This was a fun an educational thread to read. It was interesting how you seemed to manage reasonably well by concentrating on improving your first base instead of using the money to build 2nd/3rd base and then have no money for improvements. You apparently don't need to be able to deal with all the missions across the globe to get a good score and progress.
I was impressed at how much you bothered to do training with reactions, throwing, etc. and it made me curious to try to do the same. Though how much this is actually worth the time if your agents were to die more in ironman mode is another question. Though I agree with your earlier comment in this thread that reactions is actually important if you want to survive better in ironman (and reactions gives a huge bonus for example with BO auto-sniper rifle) and throwing accuracy is helpful if you actually used grenades which you by self-handicap don't so (I suppose grenades would be one way to better survive against certain spotter/sniper enemies). Obviously this was not close to ironman, given about 30 reloads in this early game where you had barely done any really challenging missions yet (such as, at early game, forward bases, parties and HQs). This certainly caused me a desire to try to restart already with an ironman mode and play better than my current SH save-scum campaign, but this would be a death sentence because I don't have a decent idea of the game except for the first year or so. But I have always liked best the early-ish game phases when you are developing, instead of late game where (at least with vanilla and many mods) you are almost an immortal already if you play it safe.
