JUNE
This sounds ominous.
Sure enough, it's more than a match for us.
After sending both interceptors at it, we're forced to break off pursuit and let it get away.
USA wants some of our alien alloys, no doubt to help them in their latest Middle Eastern Adventure. We're happy to oblige, since the price they're offering is better than the Gray Market.
The Foundry is now available for construction, along with the Phoenix Cannon. The Phoenix Cannon is a weapon for interceptors. Like the Laser Cannon (which we'll get shortly), it has a short range and interceptors have to spend some time closing on the UFO before they can fire. Unlike the Laser Cannon, its damage isn't very impressive.
Research begins on Heavy Lasers. This will provide us with Laser LMGs for our heavies, and the Laser Cannon for our interceptors.
Our AO is a trainyard. Trying to maximize firing angles, we set up.
It's a Draconian Conspiracy!
The snakes scatter.
Plasma lights up the trainyard but not our faces.
Bingo! Agassi nails Snake #1.
Some floaters cruise through a gentle mist of badly aimed overwatch gunfire.
Crooked Bee, LMG marks(wo)man, hard at work.
Overwatch fire clears out another floater.
As you can see, in addition to whiffing more shots, we've moved an assault up into position to bring the painful molestation.
When you're a few feet away from someone, primitive boomstock technology is just as lethal as plasma.
We move Bee up into a better firing position...
...and discover more floaters. Discovering more enemies near the end of your turn is bad, since they often use their free lets-find-cover move to get into a perfect spot to shoot you, then spend their turn blowing your face off.
In this case, they've got Doc Redscum flanked, and a Thin Man is using suppressive fire on Crooked Bee. Suppression is an action some units can use in lieu of attacking that puts a -30 aim penalty on the suppressed target, and grants an automatic reaction shot if the suppressed target moves.
Lovely.
The floaters take a flanking shot on Doc Redscum, and the plasma eats right through his armor.
With our Second Wave options, flanking hits are always crits.
Bee uses a rocket to take out two floaters. The off-center screen capture is something that happens a lot when floaters die--they like to go shooting off across the map with their faulty rocket packs, and the camera follows them somewhat.
Redscum's death is a setback, but it lured the aliens into several poor positions that let us take them out quickly.
Tigranes rushes over and reminds the devious snakes that we can flank, too!
Taking stock of the situation, we begin edging forward.
Mutons. Everything about these guys is more serious than the others: heavier weaponry, the first alien to use grenades, and they've got the base health of one of our better-trained soldiers.
We try to use only full cover against these brutes, reloading ammo and digging in while we've got the chance.
Smoke grenades stack with cover bonuses, and make us even harder to hit. The AI is aware of this, though, and fires at the guy outside of the smoke.
Not too surprising that TNO misses. That Muton is in full cover, too.
Firing through a literal fog of war, Bee lands a hit.
Another plasma blast misses TNO.
Next one doesn't miss. TNO's down to 2 health.
This stand-off isn't really going in our favor. I've got two assaults nearby, though, so I start to hatch a plan.
BlitzKitchen dashes around with Run & Gun to point-blank one Muton. Rapid Fire will shoot twice, and at point blank range the aim penalty isn't quite as bad. Two crits oughta take this Muton down. 14% chance of failure ain't bad, right?
It works. Double crit, only one muton left.
Tigranes with the coup d'etat. Like taking candy from a baby. An interstellar baby with special forces training, 0% body fat, and power armor. You know.
We're going to need the heavy-duty scalpels for this one.
This is the most physically aggressive specimen we've discovered so far, which the troops fondly refer to as the "Muton". I can only assume there's a colorful backstory for such a designation.
We can now produce Laser Cannons! I'm more excited about our interceptors beefing up than the Heavy Laser, since the real power of our heavies is their rocket launchers.
The research team sets their sights on the Light Plasma Rifle, next. It's not much of a weapon on its own, but it will lead us into discovering the rest of the plasma weaponry, which is unequalled.
Construction of the workshop is complete. We finally have enough engineers to start turning the tide against the alien menace.
First order of business: power armor! Lacking the funds to make enough for the whole team, we'll have to prioritize its use for now.
Way more alien materials than we can use with our current cashflow situation, so we decide to sell off what we can.
The first laser rifle comes out of manufacturing. The eggheads get to test it out first. (Note the target dummy with a call-back to X-COM 1.)
Oh, yes, yes, yes!
Enough engineers to build a satellite uplink, now. That's top priority. It'll take an ass-long time to finish, so it goes up on the board first thing.
Captain Ulminati is feeling smug as fuck about his new toy, the Laser Sniper Rifle. Scope is still popamole sized, but styling is improved.
Agassi gets to try out the new Carapace Armor.
It has an alternate skin you can use to diversify your troops' appearance, shown here.
Next drop-site: Baltimore.
The graveyard. Nice full cover nearby, but moving forward has a high chance of running into some aliens.
Like, say, some mutons.
I don't want to bunch up in full cover near the entrance, since the mutons could grenade my entire team. So I try to move around the side to flank them, but we make some new friends.
Agassi puts up the smoke.
BlitzKitchen trolls his way through some reaction shots, trying to get an angle on the floaters above the alleyway.
No such luck.
Tigranes delivers our first bit of good news. Rapid fire double-shot hits once...
...twice! That muton is crispy-fried bacon.
Muton throws an alien grenade, doing 5 damage to Varra & BlitzKitchen. Varra's cover is blown out.
Oh, god. Why? WHY?!
Ulminati quietly loses his shit over Varra getting his face blown off.
Crooked Bee gets tired of these motherfucking aliens in this motherfucking graveyard, and unleashes a rocket. The floater was in the blast area and should have been totalled, but rocket blasts don't seem to like elevation differences, often doing no damage to units on a different elevation from the actaul impact.
Eat shit and die, E.T.!
Wretched creatures aim, mudcrabs supports.
BlitzKitchen is pissed the fuck off, and runs through plasma to get a better position on the floater.
Revenge is a dish best served at the temperature at which jetpacks explode.
Oh, look. It's more Thin Men. *yawn*
BlitzKitchen's maddening kenyan battle rage makes him flub the shot.
Bee has no such problems.
One more down.
MORE?!
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Extra Conditioning is a neat Assault perk that gives extra health based on the type of armor you're wearing. As if Assaults weren't already tanky enough.
Crooked Bee is officially a replacement for Whiskey Wolf, now, at Captain rank.
Looks like a pretty safe map. Plenty of cover.
Two Thin Men appear, then vanish into the darkness. We wait on them, but they don't come chasing. With a shrug, we send Agassi forward into the bus to full cover. She's got power armor, she'll be fine.
Oop. Overwatch shot hits her on the way. Turns out, both Thin Men are on overwatch, and they both get shots at her...
Mother of... Here's my reaction, in real-time:
This mission ends up being something of a clusterfuck.
A rookie gets blown away...
...and we clip the VIP with a rocket meant for a Thin Man. Council isn't going to be happy about this one.
Fantastic work, gents.
Consolation prize: Ulminati picks up Low Profile, which makes every tiny little bush and European car in the world count as full cover.
Time to redeem ourselves, men.
Casualties force us to bring along some newbies. Say hello to Rookies Azira & Awesome.
Squad is cleared to engage hostiles. Watch your fire out there. We have civilians on the ground. Repeat, civilians are in the AO.
Roger! (Terminates link to base.) SHOOT ANYTHING THAT MOVES.
IT'S MOVING, IT'S MOVING!
He's a firing his laser. A respectable 5 damage.
A respectable NOW YOU'RE DEAD, SUCKAH!
Burn 'em down, men.
Rookie Azira fries a Chrysallid. Can you say promotion?
Dodging a coherent beam of light is pretty impressive.
Getting blasted by an LMG? Less impressive.
There's... rather a lot of them, isn't there?
ZAP!
You may notice much of my team standing in the open like idiots. That's because we've yet to see an enemy who isn't a Chrysallid, so we might as well take advantage of the fact they don't have ranged weapons. If we were all in cover, we'd have much worse firing angles.
One more Chrysallid down.
Let me ask you something... when was the last time you saw a zombie ninja-flip off a rooftop?
Majestic.
Zombie: flammable.
Prestigious enemies detected.
ACTION: REMOVE KEBAB... failed.
Tigranes was stuck in the open with his turn over, so we deployed some smoke, then LMG'd a Chrysallid for good measure.
That's a hell of a lot of kebab.
Instead of attacking us, they commit genocide against civilians. (Bonus points for catching the joke here.)
Rocket launcher deployed, block levelled. NEXT.
Zombie, meet laser crit. Laser crit, meet zombie.
A car explodes behind us. Fucks given: 0.
We move into the ruined building. I don't want to say anything, but I can't help but notice that this place was a lot better off when it was just the aliens terrorizing it, before we arrived and leveled half the fucking city.
Hey, look. It's a prestigious chap, just chilling.
E.T. GO HOME.
Step 1: rescue civilian.
Step 2: make friends with three flesh-eating insectoid aliens.
Step 3: miss horribly.
Step 4: lead them back into your friends, who vaporize Chrysallid with a frag grenade. Step 5: 
.
A civilian gets french-kissed. By a Chrysallid. Me gusta?
No me gusta! Chrysallid deposits eggs into the civilian. Zombie incoming.
Another civilian bites the dust. As you can see, Chrysallids do quite a bit of damage with their melee attack.
How you like me now?!
The zombie rises from the dead.
Azira goes for a reaction shot...
Nailed it! Could've done more damage, though.
The badly-wounded Chrysallid goes to the roof, and incubates another civilian-zombie-eggpod.
As expected.
Well done, young man. Well done.
( •_•) Consider this mole...
( •_•)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■) Popped.
Look who decided to come back and play!
Would you like to continue? Please insert 2 more quarters alien drop-ships.
We set up an overwatch farm on the stairs, and the zombie blunders right into it.
In this case, I think we were terrorizing the aliens, rather than the other way around.
Bee should now be eminently safe as long as we don't let her cover get blasted out.
Back in our base, we outfit our interceptors with the latest laser cannon. This'll let them shoot down all but the biggest ships.
We deploy a satellite to Argentina, taking it from full panic to 3.
Constructing the next satellite will require an absurd amount of cash and engineers. Thanks, Second Wave!
With Australia gone, Asia is a wasteland of alien infiltration and ruinous destruction. While our engineering situation has improved a bit, we're on a razor's edge. We can't lose many more countries, and the costs of satellites will keep inflating with each one produced. Tracking down the alien base will be integral to managing the panic situation.
JUNE ENDS
[such was the body bags flow that many a mortuary made great buck off xcom command alone...]
Do try to focus her on healing support and buffs so that she does rarely need to be in the front lines. 
