The Scene: Lynne, Yoshika, Perrine, and Barkhorn-Hartmann Mk II are on a "destroy the alien gizmo" mission. The AO is in a ruined city, so there are zombies all over the damn place, of course, but it doesn't have "The Horde" SITREP active, so there are ADVENT goons too. They've just reached the building that has the gizmo in it and one of them has sighted said gizmo, triggering Bradford's usual voiceover about how the objective is in sight and would I mind terribly having our soldiers destroy it, because Bradford knows I'm still recovering from a severe head injury and I need to be reminded of these things a lot.

Anyway.

The only ADVENT operative still "alive" is the MEC, which is temporarily on our side thanks to the fact that I accidentally gave Yoshika Haywire Protocol instead of Field Medic when she was promoted to sergeant. Oops. I've sent Barkhorn Minor ahead to beam cannon up the gadget, but she can't quite get an angle on it this turn; it's in a warehouse surrounded by boxes and crap, so the sightlines are shit, and she can't blow it up because as we all know zombies are attracted to explosions...

... but when I move her into position to blast it next turn, the Chosen Hunter appears.

Normally this isn't a big deal in the turn when it actually happens, or indeed for several turns thereafter, because he usually shows up as soon as the squad breaks concealment and he appears all the way at the back of the map, so it takes him a couple-three turns to reach a location where he can be a problem, even with his cheaty movement rules. This time, though, he's shown up at the very end, after we've killed or controlled all the ADVENT forces in play, and yeah, he's ported in at the back of the map, but we're at the back of the map too, or at least Chris is. The others are all wildly out of position to deal with something like this; the only one who can actually see him is Chris, and she's out of moves, as is Ursula, as is Perrine.

Yoshika and Lynne each have a move left, but Yoshika isn't in anything like a useful position, so that's of no use. And Lynne... well, Lynne has been having no luck this mission. I mean, none. She's missed pretty much everything she's shot at except a couple of 100% gimme Lost headshots. Earlier in the mission she donked a 95% shot on the ADVENT Officer leading the last patrol into the shrubbery. Ursula had to blast him instead (prompting Bradford to whine yet again that we really need to skulljack one of these guys, but fuck that, I'm not calling a Codex down on my head on purpose in the middle of a Lost mission).

Just before moving Chris into what was apparently trigger range of the Hunter spawn, I had gotten so frustrated with Lynne not making good on the sniper's perch I'd found her up on the fire escape that I moved her down into the container yard out front of the warehouse where the target gizmo is, hoping to at least get her some pistol shots at the last zombie swarm if Perrine didn't manage to kill them all, but then Perrine did manage to kill them all.

From where I ended up putting her, the game reports that Lynne does have line of fire on the Hunter, but only through Squadsight (the Sharpshooter innate that gives them the ability to shoot at anything a teammate can see if they have LOS on it, even if it's technically outside their own view range). Squadsight only works for the sniper rifle, though, and the sniper rifle takes both actions to fire. Having moved once, Lynne could only shoot at him with her pistol, and he's out of range. Way out of range, like "all the way on the other side of a freight yard and behind the back wall of the building Lynne is facing the front of" out of range. She knows he's there because Chris is reporting his position, but she can't technically see him.

(I choose to RP the "Squadsight only works for the rifle" distinction as that she could see him through the telesight if a squadmate told her where to look. It's the only way the LOS rules make even a token amount of sense. But anyway.)

So. Perrine and Ursula are out, Chris is out and she's beached within about 10 squares of the Hunter who's just arrived. Yoshika is in a corner where she can't do anyone any good, except possibly by putting Aid Protocol (a Specialist Gremlin ability that gives the targeted friendly a defense boost) on her. And Lynne has technical LOF on the Hunter but can't shoot at him because she moved.

But, well, you know what's coming next, right? Lynne and Yoshika are bestest pals 4ever. Yoshika can give Lynne her remaining action, at which point, adding it to the one she still has, Lynne has two and can fire her sniper rifle at the Hunter.

Of course, he's miles away and in cover, there's a penalty for Squadsight shots on top of the normal penalties for range and cover, and if you miss he has a power whereby that somehow gives him more hit points(?!). The game says Lynne has a 27% chance to hit him, and her rifle won't do enough in one hit to drop him, so Chris is probably still screwed even if she does.

There's another sniper skill called Deadeye that ups the Sharpshooter's base damage by 50% while lowering to-hit chance by 25%. That seems like a daft thing to apply to a 27% hit chance, until you see that it's 25% of whatever your present to-hit chance is, which—weirdly—makes it a proportionally better bet to try when your base chance of hitting isn't very good anyway. With it turned on, Lynne's chance to hit the Hunter from all the way downtown is 20%.

Lynne, let me just reiterate, hasn't been hitting anything all day.

Oh well, what the hell, it's usually the green wire. Mentally composing a telegram to Trude (because the hell I'm going to tell her I got her kid sister killed or captured to her face), I tell Lynne to go ahead and take the shot, because there is literally nothing else anyone can do now anyway.

Yoshika must give really effective pep talks, is all I'm saying, because the group of status boxes that appeared over the Hunter's head when Lynne took that shot was as glorious a sight as early morning on the moons of Saturn:

DEADEYE

★ CRITICAL

18

I've had some pretty satisfying Hunter kills in my campaigns—I've mentioned on the Games board that twice now, DJ has Executed him with a Repeater-equipped beam cannon on his boss-fight mission, and both of those times Rei has ushered him to the Final Death with a casual overwatch shot when he respawned. This was nothing as dramatic as that in the overall scheme of things, just a temporary takedown on a street mission—but I ask you, was that not the most Lynette Bishop possible thing at that moment? At the end of a string of shitty luck, after a pep talk from Yoshika, when everybody else has got nothin', she clutches the shot from halfway across town and blows the fool's god damn head clean off.* Full health to minus three (if they reckoned it that way) before he can do so much as move from where he came to rest after that free run-to-cover all aliens get when they first activate.

And let me tell you, I'm playing this run on a harder difficulty level; if he had had the chance to do anything, with the squad all scattered and tapped out like that, it would have been something bad. That was the second time this particular version of XCOM has fought him, and the first one was a shambles. Nobody died, but Mio spent a good long time on the DL and Hattori had nightmares for days. (Literally, I had to send her to the Infirmary for like a week to get the Chosen-o-phobia beaten out of her. At least I assume that's how they do psychotherapy in the Imperial Fusō Navy. Poor Hattori.)

So, uh, nice job, Lynne! Take the rest of the day off. You and Yoshika should probably go to that one room we've cleared all the alien junk out of but not actually built anything in yet and, uh, do some stuff the game engine isn't configured to account for. You've earned it!

--G.
* not literally, he's not animated to do that
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.