Touhou Chemblem - Low Turn Run: Chapter 7
5Cleared in 4 turns.
In this chapter, we can recruit Tenshi, the second available myrmidon. Her offensive growths are pretty amazing and her base stats are okay; however, Youmu and Mokou start with C swords, giving them access to Killing Edge, Armorslayer and Swordslayer, while Tenshi has no access to these for a while. While Tenshi's growths and her Prf weapon (that gives her 15 Might) might make her a good character in a lax playthrough where you wait for your less mobile characters to catch up, Tenshi seems contributes nothing because in the next chapter some crucial tactical (a new item and a new character) changes make the low turn run far more fast-paced than it already is, and movement becomes more important than anything. I still like Youmu better than Tenshi in this game anyway, I mean, can you disagree that she has the most badass character portrait in the game?
Anyway, once Tenshi is recruited on turn 3, Chen has to take SEVEN turns to the seize point. Beating the boss by then isn't a huge problem, but seriously, SEVEN TURNS? No thanks. This is the first chapter where we use our Warp staff. Anybody with C staves can do it, which is Keine, Kaguya and Luna Child. Keine, however, has 1 extra point of movement and it is no problem for her, being a prepromote Sage (probably this game's real Jeigan in a way since Suika fails miserably at being a good one?), so she is the best candidate to follow Chen to the village where Tenshi is recruited and warp her to the boss on turn 4.
Beating the boss by then is kinda tricky however. You start in the range of 4 Cavaliers, 2 Archers (so flyers are threatened), a Hero and a Mercenary, immediately putting your frail units in danger.
The boss himself is a General, so Wing Spear's might will triple when attacking him. Now, here's the luck-reliant part: Hatate can 2HKO the boss with the Wing Spear assuming she procs Strength on the way there. This can be done by feeding her a Dracoknight kill (there are many flyers threatening us on the way to the boss), and with a 60% strength growth she is pretty likely to give us that outcome.
However, even if her strength procs, the accuracy is really shaky. I've had to retry this too many times, and almost every time one of the attacks missed. There's a noticeable critical hit chance too, but I haven't seen even one on any of the tries (I'm positive you can crit bosses though, and we'll be doing just that to clear some maps later). So there's quite a bit of luck involved.
A more certain way to kill the boss is to hit him with Hatate, then trade her Wing Spear to Yuyuko, then trade it to Aya and finish the boss off. However, getting all three of them close to the boss is difficult with all the enemies around.
Some other things could go wrong. For one, not having anyone die in the starting part of the map on the first two turns can be tough, as you want some less than perfectly accurate attacks to connect. It really helps to have that bulky Archer Eirin baiting enemies into attacking her (they prioritise her because she can't counter due to being locked to bows). Otherwise, they would gang up on our lord Chen and we wouldn't be able to advance to the village. I sandbag Archers a lot when I talk about them, and indeed, 5 movement and no enemy phase is a big deal, but when having one around, even absolutely passive when attacked, saves your lord's life, you gotta appreciate that. Plus Eirin can penetrate the Dracoknights here, and her damage output with the Silver Bow is pretty nice no matter whom she is targeting.
Yuyuko really shines as a prepromote Dracoknight here. The crazy promotion gains in defence allow her to tank enemy dracoknights as if they were some sort of joke, and she really needed all those promotion bonuses seeing how her growths are pretty bad (she mainly procs skill, speed and luck).
Oh, and if anyone's wondering what item I had Hatate consume on turn 1, it's Speedwings. Her speed base is inferior to most other Peg Knights out there (besides Momiji, but Momiji's bases suck in general, especially for the point of the game she joins) and she needs that +2 speed to start doubling those enemy Steel Lance-wielding Peg Knights right off the bat.
MVP: Yuyuko. Gotta love that perfect level-up for killing that Sage on the last turn.