The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 25

Very smooth operation Commander Russel. Salute

:abbyplur

Something funny going on in a fishing village if this this is the mission i think it is then good luck Abby, this one was rough for me.

God have mercy on their souls. Newfoundland is here.

hahaha 10/10 intro.

Oh god. Abby has the worst fucking luck.

Fuck, I totally forgot about this mission.

This mission made me tap out of xcom, Abby, survive

Listening to the two think about the origin for Jason's last name, he probably could answer this as well, but Oestreicher is literally two letters away from the German word for Austrian (Österreicher).

It does probably sound funny to you as well: https://contribute.dict.cc/?action=audio-history&f=id-270668 (just hit the play button for an audio sample)

Abby is pulling all of the good missions.

Ugh, been dreading this for a while. Now is when we separate the women from the girls I guess. Good luck commander Abby! Hope you do better than I did my first time through this!

Please tell me they're on the verge of having plasma weapons built?

Wow! Great work from Abby! She's had the misfortune to pull two of the toughest missions in the game, and she's done extremely well with both.

Hey, it's that mission where I lost most of my own Giant Bomb crew! Good luck Abby!!

*and since this series could go on all year here's my two time-saving tips: Press 'Y' for Overwatch. Hit ESC to skip the cutscenes of the Skyranger taking off and landing.

Oh my god, finally. Shame everybody is way too good to die to chryssalids these days, he said, hoping.

NICE WORK! I don´t think i ever finished that mission without losing a soldier.

Textbook

That jump ability that Xavier has was amazing in this mission, holy shit.

Abby you really are the last of us

I think they lucked into getting this mission a lot later than usual, but still, fantastic job, much better tactics all around.

@vinny@ybbaaabby Abomination got 2 free kills that turn where you weren't sure why he still had 2 actions left. Its his perk 'In the Zone' where killing things that aren't in cover don't cost an action and chrysalids don't use cover so he was the perfect monster for this mission. Abby picked up on it the next time it happened.

Abby wasn't great at the game at the start but I have to admit, she has improved greatly! Well done!

This mission ruined my first play-through and Abby waltzed through it like it was nothing!

Amazing work! Total domination.

Wow! I lost literally all but one of my soldiers on this mission. I can't believe how she just breezed past it!

Oestreicher is definitely Germanic, but it means "From Austria", It's really the same derivation as the name of the country, which broadly means the east of the kingdom.

Xavier having the jump ability saves you one or two turns getting to the objective which is pretty crucial in this mission, as it meant they had enough of a headstart to just run back to the exit. It also helps they got this mission late so they had enough firepower to keep the enemy numbers low.

Not to rain on Abby's parade (she has improved significantly at the game), but for most people this mission triggers very early on. So when people say this mission is so hard, it's because they didn't have 3 max rank soldiers and a MEC. Or possibly even laser weapons and the squad size upgrades. She had a lot more leeway to make mistakes, like sending George into 3 chryssalids by himself, and still get everyone out alive.

I opened up this video expecting a bloodbath, but it turned out really well. Once again, props to Abby.

Is this the mission everyone has been warning about? Talking about how Chrysalids would destroy the entire team?

It seemed kinda easy, Abby played it well but it never got particularly hairy. Is there anything left which will be a big test? Or will it be mostly smooth sailing now?

To have a soldier move down a certain path, press CTRL+Right click to trace the path you want. Useful for going around fire and other hazards.

@gerrid: It will be MOSTLY smooth sailing to the end. They're way past the point of getting destroyed. They might encounter a bit of a hurdle if they delay their tech but I don't foresee any real problems. The people screaming about how they're screwing everything up and are going to get destroyed because they're not optimizing every little thing are seriously underestimating how forgiving vanilla EW can be.

I was wondering where this mission was. It was the solo pain point of my XCOM campaign.

I got this mission wayyy sooner. I barely had the opportunity in the game to make a laser weapon before it popped up and it screwed me up because pretty much all my best soldiers died with good equipment. (At this point I had like 6 decently leveled soldiers with 1-2 ability upgrades or something... Definitely no mechs or such.) None of my soldiers could outpace the aliens to extract and I think they got killed in 1-2 hits, so everybody died :( and I uninstalled the game. XD

Not for me (especially seeing that ridic base defense mission Abby had to do last time) but I love watching you play. In a way it still let's me experience the game without the more frustrating parts.

MVP!

Another solid performance from Abby, and in this instance the mission wasn't so long that she lost her nerve. I think this is the least nit-picky I've felt after an episode (I would probably have fallen George back rather than taking the risk with the grenade, but it worked out OK). And Vinny's advice was all sensible and none of it felt to me like it was overstepping the mark.

It's funny that Abby still apologises every time she dashes. There's really no need; she uses the move pretty reasonably. If a character can't do much from where they are, and aren't under immediate threat, it makes sense to put them in the best position possible for the following turn, or at least get them as close to that as you can. When she was retreating and closing in on the evac zone, dashing Jason was actually much less spicy than having him stop to shoot: there's no chance he could take down all those chryssalids before they reached him, so it was much safer for him to cover as much ground as possible as fast as possible.

Oh my god, does the game tell you that anywhere?! Needing to path troopers is relatively rare, but when it comes up it's so annoying. I can't believe I didn't know this.

@vinny: You mentioned in this episode that you wanted a way to designate a path for a character to move so they wouldn't take a stroll through poison gas or a patch of fire. You can, in fact, do that by CTRL-Clicking when trying to move, it lets you chain together moves without using their full movement turn. It's real useful.

Also, Dan was able to shoot multiple times and then move because it was his first action of the turn, but this only applies if he gets a kill with said shot.

Finally, hey; great job, Abby! Don't worry so much about dashing; sometimes it's really useful, and you used it just right.

@jamesm: It sure does. Back in that tutorial mission, I believe.

@rasrimra: Yep, me too. I had one survivor, I just ran him away while using everybody else as bait. It was terrible...

Is John Oliver a US citizen? Thought he was still on a green card from an interview, but that was awhile ago.

@zim: holy cow, really!? I've played tons of Enemy Unknown and Enemy Within and never figured that one out. Wow.

It would be awesome with an XCOM2 : WOTC edition of this glorious series.

Great job Abby. You played that perfectly.

I lost my whole squad the first time this mission popped up.

11:57: Was Vinny quoting Killer Klowns from Outer Space?

Abby honestly killed it. This was such a huge "gotcha" mission for me, it was stressful as hell.

Edit - other comments said this mission often happens sooner, which is probably what happened to me. Even so, this went really smoothly. I played too conservative at the whale and didn't keep up with the chryssalids spawning once per turn.

I think the next big hurdle for the team will be when they encounter *that* unit for the first time. There's one major unit they have yet to encounter that destroyed 5/6 of my squad the first time I fought it.

Well done Abby!

I remember for me having 2 assault soldiers with the shoot enemies who get within 4 tiles skill was very useful for this mission.

Smooth as silk.

Can definitely see you've improved a lot compared to earlier episodes, Abby!

When this mission pops this late in the game it's usually pretty easy, as long as you have a few experienced troopers with you. When you are oneshotting those bugs most of the time, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

Also thank god it wasn't Dan, he would have probably kept Abomination back, then rushed him to evac zone and clicked through the red warning and just evacced him and no one else.

There are a still a few more new enemies and a few more upgraded enemies that are going to be a huge danger to them, they really need to get plasma weapons and better armor sooner rather than later. Otherwise some of the missions that seem like standard fare might turn into bloodbaths.

Why does Abby get all the hard ones? I loved this mission, but definitely save scummed it to keep people from dying.