The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 04

Can't wait to watch Dan's intro :D

Edit: For anyone who's played the game before: Moving forward with Dan a few steps and using the grenade on those last two Thin Men would have ended it, right?

Yes, help this night shift go by faster

Look at that preview, Commander Ryckert looks to be in for swift justice.

I can't believe what dan put us through in the last episode, but can't wait to see his intro to Abby as well.

Edit:- just saw his intro and Abby please send dan to the front in every turn so that his character may so graciously die for the cause.

Edit:- oh my god, poor Alex

Wonder what new ideas Vinny may have to keep this going.

What an upload time am I right

The child's chicken scratchings on the notebook paper, beautiful. *chef finger kiss thing*

Also, good work, Commander Russell. You fought valiantly AND also brought about the comeuppance of the coward Dan Ryckert.

After just watching the intro, I would not be surprised if Abby had Dan die out of spite.

BELLATOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR

If Abby doesn't send Dan charging in the front lines with a shotgun, I'm going to be disappointed.

Edit: It's all Dan's fault.

OK LET'S SEE THE INTRO

Hahaha, the child scribblings for dan's letter. Just perfect!

good thumbnail.

Holy shit that high school/Drawn to Death-style Mission Report is perfect for Dan, especially since he hated the game.

Who gave the bad advice about not using dash.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN

I think Abby did a great job considering SHE DIDN'T HAVE A SINGLE NON RECRUIT SOLDIER BESIDES DAN RYCKERT I BLAME DAN

F

Well that was entertaining. Abby started well and Sandra bullock was kicking ass, if she had moved Dan further out of cover the grenade would have killed the thin men.

Alex good luck on the next turn.

Abby actually did well , just if the plays with Dan and Ben were tighter, she could've beaten the mission.

Or if they took one of the easier missions

This (at least the xcom 1 version) might be a short lived series, especially once it swings back to Dan

Anyways loving the series. It's as much of a bloodbath as I was expecting.

The production quality is through the roof. You madmen.

Edit: Advice for Abby: Think of it as a learning experience. My one tip for you would be that you need to take some risks playing the game, it's just about figuring out what risks have a worthwhile payoff.

@stordoff: Yarp

It was all perfectly calculated - Yakuza Kiwami comes out this week, and GBE just wants to tie up any loose ends before getting back in the Beast in the East train again :P

Vinny have some respect for the old country, stop saying "Vinsenzo."

Abby's actually totally right, (other than how Ben died - he got flanked and shot in the back, he had zero coverage from that angle) - that had she played a bit more aggressively, it could have gone victoriously. That was also a Very Difficult mission, so don't be disheartened.

Overwatch turtling is the way most people want to play as it feels safer, but it's just rolling the dice that, once you've found the aliens, they run into the open instead of shooting at you. Overwatch creeping until contact is cool, but once you've sprung the pod, it's usually best to try to actively move to kill them instead of sit in cover and hope overwatch connects. Look for flanks, use your abilities pretty freely.

Nades do 3 damage on this setting, so each grenade you bring is a guaranteed kill on the enemy types you're facing at the moment, unless a sectoid has buffed to 4HP.

In the main, blue OW move to heavy cover until you find aliens. Then look to grenade them to death or move around their flanks (past the 180 degree line of their cover) to get critical hits. Stick together and teamshoot like it's Destiny 2 if you have to.

Just XCOM misfortune like that panic, combined with the learning curve, don't be too down.

Good luck to Alex, he'll smash it.

Abby's been dealt a bad hand with how behind the soldiers are, and she's right in that playing it spicier could have gone better. Frag Grenades are much much more useful than Medkits at this stage (they're 100% chance to kill at least one alien, instead of wasting someone's turn to delay someone else's death by probably less than one turn), and some dashing could've helped position people better. It's always good to blow everyone up and get those promotions ASAP, I find.

Vinny's tip on retreating is good too. You could always retreat the front lines (anyone with line of sight), and then overwatch.

Abby did great under the circumstances. I hope she's not too discouraged by this. Gotta play the game to get better!

Pro-ish tip: Killing a sectoid while he's controlling another alien, will kill them both.

This went about as well as excepted. :D

You take your chances with 50% shots enough and people gonna start dying. Regardless if you have rookies or veterans, tho rookies didn't help. Also that last grenade could have totally saved the mission instead. But hey it's insane to expect a person new to the game to be doing much better by their third mission, especially with a massive break in the middle. Which I think is ultimately what is going to crash the Xcom ship here, with such long breaks and 3 people playing in turns the attrition is going to be faster then them learning the ropes.

Tip: Grenades are OP in the early goings, especially on lower difficulties they are guaranteed kills, it's how rookies become not rookies. Medkits at that early stage are not worth comparatively.

Honestly, not bad given what you had to work with.

Abby, I won't bother @ing you because that seems weird but you did pretty great with the decision making in this episode, don't let anyone get you down. You were on track to win that mission like you said but that little mistake on healing (I don't think you were in range to heal Ben but the character was totally in the circle visually so I think that's a mistake anyone could have made) and taking the advice of Vinny to retreat when you couldn't see if the Thin Men were on overwatch or not were what sealed it for you, generally Vinny seems pretty risk averse, there were a lot of times you could have moved up and gotten a good shot but didn't cause he made you second guess yourself.

I think you need to embrace your instincts regarding taking the fight to the aliens, aggressive flanking can really help kill them before they get to take a shot and with rookies it's best to just bring a grenade so they can get easy kills. Just in general overwatch has its place but shots with it are less accurate (and rookies have bad aim, as you've noticed) and aliens won't move generally when they'll get shot at so by overwatching you're encouraging them to stay and take shots, Thin Men are the worst regarding this because at this point in the game every shot they take is deadly and they have the best aim of any enemy for a long time.

It's gonna be sad when that satellite uplink gets built and they realize they have no satellites built

That's the best intro so far. Very funny.

@ybbaaabby (spoiler for people who haven't watched the video yet) For what it's worth, I think you played that first mission about as well as you could have, considering the resources you had.

I was rooting for Dan to keep cheating death and getting promoted, would have made for a fun narritive, oh well.

Never did get into these games myself, but I got Mario XCOM coming tommorow, which is hopefully pretty cool, so I'm probably just gonna play that instead.

To be fair to Abby, she did pick up with the mess that Dan left. Good luck to Alex!

Only complaint about this episode is that its a whole week till the next one!

Did Abby just name that nice black lady Dirt Bike?

Unlucky, Abby

@stordoff: yep

The mission went as well as could be expected with just rookies. But the whole "I'm not going to read things on the screen" thing will probably be what causes a very early game over. They really need to get someone another rank up, so they can increase the squad size. That's usually a major boost in the early missions... But I fear it will be overlooked, making things even more difficult.

Really sad though that Dan is not up next. I would have loved to have seen the letter detailing how "hero" Dan Ryckert turned out to be a coward AND a lousy shot, and got himself killed in a most deserving way!

Love this series so much :D

Kill Dan's Character.

Oh, man; if you'd just listened to your heart, Abby, and ran out there and thrown that grenade. Bullock would still be with us, and Dan as well I guess, but I'd have taken that sacrifice.

@vinny: Hi! Just a friendly tip, when selecting which alien to fire on, if their icon is yellow, it means you have them flanked! Flanking someone gives you a big boost to your chance at hitting them, and to inflict a critical hit, which pretty much does what it sounds like.

Also! When positioning your character, if the cover indicator (half cover, full cover) is red, that means you will be flanked if you take position there.

If you have problem telling these apart, I'm sure there's mods in the steam workshop for changing the colours.

Flank and un-flank your way to victory!

Edit: I just found out there's a Ryo from Shenmue voice pack mod... Though that might only be for XCOM 2

Fuck Thin Men

It might not have been an optimal mission, but it was real and it was fun. Now that we have #teamfuturebrad in the squad, victory is assured!

Not bad Abby, you could of got those 3 Thinmen with the grenade if you ran Dan out into the open and threw it killing all 3, but these are tricks that come with playing and understanding how many aliens are left, also you had several flanked shots "Yellow Portrait" on offer that got ignored.

This is a great series btw.

@vinny For future information, the grenade does guaranteed 3 damage on anyone in the blast radius, which would have killed the Thin Men so not being in cover wouldn't have been an issue.

Still love this series!