Utterly Mad

June 2035


We make contact with the West Asia region. Noct recovers and is sent of on a covert action to reduce the cost of building the proving ground and increase his aim a bit.
We buy tier 2 gauntlets for the Templar

Operation: Dark Thorn



We deploy wilson and nocam on this one to assassinate a ADVENT field commander our first encounter with shieldbearers, these cunts deploy a shield that gives an extra 3hp to nearby enemies.
Initially we set up on the roof of a building to ambush the next turn this goes awry naturally as a patrol climbs up and reveal us activating 3 pods. The Warlock shows his ugly face to try and stop us.
a pitched battle lasting seemingly forever ensues as all those shields go up making already tanky enemies even tankier
Once Nocam runs out of nades to lob and forced to rely on his cannon he demonstrates the aiming skills of Helen Keller. He's gonna need a scope and/or aim pcs whenever we get those, so he can maybe hit the broadside of a barn or even SEE the barn at least grenades don't rely on aim.


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Back at base we finally have the resources to build tier 2 armor fucking up almost all customization, thanks Anarchy's children "your a great DLC and every customisation option is great"-absolutly nobody
admittingly there are some nice pieces like non-shiny power armor and some of the helms are okay but the rest is just utter trash. We spend a hour literally just customising the entire barracks to not look stupid.

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Operation Forgotten Empire

Avatar project (basically a doomclock once the meter is full you have a certain amount of time to knock it down a bit before it's instant game over) is pretty high as it is we most definitly don't want them to add another 2 blocks to it's progress.

We send -Helen Keller- Nocam and Chaosvolt out on this one, Noct got injured in his covert op (good job you strained a muscle and are crying like a bitch about it) . wilson was injured in his first mission and is still getting pieced together again with duct tape.
We have our first encounter with specters, a new enemy type in WOTC that knocks out a soldier and creates a copy of them with the same stats and skills, once the specter or copy is dead the soldier wakes back up or alternatively use a specialist's (like chaosvolt) revival protocol skill on them.

In a surprise turn of events -Helen Keller- Nocam kills something, with his gun, instead of lobing nades at everything that moves, the spectre copies -Helen Keller- Nocam, it'll be fine right? nocam has garbage aim. It copies grenades, even used ones, shadow nocam lobs an incendinary 'nade at chaosvolt 
who later gets mindcontrolled . We free Chaosvolt from mindcontrol before he can do anything to fuck us over. Turns out spectres have a life steal ability that panics guys, making this guy a pain in the arse to kill with his invisibility and running away then decloaking to lifesteal and panic a guy. shadowcam takes pot shots at our sniper who is in high cover on high ground misssing every single one, for once nocams poor accuracy is actually a good thing. Eventually Chaosvolt (2nd most accurate of the Um guys after wilson) puts the spectre the fuck down bringing back Helen Keller Nocam.

On the positive side nocam being out several turns means he still has his flashbang to help deal with a pod of -snektits- vipers     
I find myself really wishing I had tier 2 weapons right about now. Chaosvolt hacks the objective and those covert ops to improve his hacking already begins to pay off as we get a bonus from the chest increasing region income by 25 supplies




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We don't have much time back at base before we get another guerilla op, wilson is finished being duct taped together and so is the only UM available for this one as everyone else is busy getting their internal organs internal again.
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Operation Frost Fall


Rookie brigade hype (plus wilson)! well more the not-quite rookie brigade most them are somewhat leveled, theres lost on this mission which means endless fucking hordes of the things every other turn and witht he aim demonstrated by our soldiers this will only take the better part of forever. Spectres are now officially worse than stuns lancer, they can run half the map after reveal and are guranteed to knock out one guy unlike lancers where it's chance it will just miss or disorient. Not only that but your down one guy and gain 1 extra enemy you have to deal with. We pick up a new recruit in the mission I think he'll fit right in with XCOM given his first shot is a 99% to hit 100% to miss . at least 2 out of the 3 guys we need to rescue from the zombie horde are awake and can fight with us unlike last time where a scientist was with a passed out escourt.

Apparently the mission is somehow a failure, we rescued everyone who we came out to rescue and the mission was an evac mission rather than eliminate all enemies, and we got none of the reward? has to be a bug.

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Back at base
We finish our light armor breakthrough and get a couple of instant autopsies done and begin mag weapons which we sorely need, we get a new Templar recruit and begin searching for a way in to the warlocks base, hopefully we can strike his base before he strikes ours.
I discover that the poster about XCOm shipping noct and chaosvolt in on display in the bar
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Operation Blinding Prophet


We deploy -Helen Keller- Nocam and Noct on this one to abduct a enemy VIP at the request of Baldy McCouncildude. We set up an ambush opening up on a viper and 2 sectoids with an incendiary grenade, the guy who was going to be our scout since he keeps concealment after others have been revealed, gets revealed and mindcontrolled in the one turn and flashbangs half the squad, its slightly annoying more than anything else, we encounter turrets for the first time and they're already the upgraded ones. A Cancer Lancer Stun Lancer knocks  out our new Templar in one fucking hit.
(A real nice balanced unit, charge half the map to 1 hko a guy)

We have no way of waking them back up in this mission so someone will have to haul his ass over to the evac zone which means 2 people are on ass hauling duties today as one will need to carry the VIP as well.
Noct didn't have to roll for panic on seeing the stun lancer for some reason.  Nocam hauls the VIPs ass and ropes out ahead of the rest of the squad while the rest of the squad picks off what they can while running towards evac.



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Back at base we finish clearing out some debris and begin building the proving ground, this will give us access to a bunch of useful stuff, like grenade and ammo types killer robots and more
The avatar project is getting dangerously close to finishing, it is time to contact the East Europe region to strike the facility there however this facility is guraded by a ruler (alien hunters DLC) which is going to be a major pain to deal with on beta strike, they already have a mountain of HP and get an action for every action you take. we also have the Blacksite i'm going to have to go sooner than I'd like, usually I'd wait til I have the skulljack available and do blacksite + codex in the one mission to do knock back the avatar project 2-3 points in one mission
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End of June 2035