So, there doesn't appear to be a general thread for telling stories. If I'm wrong about this, feel free to move this post into that thread, mods.
This is a thread for sharing the wacky adventures you've had. Incredible strings of luck (good or otherwise), tales of come from behind victories or utter dominance. And, of course, tales of failure and disaster.
Now, I already had a team infiltrating the Advent HQ to liberate South Africa. While waiting for it to complete, I got a quest for an Troop Column. I figured I'd be able to make the HQ easier with that completed. So I sent in 5 leftover troops (all good soldiers, still) to take them on. I was able to get it down to Very Light with some intel. Well, 5 solid soldiers and very light enemy presence on a mission without timers? Shouldn't be too hard.
Well, it took a while to setup. Enemies were patrolling near each other. But eventually, I found something I was happy with. One pod of 4 was all gathered around a car, another pod of 4 had walked off screen, and the pod of 3 aliens (2 vipers, 1 muton) were off to the side. So, I decided I'd drop a sapper grenade on the car, blowing it up and killing an entire pod. I'd then have 4 soldiers left to clean up the remaining 3 aliens, before the off-screen pod activated onto me the next turn thanks to the sound.
Welp, I fired my grenade... 1 death. The car didn't explode, and only one soldier took enough damage to actually die. Well crap. But still, I could take out the vipers fairly well. A well placed rocket was able to hit both Vipers, and the car one was hiding behind. I had a high aim soldier with Fire in the Hole who hadn't moved, so I had a good chance of hitting the thing dead on. Worst case scenario, it would veer off target and hit only one snake, but also their cover. Well, this was wrong too, as the rocket did exactly 1 damage to one of the vipers, and absolutely nothing else.
So, now I'm stuck with 3 actions to kill 6 enemies, instead of 4 to kill 3. I have my Sniper command my Grenadier to drop another grenade on two of the surviving advent to finish them off. The sniper then dropped a smoke grenade on most of the party. I then use my Ranger and Assault to finish off the Muton. So, this could be worse, we're down to 1 injured advent and 2 vipers, and sure the next turn I'd activate the other pod, but I can work with that. I'm sitting in smoke, I've got 2 grenade and flamethrower charges left over.
What I didn't account for was Viper poison, and my highly bunched up group. My Sniper was pretty much turned off, as his accuracy took a plumet from red fog and the poison itself. The grenadier and technical weren't looking terribly hot either, especially after the grenadier took a hit from the freshly activated pod, despite height advantage and smoke. The soldiers were losing health, accumulating red fog and everything was just going miserably. Still, for the remainder of the match, my luck wasn't so bad, and I was able to just BARELY get everyone out alive. My Grenadier was down to 1 HP when the poison wore off, and my Technical was bleeding out in the street.
My lightly wounded Assault (Yes, my assault was the one who took the LEAST damage) is confined to the infirmary for 9 days. The rest of my squad wasn't so lucky, culminating in a 35 day infirmary time for my Ranger, an up and coming high-quality soldier with some very good AWC perks.
Still, I should count myself lucky. The mission itself was a success, and I secured both Viper corpses and my very first Muton corpse. And nobody died. But still, I've never taken such a heavy beating so quickly before. But hey, it's a lesson I'm glad I learned about smoke grenades and Vipers before I went into the HQ mission, which is now down to Extremely Heavy, presumably thanks to my brave,but fumbling, soldiers.