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Worth: 100G

Description: Beat the game in Ironman mode on Classic or Impossible difficulty.

How to Earn: The description of the achievement is somewhat misleading, you can only earn this achievement by playing Ironman Classic or Ironman Impossible. You do not get this achievement by finishing on vanilla Impossible.

Ironman mode means you only get 1 save slot. The game automatically overwrites your file. Anything you do is supposedly permanent. However, this can be circumvented by keeping a copy of your ironman save file on a memory stick or on cloud storage. Moreover, you can dashboard during your turn or the alien's turn to revert to the beginning of your turn.
Eg;
1) your turn starts
2) you move your guys. You end your turn
3) alien's turn starts, he kills your favorite guy.
4) dashboard before the alien's turn ends
5) when you reload the game, you'll start back at step 1)

Thief44's tip- you can sign out of live instead of dashboarding in step 4). This makes the process faster.

You can probably win this achievement without dashboarding, but it does make it easier. Moreover, this game has glitches. For example, the last mission has a series of locked doors that are unlocked only if you've killed all the aliens in the current room. I had one game where the aliens never spawned and I was glitched. Thankfully I had a previous save.

I did this achievement on Classic Ironman and it was quite easy compared to vanilla Impossible; however, I personally think Impossible Ironman is undo-able. If you've somehow finished Ironman Impossible, then you are a XCom God.

If you've read my guide for vanilla Impossible, I basically followed the same script for this Ironman playthrough, although there are some key differences which I've noted below.

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Money-wise, the difficulty is similar to Impossible in that you are always broke! But here's a trick to get rich quick. Pick the tutorial option in Classic Ironman, pick North America and you will start rich. Starting with the tutorial makes this achievement a joke.

You should end the first month with around 800$, research skeleton armor and outfit your guys ASAP to make this run a breeze. Then skip to plasma and ghost armor to destroy everything.

------Ironman Battle Strategy-------------

To survive in Ironman, you must play cautiously.
Most important tip: ALWAYS KEEP YOUR GUYS OUT OF SIGHT.

Here's how I killed the maps without getting shot once. Using this strat, I rarely had to resort to dashboard. My squad usually has at least 2 heavies (with shredder rockets) and 2 snipers (squadview). Support is useless, I only use the support class to stun aliens due to their +3 movement.
1) First, keep your entire squad safely hidden, and build a nice kill zone that everyone can shoot at. Usually someplace that you can funnel enemies into.
2) Now we use someone to scout (I recommend you get 1 assault with lightning reflex). Use the scout's first turn to scout to the edge of his movement range, then switch to your snipers and kill everything that your scout found.
3) Now use your scout's second turn to return to his safe hiding spot with the rest of your group.
4) Put any unused members on watch (you will be spamming Y a lot).
5) If your snipers didn't kill all the aliens, the aliens will try to chase down your scout... and directly into your well placed killzone that you constructed in step 1. If there are too many enemies or if they are behind cover, use your heavies' rockets. Sometimes the aliens take 2-3 turns before they chase you down. Just spam Y (to put your units on overwatch).
6) once you've killed everything and you feel safe enough to move on, have your scout find a new killzone, and move your squad to your new killzone while your snipers keep watch. Always have your snipers move last, and never move your squad from your nice safe killzone if your snipers have used up their turn. And of course, dashboard if you've screwed up.

I have to warn you that the game is kinda glitch and will sometimes spawn enemies directly on to your group. Once a muton spawned right behind my sniper and killed my guy in 1 shot.

Good luck or get the dashboard button ready!