He's not fastest doing anything. I'm trying to watch the recording from yesterday and he takes 100x as long as it should just navigating screens, changing soldiers, talking to random fucks on his chat, ugh. Makes you want to go to his house and inject him in the fucking eye with a syringe of fucking cocaine.
Edit: Ok, so I just watched him do 2 missions. The first was a council mission, where he (as most people who play a lot) knew exactly where the aliens would spawn, nothing new there. The second he sat on the roof overwatching and peaking over the edge for like 20 turns, exploiting mind-merge particles to keep track of enemies and waiting for the perfect setup that never came. Grenaded 3 sectoids but the explosion destroyed the cover of the roof's edge and left him exposed, resulting in a wipe.
People who play this slow and defensively have no real grasp of tactics. Waiting for the perfect moment is just rolling the dice every turn, and if you roll too long, eventually you're gonna get snake eyes. This is like, what, his 9th attempt at this Second Wave playthrough? So, basically he's gonna keep rolling til he gets lucky and manages to survive the first 2-3 months? Not impressed.
So, here's the thing, Normal is faceroll, Classic offers some challenge, mostly early/mid game, but does not prepare you for Impossible. The best way to get ready for a successful Impossible Ironman run, is to play Impossible Tinman. Play Impossible and only save at the start of each mission. If you fail, or a soldier dies (or is even wounded, if you want to get really good) then you restart at the beginning of the mission, just like the first mission offers. If you do a whole playthrough like this, your tactics will improve greatly and you'll be ready to try I/I.
Beaglerush's Let's Play videos can offer some decent tips to get you started and are somewhat entertaining, but he's another one who plays a little too defensively. ChristopherOdd (that Quineloe linked) is great to watch for what not to do...unless you were born with a rabbit's foot up your ass.
Calroon, if there's some brilliant tactics buried in that guys vids somewhere, then please, state the name of the vid and the time. Because I see nothing interesting or useful and he is just too damned slow to wade through all that.
Edit #2: Nevermind. I checked his previous 2nd wave run that was successful. Saw he used SHIVS, stopped watching.