TAS - FE9 - Maniac Mode - WIP 8 (Ch. 23 & 24)
8As you would expect, the great bridge wasn't a piece of cake to cross for Marcia, especially when carrying Ike and without the Full Guard. Before even thinking of to crossing it alive, she must first make sure that the path is open after each enemy phase, which is easier said than done. I went for a Reyson strat to spend one less turn on the map, which also allows Marcia to end her turns next to a barricade, ensuring she will not be blocked by 1-range enemies, while there is only one 2-range mage that she must kill, which is why I setup one of my forge Javelin to have only 1 use left, so she didn't waste time attacking the other enemies. Keeping a weapon to proc Guard instead of double dodging may have been good, but she can't really proc it every time with only 13 SKL while carrying Ike.
I had to kill the first enemy with Sonic Sword!Ike as I couldn't get him in 1-range without another deployment, which I didn't want to because there isn't any good place to hide and Tanith is my only unit besides Marcia who can carry someone and not be doubled by the warriors. For the Ike drop, I thought I would have to rely on the NPCs or some Ike crit to open a path to the boss, but with this drop setup the enemies somehow left a path open without any fighting on my side. I forged a max Mt/Crit Silver Lance to OHKO the boss, as I will need it later on anyway.
For chapter 24, I tried different strategies as the most optimal one wasn't obvious. The fastest one was to solo with Marcia and Ike, as the time saved from having a very limited enemy phase on the first turn is just too big compared to my other options. The downside was that Marcia was a sitting duck for the ballistas, and I had to manipulate their biorythm so that they "only" had ~90% accuracy against her, as opposed to 100%, as I needed to dodge one of their 3 attacks. It was very important to kill the paladin on turn 2 instead of healing (his stats were also manipulated, as there is only a ~50% chance he is weak enough to be ORKO by Marcia), else one of the wyvern lord would not take his space, leading to a bunch of paladins attacking Marcia and wasting time afterwards, as well as having a serious chance to hit and kill Marcia.
Now the elephant in the room, the NPCs. They are a big time waster and I needed to make it as little as possible, which is why a lot of them got "unfortunately" crit killed by red units, preventing them from moving ever again (Marth would be proud). I also had to make sure that they would not be low enough for the valkyrie to heal them, and that no wound unit would start his turn on the healing bush.