The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 09

What a great episode.

Big Boss Salute to all who gave their services

Here we go again.

I'M SCARED TO WATCH THIS.

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Right, let's see what happens.

A preemptive - Dan is Bad People.

E1: Minor Tactical Observation - Around 31 minutes Dan gets Austin to Supress a Grey, but immediately kills it with a grenade from Zhang. It never hurts to cycle through all your Soldiers before making decisions, because Austin's turn was still burned.

E2: Boy - Dan really got the pink mist at the end of that mission Huh? Why stand still and Overwatch when you can spread your squad out and open every door they come across?

E3: Managed to bait out both of the Overwatches looking at Mary, but didn't move her out of Danger.

E4: Good God...

Somebody should probably tell them about the "Make items available" button.

ALIEN ACTIVITY

The rocket didn't hit because you aimed it above the Sectoid and the power conduit thing. You needed to lower the elevation. Come on guys, you should know by this point that when aiming AOE attacks targets that would be hit are highlighted in red.

Edit: Oh boy, time for some new hires! Dan got overconfident, that positioning was no good before things went to hell. Gotta keep your group tight, yet spread out and in good cover. By the way, carrying a medkit makes a soldier immune to poison.

I guess I'm ok with Dan thinking The Abomination is Dan, as long as everyone else knows its definitely not.

This was a fun episode.

This is bullshit. Lang Zone already egested all of Dan Ryckert out of his ass. He shouldn't be an abomination anymore.

hard mission! gj!

Dan was admittedly hampered by the lack of a Support available for this mission but even so, yikes. Ya gotta use your guys as a team my man.

Thanks for toning down the troll stuff Commander Ryckert. All things considered, I think you did quite well on this mission given the circumstances.

Yeah this mission took out nearly all my squad too. The cyberdisc have high evasion. Rember that if you want tosend troops forward its usually best to overwatch others first, then dash in.

That was a tough one. I think Dan could've minimized casualties by Overwatch-crawling, while moving Abomination up to the doorway of the final corridor. The Cyberdisc was an unlucky spawn, but was way harder because of the lack of reaction fire.

On another note, they desperately need an Assault with that evasion skill to break enemy overwatches. And take that armor of Abomination, it's much better suited for the frontline soldiers. Mary might have lived if she had it.

Edit: This is why I run 2 snipers and 2 assaults. I can burst down big threats in a single turn.

Man, that was some poor luck on that Cyberdisc. Tough one!

And I think I know which story mission is next...

Can't believe I heard Vinny yell "AUSTIIIN!". The circle is complete.

Man, that's what happens when you spread your squad too thin!

@robaota: Lets be honest - two shots to take down a Cyberdisk is pretty damn fortunate.

It was the rest of the stuff they did which was bad.

"No room for self serving folks here." Mister Ryde has turned back into Doctor Henew Dankyll again, but for how long...

They need to hire some more troops ASAP. Also. There's a menu option that says : Augment Soldiers. I'd take a look a that, think you can sell a few things here and there and get you some MEC troopers.

Wow, what a mission. You played it well all things considered, Dan.

Yes, open all the doors.

So many good people lost... We can only hope Cmdr. Russell can reassemble the experimental science division and bring back our best and brightest from purgatory.

Pre viewing: I'm one of those whiny babies who was really butthurt after Dan's last turn. I really do like the guy, however, I just cannot stand watching a person troll his team in a cooperative game (and the EC is definitely a cooperative meta-game). If there's more of that again, I'll be out, and won't be tuning in to the feature any more. Here's hoping Dan takes some of the criticism (which, to be fair, went way overboard from some of you guys) and tones himself down.

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Post viewing: You done okay Commander Ryckert. I'm back in (But... what's with the preoccupation with former directors of the FBI?)

Lotta good soldiers dead today, but this was a tough mission. Mary kinda got hosed, same boat as Brad from a few weeks back. Just poor luck.

Anyone keeping track of body counts? Looking at that list of corpses at the end makes me think Dan is probably in the lead. Also, anyone know about when the Site Recon mission (the one in Newfoundland, Canada) pops up? I'll bet a shine that no one walks away from that one, and I'm kinda eager to see it.

Tough run, couple of mechanical errors, could have used run and gun more and check your rocket shots are a hit.

I really hate having to wait a week for each new episode.

The Covenant call Master Chief "The Demon!" in some of the Halo games.

Good job Dan. It wasn't perfect but you kept your trolling out of the gameplay relevant aspects of the run, and it means the team lives to fight another day.

Mary could have been saved if he'd thought things through. A disabling shot from Abomination on the cyberdisc would have bought them some time to get into better positions. Mary could have retreated to a position where she didn't have multiple aliens firing at her instead of reloading. And of course he could have kept his squad closer together and reload before advancing so they would have been ready to hit the cyberdisc with full force once it appeared.

I'm surprised no one brought up Liquid Ocelot when explaining the concept of Dave Ryckert to Dan.

They really need to sell some stuff and order new soldiers (like 5 or more) as soon as possible!

Unlucky, Dan. This was a tough one.

Guess building another plane is on hold, time for some new recruits.

Itill be up to Abby to resurrect the team,

but good on Dan for playing things straight and actually working with the team

Wow...

Loving the improved production value on these premium videos (not sarcastic)

@blacklagoon: You're not wrong. However, the only really bad call at a critical moment was reloading Mary instead of having her haul ass (edit: and also not run and gunning that other guy, that could have maybe taken out the disk). Most of the rest of their issues just tilted their luck, rather than fucked them. Given the one-hour-every-three-weeks play schedule Dan's got going, it's not too bad.

Thinking on it, kinda seems like, in contrast to the other two, Dan knows how to use Snipers, but not how to use Assaults.

A few basic mistakes and mis-moves cost a few lives, but the series isn't about expert play, and it was great to see Dan playing well with others. Nice demonstration of the power of a squadsight sniper during the early stages of the mission too. Its up to Swery to save us all now.

lol good stuff, and i like how they still haven't even peeked in the augment menu yet, lol.

o7 lt. Walker

@convox: In regards to E3, I'm pretty sure Mary had already been poisoned and was at one health at that point you're talking about. She was a 100% goner no matter what happened there. Dan did the right thing in that scenario. I stress, right thing in THAT particular scenario.

This was not about "bad RNG". This was straight up bad tactics. Mary should have been pulled out at the very least. And placing everybody into flanked positions just to attack the cyberdisk was just plain bad.

Also, this was yet another episode where the mouse hovered over "AUGMENT SOLDIERS" but the clicking did not happen.

Sooo.... how about checking out those cyber labs you built?

I still think the balance on these Slingshot DLC missions is kinda wonky.

The first mission with Zhang as the VIP is basically fine. The second mission (with the train transponders) is pretty fucked up, on Classic difficulty and above, especially pre-Enemy Within, because it would end up being your 2nd Council mission and there was often no way you would have suitable squad size and equipment to deal with so many Mutons and Thin Men with such a harsh time limit. It's a little more reasonable in Enemy Within because there are so many other Council missions that the train mission seems to come a little later.

And then this third mission on the battleship actually isn't that tough since it's mostly just eight zillion Sectoids. The tough part is when it throws a Cyberdisc at you which is a stiff challenge at this stage of the game. However, should you win this mission, it basically breaks the entire game economy and you have enough alloys and elerium to pretty much finish out the rest of the game. The only scarce resources will be money and weapon fragments, because you get a truly absurd amount of elerium and alloy from harvesting an intact battleship this early in the campaign.

The resource balance just seems broken if you own this DLC and are capable of completing it.

I love this series. The X-Com games are the greatest "losing is fun" games ever made. Dan's play was super sloppy and the game punished him hard for it. Not being able to deploy a support squad member turned out to be especially fatal. One support with the 3x medkit usage perk would've saved Dan's bacon.

Hoo boy, that rocket shot into nothing but air sure sets an accurate tone for Dan's level of tactical competence.

The problem Dan and alot of people have in Xcom is hesitation to take shots. When you see a new enemy concentrate all fire on the strongest enemy. Dead enemies do 0 damage to you even if you are in no cover. Often by being more concerned with protecting your team with cover and saving abilities for later gets them killed faster than being aggressive.

Austin is dead, time to bring Danika, Patrick and the rest of Waypoint...

Please hire new troops ASAP or it's RIP Exquisite Corps.

Please augment a soldier.

Please know when to pull troops completely out of the fight instead of getting them killed.