FE11 H5 No Forge & No Warp LTC - Chapter 4: Battle in the Lea
30Completed in 6 turns (23 total).
Challenge playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSv8zSDR9c1qU6v0rfjC2TFzed9xD6hI
The map when forging becomes available... but not to us. Normally, you'd forge your Wing Spear here, letting Shiida OHKO cavs with ease and possibly some armours too, depending on the strength of the forge. It makes a pretty big difference in terms of the support Shiida requires in order to function - she has to take a counter when engaging a cav, unless somebody chips in, and her Wing Spear uses are depleted much faster, too.
There's another restriction placed on us in this map, and that's Merrick's recruitment being skipped entirely. The village Marth needs to visit for his recruitment would cost only one turn, but what we're playing here is a low-turns run. The short-term effect is that Marth needs to rush faster for the gate for a 6-turn clear, putting himself and his allies under great risk on the penultimate turn. The long-term side effect is that we lose a decent mage growth unit, his Excalibur tome (also favoured by Wendell and Boah) but also, perhaps most importantly, Wendell, one of the game's best characters. Merrick could recruit Wendell without any turn penalties incurred; however, his absence means Wendell costs turns for Marth to recruit as well.
At the start, I check if a cav hasn't rolled up Str. Him doing so hurts Shiida to the point where Matthis, one of the game's many useless units, can finish her off next turn. Truly a humiliating defeat we want to avoid at all costs.
The initial cav wave is faced by Jagen and Shiida on enemy phase. Jagen going Dracoknight and holding an axe causes the enemies to target Shiida in spite of having Jagen having critically low luck, which the AI tries to exploit whenever it can 3HKO with a crit. Shiida will delete one of the five cavs completely, while Jagen's chip is cute at best (a silver lance equipped will cause the cavs to ignore Shiida entirely).
It's now time to take on the remaining cavs, who are bulky and fast. Shiida generally wants somebody to chip one of the cavs before she can Wing Spear KO without taking a deadly counter. Another cav weakened by Jagen can go down to a team effort featuring 3 more units, a good kill to feed Barst. This leaves us with Matthis and another lance cav, both unhurt. Matthis is a character we can recruit, so his stats are way poorer than H5 ones; he's no threat. The other one is a different matter; because Jagen is parking in front of the bridge to stop the 2 archers from attacking my units on the subsequent enemy phase, the others have to deal with him. I have to rely on Nabarl critting this cav, exploiting Nabarl's role of a 9 mov Killing Edge, however leaving the cav alive due to insufficient strength. I save just before Abel is about to grab the kill and level up, Abel being one of the most treasured allies on this run with his appropriate class and opportunities to grow, making him a slower but bulkier Dracoknight eventually.
Castor, using the save point very unfortunately placed in the east, about to get swarmed by four enemy Fighters, is my first sacrifice on this map. His job is to ensure the next level-ups are decent enough, and I continue each attempt when I see +str/spd on Abel. Ogma is also separated from the party, distracting the Hunter that's about to threaten the party from the north. He can usually take down the Hunter without using up vulneraries and has chances to self-improve a tiny bit on the other enemies. Ogma is almost certainly going to be one of the sacrifices eventually, even though he'd make a pretty okay Bow Knight (but imho not a Hero due to a lack of axe rank). That's fine; we'll have Wolf, Sedgar and Horace as mobile bow options later on in addition to more competent promoted snipers amongst Class A units.
The next turn is a crucial one. The army throws themselves at the knight and two archers guarding the bridge while getting into the two horsemen's range. Marth faces the risk of incurring damage, but that's fine, because even in range of the horsemen, the AI will prioritise killing lower defence targets it can kill instead! Mage Wrys and Dark Mage Cord are sacked here, having added invaluable chip prior (Wrys even stole Abel's kill due to a javelin miss). With all important units surviving enemy phase, we employ three riverwalking units, including two Pirates, to surround the horsemen and neutralise them even if we whiff our attacks and fail to kill them.
The bosskill is a surprisingly reliable one this time. Jagen reaches the boss early and waits to counter with silver lance on EP. A single javelin attack at range will enable Shiida to KO with Wing Spear after the strength she's proc'd - Sheeda's str procs are an (insufficient) compensation for her lack of forge access. This is a great chance to reset for a good level - I don't stop until I get str as well as either hp or def; her bulk is becoming a problem...
Other Videos By MoogleBoss
Other Statistics
Counter-Strike: Source Statistics For MoogleBoss
Currently, MoogleBoss has 44,026 views for Counter-Strike: Source across 39 videos. His channel currently has around 6 hours worth of content for Counter-Strike: Source, or 2.31% of the total watchable video on MoogleBoss's YouTube channel.