419 attempts to ironman(ish) legend victory

I finished my first legend victory last night. I'll call it ironman"ish" because although I play ironman I got sick of all the abandoned campaigns in the first month, so this game - like the last 30 or so campaigns started from a 1 May save file.

From my experience I have to say to anyone struggling - the inverse difficulty curve is real. I am still only getting about 3/10 flawless gatecrashers and sometime as many as 10-15 injury ridden gatecrasher streaks. That's after 330 hours of X2 and 1500 of long war.

Hang in there it gets better.

I believe that if you can make it to July, you are probably going to win the campaign. I certainly found that as soon as you have magnetic weapons and predator armour the game changes for the good.

What did I learn?

• It's hard, and it's harder in the beginning than the middle or end.

• GTS + AWC is probably the strongest start. Surf the avatar countdown timer until you get power and resistance comms.

• Whatever you do, if you're coming from commander make sure you learn exactly what the different ammo types do / different grenades. If you don't know what effects an Archon, don't gamble with an emp grenade "because it should" - instead spend a bit of time reading the wiki.

• Gunslingers with the right ammo and face-off are unbelievable.

• The shadow chamber is incredibly important in Legend, where knowing how many enemies you have to deal with can be the difference for rushing and making an objective or getting killed by unfounded optimism. After squad size 2 this is the best tactical upgrade there is.

• Skip very difficult missions if they do not allow you the option to extract on your own terms (e.g. extract VIP). Losing a squad is not worth it. Likewise dont be scared to evacuate from a retaliation or a supply raid if its going badly. I recovered from 4/5 skipped abandoned missions. You're not going to recover from a couple of squad wipes.

I played most of the game with 2 grenadiers per mission, but took a final squad of 2 psi, 2 gunslingers with long watch, face-off, (1 serial, 1 fanfire), 1 medic specialist (but with capacitor discharge) and 1 ranger (run and gun, although I used concealment for most of the soldiers up to the final mission). It was a combo that worked well and I'd taken 3HP damage by the time the final avatar fell. (But hey, a dominated gatekeeper and a couple of psi zombies always helps)

My favourite moment in the campaign was when a void rift + 2 gunslingers took out 6 mechs and an avatar in 1 turn.

For those of you about to give up / pack it in in frustration - hang in there. And maybe try starting from a mid game save? Grinding gatecrashers is not fun.