TAS - FE9 - Maniac Mode - WIP 6 (Ch. 18)
13The chapter where Maniac mode starts to kick in. Compared to Hard mode, there are almost double the number of enemies, most notably 6 siege tome users instead of 3. The generals are also annoying with their high defense, they were manipulated at the end of chapter 17-4 to have lower than average stats, allowing Marcia to OHKO 5 of them, while the high level one could be ORKO with only 1 crit instead of 2.
Ideally you would want for Marcia to vantage crit everyone, but the odds of doing it during the enemy phase decrease exponentially with the number of enemies she faces, so I had to make compromises between the time wasted on "extra" attacks and the time it would take to burn RNs to get a better outcome. I alleviated some of this burden by purposely breaking some of my javelins once all the 1-2 range enemies were dead, allowing Marcia/Titania to finish the rest with the forged slim lance. Speaking of forges, I got a brand new max Mt javelin at the base, but despite that I only had a few uses left at the end of the chapter due to the sheer quantity of enemies I had to kill with it.
The siege tome users are not stationary and it's almost impossible to prevent them from attacking at least once, but I managed to bait them all to be in range of Marcia/Titania after that first attack. The boss has Nihil, preventing Marcia from using Vantage in the enemy phase against him. I could face him anyway, but it was slightly faster to spend an extra turn rather than to watch his ~5s attack animation. It also allowed me to more easily manipulate the paladins reinforcement stats near the starting position, as Muarim and Tanith were my two best units available apart from Ike, and it's unlikely for one of them to be able to ORKO one of the paladin, while Ike has no issue with his Regal sword.