I am doing pretty well in my current campaign, with 4 regions out of 16 liberated from the Alien Advent Administration. However this mission was the worst I've experienced so far in terms of casualties, with 2 soldiers, 5 resistance personnel and many civilians killed. Yet it was the most epic and fun battle at the same time.
The two soldiers below formed a suicide team of spotters, to enable my snipers to complete the objective in the first 3 turns, preventing the situation from being completely unstoppable. I knew going in that it was very unlikely they would survive. They were low rank, but they had excellent stats for their role.
In the latter half of the mission the battle was largely over, but it felt like Aliens (the movie). Chryssalids were everywhere, burrowed underground. A fire team of 5 remaining soldiers had to hunt them down carefully. Every time someone took a wound they had to be rushed to the evac because I had run out of medkits. In the end only 3 soldiers were together hunting down the last Chryssalids. If you don't know what Chryssalids are, they are like the bugs in Starship Troopers, but they quickly multiply by poisoning your soldiers and other civilians, until they die and form cocoons, from which up to three new Chryssalids are born.
Nightmare fuel.
This is why I love XCOM. Moments like having to get one of my snipers to pick up and quickly evacuate their comrade, both of whom have been with me through this campaign, for medical care off the battlefield or they will die, you just don't get moments like this in other games I feel.