Did a lair yesterday and it took me 2.5 hours to finish it (with me taking a break to say WTF lots of times and think how to get out of it alive).
Everything was rolling until I hit a choke-point where there was a Siren. Any troop that would go through there and she would scream (-10WP) and panic them (and the fireworm Chiron shooting at us). My heavy was panicked so no grenades or rockets to make it pay. Assaults were too close so no dash and quick aim to dispose of it. Then a second Siren comes. The biggest problem was the impossibility to have line of sight on them with my snipers.
I concentrated on killing the other aliens with my snipers until the Sirens had no more WP to scream. And once I could go and kill them, 2 more Sirens show up (but this time I could rage burst them into hell). Oh, and after that 2 more (I think they spawned).
I had to use all the tricks I could to get out of this: war cry, rally troops, rage burst, dash, quick aim, (bash on fireworms). I even did a rage burst with the pistol because my sniper had to climb to get line of sight to remove a threat that was going to kill one of my other troops.
Situation was so desperate at times. I feel a sense of accomplishment for having gone through this without a KIA and no save-scumming (had forgot to make a save and wanted to see how badly I would lose).
But … I’m really used to those kind of games and I play on the lowest difficulty. How do you expect a real newbie to get out of this ???