XCOM Enemy Unknown: Enemy Guide: Mutons

XCOM Enemy Unknown was released in 2012.  It is a remake of the popular 1994 game.  XCOM is a turn based strategy game in which you try to halt an alien invasion.  You choose what you want to research and what you want your engineers to build, as well as managing your troops and relations with all of the countries in the XCOM project until a mission comes up.  Once you accept the mission you get a taste of the real gameplay.

You will drop 4-6 soldiers into an area where they will have one of several objectives, though you will always have to fight aliens, which will develop and you will end up fighting stronger enemies the farther into the game you progress.  Each turn your soldiers get two actions.  One is to move, and then you can move again or fire your weapon, reload, etc.  You will need to move your troops into cover, hopefully flanking the enemy’s position in order to get bonuses to aim and  critical hit chance.

Mutons are tough enemies, especially on higher difficulty levels and after you’re used to fighting sectoids, thin men, and floaters.  Mutons have a lot of health, (which will increase depending on the difficulty level) over twice that of the other aliens you’ve fought, good aim, and most importantly, carry grenades.  This puts them leagues above the other aliens.  They can easily make your troops panic as well.

Mutons travel in groups and will devastate your squad if they catch you off guard.  This makes it even more imperative that you move cautiously.  Usually one Muton will throw a grenade, which will do five damage to usually two of your squad members (unless you’re smart enough and space them out).  The main problem is that it will also destroy cover, and the next Muton will get a clean shot on your soldier for instant death unless you have high level armor or get incredibly lucky.  It will only get harder from that point.

In order to take out Mutons, remember to move cautiously and try to uncover them with your first move, or have them move into your field of view.  If you don’t kill them all in this first turn then they could easily kill one if not several soldiers.  Usually the Mutons will stay grouped together.  This will make them easy pickings if you have a heavy weapons soldier fire a rocket at them.  It will destroy their cover and cause a lot of damage, and it won’t kill them with explosives, meaning that you can still recover weapon fragments.  If you can’t do that, then you’re going to have to try and flank them.  Getting into a gunfight with them can be perilous unless you have high level snipers.  If you think you won’t be able to kill all of them then it can be a good idea to have your sniper shoot one, (from great distance) and then have everyone retreat out of sight and go on overwatch.  If the Mutons follow they get shot up.  If they don’t, then the next turn move an assault unit with lightning reflexes up.  The Mutons will probably be on overwatch, but as long as you keep their approximate positions in mind you should be able to only trigger one overwatch and be fine.  Then have your sniper shoot again.  Repeat this process as many times as you need to.

As long as you’re careful and don’t let Mutons flank you, or let too many of them rush you at the same time, you shouldn’t have too much trouble with them.  Once you start encountering Mutons though, you’re going to want to make sure you can upgrade your weapons as quickly as possible.  Otherwise killing them will become much harder than it needs to be, which will quickly lead to deaths.

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