Chris Kluwe’s 10 Rules To Surviving XCOM 2

Hi, everybody!

(Hi, Commander Chris!)

It’s that time of the year again. You know, the time where we all gather 'round our computers, fire up a new XCOM, and 20 minutes later resist the urge to throw our monitor out the window in a frothing ragefit, because somehow your squad managed to miss three overwatch shots from ambush on a Gatekeeper and now it’s in the middle of everyone and there’s tentacles and screaming and why oh god why couldn’t you just hit those 95 percent Overwatch shots I swear...

Ahem. Sorry. Got a little sidetracked there. Anyways, like I did for the last XCOM, I assembled a list of 10 rules which will help you lead your ragtag remnants of humanity to the ultimate victory – saving Earth itself from treacherous alien scum, fiendish human quislings, and Fister McGrundle’s propensity for ill-advised Muton melee combat. I guarantee if you follow these 10 rules* (not actually a guarantee, and I am not liable for any adverse side effects that may occur from following this advice, up to and including swimmer’s toe, lacerated underwear, pernicious ferrets, and flarb), you’ll go from a barroom buried in memorial plaques to a tiptop fighting machine capable of carving its way through a Berserker like a fusion blade on a tender Christmas ham.

Rule 1: Autosave Is Your New Best Friend
XCOM2 has a fantastic autosave function, one that activates at the start of every turn of combat, and will store saves up to three turns back. This can be handy for when you rush into that burning building to secure the VIP, and next turn realize there’s an Andromedon and two Vipers patrolling right on top of you that can now see you no matter where you move. Oh, and their three Stun Lancer friends are waiting just outside to sprint in and beat your operatives into a chunky paste. Because why wouldn’t they be?

Hit the ‘ol escape button, click on the second autosave down, and rethink how you’re going to rescue Dr. Thaddeus Failington before he's forced back to the ADVENT cheese factories.

Rule 2: Stop Being A Savescum, You Scum
After you beat the game once, utilizing hefty amounts of save/reloading to ensure your crack team of deadly assassin commandos never takes even a single point of damage (no doubt due to your brilliant strategery mind), do yourself a favor and start your next game on Ironman. Now, while Ironman can lead to copious amounts of bile and teeth gnashing, due to the ‘no takebacksies’ structure of the game mode, it will also force you to learn things that save/reloading cannot teach you – namely, that your actions have consequences.

This time, when you send all six members of the A-Squad into that burning building and the ensuing counterambush not only kills every last one of them, but also drives Dr. Thaddeus Failington permanently insane via the sheer brutality with which your hapless minions were dismembered/melted/eaten/vaporized, and then you enter the dreaded deathspiral because you never bothered to put together a solid B-Squad to sub in when A-Squad takes some wounds, you will have learned a valuable lesson. No, that lesson (hopefully) isn’t ‘punching drywall can lead to a broken wrist if you hit a stud,’ but rather, ‘take your time and ensure your squad is always in position to support itself,’ and/or ‘have a B-Squad.’

Rule 3: Have A B-Squad
We all have our favorite group of characters. Whether it be Sergeant Herpaderp on the minigun along with his grenade toting buddies, Corporal Facecheck’s squad of combat medic hackers, or Fister McGrundle’s hapless idiocy while swinging a sword at anything that remotely looks like a threat, most of us tend to favor using the same particular squad for every mission. A big reason for this tendency is that, when characters level up, they get abilities to make ensuing missions easier, so naturally you want to keep using them because you have a better chance at beating the ensuing missions. This eventually leads to your barracks consisting of six Captain Badass von Killenstein’s, and twenty-five rookies trying to lick the paint off the interior walls.

Resist this urge, ESPECIALLY if you are playing Ironman. If the A-Squad goes down, and all you have in reserve are raw recruits who think a Sectoid is some sort of sex doll from Japan, your game is toast. Wounds take a ridiculously long time to heal in XCOM2, especially because the game likes to slap that ‘Gravely Wounded’ tag on anything more severe than a chipped nail, so you better make sure you have a backup squad that can step in when the main squad goes down. Because they will go down. Without fail. And the reason is...

Rule 4: There Is Always An Alien Ambush The Last Place You Expect
The aliens of XCOM2 aren’t your parents' aliens. They’re not here to phone home. They’re conniving, cunning, calumnious, and just plain cruel creatures spawned from the devious minds at Firaxis. You might think, “Oh, there’s no way two Archons could be hiding in that tiny little 2x2 fog of war grid behind that lone tree I can’t quite seem to get an angle on, surely I’m okay to advance on the objective,” and in most games, you’d be right.

XCOM2 is not most games.

No matter how diligent you’ve been pushing your forward scouts up, no matter how flawlessly the mission has been going, no matter how close you are to what seems like a completely undefended computer terminal, assume that there are aliens on it, inside it, above it, and in some cases, beneath it in the ground itself. Because there will be. And when you trigger that pod with your last move of the turn, and your carefully honed team of elite murder machines is now caught out in the open with their pants down, that’s when you’ll suddenly realize, yes, two Archons CAN hide in that tiny little 2x2 fog of war grid, and now you’re about to gain an intimate knowledge of what the pointy end of their laserspears can do.

Captain von Killenstein is not going to enjoy his time in the medbay.

Rule 5: The Sooner You Make Contact With Other Resistance Cells, The Better
XCOM2 works slightly different than XCOM in that instead of satellites, you have to spend time (and Intel) making contact with the rest of the Resistance cells scattered about the globe. You will want to do this rapidly, for two reasons. Reason one, is that it gives you more Resources during your monthly supply drop, and cash is king, baby. Without Resources, you can’t afford to expand your base, build fancy new weapons, or hire new recruits, and you’ll never have enough to do everything you want; but the more you can do, the better off you’ll be. You also get random bonuses for each continent that you’ve made full contact with, and these are often very helpful (like building experimental weapons instantly, or getting an extra modification slot on weapons).

Reason two, is that the aliens aren’t just sitting around playing Candy Crush while you try to save the world. They’re busy building their own horrid little doomsday device, the Avatar Project, and a key component of the Avatar Project is their Black Sites.

“What is a Black Site,” you ask?

A Black Site is a red looking building that, if left unattended, will help the aliens complete the Avatar Project in a reduced timeframe, but don’t despair! If you assault a Black Site, and successfully complete whatever objective is assigned to you, you’ll knock out a chunk of the aliens’ progress (the exact amount is indicated by the number of red squares underneath the facility). This is great! Functionally, you can keep the game going indefinitely, as long as you successfully attack a Black Site when the Avatar Project timer is full!

However.

Black Sites can pop up anywhere on the world map, and if they pop up in a region you haven’t made contact with yet, weeeelllllllll...

Yeah. It’s no bueno. So get out there and phone a friend. Phone multiple friends. Hunkering down in Australia isn’t going to work in this game.

Rule 6: Research Magnetic Weaponry As Soon As You Can
Magnetic weaponry takes the place of laser weaponry from XCOM:EU, and unlike my advice for laser weaponry in the last XCOM, you want to grab this upgrade as quickly as possible. It gives your troops a hefty firepower increase, and the difference between maybe one-hitting an ADVENT trooper early-mid game, and always one-hitting an ADVENT trooper is huge. Primarily it’s due to the fact that even though the tooltip says your basic weaponry can potentially one-hit enemies, in practice it never happens, because the game hates you and wants you to suffer with the angst of a thousand Morrisseys.

Get magnets. Learn how they friggin’ work. Your squaddies will thank you.

Rule 7: Knowledge Is Power (Because You’re Invisible)
There is absolutely one ability in the game that you MUST have, and that’s Phantom on a Ranger class squaddie. On the surface, Phantom doesn’t look that gamebreaking, but looks, like Presidential candidates’ hair, can be deceiving.

“Oh, my squaddie doesn’t leave concealment when everyone else does, whoopty doo, won’t he be firing from ambush anyway? What a dumb ability. Imma grab that sword damage instead.”

These are the words of a dumb. Yes, to truly use Phantom to its full potential, it means one of your squaddies will spend most of the mission not shooting, which represents a drop in your overall firepower, but the tradeoff is you get to ambush the enemy the entire map.

See, by not breaking concealment, your Ranger can now scout ahead of the main group, and when a group of enemies is revealed, your Ranger, assuming you don’t run right into their faces, will remain in concealment. This allows you to position the rest of the squad just outside of the enemy field of vision, and then ambush them on the terms of your choosing, with full actions available, instead of stumbling into a pod halfway through your turn and scrambling to salvage the situation.

Even better, it allows you to make the best group makeup in the game, which is five Sharpshooters and a Ranger. Rain long range death from beyond your enemy’s ability to react! Never get into a firefight again! Pretend you’re Mark Wahlberg in Shooter! The opportunities, with Phantom, are endless.

Rule 8: Hit Capslock During The End Of Mission Loading Screen In The Transport
Look, I don’t know what kind of space magic makes it work, okay? Just do it. You’ll thank me.

Rule 9: Grenades Are Your Friends
After the very first mission, make a Flashbang and put it on your Grenadier. Use it liberally. Heck, make another Flashbang and put it on another Grenadier. Now nothing will hit your squaddies. Even better, research Plasma Grenades, make an entire squad of Grenadiers, and go full Apocalypse Now on every level you walk through. Plasma grenade don’t give a f--- about cover. Plasma grenade blows up whatever it wants.

Bonus funtime tip – Grenading a group of enemies standing on a rooftop is not only hilarious, it’s also extremely effective, as they’ll take additional damage from plummeting to the floor below. Remember, gravity always wins!

Rule 10: Don’t Forget To Mod Your Weapons
Weapon mods add a small, but not insignificant bonus effect to the squaddie they’re attached to, ranging from bonus hit chance to extra ammo. Don’t be afraid to use these as soon as you find them – they’ll drop frequently throughout the game, and nothing is more satisfying than equipping a minigun with a stock (missed shots still do 1-3 damage) and superior repeater (15 percent chance to instakill enemy on hit), then using the Saturation Fire ability. Yes, it’s exactly as gross as you think. It slightly makes up for all the unfairness the game piles on you. Slightly.

Rule 10a: As Always, Never Trust The Accuracy Percentage Chart
Oh sure, Corporal Noobtuber, you had a 95 percent hit chance with a 115 percent crit chance on that Archon you were literally standing right next to with your plasma shotgun, but you go ahead and graze it for 3 damage. No, it’s cool, I’m not angry. Why would I be angry? It’s not like that led to the deaths of over half the squad. You do you, buddy. The rest of us will just be over here TRYING TO SAVE THE *** HUMAN RACE YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF RECONSTITUTED GOAT SHARTS IF YOU SET FOOT ON THIS SHIP AGAIN I WILL PERSONALLY EJECT YOU FROM THE AIRLOCK WHILE WE’RE OVER THE ANTARCTIC DO I MAKE MYSELF PERFECTLY CLEAR DO NOT SPEAK I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR YOUR VOICE FOR AT LEAST A MONTH.

Good luck, Commander. Vigilo confido.

Chris "Warcraft" Kluwe is a former Minnesota Vikings punter who wasn't good enough to play for the Oakland Raiders, bass player of Tripping Icarus, author of Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies, and co-author of Prime: A Genesis Series Event.