I finally got to play this.
I would like to say, first this: This game is great, but the abduction ship is annoying.
Secondly, fuck Cryssalids.
Third, I've only lost one soldier, to an outsider because I took an idiot chance and still had shitty armor. Later though, on the abduction ship, I pulled off something... Awesome. See, both my Colonel rank heavies were heavily wounded by some Mutons on a little catwalk with two open spaces next to them. My assault was at the end of the catwalk behind cover, and across from him was my medic. Both of them were mildly injured. My main heavy, the guy from the tutorial mission, was near death and in half cover, the obvious target for the aliens next turn.
Earlier in the mission, my sniper had glitched out, switching her pistol for her sniper rifle incessantly, then not being able to use any skills whatsoever. I ran her outside so she would get ganked, and she was sitting there, full health but useless. Well, not useless. To save my heavy, I ran her up, right next to him, and left her out of cover. Just standing there, facing down three mutons. I had my badass Assault guy kill on muton with his scatter laser, and the medic injured the other.
Alien Activity.
Both mutons fire on the glitched sniper. She 'only' has ten health, compared to 14+ for everyone else. But she takes both muton's fire, and lives. My turn comes, and the injured heavy fires his rocket launcher at the surviving mutons.
None of my men died. Several (Read: ALL) were remanded to the Medbay for several days, but I'd been needing to train up some backup rookies anyway.
Good times.
Also, fuck Cryssalids. Seriously.