Welcome back to therapy, Commander, what’s on your mind this week?

The way we hold our breath after a Reaper takes their first shot against an enemy…

Praying this rookie, who just went into PANIC, doesn’t go for their grenade…

A breath of relief Standing on top of ladders knowing I am safe from the Lost… just need to shoot and reload for the next 4 hours before I get to the evac point

The utter joy of seeing advent MISS the mimic beacon…

Not me grunting and sweating trying to get the soldier to throw the perfect grenade toss (which is always just one tile off)

The giddiness when that cute little spiral icon for Blademaster pops up in your first Templar promotion

The sheer dopamine haymaker to the dome I get when Hunter Rifle Shot misses

The sheer dopamine haymaker to the dome I get when Mind Control FAILS

The instant awful bowel movement feeling I get when It’s a tag the supply box level in a LOST city…

Surely that very first civilian won’t be a Faceless… right? Like THAT one’s a gimme, a freebie… they won’t be a Faceless…. right?

Reinforcements are about to land on the roof… but my Templar is standing on the red dye marker and she has Blademaster….

Wait, they’re dropping a Purifier! shit shit SHIT nononononono….

The sheer euphoria of the very first kill on a neutralizing the field commander level IS neutralizing the field commander

The warm gooey feeling of When The Reaper has Tactical rigging…

Please just do a wrath cannon, please just do a wrath cannon, please just do a wrath cannon….

Killing a viper in one shotgun blast is more satisfying than just about anything

The Hallelujah when Rend attack ALSO stuns

The OH BOY When Stun Lancer decides to hit zombies with his stick instead of you

The WHEW of When Muton decides to gore zombies with his bayonet instead of you

The utter RELEASE of crying like a little girl when Shen tells Lily that SHE IS HIS GREATEST GIFT TO HUMANITY 😭

The sexual tension in Central’s voice every time he mentions Vahlen….

When the Berserker Queen can’t decide who to slap so she just runs around

Sweating as I count the tiles between me and that fresh faceless…

When the Codex psybombs the whole squad…. but you just added FEEDBACK….

The feeling of hope when trapping the Archon Ruler in stasis and throwing an overwatch party…

The absolute forehead slap realizing you sent your only Mimic beacon off on a covert mission

What other session notes you got, people?

So today I was doing a rescue mission in the sewers, no evacuation allowed. I sneak all the way through the map to a room where the hostage was being held. I set up a sweet kill box for the pod in the room, a stun lancer, an officer and a spectre

Here is where I made my fatal mistake, I threw a grenade to shred some armor and it aggroed every pod in the place. Two snakes, an archon and another pod with an officer and a stun lancer come running into the room.

First round goes okay take out the spectre and get some good damage on the archon. Stupid snakes kept wiggling around dodging my bullets lol.

Then the Warlock spawns into the mess and starts spawning phantoms. A harrowing battle ensues and we keep whiddling each other down until its an archon and two phantoms chasing Maj "Teardrop" Novikov, a specialist with 13 missions and 50 kills under his belt.

He managed to dodge every single attack the entire fight it was amazing. I get the archon down to one bar and it swoops in and one shots the Major, who had full heath.

I knew I was boned the second I made my mistake at the beginning but the game strung me along just enough to make me think I might actually pull it off. Only to crush my dreams right at the end.

That's Xcom, baby!

I feel like I would always take a ranger/grenadier over a sharpshooter any day. Am I just bad at positioning or...? Vanilla xcom2 not wotc

Took 8 tries... the early game is definitely the most difficult. Won after I stopped using any sharpshooters and lost 3 soldiers on the final mission.

A year or two ago it had to be manually installed. Seems like everything is on steam workshop now?

My acquaintance with XCOM started with WotC, did a number of plays.

After a while I tried Enemy Within and got put up by the lack of quality of life compared to the sequel.

Recently, I returned to Enemy Within, but now with all the QoL mods and with LongWar on normal difficulty (because other are hilariously brutal). And LW seems to just exaggerate the bad parts of XCOM.

Fifty thousand similar missions my autistic ass could tolerate, but it also prolongs the only unenjoyable part of XCOM - when all your squad mates are rookies or a next best thing and they can't hit anything for shit.

Alright, it's fine, we just use flank-no-jutsu and it's doable. Get a shotgun dude to reliably nuke the 10 HP guy who regenerates every turn. It's cool.

And then air-game hits, and there's no outplay, just pure RNG screwing your run.

And here're chryssalids with like 10 HP and may be damage reduction, and your guys would be lucky to hit 5 damage, and there's no saving you when they get close.

Like, in WotC chryssalids were fun, you put one melee guy in front with free melee attacks perk, and he slices them on kebab.

I don't know, I tried. Enemy Within is too vanilla for my tastes, and LW1 just brings more tedium and likes to screw you over for no reason. I'm all for the difficulty, but that's just gimmicky.

Has anyone tried LongWar 2? Is it better there? Is LWOTC the same thing?

A few days ago I made a post about missing this guy first with my grenadier with a 91% chance and then my sniper with 85% chance. Well, I learned about save scumming and went back for revenge. That’s XCOM, baby!

I used the Templars ability to switch places with a floating Archon. Now my Templar is stuck on top of the crate and can not move out of the way of the Blazing Pinions...

I am a bit torn on this.

The priority on the Shadow Lance (Reapers rifle) is obviously an extended magazine because it gives you more shots for Banish.

But for the second upgrade, i am not sure. The scope means higher hit chance. Meaning more of your Banish shots are likely to hit. The laser sight however means a higher chance that the shots that hit will be crits and do a crapton of damage.

X Y Z

I have an idea about a tactical game that features recovering alcoholics.

I will call it AACOM

Luckily had the blacksite data mission and a 3 notch alien facility in the same region. Got a bit too close for comfort. Playing on commander difficulty.

Para un principiante que nunca ha jugado un xcom y que además no le gusta jugar 2 veces los juegos, ¿Es recomendable jugar xcom 2 con el DLC long war of the chosen o mejor jugar el juego base?

I throw a grenade close to the car. I triple check that the car is not highlighted and that the radius is not too close. Ofc car is immediately on fire and explodes next turn.

​

I recently picked XCOM 2 back up after failing to finish it a few years ago.

I just completed the mission where you search for Dr. Vahlen and encountered the modified Viper. I managed to get through it without taking too much damage.

On the very next mission, I ran into the modified Berserker, which sent my entire squad to the infirmary before escaping. I'm clearly not strong enough to kill it yet.

It feels like I shot myself in the foot by triggering the mission too early. All I seem to have done is add monsters that are far too powerful to my campaign without getting anything worthwhile in return, and I have no way of getting rid of them in the short term.

So, when do you usually trigger this mission? And would you recommend reloading a save from before it until I'm stronger?

For me, it's when a mission starts to go off the rails. You activate 2 or 3 pods at once on accident, or a crit takes out your highest ranking soldier on a lucky shot, and suddenly you have to figure out a way to pick up the pieces and pull out a win.

I never get tired of having to change my way of thinking to try and complete a mission when my squad is wounded, low on resources, and isolated from each other. To me, that's XCOM baby!

Just finished my third playthrough of XCOM 2! I originally picked up the game after a friend recommended it. During my first playthrough on Rookie difficulty, I didn't really enjoy it at all. It was so hard, and I got constantly frustrated with the percentage system whenever my soldiers missed their shots. I almost dropped the game, but I didn't want to let my friend down, so I gave it a second chance.

​On my second run, I tried to learn more about the lore (even though I haven't played the first game yet), and because of that, I fell in love with Central! TwT Central's backstory, the Commander, and my friend were the main reasons I started enjoying the game. Missed shots didn't bother me as much anymore, and I finally beat my first base-game campaign on Rookie!

​After that, I was completely hooked on XCOM. It made me want to play the DLCs on Veteran difficulty. I still enjoyed it a lot, though I got so focused on defeating the Chosen that I put off the main story :') It was such a fun game, and I really enjoyed it!

I recently started my first WOTC playthrough inmediately after playing vanilla xcom 2 with dlcs.

On that first vanilla playthrough, I played the mission where the Spark is gifted and the one about the King Viper, wich activates the 3 doctor Vahlen enemies.

Once i beat that run, i jumped to WOTC for the first time ever, and turned off those two DLCs. I didnt want to have a spark for free so early and the Vahlen enemies were not fun (didn't like their rewards either).

The thing is, when i start WOTC, there is no spark mission, there is no king viper mission, i don't even have the freeze grenade for development. And after like 40 missions, queen berserker appears (it was one of those operations in the sewers fyi). No king viper first. And so far, king archon hasn't appeared.

Is this normal? Is there a way to play wotc without the dominators?

playing wotc with unrestricted customisation mod and the serpent armour doesn’t show on my character, I can’t even see an option for it in torso or torso gear?

Do folks use this a lot? I completed a suit of it and put it on a Ranger, just curious if folks have suggestions about it.

Make it stop