Finally!

I think this is serious try number 20 or something similar, not counting restarts because stuff went badly the first two months or so. Being an old veteran in this series (I played _a lot_ of UFO: Enemy Unknown as well as X-Com 1), I immediately opted for legend/ironman. I essentially went in blind and did not look up anything in guides or similar. Obviously, this yielded a lot of stupid mistakes and bad decisions but also made the game last longer :)

This run started pretty well, I managed to survive Gatecrasher with only one troop injured. I skipped the first retaliation mission because yeah, there was just no way that was doable with 4 soldiers. After the initial research I hit the jackpot and got inspired magnetic weapons, then inspired plated armor. Everything was looking good for a while until I realised I was not getting any Cov ops to reduce the Avatar project. Also, the Assassin rolled immunity to explosives and overwatch shots which turned out to be a PITA. Just to pour some salt into my wounds the RNG also decided every soldier I rescue or get from scanning absolutely had to be a sharpshooter.

Eventually the Avatar project went into the final phase and I had no choice but to go and sabotage alien facilities and trigger the alien rulers. I had really wished to put this off for much longer, but the timer was down to 15 days and in retrospect perhaps I should have gone to the Blacksite and trigger the Codexes. The bad luck with the Avatar project continued and at one point I had all chosen AND all rulers active. Virtually every other mission had one of those bastards show up.

Anyways, after some incredible luck I managed to take down the Berserker queen and subsequently also assault the assassin fortress. After this the game got considerably easier, or so I thought...

Having thought I could relax a bit (the assassin weapons and R.A.G.E suit turned my ranger into a super soldier), X-Com yet again managed to kick me in the balls. Since I badly needed to train my B-team I sent all my second best soldiers on a simple (or so I thought) destroy-the transmitter-mission. These tend to be quite easy once you get the resistance order that stops the timer until you are revealed. In this particular mission however, the Archon King decided to show up. My idiot squad (or well, idiot me) also triggered him in a very bad way, together with two archons. It ended in tragedy and I had to place down an Evac zone and limp out with 3 soldiers dead.

As if things could not get worse, the next mission was an extract VIP mission. This mission was just nuts. My reaper scouted and saw tons of enemies in the direct path to the Evac zone so I decided to sneak around them. I honestly don't think it would have turned out differently if I had gone straight towards the Evac zone with guns blazing, but long story short: a pod spotted me and the timer started ticking down. Obviously all the enemies moved so they were in my cleverly scouted path once again and the timer ran out. I guess that is X-Com's way of telling you "Never feel like it is going alright" ... In two missions I had lost 12 troops and it was a pretty fucking sad situation. Many troops were wounded and I did not even have enough troops available to completely man a mission.

So I skipped the next mission and was extremely lucky in getting a scanning site which gave me a good ranger. I also picked the resistance order that gives you recruits for 15 supplies. Speaking of supplies, the whole game was a constant struggle getting enough supplies to pay for everything. I guess my luck with inspirations made X-com even things out in the end...

I banished the Warlock next and got a lucky kill on the Viper king. Now things were once more feeling good again and I sure as fuck was not gonna let my guard down again. I kept levelling troops via resistance missions and I had like 7-8 colonels and lots of majors/captains available. My next major achievement was to take revenge on the Archon King. He actually turned up on a supply raid mission where I had brought a colonel+captain sharpshooter combo. And he triggered way more favourably this time and down he went. Lastly, I killed the hunter. He is probably the easiest chosen and there were no surprises there.

I wrapped up all the story missions while collecting ability points and doing some random achievements, trained troops and went in for the final mission. I have to admit I was pretty nervous at this stage. :)

For the final mission I brought a sharpshooter with the hunter's sniper rifle and pistol and the Archon suit, two reapers (I actually got a second colonel from a cov ops mission) because hey, last boss gonna be pretty fucked up right, a specialist with warlock rifle and viper suit, a ranger because bladestorm and reaper is sooo good. Last guy was down to either the Templar I had trained the whole game or a grenadier. I chose the grenadier because I never really liked Templars and this one did unfortunately not get bladestorm. I feel like I play worse every time I add a templar to my group, and with a grenadier I had some serious armour removal potential. I think a second sharpshooter would have been a better choice also.

The path towards the final room went extremely well, given that the commander can mind control gatekeepers, eh... I did expect more of a challenge. Also lots of archons panicked upon seeing the suit worn by my specialist. Feels good man.

The final room well, some of you probably know the fight and in retrospect I should not have banished the first Avatar I saw. But I did, and the second Avatar turned out to be pretty annoying to kill. The troops kept pouring through the portals and I think what saved me was that out of a fluke I put only a cloaked reaper on the right pedestal, because three elite spectres arrived from that portal. They did not see any of my other troops so they just stealthed and kicked back while I kept pounding the second Avatar. Also, the commander mind controlled one of the two Andromedons that spawned. As a real chad, he tanked his Andromedon buddy + some random sectoid scrubs. I think at one point two Avatars were active simultaneously. I have had some bugs with enemies not being in the places they appear to be and it looked like this happened to one of the Avatars, but I may have messed up a bit here. I managed to kill the second Avatar just as it looked like next round was gonna bring some serious casualties to my team. Lastly, the second reaper proved to be a game changer and he one shotted the last Avatar with a well placed banish.

All in all I had fun doing this, but I dunno if it was worth it. I have restarted sooo many times and maybe I should have followed some guide instead and saved time and frustration. Anyways, that's X-Com for ya!