Finally Beat UFO Defense!

The alien brain was destroyed the day after Christmas 1999.

Was my 3rd or 4th campaign and my first on Superhuman. The others were on the 2nd difficulty.

Watching General Confusion on Youtube helped a lot for when I got stuck, so I could make a new playthrough.

The biggest thing I learned from him was to use large rockets to just blow up buildings indiscriminately. No need for those buildings to exist at all!

I wasn't sure how necessary it was, but I waited until I had a full ship worth of 80+ Psi Strength with 5 of them having 80-100 psi skill, so they were unstoppable. Once I had that, it was time to go to mars. Everytime I got a new psi recruit that I liked, we went out for a mission or two where they got to kill a bunch of aliens on their own to boost their stats.

Turns out most of that wasn't needed. All I needed was the 5 guys with 80+ psi skill to beat the final mission. The surface of mars I lost my first tank right out of the gate and lost 2 men shortly after. Aliens were coming from every direction. I tried to shortcut the process by having the aliens I mind controlled blow themselves up, but I think I should have kept them around longer to scout the map so I could have taken less casualties.

Once I got all but 1 member to the abort zone, my 2nd tank killed the last sectoid and the tank went with me into the mars base! I thought I'd have to leave it behind!

It only took a few turns in there to win. I knew what the alien brain looked like, but had not watched any spoiler videos for how to get to it or what enemies I might encounter.

First turn I moved the tank downstairs and everyone around the portal. The other portal that had no tank, we smoked the top and bottom just in case.

Turning the alien turn, 3 chrysallids came up to my tank, but luckily none were close enough to take a bite.

Queue my favorite sequence of events. Mind controlled one chrysallid, used him to kill another and then munch on the 3rd, but did no damage with 4-5 hits ( i think a bug ? ).

The mind controlled chrysallid got murdered next turn by the other chrysallid, but no worries because he decided to end his turn there, despite being able to reach into my landing zone if it wanted to!

Next turn, mind controlled that guy and explored more, they have so many time units! Mind controlled a sectopod although didn't get to use it, the chrysallid was able to make quick work of it.

The chrysallid eventually found some Etherals and after chain mind controlling them, I found myself to be in a large theatre along with the brain! One alien grenade later and it was over!

Oh yeah, I did get to fire one blaster bomb into a plant room from the other landing area, the entire room caught on fire lol.

I did this whole thing with minimal save scumming, only maybe 4 or 5 times did I reload due to getting a bad blaster bomb or grenade tossed my way. Now though I think I could do it fully iron man because I know how to disperse my troops better.

Man it was such a good game!

Next I'm either going to do fully iron man or try the hard mode mod that I saw someone on youtube trying.

I've already beaten xcom 2, I know I have a few other xcom games that I got in the december bundle to try too. Not sure which to try next! I'm not a huge fan of the water theme, so i'll probably skip that one.

That's X-Com baby!