toward ?ric and slashed eric hard, nearly killing him. The Codex moved his hands and at everyone surprise a dark cloud appeared, disabling all the team's weapon. ?ric was just close enough to run to the Evac zone. the rest of the team tried to repair their gun. the Heavy killed the Codex with a grenade but at the end of the turn, the dark cloud ignited and killed 3 team member. the other one panicked and was killed by the MEC.

?ric was the only one to get to the base that day...

 

[teqrevisited]

Spoiler: Only one so far that has stuck with me. (LONG AF, with a TLDR)

I don't spend time customising troops until they make it to at least Sergeant, so I had taken a few meat shields into a couple of missions each and gotten them their stripes when I discovered something: Two women. Kari Jacobsen, Support, and Elin Jacobsen, Grenadier. Both from Norway. Almost identical bio. I knew then that the game had either gifted me two amazing sisters who were about to wage a scorched earth campaign against the alien overlords or that it was all just the setup to a drawn out, cruel joke. Well...

A few missions later and all was well, the squad was only taking minor injuries and an engineer staffing the med-bay made sure they were back in the fight in no time. The Jacobsen sisters were fast becoming legends, Elin with a slight lead on kills. Then the punch line came; our first Blacksite mission.

I wont divulge the mission specific events for spoilers' sake. Things were progressing steadily as the squad closed in on the objective when all hell broke loose. A door opens around 10 tiles ahead and a MEC charges out, followed by a Stun Lancer and a Sectoid. A problem, but not too big a problem, I thought. Then from the front right two Vipers and another Stun Lancer close in. Against the odds a newly minted Support squaddie crits a Stun Lancer from the side, killing him outright. A launched grenade from Elin wounds both Vipers, annihilating their cover. One Viper is killed and the other wounded with the next two shots and Kari manages to wound the remaining Stun Lancer. This was not enough.

The Sectoid makes the first move, advancing on the squad and reanimating the fallen Stun Lancer. The remaining Viper pulls the triumphant new recruit and begins to choke her to death as the MEC moves up to fire. Kari, a mere two tiles away, could only watch with horror as her sister was instantly killed by a plasma round to the chest. I have not seen Kari panic once since this event, but it was all she could do at the time. The Stun Lancer dashes forwards and stuns another Sergeant taking cover. The nightmare is far from over.

Thankfully the stunned Sergeant Dillon recovers immediately, giving him the perfect opportunity to punish the Stun Lancer for its reckless manoeuvre. With Kari coming to terms with her sister's death, and taking cover dangerously close to the Psi-Zombie, it falls on another relatively fresh squaddie to destroy the MEC's armour plating. Meanwhile squaddie Saito is regretting ever signing up, struggling for air in the coils of the Viper. Another round is over.

Sensing an easy target the zombie finds Kari, now finished sobbing, and brings her down to 2 bars. The MEC notices the rookie throwing grenades at it and wipes him out. The squad holds their nerve. Now the Sectoid attempts to mind control Kari. Not today. The Sergeant is finally free to save the squeezed Saito, moments before her impending death. With the Viper taken care of, Saito moves to engage the Sectoid. Thankfully its arrogance led it into a flanked position, letting Saito critically injure it. Kari then makes the kill, taking the Sectoid and the Zombie with it. Dawn approaches.

Having seen what happened to its comrades the MEC retreats slightly, but leaves itself in plain sight. It takes aim on Kari, determined to finish the job. Clearly ADVENT has heard of the Jacobsens' exploits. The shot goes wide.

Kari's grenade is let loose upon the MEC, leaving him completely exposed, and the two others finish him off. With the way cleared to the objective Dillon and Saito move to secure it. As for Kari; there was no way she was leaving Elin behind. With her sister's lifeless body over her shoulders, Kari ran tirelessly to the evac zone ahead of the objectives team. Hidden movement was detected but no hostiles made themselves known.

The Objective has been achieved. Reinforcements are signaled to halt the evac and I rush Kari and her sister out of there ahead of the objective team. Dillon and Saito manage to find cover just before the pursuing enemies get eyes on them. Saito was narrowly missed by an overwatch shot from a Trooper, but both her and Dillon made it to the Skyranger.

TLDR: Two women share nationality, background & last name therefore are sisters. One is killed during a mission turned sour. I assign other sister to carry her corpse to evac.

 

[freaper]

I'll keep it short.

Small town, train station. Fuel car, mimic beacon, proximity mines.

Just finished the game today, loved it, even though the story left me a bit wanting.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I finished my first Legendary campaign last night. My team was:

1. Wolfgang Gunkel (Grenadier)
2. Linda from Accounting (Specialist)
3. Bill from HR (Ranger)
4. Daniel the PR Guy (Sharpshooter)

Wolfgang is a reference to a random rookie from the original X-Com. A college roommate and I were playing it for the first time, and had no idea what we were doing. Wolfgang kicked open a door and encountered a large number of enemies. With no other option, he sacrificed himself to clear the room with a grenade. Ever since then, whenever given the opportunity to make a custom character that can specialize in the use of explosives, we'd make that character Wolfgang.

Anyway, end boss spoiler ahead:

Spoiler

Linda from Accounting ended up being a total badass. Upon entering the boss room, I put her into Overwatch. The first Avatar tried to attack my Commander Avatar, it triggered her Covering Fire, and she instantly Executed it with the Repeater weapon mod. One down, two to go.

The second Avatar entered the battle, and hid behind a statue on the right side of the arena. It was the only enemy in view of my team at the time, and Linda had a clear 80% shot. Executed. Two down, one to go.

Things started to go badly at this point. I got some really bad luck with enemy spawn composition, and they were starting to overwhelm me. I was beginning to regret the decision to go for the achievement for not increasing my squad size in my first campaign. Wolfgang launched a grenade at a large group of enemies at the edge of my sight range that the last Avatar was apparently also hiding with just outside of view, causing it to teleport directly into a position to flank my team. The only person left on my team with an action left was Linda. She had a 25% chance to hit it. I figured my team was already in pretty bad trouble anyway, so there wasn't much to lose in taking the shot. Executed.

Linda, that badass beankeeper from Accounting, one-shot all three of the Avatars.

 

[Amaror]

I have one mission that's somewhat stuck in my mind. It went through without losses, but it was only with quite a bit of luck.
First mistake had been to take a position with one of my soldiers near half-cover. Since half-cover doesn't block sight he immediatly saw three sectoids but was also seen by them, so bye bye concealment. Additionally a squad of advent came from the east, together with another pack of advent with a snakewoman.
it was bad, because there was barely any cover that wasn't flanked by one enemy or the other.
One specialist got hit pretty hard, but i managed to take out two of the three sectoids, but the third and last sectoid dodged a melee attack that would have killed him.
Next turn that sectoid mindcontrols the very ranger that would have killed him. Since I haven't had skulljacked a advent officer yet and got a good situation to do it without exposing my soldier I take it. Little did I know that that would spawn a freaking Codex. I get a few shots at the bastard, but of course she clones herself and flanks my squad from the direction that I had just cleared of Sectoids.
Oh, boy. Next turn, one Codex disarms two of my guys, luckily the rest of my enemies can't kill any of my guys and the fight continues.
I manage to kill the flanking Codex with my Sniper. I reload my specialist and kill the other codex, while retreating with my other specialist, barely alive. With another soldier I manage to flank and kill the sectoid (Crit, otherwise he would have survived) which gives me back my ranger, who celebrates being back by dashing into cover and hurting an advent stun-lancer.
What I also didn't know was that the damn disarm-wave explodes in the next turn, the specialist remaining there only has three HP left. A Stun-lancer runs up to my ranger and knocks him unconscious. The next move nearly made my heart stop since the snakealien tongue-grapped my specialist, the one with only three HP left, and chokes him, luckily only removing two HP, so he stays alive, barely.
Now we only have left one advanced advent-trooper, one snakealien and one stun-lancer. Sadly none of my soldiers have a shot at them, since their view is blocked by a train. But luckily snakealiens choking a soldier of yours still count as occupying the tile next to the soldier, even though they look like they're right on top of them. This gives me the ability to shoot a grenade over the train, hitting both the snakealien and the advanced advent-trooper, but not my specialist with 1 HP. This frees the specialist and he manages to get into cover and kill the advanced advent-trooper. Now I only have my sniper left, who has no possibility to get a shot at any of the enemies and my other hurt specialist that doesn't have any ammo and no shot at the enemy. But since he has the spider-suit I can shoot him up to a building, which gives him a shot at the snakealien and doesn't cost an action. This makes it possible to both reload and shoot the alien at the same turn. Only the stun-lancer is left. I overwatch my sniper and just as the stun lancer is nearly next to my 1HP-specialist, she makes the shot and kills him. Phew, what a mission.

 

[spartandude]

Here is a lesson in why you shouldn't put your best friend in a squad.

So I put my friend in as a custom character and earlier today a mission went sideways with him. One of my specialists, Gretta, was my best medic and one my best soldiers. She was taking cover behind a car (not great i know but she need some cover) and one shot hit her and badly wounded her and another set the car on fire. Now my thought was the car will probably blow up making her bleed out but someone else with a med kit will get to her after that as the last enemy couldnt get to her....

Well the last alien shot my friend causing him to panic. He ran over to Gretta... and pulled out a pistol and shot her in the back of the head... then the car blew up.... and perma killed them both.

 

[GothmogII]

Jesus Castillo. Specialist. Medic. Died in the final battle for our sins tanking an Andromedon.

 

[Zhukov]

So I have this archon bearing down on my squad. I've managed to put a decent dent in him as he charged, but not quite enough.

So I run-and-gun one of my rangers into position for the finisher. He's the only one left with enough damage

It's very important that this shot hits and I can get a, let's see... 94% chance to hit. Lovely. Doesn't even have to crit.

I take the shot. Fucker misses. Misses a 94%.

I'm about to start swearing when, praise be, my ranger's 10% hair trigger bonus goes off for the first time in my entire campaign. A free action! About fucking time.

Naturally I get him to take the shot again. At 94%.

He misses. Again. At 94%.

I commence swearing, long and loud.

I ended up having to move up my armoured heavy to tank the hit. He took a 14 damage crit, leaving him on 2HP.

On the next turn my ever reliable killing machine of a sniper casually strolled up to finish off the archon with a lightning hands+pistol shot combo. I like to imagine she was sneering at the hapless ranger as she did so.

 

[LongAndShort]

My team have just busted a scientist out of an Advent holding cell and are on the way to the extraction point on the roof of the complex. There's a sectoid up there who took the last few rounds of my Grenadier's cannon in stride, so I send my Ranger to deal with it. She's an Aussie, so even though I'm only a few missions into the game she's already earned a special place in my heart. It helps that so far she's been my most reliable badarse. Unfortunately the sectoid's in overwatch, and manages to not only hit her but set on her on fire. Still, she does what she needs to do and blows the fucker's head clean off.

Now, good news is that the extraction marker is close and there are no more hostiles. I can get her there on the next turn, before the fire does any serious damage, get her back to the Avenger and into the medbay. I get everybody else onto the roof, the turn ends... and the section of roof upon which my girl is standing collapses beneath her. She falls three stories to her death. I stare at the screen in stunned silence for a whole minute.

Then my Russian Specialist, a laid back veteran who I'd seen once share a drink with this Ranger slid down the ladder so that, if nothing else, we could bring the body home.

 

[Weresquirrel]

I honestly don't have a lot of good stories yet. I do have a couple of nice ones though...

The first is a simple one, I got the drop on the opening squad killed 'em all with out much issue, but an ongoing dark event means some reinforcements get called in. Since the area is nice and clear, I'm able to position all my troops basically in a wide circle around the drop site. The reinforcements land, and I'm treated to a lovely panoramic sweep of all 6 of my troops unloading into the hapless schmucks. Glorious.

The next is a moment of pure fluke. I'm on a hacking mission and I'm down to the wire. 1 troop left with a move, a viper and a muton between me and the goal. I throw caution to the wind and sprint my ranger over to the hacking site, turn around and shotgun the viper in the face. Critical hit, dead. The basic hair trigger activates, a 5% chance. I'm out of ammo. Damn. Oh wait, I have an auto-loader equipped as well? I put the muton in my sights, 30% chance to hit. No options. Blam. Critical. Dead. Next turn is the last opportunity to hack the terminal so I take it. Mission success. All thanks to a 5% proc and a lucky shot.

One last one is a bit confusing and I'm still not 100% sure if my read of the situation is correct. One of my rangers got tongue-lashed by a viper, but the viper died from doing so without me taking a shot. I can only assume the bladestorm perk I gave the ranger meant she cut her way out from the inside like a badass. She did spend the rest of the mission on her knees looking like she was being strangulated though. In my head the exchange was a lot cooler.

 

[Wrex Brogan]

Unfortunately I've got no stories of Xcom 2, as I'm currently working my way through Enemy Unknown (I really forgot how long I had that on my back-list) - though I do have a *fun* story from that.

Site Recon. 3 months in. Didn't realize what the mission was about so sent 3 of my best soldiers along with 3 rookies I needed to rank up. That was a... huge mistake. Ended up running extraction with 6 Chryssalids chasing me down, and 2 rookies (and one Sniper Captain, who died pulling a critical shot saving the Support Captain's life) shambling after me before I managed to get everyone still alive to extraction.

The rookie who did though fucking deserved the medal I stuck to her - she managed 5 kills, only missed one overwatch shot and didn't take any damage the entire mission despite being the one I sent up to activate the beacon. Now if only she rolled Sniper to refill my roster instead of yet another Assault... ah well.

 

[InsanityRequiem]

So far the only stories I have are rage stories. I know the whole ?You got XCOM?d!? thing, but more often than not, that seems to happen when you miss a 97% shot in which the enemy then hits your soldier. Or hitting a <15% shot for a crit kill.

Not when the enemies are across the map and not even in proper view, in front of/not flanking my soldiers, and gets high damage/crits on said soldiers. Soldiers who are behind full cover. And my soldiers miss them, enemies who are behind half cover when not even half the distance between me and them when I do get into attack range.