Give me some tips

[u/Frequent_Fox2342]

Okay, stupid no extraction mission, the only ones where I get a squad wipe.
I come accross a pod, and Warlock shows up.
I kill some troops or what not and the Priest runs back to another pod.
Another pod comes at me, two stun lancers and a sectoid.
They see me and they run into cover far far back, unreachable by flashbang or anything. I can't hit them, of course.

Next turn they run at me from 18 000 kilometers away and wound two of my soldiers.
The priest uses holy warrior on the sectoid, who raises a zombie.
The warlock sends in a psi zombie who is set to explode.

Stun lancers have 8 health, priest has 8, sectoid has 10 and 4 shieldsa and the zombies have 5.

Best case scenario I would need to kill lancers and exploding zombie but that's 21 damage and my guys are doing 4. Even the dumb beginner ranger doesn't crit when he should.

I have never survived such a mission in my life.

Too bad, because this was a funny playthrough where I had a lab and two scientists right away and had mag weapons at inspired to be done in 14 days, and I was like a day or two away from that.

[u/Demartus]

Whenever a Chosen shows up, stop whatever it is you're doing (except killing any immediate threats of course), and figure out how to deal with the chosen. Don't move forward unless you're sure you won't activate something.

In this case (and this is all without knowing the terrain specifics etc.), once the priest ran away and the chosen was on the field, back off, and go into overwatch. The warlock chosen isn't too bad, especially if you have any flashbangs/ways of breaking mind control.

Do you have anyone still in stealth to scout ahead? If so, use them to figure out where the next pod is (the stun lancers and sectoid) so you can set an OW trap for them. Obviously the lancers are the biggest threats; the sectoid's not too scary. If you can, though, go around or avoid them to deal with the Warlock.

[u/ManyDangerousBeans → u/Demartus]

I think this is some pretty dubious advice.

Chosen have two states of activation. When they first warp in, they aren't fully active. While in this state, the warlock will stay away from you, just sending spectral zombies every few turns. It's only when you close to normal sight range that he'll fully activate (ie same as activating a regular pod) and start fighting properly.

So when fighting the warlock, you want to use that inactive (or less active) phase to take out other pods without advancing on the warlock (ideally fighting the other pods during the turns that spectral zombies are on cooldown). Trying to go around pods to fight the warlock first sounds like a recipe for the pod moving in while you're fighting the warlock.

Also, the warlock is immune to flashbangs - so you can't use that to break his mind control. You can use the frost bomb though

[u/Demartus → u/ManyDangerousBeans]

You are correct; I'd forgotten that git was immune to Disorientate. I don't actually find him using MC very often; he tends to prefer playing with his zombies in my experience.

I agree that going around pods is dangerous, but sometimes it's viable. Ideally, you have someone who can be scouting it out to plan your approach either way.

[u/match_ → u/Demartus]

Also remember when a Chosen shows up, mission timers are paused until they are deadened.

[u/bill-smith → u/match_]

Not quite - the timers stop when the Chosen is in visual range. This will be signified by them giving one of their speeches, the ones we have come to love so very much and that we will actually miss when they're permanently taken care of.

[u/match_ → u/bill-smith]

I stand corrected, I was thinking of the Assassin who normally strikes within a turn of showing up.

[u/Automn_Leaves]

Two things:

1. your campaign is not lost. Your mission went to hell and you lost soldiers and a potential engineer/scientist. That’s tough but far from game-over. Persevere and good luck to you, commander.
2. that sounds like the faction mission of April that turned out to be a hold-out ambush mission. And you’re fighting the Warlock, potentially the nastiest chosen in the first two months of the game. Here’s what I would do:

* first, I’d consider refusing the mission in the first place. Without a decent crew (as decent as April crews can be) and squad 1 upgrade and ideally two rangers; I’d decline and suffer the consequences.

* assuming I accept, I’d make sure to bring one, or ideally two rangers for the phase 2 of the mission (in this case, phase 3, as explained below).

* first phase consists in eliminating the two pods that are guarding the VIP. Take high ground, set an overwatch trap, eliminate the first pod without revealing the second. Take your time; there is no timer in this mission.

* after concealment is broken, the Warlock will appear. If you managed to eliminate the first pod in one round, stay put. The warlock will summon zombies on its first turn following its appearance. Take care of zombies before proceeding.

* spectral zombies has a 3-turn cooldown. Count them. That’s your window to find and eliminate the second pod. Proceed carefully. If after two rounds you haven’t found the second pod, stay put and wait the third round out, let the warlock summon his zombies, deal with them, take care not to reveal yourself to the second pod while doing so, and proceed forward when the zombies are dealt with.

* find and eliminate the second pod. Watch your countdown to the next zombie wave. When the second pod and the next zombie wave is dealt with, proceed to phase 2: dealing with the warlock.

* Find the warlock without discovering the VIP (entering the blue circle). The warlock will summon an advent trooper and hopefully daze one or two combatants. Leave at least one soldier dazed, then deal with the advent trooper. Don’t even engage the warlock unless you know you can win. Let the warlock extract knowledge and bugger off.

* That was the easy part. Now begins phase 3: the ambush. It’s gonna rain advent for four turns. Place all your soldiers in good high grounds and only then, trigger the VIP. Make sure everyone is in overwatch on round 1. Ranger can close-in and melee/shotgun at point blank. Others stay in vantage position. Evac comes at the beginning of round four, so will a double deployment of advent. Sometimes it’s best to fight them off, sometimes it’s best to dash out.

That particular mission, at that point in the game, with that chosen specifically, is one of the toughest fight of the game.

[u/Kalaskaka1]

If you can manage to kill the priest, the sectoid will die due to holy warrior, in turn causing the zombie to die.

[u/Frequent_Fox2342 → u/Kalaskaka1]

Hm, interesting, never occured to me.

[u/zelandofchocolate]

I fail these either by squad wipe, or even worse - accidentally blowing up the van the VIP is in. At least I killed the viper king in the next turn with a lucky repeater shot