This thread is for you to share your experiences, your best/greatest XCOM moment that was simply awesome.

It could mean anything, to taking down your first UFO to clearing a mission with 0 casualties to even taking down the Uber Ethereal on the Temple Ship.

What is your best XCOM Moment that made you pump your fist in the air and roar in triumph?

It was back in my second game of Enemy Unknown, I had only one Colonel and that was my Sniper who had Squad-sight, gunslinger, executioner and double tap. It was a UFO mission that had, unfortunately, had the first appearance of the Muton Berzerker. Three of my lesser men were stuck inside with him and neither my Sniper or the Heavy that was with him could get in and cover them.

So what did I do? I took the free aiming fire rocket, blew a hole in the side of the UFO revealing the big red alien so that my Colonel could headshot his ass after tapping him once already.

I lost a some resources sure, but all of my men made it out alive - we had only laser weapons and were about to get carapace armor.

And... later I learned that Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw had a similar experience that he spent the end of his XCOM review rambling about... weird.

But still, best moment ever in any XCOM Play-through I've done.

My biggest moment? Hmm, it'd have to be when I solo'd a terror mission with the only MEC I had at the time.

For the first couple of turns, he wouldn't land a single hit, but would be smacked down. The minute a Chryssalid showed, though? Dear lord the carnage. Ran through the mission with 3 HP, killed everything in one shot, and didn't get hit once after that and never missed a shot. As a side bonus, I somehow only lost one civilian.

I couldn't close my mouth, that's how shocked I was.

My favourite moment remains the first time I completed the game.

I had walked my team through the final mission slowly and carefully, ready for anything as it came, making sure to set up my snipers for devastating shots long before I managed to actually alert anything to my presence. Eventually I finally came to the boss's room...

My assault was devastating. My Volunteer blitzed up to one of the Ethereals and mind controlled it; the other fell to concentrated fire. The ethereal I had mind-controlled then mind-controlled one of the Muton Elites in turn, and the second Muton had an assault appear about two squares away and unleash a point-blank shotgun blast - didn't kill it, but it would have been killed if it moved a single space since it was within his range...

And then, when I thought I'd gone through my entire team, I find out that I actually had one more sniper who hadn't moved.

Sitting all the way back outside the door of the room, behind cover.

With a perfectly clear line of sight on the Uber Ethereal.

Headshot=>Critical=>Doubletap - the final boss went down in two shots, one turn, from a character that I'd forgotten was even there. All of my preparation and dismantling of his minions was for nothing.

It was glorious.

I think they've updated the final map in EW so you can't do that anymore, though...

In EW, the two sectopods you have to fight in the final map were a fun moment too - I had a character with memetic skin get a bead on them, then rained down a bunch of proximity mines from a MEC before taking the sniper shot. The sniper fired, they immediately freaked out and tried to charge, and ate a series of explosions - only to continue to have absolutely no idea where I was, and I dismantled them without them getting a single shot off. Satisfying.

Not exactly an ass kicking moment. I'm on the Temple Ship screwing around on an easy difficulty playthrough. I decided to field a mostly mechanized squad onto that mission (EU so the volunteer and five alloy SHIVs). I got to the final chamber without taking a hit and I had all the SHIVs surrounding the volunteer, turning him into a mini-fortress. Until then, I hadn't realized that SHIV's technically have 0 will, and Etheral psi attacks take into account the defender's will. Rift killed five 22 HP SHIVs in one hit.

Mistakes were made.

My first run through Enemy Within. I was playing on Hardened Ironman mode and XCOM HQ was being attacked. Except I de-equipped everything from top six soldiers before the attack started. So I had to go through the entire mission with regular assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and frag grenades against mechtoids and berzerkers and cyberdisks--pretty much everything except ethereals.

Somehow I succeeded.

Was training rookies on a routine Large Scout crash site. Shot goes wild, but blows up the parked semitruck behind it. Which aparently 3 x-rays were hiding behind. 4 kills on a squaddie and mission complete. Just another day in xcom.

Long War mod. I'm at the command deck of an Abductor (last room in the back), and scan to see a cyberdisc and drones down there. This sucks, because the angle makes it very hard to hit it from up here and it wont move if activated.

I overwatch the whole squad up top hoping it moves up to see what opened the door.

It does, someone yells "go loud", and because all the fliers flew up at once I get to see 7 simultaneous reaction shots on like 4 targets. It looked awesome.

My best X-COM moment was back in UFO Defense. I had gotten several new recruits. Among them was one guy, he had the lowest possible starting Health, TUs, and Aim, but he came with maxed out Reactions and Bravery so I decided to keep him. The end of the previous month had revealed him to have a Psi Strength of 100, which was the cap. So I decided to see just how powerful that much Psi could be. I sent him solo into a mission against an Ethereal Supply Ship. All he had was a Flying suit, a Laser Pistol, and as many Psi Amps as possible. He proceeded to Mind Control every Ethereal he found, make them disarm and tossing them an Amp, which they would then find more Ethereals and either Mind Control them or I would have him do it. The guy proved completely immune to Psi attack of any kind, and collected every single one of them making them march into the Avenger, where he trained his piss poor aim by constantly taking shots at the now completely powerless Ethereals. The most they could do was mind control or panic one of their own that was already under his power. None of them had a weapon anymore.

After several more missions where I sent this guy in alone, he eventually maxed out his TUs and Aim, which combined with his stupid powerful Psi made him a one man army. I even sent him into a terror mission alone against Chryssalids. (Flying armor bitches!) Unless I deliberately tried he just couldn't lose. Eventually it came time for the final mission, so I decided to go for broke with him. Pulled a Duke Nukem and sent him alone to Mars. He actually made it all the way to the final part, into the Brain's chamber...

There the story takes a sad note, because an Ethereal I didn't find earlier happened to have a Blaster Launcher, and it sent a warhead straight into the back of his head, killing the would be super soldier... However his story has a silver lining. Because he was standing close enough to the Brain, the same blast that killed him also took it out too. And thus the war was won, and I completed my first Superhuman playthrough.

One of my best moments involved one of my many attempts to capture a Muton; the whole squad whitteled him down to 1 HP with pistols, and everyone was out of actions except the rookie with the arc thrower, so the Muton would have his pick of flanked targets the next turn. So my only option was to march that rookie up there and zap him. 90% chance, so of course...stun failed. The next turn, the Muton IMEDIATELY shoots poor Isidoro Garza right in the face, point blank, crits (of course) and he goes down like a sack of potatoes. The Muton got shot to bits the next turn, but I was still saddened that one of my most promising rookies had to die in such a gruesome manner.

The good part was, Garza actually SURVIVED in critical condition, and once stabilized, not only did he survive the mission, but was promoted to assault. Justly deserved, I'd say. Even with the Will loss, I always made sure to bring him on future missions just so when the rookies started ☺☺☺☺☺ing he could go, "You think this is bad? At least you didn't get SHOT IN THE FACE by a Muton!"
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On my first Site Recon of the Long War, I encountered every single patrol of Chryssalids on the map.

On the second turn.
9+ Chryssalids all bearing down on me. And I -survived- it with creative tactics like running like a little girl from the fight and saturating the area with explosives.

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I'm just about to do Site Recon. Three Engineers, two Scouts, one Assault, one Infantry: all of them rolling with shotguns and Tac Vests. Let's do this.

One of my all-time favorite moments in EU was also the unfortunate end of that particular impossible ironman run.
I'd just come off of an abduction mission with only a hover shiv surviving and winning the mission. It was promptly named the little shiv that could. And then, terror mission. I had been reduced to only three shivs, a regular, an alloy and the little shiv that could and no troopers at all.
The mission started off awesome, the shivs just cut through the crysalids. But then, 2 sectopods! The two grounded shivs got blown up after doing a little damage to one sectopod but the pods missed the hover shiv. The little shiv that could then killed one of sectopods and every other alien left.
The last sectopod was stuck on a balcony and the little shiv that could spent something like ten rounds playing cat and mouse trading shots with the pod and slowly getting shot up.
And then the inevitable, a civilian somehow got triggered and ran into the sights of the sectopod. The little shiv that could valiantly charged to try and save the civilian, and missed the shot would likely have killed the pod. On its turn, the sectopod casually wiped out the civilian and then the poor brave shiv.
With no troopers available for at least a week and no credits to buy more that game imploded. But my kids that were watching that last fight still talk about the little shiv that could and they always build and use the hover shiv when they play.

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I had a site recon mission that I had mostly low level troopers and rookies on so I wound up using shotguns, sawed off shotguns and grenades on everyone. I think it may have been one of my most successful runs of that mission I've had.

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Chrysalids wih Lightning Reflexes are scary. Fuck Chrysalids with Lightning Reflexes.