The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 25

Yeah having good weapons and personnel really makes a difference. I got it when I'd maybe just gotten T2 armor and I think everyone was still running around with basic weapons. I definitely also didn't have Superlegs.

I feel kind of sad that it doesn't look like they will ever experience the horror of seeing a squad member go down to a crysalid for the first time, only to be risen as a zombie that they need to put down

Nice job Abby :)

@vinny for future renaming purposes, of your current coworkers you still haven't made Jan, Rorie and Bakalar. If we go with past GB employees that appeared on camera then there are of course Drew, Dave, Alexis, Ian...in case of female soldiers if Regina hasn't changed place of work it's necessary to go with friends of the site (for example i think this roster lack some fungineering :D). The list of male friends of the site is endless; maybe Boyes, JV and Drake could bring back something into Abomination from before he was horribly mutated :D

Dan's briefings will never not make me laugh.

Jeez, people won’t let Abby have any glory eh?

“She got it easy, I had this mission early in the game. Therefore, Abby isn’t good; just lucky.”

Give it a break.

I remember this one being my favorite mission. It's super difficult in hard mode but there's no bullshit like the HQ Raid.

Fuck yeah! Abby handled this like a pro.

Well played! One minor thing though, in missions like these it's a good idea to just kill as much as the remaining enemies as possible. It's pretty much free XP for the soldiers, especially when it's melee-only chrysalids coming down a narrow path, shooting bugs in a barrel!

Surprised no one has been excited by the idea of SHIVs yet.

That lack of arc thrower is probably going to come back to haunt them.

haven't finished watching yet, but as soon as I saw what mission it was, I yelled.

The only real error in this is the continued feeding of xp to Abomination and Zhang, who both should almost be benched for a few battles, frankly.

But really good job.

Also good job on the Light plasma, as soon as you get that you can research the proper plasma rifle which is the thing you really want. (As Vinny said all these can be salvaged by arc thrower-ing stuff also).

"Do you think people are gonna be spicy about me dashing?"

No one cares, literally no one cares.

But this was not the mission to bench Abomination. Which is basically was Abby was saying to Vinny about taking an arc thrower. These council missions are a bit too dangerous for that, especially this mission.

Agreed.

@kevin_cogneto: Or perhaps this Tim Curry classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRSTpj2Z5cU&feature=youtu.be&t=97

"Oestreicher" or "Oesterreicher" literally means "the Austrian." Austria in German is Österreich which means "the East Realm"

Also I love that they made a joke about this mission taking three hours long, the reference Central makes to a cruise liner is about Terror from the Deep where the cruise ship missions actually did take hours because you did have to search every single room for skittering assholes

The day that the Corps meets a Sectopod will be a day.

@gerrid: it did seem easy to me too... Dunno. I remember there being mutons and sectoids on my playthrough.

I lost a lot of good soldiers at the fishing village....such is life in X-COM.

For an XCOM first timer who doesn't seem to really love the game, Abby keeps pulling the hard missions and doing really well with them. The effort is appreciated, great job Abby!

Oh holy shit. They finally got to this mission. This is the one that was super tense... and cemented my total loathing for chryssalids.

Abby killed that mission like Dan kills "traitors". Great job.

Has Jan been added to the game yet?

Damn fine work, even later in the game this mission demands a lot of good decisions on walking the line between strong fire coverage and mobility.

Abby walked that line near perfectly, great tactical awareness and top marks!

Abby took command and executed to near perfection. Thanks to Vinny for the "by the numbers" assist. This had the right amount of Vinny. Abby played the way she wanted to and even called Vinny out at one point. Keep kicking ass Cmdr. Russell.

Good work, Abby! It's a tough mission if you let it spiral out of control, but Abby kept it under control.

I feel like they're really running out of ideas for custom soldiers, though also the customization options are failing them for people like Patrick Klepek or John Oliver.

Please learn a word that is not "spicy" to describe making (according to your perspective) a risky decision.

Whenever Abby says that she doesn't care or just skips past things without taking 3 seconds to read a prompt it just removes any hype I have for this feature. Still, good mission, let's see what's next.

Gooood job Abby!

This mission destroyed me. I think the In the Zones by abomination were super valuable here. I got held up but those first ones and was attacked all the time after that.

I think you guys can beat this, if Dan doesn’t lose his luck, because he relies heavily on it.

Well played Abby, that could have been a complete clusterfuck and it wasn’t, you killed it.

However I still think the hardest fight is yet to come, and depending who is commanding, failure at the final hurdle is an all to real prospect. At least that would be a great setup for XCOM2: WOTC

Commander Russell with another superb performance on a hard mission. Thats what I call an episode.

Every time its Dan's turn I am totally expecting a full wipe. Luckily that hasn't happened yet, but I always expect it.

Should of picked squad sight for Xavier!

Great episode. Abby played well, and Vinny had the right (aka low) level of involvement.

Oh my gosh you are right. That's exactly how this would have gone down. Imagine the comments section afterwards...

Now we got 2 competent commanders. Humanity might has a chance after all.

(I'm actually waiting for a sectopod to show up...it's gonna be sooooooooo goooooood.....)

o the Newfoundland mission (remember it since its a crazy mission and I'm Canadian)

I was pretty rattled when I had to deal with this mission, but now its one of my favorite Xcom missions

Also great job playing through this mission Abby!

How come Drew doesn't ever get a look in with Abby?

Not a single hit taken. Nice.

So far Abby has had 2 of the unique missions which are definitely a couple of the harder missions in the game when it's your first time seeing the designs. She has executed both damn near flawlessly and I am extremely impressed. Way to go Abby!

Abby did excellent. Not knowing that this is kind of an infamous mission and treating it as a regular thing probably helped. With some occasional (Dan) exceptions, everyone has gotten much better at not seeming like they don't remember anything after 3 weeks.

If there was one thing I wish they would keep in mind a little more, it's that people with shotguns are wasted in the very back, and snipers become less effective up close.

@geralt: Unfortunately, all it takes is one extremely incompetent one to ruin it for everyone.

I'm equal parts relieved Dan didn't get this mission, and sad that we didn't get to see what kind of disaster/outrageous lucky escape it might have been.

I certainly wasn't prepared the first time I got this mission, I didn't have enough high ranked soldiers with decent weapons and armour. I paid a high price.

Thinking about it, the difficulty of this mission varies probably more than almost any other special mission, depending on when it pops.

For it to pop now fits pretty well in the general difficulty curve, it's not easy nor it's hard, it's just normal. When in contrast the base defense mission for example was actually really hard and real spike in the curve.

Abby still played well and didn't get hit even once, and this is one of those missions where things can escalate really fast from even one simple mistake or poor positioning, so that was key. Especially with their medic situation, just thinking about that gives me nightmares.

Abomination's (lang)zone ability was clutch. Oneshotting those two bugs there and still being able to keep moving on the same turn felt like a real key moment. Had he been out for gene mods or wounded or anything else, things would probably be quite different.

I'm really not convinced Abomination was required here. OK, it may be a traditionally difficult mission, but this was not too bad. Several occasions where Abomination took a kill where there were plenty of others who could have done so. It would have required tighter control, but nothing much beyond what they are capable of.

Anyway, this is a purely academic argument because they will always take him, and at this difficulty that's fine. So as you were!

Flawless job Abby!

Nice work on the mission! I made it through the XCOM base assault with a few less scratches in the playthrough I'm working on right now (also Ironman Normal), but the zombie ship was a much closer call for me. My team was surrounded by the crawlers by the time I got back to the evac zone.

Meanwhile Dan keeps getting the easy EXALT missions. Anyone else get the feeling he's going to wipe a squad if he gets a real tough mission next?

I'm beginning to think that Dan is a member of EXALT

This series is so good and the crew just keeps getting better!

I spent about half an hour cornered in the ship trying to desperately get up the stairs managing movement and reloads.. Well done Abby!