FE3 Book 1 Low Turns - Chapter 14: Starlord Marth

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Published on October 31, 2015 6:08:12 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh4x8gIP84g

Game:

Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (1994)

Duration: 6:36

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6

Completed in 3 turns (60 total).

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One of the many indoor maps we have to complete during the second half of the game. Unlike some of the earlier indoor maps, we don't clear this one with the help of the Warp staff, considering the boss isn't too far away and Marth now walks 11 squares per turn instead of 7. It is still a challenging map as we have to fell a mamacute boss without access to a Wyrmslayer (and Falchion but that's a given) and while a part of our army is busy ensuring that, the other part needs to break through tough enemies like a hero, a sniper and a generic mamacute to secure access to a 2nd Warp staff (the first one broke in the previous map) and some other nifty but less essential treasures.

I learned to hate the amount of resetting for favourable RNG outcomes this map took. Firstly, one of the bishops in the boss room actually carries a Reserve staff, recovering everyone's HP from range (basically Fortify with a different name). It's not that we need 10 allies to return to HP every turn in the maps to come or anything like that, but Reblow / Physic is about to break after seeing some very necessary use, so another long-range staff is really needed at this point, and the fact that it's an updated version is only welcome.

Anyway, the issue with killing the Reserve bishop is that he's standing right next to another bishop, with Reblow, and since you can't really reliably ORKO them without a really competent bow user (which Kashim and Jeorge fail to fully satisfy), we rely on the bishops "forgetting" to heal each other on the 1st turn's enemy phase, allowing Kashim to use his absurd strength growths to finish off said bishop . With one of the bishops gone, it's only a matter of time (=Jeorge + Kashim ganging up on the second bishop) until they're both dead on turn 3, giving us the Reserve staff we wanted as well as the largely unnecessary Member Card for secret shop access.

Kashim does get at least two kills while hunting for bishops (he sometimes gets more if Jeorge crits one early, attracting a sniper and possibly also some archer reinforcements, but this sometimes leads to Kashim's death since he's only got 4 defence, which doesn't help his odds of surviving all these attacks), but we want him to gain even more exp, so I position Abel and him in such a way that the javelin armour knights both suicide on Kashim's steel bow, giving him extra 60 or so exp (you gotta love how kill exp isn't diminished - neither for overlevelled units, nor for promoted ones).

The bosskill is slightly luck-reliant but Marth and Abel attacking him with silver swords on turn 2 have very good chances of felling the dragon. The long-range dark mage just nearby seems dangerous, but hasn't even tried to kill weakened Marth in spite of having plenty of movement range to do so.

Meanwhile, the portion of the army heading west has more trouble with the enemies there. The sniper is a tricky enemy type due to their capacity to crit our units, as well as high speed and attack, but we don't really need to kill the one here, as long as he stays out of our way and lets us kill the thieves that opened Orion Bolt / Warp chests. The hero, however, needs to go; otherwise, we fail to move our most mobile unit ahead and are left unable to retrieve the treasure on the last turn. Two big problems arise here - one is actually getting rid of the hero, which is a daunting task. Chainy copies Marth on the first turn to be able to double the hero with a Killing Edge for unreliable damage output that is supposed to take the hero out with a crit. Wielding the silver sword for more raw attack weighs Chainy-Marth down to the extent he stops doubling. So this is yet another luck-reliant bit in this strategy.

But our worries aren't summed up yet. On turn 2 enemy phase, the transformed enemy mamacute will rush to where our party has been breaking the human walls in the way of our treasures, threatening the units in range with 20 damage ignoring defences. The unit who will ALWAYS be in range is the one unit who defeated the aforementioned hero, and that's our 18 HP Chainy, lacking 3 points of HP necessary to survive the dragon's fiery breath. Since Marth that Chainy copied had good dodge potential, he'll face an exact coin flip chance of getting OHKO'd - hardly something we want the success of our strategy to depend on so late into this strategy. Chainy either dies and we have to restart, or he dodges the breath and we can easily seize on turn 3 with all the essential objectives satisfied.

It's not until many, many attempts in that this is successfully carried out. I also worry about other "little" things such as Kashim proccing a point of Wlv on the way, something we need to start using Partia for damage (and double experience) very soon.

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