XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Part 6 - Operation Hidden Druid

Alejandro Vargas, despite lying in a hospital bed in our medical bay, was awarded the corporal badge - the first XCOM soldier to do so. It wouldn't surprise me to see him be the first colonel.

He chose to learn the 'Bullet Swarm' skill, allowing him an extra action if his first action was to fire his weapon.

Sq. Verhoeven decided to specialise in the support class. Thus she gets training in how to efficiently use a smoke grenade. At time of writing, I've yet to see her actually use it.

The council stuck true with their word and rewarded us with some credits and some scientists.

In addition, we received an extra satellite. Bradford suggested we deploy it right away. I wasn't in the mood to argue.

Right now, the only satellite we have operational is over our HQ in Germany. Each country we launch a satellite in will pay us an extra bonus at the end of the month. In addition, the more satellites we have operational in a continent will mean bonus rewards (as you can see, Europe is giving us an extra 2 scientists a month). Launching a satellite will also decrease the panic of that country. Taking all of this into account...

...I decided to launch the new one in China. This was pretty much my apology to them for leaving them to fend for themselves as I protected USA a few days earlier.

I immediately ordered an Interceptor to be transferred to China. Once I had finished this task, I came across Bradford having a fairly heated discussion with Dr. Vahlen.

To this day, I still have not received this trophy. I had even built a shelf for them and everything. Of course, I needed Shen's help to set it up - damn IKEA.

Oh yeah, and Vahlen wanted us to capture an alien alive, but that's not the important thing here. I want my trophy.

While Bradford still wasn't too sure, Shen managed to convince him.

If we learn how to communicate with it, we can interrogate it and hopefully find out why they are attacking us and from where they are from.

So it was agreed, we must try and capture a live alien. We'll start with the Sectoid. First we have to build an alien containment facility...

...and then officially order Vahlen's team to research the 'Arc Thrower', which will stun weakened aliens into unconsciousness. Hopefully. If it doesn't...I don't want to think about it.

However, the action wasn't just happening at HQ...some of it was happening in our own backyard...

Our satellite over Germany picked up an alien craft. Time for our interceptor, Raven-1, to get to work...

This was my view. I pretty much had to order the Raven to attack the UFO while having the option to abort if they got too damaged. That didn't need to happen, as 0.2 seconds later...

It was the strike team's turn to get down there.

While Vargas was cleared for duty, I decided to keep him at base and give a new Rookie a chance - Rk. Andersen from Norway.

The main goal for this mission was to see what kind of technology powers the alien craft as well as the material it used - and hopefully one day we can reverse-engineer it for our own purposes.

Other than that it was a fairly uneventful mission. Did everyone survive?

There was Norway everyone survived.

I feel awful now.

Mission Stats

Rk. Jorgen Andersen - 1 Kill - KIA

Sq. Victor Roux - 2 Kills

Sq. Amber Verhoeven - 0 Kills

Rk. Scottie Hunter - 2 Kills - Wounded

Roux is quickly becoming our most efficient killer - it helps that he can shoot from a long distance. He decided to go the "Squadsight" route with his promotion - he can now shoot at any target that another soldier has eyes on.

Verhoeven's new skill is "Covering Fire", which is a very useful skill with Overwatch - instead of attacking when her target is moving, she will also retaliate if someone attacks her while she's in Overwatch. She didn't manage any kills in this mission, so I'm not sure why she was promo...

Err...Amber?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHMBER, I'M SORRY.

Moving on from the horror show, my fellow countryman also earned himself a promotion. He decided to specialise in the assault class - or as he put it - "I want to do what they do in Call of Duty". He learned the Run & Gun skill, basically letting him have one extra action after Dashing. It could be useful in certain situations.

Lots of great loot, hopefully some of this will come in handy. It's been a long fortnight, so a couple of the soldiers organised a little party. As Commander, I feel it is my duty to remain sober.

[Editor's Note - The next paragraph is almost intelligible. The words "party hard" and "vodka" seem to come up a lot though...

...the next day though...]

Ugggh, my head. It feels like I've got a rave going on in my head. And for crying out loud Vargas managed to be sick all over my desk. That's the last party we're ever going to have at HQ.

[Editor's Note - It wasn't].

Some joker also changed my computer's background. My eyes are still adjusting so I cannot see what it is at the moAHHHHHHHHHHH

XCOM: Enemy Unknown - Part 5 - Mission 3 - Vengeful Paramour

A civilian actually managed to escape from alien captivity. It was decided that Miss Sing could end up holding vital information about her captives. We had to bring her in immediately, at all costs.

Straight after entering the battlefield we were met with a new kind of alien - we would go on to dub it the 'Thin Man'

An infiltration unit? This was meant to look human? Well, I have to admire them for trying - but this does confirm that this isn't a random attack on Earth - they have been preparing for this war.

Dr. Vahlen then went on to recommend that we capture the damn thing. Except we have no safe way of doing that and I am not losing my squad just to capture Stretch Armstrong here, so I ignored her advice. For now.

The Thin Man seems to have the same sort of combat abilities as the Sectoids, minus the mind control but with a lot of added nimbleness. When it moves, it reminds me more of a snake than a human.

Amber Verhoeven scored the first kill of the battle with a fantastic shot that took down the Thin Man in one.

Of course the Sectoids were there as well, this one getting a surprise shot on the veteran of the group - Squaddie Vargas. I thought that was it for the Argentine, but somehow he kept on going...

...and naturally getting revenge. The poor Sectoid had no chance.

More aliens were scattered across the battleground, but Verhoeven kept up her impressive performance...

This is what you end up with when you mess with Amber Verhoeven. I'd hate to be any of her ex-boyfriends.

It was Rookie Verhoeven who saw Sing first - thus it was her duty to make sure Sing got back to the extraction point.

Sing was understandably a mixture of appreciative and panicked - she knew she wasn't safe just yet. We were only half-way done.

I suggested to Miss Sing that she should make gradual advancements to the extraction point and keep her head down. Almost as soon as I said that, another Thin Man showed up.

Rk. Ilyushin fired at the Thin Man and thought he had him killed...

...sadly that was not the case and the Thin Man retaliated by shooting back at the Russian. The kid never stood a chance.

Sq. Roux got himself a couple of kills - this one he showed off his new ability - the Headshot. At this range he would be guaranteed a critical hit just by making sure he hit his target.

We successfully got Sing back to the Skyranger without much more action. All we needed to do now was to eliminate any remaining hosti---

Which Verhoeven had already taken care of.

The death of Ilyushin was the only negative to take away from this mission. We can't get too sad every time one of us dies - casualties are to be expected - but I will be a happy man if I never have to get used to my soldiers dying on me.

One more thing - Vargas took the full brunt of an Sectoid attack and he was back at work in seven days. The guy's a bad-ass, and thoroughly deserves his promotion. Verhoeven was simply immense, her three kills proving herself to be an efficient killer - though she has decided to take more of a Support role on the field.

From now on missions will no longer have their own update, unless something major happens in one.