XCOM 2 (PC/XB1/PS4) - Free (no WOTC DLC included) on the Epic Games Store until 21st April.

Sounds awesome. Slow and steady for you. When you get (over)confident I enjoyed rangers with shotguns or those katanas with ‘reaper’. Just run them around with melee and it’s fun. But you can get caught out.

Will give that a shot if I do another play through. Which is highly likely.

It’s one of the very good things about gears tactics. It encourages you to be aggressive, and go for melee kills.

Holy gooseberry fool at the Avatar part of the last stage I may have to reload an older save and prep for it long before it becomes active. I dread to think how much more difficult it is on the harder settings...

I remember the last level being a long, slow deterioration and defeat of my squad before being snuffed out in the last section. I put the game down and decided that was my canon ending.

But months later I rebooted that level again and it was a breeze. The only difference? Knowing what I was walking into.

Playing this with loads of mods and WOTC on legend and I am not even 1/2 way and it is hard! I love it.

I am struggling. But nothing hurts more than a mind controlled squad member critical hit and killing a fellow squad member.

That last mission is a beauty. Get to the end, and then the finale. The end then epitomises the whole game.

You only need to kill the 3 avatars.

So what is your strategy? Go for it at all costs or try to pick through overwhelming odds?

I thought of a plan of having 2 or 3 rangers equipped with the skulljack thing, high dodge chance armour and have them supported by smoke and flash grenades to further increase their scant chance of survivability.

Saint of Killers wrote:I thought of a plan of having 2 or 3 rangers equipped with the skulljack thing, high dodge chance armour and have them supported by smoke and flash grenades to further increase their scant chance of survivability.

See I go snipers on the towers and rangers. ‘Serial’ on the snipers and ‘reaper’ on the rangers.

I've gone back a number of saves from Avatar fight. Gonna try and finish all those red missions on the world map, and in the process, hopefully, build up lots of good gear and more a varied team. Downside of doing this: my snipers now can't kill for gooseberry fool when using Kill Zone Seriously. First time around? strawberry floaters couldn't miss. Now? My 2 best guys will sometimes miss with it more than they hit. Hi-lariously infuriating.

Still on my jouney back to Avatar fight. But I am now in total control of the countdown to doom bar, and everyone is pretty much OP af. Not only my go to guys and gals, but I now have lots of maxed out soldiers in back-up as well. (Sharpshooters, rangers and specialists as far as the eye can see ) No doubt I'll have my legs lopped out from under me in the Avatar fight, but I'm at least doing much better omw to that fight than I was on my first attempt.

Saint of Killers wrote:Still on my jouney back to Avatar fight. But I am now in total control of the countdown to doom bar, and everyone is pretty much OP af. Not only my go to guys and gals, but I now have lots of maxed out soldiers in back-up as well. (Sharpshooters, rangers and specialists as far as the eye can see ) No doubt I'll have my legs lopped out from under me in the Avatar fight, but I'm at least doing much better omw to that fight than I was on my first attempt.

Your first run of vanilla XCOM2 is training for War of the Chosen.

Memento Mori wrote:

Saint of Killers wrote:Still on my jouney back to Avatar fight. But I am now in total control of the countdown to doom bar, and everyone is pretty much OP af. Not only my go to guys and gals, but I now have lots of maxed out soldiers in back-up as well. (Sharpshooters, rangers and specialists as far as the eye can see ) No doubt I'll have my legs lopped out from under me in the Avatar fight, but I'm at least doing much better omw to that fight than I was on my first attempt.

Your first run of vanilla XCOM2 is training for War of the Chosen.

It's on sale right now on PSN. Will pick it up after I'm done with the main campaign, or before the sale ends.

Saint of Killers wrote:Still on my jouney back to Avatar fight. But I am now in total control of the countdown to doom bar, and everyone is pretty much OP af. Not only my go to guys and gals, but I now have lots of maxed out soldiers in back-up as well. (Sharpshooters, rangers and specialists as far as the eye can see ) No doubt I'll have my legs lopped out from under me in the Avatar fight, but I'm at least doing much better omw to that fight than I was on my first attempt.

It’s a long fight. I like to use a psi operative to grab a tanky unit like an andromadon, and put some more damage out. Specialists for heals are good too.

Bertie wrote:

Saint of Killers wrote:Still on my jouney back to Avatar fight. But I am now in total control of the countdown to doom bar, and everyone is pretty much OP af. Not only my go to guys and gals, but I now have lots of maxed out soldiers in back-up as well. (Sharpshooters, rangers and specialists as far as the eye can see ) No doubt I'll have my legs lopped out from under me in the Avatar fight, but I'm at least doing much better omw to that fight than I was on my first attempt.

It’s a long fight. I like to use a psi operative to grab a tanky unit like an andromadon, and put some more damage out. Specialists for heals are good too.

My current plan is to level up everyone to max / buy colonels when they become available, so I can then try multiple ways of attacking it if my preferred method fails. I've also got a good mix of armour suits, accessories and have researched all high end weapons to give myself the best chance of success.

Saint of Killers wrote:

Bertie wrote:

Saint of Killers wrote:Still on my jouney back to Avatar fight. But I am now in total control of the countdown to doom bar, and everyone is pretty much OP af. Not only my go to guys and gals, but I now have lots of maxed out soldiers in back-up as well. (Sharpshooters, rangers and specialists as far as the eye can see ) No doubt I'll have my legs lopped out from under me in the Avatar fight, but I'm at least doing much better omw to that fight than I was on my first attempt.

It’s a long fight. I like to use a psi operative to grab a tanky unit like an andromadon, and put some more damage out. Specialists for heals are good too.

My current plan is to level up everyone to max / buy colonels when they become available, so I can then try multiple ways of attacking it if my preferred method fails. I've also got a good mix of armour suits, accessories and have researched all high end weapons to give myself the best chance of success.

You sound set. I had a fail the other day on commander +. Got a dark event that was guns at the avenger. Started trying to fight it out but chosen
turned up and so many enemies. There was no way to get the guns. Everyone died.

Restated a level down and it’s so much easier. Still fun though. Apparently my 10th campaign.

That's nails even on easy. How is the game different on higher difficulties? Better AI? Less chance to hit enemies?

Saint of Killers wrote:That's nails even on easy. How is the game different on higher difficulties? Better AI? Less chance to hit enemies?

Not entirely sure. But, it takes longer for the bigger enemies to appear. Health chunks get added more slowly, and much fewer. So even 1/3 to 1/2 way through the game the basic enemies can be taken down in 1 hit with upgraded weapons.

On commander +, health bars were huge and it relied on traps for so many enemies. Often it would take 2 soldiers to take down 1 enemy, you had be so careful not to engage more than 1 group. Even then, some of the batches of enemies were 5 spectres (I have a heavily modded PC game which might be part of it).

I've been getting into Chimera Squad this week. I like the new take on the game with the breach mode, but I do miss the initial anticipation pre-battle where the game is a bit slower, especially when doing lots of missions in one sitting. It leans a bit closer to being a puzzle game than a tactics game, especially as you lose your ability to have initial placement on the map.

I fudged up in the most hi-larious way ever.

Doing a VIP capture or kill mission. Everything was under control and so I didn't even save scum.

But I was down to the final 4 movements before mission was considered a fail. I had my senior sniper about half the map away and so extracting him was my biggest concern; enemies were down to the first and last back-up and were being dealt with, with one of them being mind controlled and acting as target bait so everyone else could just run to the evac point.

Re the far away sniper: my psi soldier had the bonus movement ability and so I think I could have got him home with everyone else. If only I hadn't been INCREDIBLY DUMB and extracted the psi soldier

So not only did I not give the sniper the extra action ability, but I also lost mind control on the enemy soldier. Who saved the day? The senior sniper. FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUU. Ended the game there and then. About to do it over again.

Much dumb.