Future Combat

Part of my XCOM: Defenders of the Earth series!

Alpha and Buster Downs were sent with "newbies" Elvis, Badass, Party Girl, Rocket Man to handle a small UFO scout ship in some forest in the USA. The Sky Ranger strangely dropped them off on the side this time (guess it didn't want them to escape) putting them in between a heavy floater squad and an elite muton bunch. In the exchange of fire Badass opted to fire a rocket at the mutons instead of taking cover, trusting his life to Buster Downs to put down the last jetpack boy flanking him. Buster missed. The alien did not. Despite the loss of Badass the rest of the team cleared the remaining enemies and entered the ship proper to find another ethereal (they're all over the place now) and one elite guard. They managed to injure both but then the ethereal made the mistake of mind controlling Rocket Man. This panicked the rest of the team (except Alpha) into unloading all their ammo at them - killing them both. Odd way to complete a mission.

The team then traded Alpha for Blunder Buss and filled the remaining slot with our new hover SHIV tank for field testing against a supply barge in Canada. It had the same layout as the previous one but this time the team started off on the side. Though Buster was killed in action through floater fire and finished off by being electrocuted by a drone, the rest of the team defeated the floaters, berserker, sectopod, cyberdisk, elite mutons and ethereal captain with little issue thanks to the tough, highly mobile, and super accurate SHIV unit and its mounted plasma cannon. It couldn't be mind controlled and thanks to its flight capability easily outflanked all enemy defensive positions. I agree with Shen that this is possibly the future of combat as it out performed most of its human counterparts.

It sees you... ALL!

Total Annihilation

Part of my XCOM: Defenders of the Earth series!

Soldiers Lost in the Seventh Month: 4
Campaign Total: 25

The end of a combat heavy month saw me with another grade of "A" and with funding from all but one country (since they didn't have a satellite yet). Soon after a giant alien craft was detected over South America, the one place I didn't yet have a Firestorm (it was in transit). Still, I had my last Raven interceptor and its ace pilot Vince McCool so I sent him out to sortie. He lasted 2 seconds before being annihilated by the heavy weapons on alien craft. With not much else I could do about that I turned my attention to a terror strike in Osaka where I decided to send out a freshly hired squaddie team of Clown Face, Rocket Man, Party Girl, Badass, Elvis and Hot Momma to earn their stripes. This time they had the best gear, all wielding plasma weaponry and in titan suits. What could go wrong?

They landed at a tank factory (wtf?) and annihilated the first group (cyberdisk) they saw while Clown Face busily saved civvies in the AO. Then came a zombie horde with crazy chrysallids and a sectopod. Things got very hairy as Party Girl handled the zombies while Clown Face was alloy-cannoning (turns out it's not that good) sectopods and the rest of the team focused fire on the mecha. It wasn't enough to take down the mechanical horror which then made Hot Momma live up to her name by disintegrating her with its special beam cannon. Her horrible death shriek spurred the team on to eliminate the robot in the next round. Luckily the surviving chrysallids decided to flee/eat other things and left combat only to be replaced by a muton berserker squad.

Why didn't I think of that?

With no more explosives and unlucky shooting the berserker pummeled Clown Face's skull into a fine mist and even punched Elvis (only the second man to survive such a hit - the first being Hitler in an earlier mission) before being taken down. With a few rounds to regroup and reload the remaining mutons and chrysallids were not an issue. 4 out of 18 civilians saved. Mission complete!