XCOM 2 AAR - Failure

In contrast to the last mission taking in place in a rather rich city, this one more clearly shows how bad things can get for Humanity under alien rule. Trash and propaganda everywhere, it seems some citizens have taken to driving tanks, even in town.

Up above on the highway is our first wandering patrol with a new alien combatant: a being from a world so toxic it needs a heavy environmental suit in order to function. It looks ugly, and any release of what's in the suit would surely be rather bad for any nearby human. We setup, and the firing starts with a sniper shot from Health on the unsuspecting codex.

The rest of the group's fire focuses on the dropping andromedon. Three solid shots, and it's still at half health. That thing is armored! Rather than deal with it right now, Trajan puts it in stasis while the rest of the team works on the 3 codices still up. Trajan's first shot misses the alien, but does explode a nearby car. She'll fit right in. The null field from the injured codex does a number on the group. 4 out of 6 suddenly find themselves out of ammo. The aliens themselves group up though and Susanne grenades them, killing two codices and leaving the andromedon vulnerable to a blast from her cannon. A pistol shot from Health is enough to finish it off.

Of course, nothing is ever easy. The alien inside is dead, we're very sure of that, but the suit itself is over-engineered enough that it can still function without its host. Disgusting. JCan attempts a hack on the suit, but fails to gain control, accidentally empowering the thing. Trajan makes her shot on it as it advances forwards, but Van Wezel misses the follow-up to bring it down, and JCan takes a brutal hit to his face. 

It even leaves a trail of toxic goop as it walks. Ugh. Susanne moves to flank the codex, giving Health and Lovenought the opportunity to kill its clones. In a twist, Trajan misses her next shot on the suit, but Van Wezel makes his, bringing it down. An ADVENT troop carrier follows it up with reinforcements. Why they do this I don't know, as the group is brought down in a hail of overwatch fire. Bradford, smartly, yells at us that the terminal is soon to be locked out.

Oh. Yea. The aliens aren't here to kill us. They've got hundreds of troops available. Stopping us is just fine. Even given all the aliens we've killed so far, our one death with Potassium felt like it hurt us more than all the deaths we've dealt to them. It'll be a rough race to make it in time. Guarding the terminal is a heavily armored group, 1 mec, 1 heavy mec, and an advanced soldier. That's a lot of hp to work through. The heavy mec gets a good shot on Lovenought, that looked like it hurt.

Susanne fires a rocket into the group, but it looks like they're merely scratched. With the help of a grenade from Van Wezel, JCan is able to finish off the mec. Lovenought misses his key shot on the heavy mec, and Trajan is too far away to be of assistance. The soldier lands another hit on Lovenought, yikes. The heavy moves into Health's range, and she brings it down. Susanne grenades the remaining soldier and then cannons it, bringing it down, but it's too late. We're too far away from the terminal to reach it before we're locked out. The mission is a failure. We continue to kill the remaining ADVENT forces, as grabbing what we can is useful, but morale is low.

Not sure where the remaining forces are, we reload, regroup, and get people healed. Lovenought is the first to spot the new troops, hiding behind a building, he'll be the sole focus of that group for some time. The archon is able to get to Lovenought roughly unharmed, and hits him with his plasma staff. Third shot today. Susanne runs forward and launches her acid grenade on the remaining two soldiers. Looked like it hurt. The rest of the team works on the archon, but it narrowly survives. Now is when I'd use Trajan's stasis ability again, but she's placed herself just out of reach. (Not sure what happened. XCOM is a little buggy. Said she was able to target him, but wasn't). She does kill the nearby soldier though.

The archon takes a second swing at Lovenought. He's horribly injured, but alive. He responds back with enough of a shot to take it down, and Health kills the remaining trooper. The mission was a failure, but everyone is at least alive. I think it's time we paid a visit to the codex sites though. The aliens are advancing quicker than we are, best to go now.