Taking a quick break from Classic Ironman to bring you this special announcement:
If you thought this game would be "lol casual crowd failgame", I suggest you reconsider.
The Situation: Rescue a VIP and escort him back to the Skyranger.
The Scene: Open street dividing two sidewalks.
The Squad: One of each; Heavy, Assault, Support, and Sniper. The sniper was a full sergeant, heavy and assault were corporals, the support a newly-minted squaddie.
The Story: Mission started easily enough. Had a few minor scares (thin men jumping out where they could flank me), but nothing I couldn't handle. The assault started making his way towards the VIP while the rest provided covering and overwatch fire on the aliens on the other side of the street.
Then the squaddie died. Took a crit from a sectoid plasma pistol behind half-cover and died instantly. A shame, but I could deal with that. He wasn't performing all that well anyway. Nobody panicked, and the fighting continued.
Assault rescued the VIP. Cue thin men jumping out nearby and going into overwatch. Well, fine. The assault drew the enemy fire and managed to avoid any damage, allowing the VIP to follow along.
Anyway, things were going well until the squad, VIP in tow, were just a little bit away from the extraction zone. I expected pursuit, so I set my heavy into overwatch and had my sniper reload.
Two thin men jumped in out of nowhere. One flanking my heavy, who managed to miss from two squares away. One flanking my assault. And then a third (which had been chasing the VIP down the street) jumped up and began suppressing my assault.
The heavy took down his thin man with a second point-blank shot (which had 96% accuracy, mind). The sniper fired a shot at the second thin man at 87% accuracy...and missed. VIP tried to make a run for it and got shot on overwatch (stupid mistake, I was trying to finish the mission before any more of my guys got killed). Heavy, on his last shot before reloading, scored a nice hit at 65% odds on the flanking thin man, killing it. Sniper threw a grenade at the suppressing thin man...which did no damage at all. Assault did a Run n Gun on the final thin man, killing it while barely avoiding death himself.
Mission Failure. And this was maybe the fifth mission.
ETA: Oh, and Mexico is already at maximum panic and is on the verge of leaving the Council. Fun times.