Well, I think my first playthrough is about to go down in flames.
This is on Classic Ironman
When I last left off, I had lose every single experienced soldier save a single Sq. Assault and several key nations had just left the council. We'd just researched laser weapons, many nations were in the red for panic, and I had saved and quit out of the beginning of a UFO mission. I felt that was a bit of a tipping point for me. If I lost that, we were pretty much toast. If I won, I thought I might be able to pull through.
Well...we did win that one, but at a high cost. Only a single rookie survived, and heavily injured at that.
But it turned things around for a bit. I sold off every scrap of UFO tech I had to finance a new set of soldiers plus full carapace armor and laser rifles for them all.
For a while, things got better.
We took out two more UFOs, including a pretty large one, with few casualties. We met mutons again, and slaughtered them. We captured one of those UFO Outsider things.
I started to get some semi-experienced troops again. No one really high up, but at least I was using squaddies and corporals instead of just rookies.
Then I had a three bad missions in a row.
First was an abduction at a gas station. Almost no cover (I don't count gas pumps as cover), and we immediately run into a Cyberdisk and Mutons. It got ugly. Floaters showed up and flanked us, the mutons threw grenades around, and I lost all but a single Sq. Heavy who managed to flee. We took out everything but a single Muton, but it just wasn't enough.
That was bad. The next was worse, in a way.
It was a bomb disarm mission. My first. We were doing well with a bunch of rookies a Sq Sniper. It was just thin men and a few floaters, and were were tearing them up with the laser weapons. Well..until I disarmed the bomb and
four more Thin Men dropped out of the sky and murdered everyone.
Then I had another abduction, which I lost because I got cocky. I thought I'd killed everything down to a single Sectoid. I moved in to flank him without being cautious about it, and found another sectoid buddy of his and a group of Floaters. They tore us to shreds before I could regroup.
Had some more successes after that, but the damage was done.
The nail in the coffin was a Terror mission. I didn't even really try it was so bad. We entered near a store. I was immediately attacked by a Cyberdisk and a pair of Chryssalids. The next turn,
another Cyberdisk and two
more Chryssalids showed up.
We took out one Chryssalid, lost an Assault, and bugged out. I had no hope of winning that one.
So now...I have one last bright spot in the campaign before I think it's all going to end. Canada and India are both Red, and the Doom-o-meter is at 90%.
But I just had a group of rookies and a Sq. Sniper take out Mutons, Thin Men, Floaters, and a Cyberdisk without losing a single soldier. Laser weapons and Carapace armor are pretty damn effective, I must say! Even captured a Floater on that mission!
It's 4 days to the Council report, and I think that'll be it. But I've learned a ton and I feel like I've gotten much better at the combat.
My next playthough should go better.