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The Search for a New Meta: Myrmidon-Only AA


Parrhesia
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Ignoring the fact that swords are generally one of the worst weapon types in every game, Fire Emblem is about swords. 75% of lords. 30% crit rates in FE6. The Munster Escape. The FE9 duel. The entire concept and execution of Daemon Fighters. Sword.

With my barracks having reached such a girth in FEH as to have 28 myrmidons in it, I realised I could transcend all other unit types and complete content using the noble myrmidon alone, as Kaga willed.

THE CHALLENGE

I will gladly step up to whatever other challenge the thread finds necessary. At its core, though, the objective is to clear an Advanced Arena Assault. This will require an intricate understanding of myrmidon science, myrmidon timing and, most importantly, the knowledge of which myrmidon to apply to which situation. Arena Assault is all about matching hard-counters to targets. I will make do with what I have.

MYRMIDON DEFINITION

Technically, some of these myrmidons are mercenaries and lords. I don't give a shit. It's anyone ON FOOT and WITH A SWORD.

MYRMIDON STABLE

Here it is, then. The people who will be doing the myrmiding. I haven't changed any skills or moved around any seals for this, so they're kind of haphazardly assigned, as you will see.

Myrmidons

Spoiler

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Defensively sturdy, these three myrmidons can take a hit. Despite two of them being -defence. Even so, I will have few compunctions about blocking things with their face.

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These myrmidons, on the other hand, will be entrusted to slaughter any single target I see fit to sic them on.

Fillyrmidons

Spoiler

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These myrmidons are just a bit shit and don't really stand out for any one reason. Nevertheless, without them, I would not have enough myrmidons. Appreciate them. I will be carefully rationing them between teams, cycling one in here and there where I can.

Falchion Myrmidons

Spoiler

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If there are dragons, we will stop them. We will crush them. We will destroy them.

Counter-myrmidons

Spoiler

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Sabre will crush any armour into dust. Tobin is a vastly inferior Sabre. Gray will be deployed the moment I see a horse. It is the one thing he can do.

Distant Myrmidons

Spoiler

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Vroy also has DC. These people will probably be marshalled to draw out archers and green magi. None of them are exceptional, but all can do a job.

Triangle Myrmidons

Spoiler

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If I need to kill a green unit, I can task Eirika to it. Unfortunately, she faces some degree of competition in this role. She's the first 4* I ever promoted! She has not made a competitive appearance in close to a year.

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Lene can either kill a green on her own or dance another myrmidon to handle greens. There is somewhat limited utility here.

Peak Myrmidon Performance - the Swordmasters

Spoiler

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Have you seen a more pure myrmidon in concept? A celebration of the myrmibrand? No. No, you have not. Athena is the greatest myrmidon in the world.

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Witness the majesty of Cyan Fir. If anyone can facetank a Reinhardt, it's her.

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Soleil is an expression of sunk-cost fallacy. I pulled her at 5* at Spd/Attack, so I promoted another to make her Attack/HP instead. Then gave her Wrath, because Wrathsweep sounded like a great idea. It wasn't quite that good in practice. Then I figured I needed a merge project and got her to +5 before grails became a thing, but, well, she was there and half-finished and I pulled a Grike so she got Steady Breath and a sword from that phase where I promoted about three Athenas in a week. She has arrived at being a capable swordsman. I'm not sure why she has Moonbow equipped.

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Marisa is about to promote to +9 as soon as I get 7000 more feathers. You will note she is unstoppable. Due to her level, she and Soleil will naturally be in the first wave, attempting to fend off unknown threats.

Lyn

Spoiler

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Lyn was the first 5* myrmidon I ever pulled. She is terrible. You will note I have 29 myrmidons for 28 slots. Lyn is almost certainly going to be the odd one out.

Time runs short. We begin soon, and will change the meta step by step.

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He already had the armourslayer before the refine came out. I like how he works as-is.

34 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Do you not have Hana and Selena to fill the role of anti-armor? You're gonna need a bunch of 'em.

I posted every myrmidon I had. So, no.

Again, the point is not to build a team around destroying AA with myrmidons only. The plan is to apply the myrmidons I happen to have to the challenges I face.

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2 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

I will gladly step up to whatever other challenge the thread finds necessary.

28 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

Again, the point is not to build a team around destroying AA with myrmidons only.

I challenge you to destroy Arena Assault with sword infantry only then!

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3 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

With my barracks having reached such a girth in FEH as to have 28 myrmidons in it, I realised I could transcend all other unit types and complete content using the noble myrmidon alone, as Kaga willed.

 

Only 28? You're missing a good lesser half of them:

Spoiler
  1. Alfonse
  2. Alm
  3. Athena
  4. Ayra
  5. Chrom
  6. Male Corrin
  7. Eirika
  8. Fir
  9. Gray
  10. Hana
  11. Hinata
  12. PoR Ike
  13. Joshua
  14. FE7 Karel
  15. Karla
  16. Laevatein
  17. Laslow
  18. Leif
  19. Lene
  20. Lloyd
  21. Lon’qu
  22. Lucina
  23. Lyn
  24. Marisa
  25. Marth
  26. Mia
  27. Navarre
  28. Ogma
  29. Olivia
  30. Owain
  31. Roy
  32. Ryoma
  33. Saber
  34. Selena
  35. Seliph
  36. Silvia
  37. Soleil
  38. Tobin
  39. Rutger
  40. Legendary Ike
  41. Legendary Marth
  42. Legendary Roy
  43. Masked Marth
  44. Fallen Celica
  45. Brave Celica
  46. Fallen Mareeta

Didn't mean to belittle your collection or anything with that. Just including it show how vast the Sword Infantry pool is. It has only three fewer units than all three Tome Infantries combined, over double the Bow Infantry (22 with the two colored Bows), just short of triple the Axe Infantry category (16), and more than triple the Dagger and Staff Infantry (15 and 13).

 

Good pluck and luck!

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Make sure you have a couple of cancel affinity sword units or else a blue TA unit can potentially ruin your run. 

47 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Didn't mean to belittle your collection or anything with that. Just including it show how vast the Sword Infantry pool is. It has only three fewer units than all three Tome Infantries combined, over double the Bow Infantry (22 with the two colored Bows), just short of triple the Axe Infantry category (16), and more than triple the Dagger and Staff Infantry (15 and 13).

 

Yet people complain about too many armours. Ironic isn't it? 

 

Edited by Icelerate
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4 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

 

The Search for a New Meta: Myrmidon-Only AA

To be completely technical, this is just a challenge and not a "new meta". A "new meta" would imply that this team composition is optimal (at a specific pay grade), and that's more or less not happening.

 

Don't let that detract from the challenge, though. I wish for your success, and it'd be pretty awesome to see some videos of your runs when you succeed.

Edited by Ice Dragon
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If you're seriously attempting to mount a more "serious" challenge, then have the first team consist of 5*+10 sword infantry units with at least some attempt at SP optimization (ie. Aether/Galeforce over Moonbow/Luna or AoEs; dual Rallies over positional assists; using passive skills that cost at least 240 SP each at the highest tier; Prf weapons over generic weapons).

Recommended for the first team are any 4 of the following:
Soleil
Fir
Eirika
Marth
MCorrin
Joshua
Hinata
Lon'qu
Masked Marth
Navarre
Ogma
Roy
Chrom

Edited by Roflolxp54
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24 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

To be completely technical, this is just a challenge and not a "new meta". A "new meta" would imply that this team composition is optimal (at a specific pay grade), and that's more or less not happening.

So there are these things called 'jokes', and sometimes they can involve saying things that are untrue.

 

9 minutes ago, Roflolxp54 said:

If you're seriously attempting to mount a more "serious" challenge, then have the first team consist of 5*+10 sword infantry units with at least some attempt at SP optimization (ie. Aether/Galeforce over Moonbow/Luna or AoEs; dual Rallies over positional assists; using passive skills that cost at least 240 SP each at the highest tier).

No.

 

Like, seriously, if you are looking at a thread of 'I'm going to fight Arena Assault with twenty-eight footswords, and one of them is an Athena with 39 attack', and I've explicitly said twice that I'm not changing my team to make the challenge easier (like, you know, literally taking TA off everyone and replacing it with nothing), and your first thought is 'hm, but how to optimise this'...

Edited by Parrhesia
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1 hour ago, Parrhesia said:

I mean, that is the entire point of the thread, yes. The key part of the second quote was build a team around.

Oh okay, I totally misunderstood the second quote.

I guess for an additional side challenge, I recommend using obese myrmidons, basically sword armors, for one of the rounds during your second run, but they cannot use any armor-only skills. Alternatively, you can just use regular sword infantry, but they are limited to moving only 1 space per turn to simulate being obese from sitting on the bench for so long in Askr.

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27 minutes ago, Parrhesia said:

So there are these things called 'jokes', and sometimes they can involve saying things that are untrue.

So there is also this thing called "writing" where subtleties of language like facial expressions and tone of voice don't exist and things that often rely on those, like sarcasm and "jokes", are sometimes hard to discern.

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You don't need my facial expressions to realise that '28 swords is the best way to handle high-quality enemies that are 25% lances' is not a serious statement. I would have to be pretty impossibly fucking stupid to think that for real.

Edited by Parrhesia
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22 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

So...is this not happening? Because I thought it'd be cool if any of us gave the challenge a crack and posted our final scores or something.

User participation is always lit, feel free to do a run yourself. I'll probably do a run tomorrow, but like, seriously, I only put the thread up seven hours ago lol

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2 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

You don't need my facial expressions to realise that '28 swords is the best way to handle high-quality enemies that are 25% lances' is not a serious statement. I would have to be pretty impossibly fucking stupid to think that for real.

you'd be surprised how many times people meant stuff seriously when i thought they were jokeing... stupidity sadly does not know any sorts of boundaries.

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Huh, I don't even have 28 sword infantry units at 4 and 5* combined. Ever thought about doing all 7 fights with one character each? I guess it could skew the difficulty a bit though

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Spoiler

 

Round 1: Alfonse, Marth, Lloyd, and Laslow vs Brave Roy, Eirika, Brave Ike, and Ephraim

  • extremely easy battle, except for Ephraim packing swordbreaker
  • Used Special Blade item so that Laslow and Lloyd could sacrifice themselves killing him. Alfonse solo'd the rest.

Round 2: Athena, Lyn, Hana, and Olivia vs Brave Roy, Legendary Ike, Ishtar, and Surtr

  • Surtr had steady stance 3 instead of 4 equipped. Idiot.
  • Let brave roy run ahead of the pack and killed him with Athena despite him being on a defensive tile. Then danced her to kill Ishtar which is why she's here in the first place. For some reason Ike was also lagging behind with Surtr so I evacuated her safely
  • Lyn took out Ike, then Hana knocked out Surtr with dancer support.

Round 3: Hinata, Masked Marth, Ike, and Fir vs Keaton, Panne, Eir, and Halloween Henry

  • Ah shit, kid gloves come off when the beasts come out. Eir for some reason had HP +4 in place of Swift Sparrow
  • I may have over prepared by using my Naga's Tear item which allowed Ike to kill Eir with Aether. Their entire team also had garbage positioning with Henry tucked in a corner with no armor boots. Panne couldn't transform. I noticed too late I never gave my 42 defense Hinata bonfire but he survived two rounds with Keaton before somebody could finish the job.

Round 4: Legendary Marth, Chrom, Karla, and Marisa vs Legendary Tiki, Ninian, M!Grima, and Adult Tiki

  • Legendary Marth intensifies
  • Chrom is not only here for backup dragon killing but his 50 HP reciprical aid
  • Mainly chose Karla since she's one of few units packing a helpful assist (reposition) but I didn't end up needing it. Should have gone with more filler like with Marisa

Round 5: Gray, Brave Celica, Silvia, and Eikria vs Reinhardt, Green!Olwen, Brave Roy, and Brave Lyn

  • Didn't expect a cav team. You're up, Gray
  • Dancer support for Gray and Celica to player phase kill. Eirika is pretty much filler besides her native hone atk2 and hone spd 3 support.
  • Enemy AI outplayed me so I had to engage them a turn sooner than I wanted. Celica and Gray die heroically leaving Eirika to finish off Reinhardt

Round 6: Legendary Roy, Roy, Navarre, Rutger vs Legendary Eirika, Ninian, Bride Fjorm, and F!Grima

  • Regular roy baited out Eirika from a safe position since he's the only option I had with swordbreaker and that wrecks her base skillset
  • I had a prime opportunity to sacrifice legendary roy to kill Ninian and I took it, getting the rest of my guys ready to slay the rest. Navarre died but the other two survive.
  • In retrospect I could have used my elixer to keep navarre alive. That was sloppy.

Round 7: Alm, Leif, Legendary Ike, Soleil vs Inigo, Masked Marth, Bride Charlotte, and Kaze

  • Just sort of picked my best remaining units since the map is the easy kind where the enemy AI just naturally splits up for you.
  • Soleil and then Leif together knocked out Charlotte with no counter attacks, but there was no saving Alm from Marth with my remaining elixer. The dancer gave me no trouble, surprisingly.

 

 

 

Here's my run. Final Score: 4314. Items taken were Elixer, Special Blade, and Naga's Tear. Elixer not used. Six deaths, at least one totally preventable with that elixer. I chose to keep within the OPs conditions in not inheriting any skills or refining any weapons in preparation for the challenge. Also didn't equip any seals that weren't equipped beforehand but that's moreso my laziness and not a rule I recommend. I also picked only Advanced battles which were in the ~690 range. My Round 1 strategy is to use basically several of my worst guys until I can get a run off the ground. Two deaths and an item used is not the ideal start but I think whatever you do Round 1 will be challenging so invest as little as you can and just keep passing on fights until there's one you can win. The Round 1 I stuck with was my third attempt but I should have fished for a better start

I've made it a point to 5 star every unit in the game, so I had 38 unique infantry swords to choose from. I'm F2P so a lot of these guys are packing their base skill sets and unrefined weapons so I tried to refrain from using stronger units than I needed. But having such a wealth of units to choose from naturally gave me an edge in conserving good units for later. You are allowed to select less than four units for a fight, however so if you come across something that's easily solo'd with dancer support, I would consider doing just that to give you more options later if your pool is not as large as mine.

My squad:  

Spoiler

Units who ended up getting used (these guys are packing their base skills unless otherwise noted):

  • Alfonse: unique refined weapon, draw back, and swordbreaker.
  • Marth: unique refined weapon, moonbow, attack +1, Drive Spd 2, Close Combat sacred seal (I'm using him for this week's HM farming strat)
  • Laslow: no SI or refined weapon
  • Lloyd: Swap and Defense +1
  • Athena: Defense refined weapon
  • Lyn: +1 merged, Unique refined weapon, reciprical aid, Brash Assault 3
  • Hana: No SI or refined weapon, and I don't even have any of her passive skills for some reason
  • Olivia: No SI or refined weapon, but did have a spur atk 1 seal from F2P guides
  • Hinata: Swap and Quick Riposte 1
  • Masked Marth: +10 merged, unique refinement, reposition, Aether, Fury 3, Renewal 3, Spur Def/Res 2, and Brazen Atk/Def 3 seal. (yeah she's my best unit in my barracks)
  • Ike: +1 merged, Reposition, Vantage 3, Spur atk 2
  • Fir: No SI or refined weapon
  • Legendary Marth: No SI, Darting Blow 3 seal
  • Chrom: Reciprical aid, HP+3, Renewal 3
  • Karla: Reposition, Triangle Adept 1. (should have taken off triangle adept 1)
  • Marisa: Defense refined weapon, swap, Moonbow, Obstruct 1
  • Gray: No SI or refined weapon
  • Brave Celica: No SI or refined weapon
  • Sylvia: No SI or refined weapon
  • Eirika: No Si or refined weapon
  • Legendary Roy: Swap, HP/Res+2 seal
  • Roy: Unique refined weapon, draw back, luna, swordbreaker 2
  • Navarre: Swap, Moonbow, Defiant atk 1
  • Rutger: Defense refined weapon, swap, moonbow
  • Alm: Unique refined weapon, reposition, moonbow
  • Legendary Ike: Swap, Quick Riposte seal from F2P guides
  • Soleil: Reposition and Luna
  • Leif: No SI, fierce stance seal.
     

Units who were not used:

  • Laevatein: No SI. If I had more units with hone/fortify skills I would have found a place for her since she's very good.
  • Ogma: No SI or refined weapon
  • Tobin: Defense refined weapon, Ignis, Axebreaker 3, Hone atk 2
  • Saber: Unique refined weapon, Swap, Threaten Atk 3
  • Seliph: No SI or refined weapon
  • Karel: Pivot, Luna, Fortify Def 3
  • Joshua: Pivot, Fortify Def 1
  • Lon'qu: No SI or refined weapon
  • M!Corrin: Darting Blow, Desperation
  • Selena: No SI, armorslayer refined into armorsmasher, but no further than that.

Infantry swords I don't have: Lucina, Ryoma, Fallen Celica, Mareeta, Mia, Ayra, Owain, Lene

Things I wish I noticed/did differently:

  • Marisa rocks for this challenge with her native infantry pulse. Having charged specials is the best way to blast through bulky blue units, and she can get your moonbow slaying edge guys up to speed on turn 1
  • If you're preparing for the challenge more than I did, consider passing around reciprical aid to some of your filler units who you know won't have anything meaningful to contribute. This way they can pass their HP to somebody at a critical moment. This can even let you use some of your four star units hanging around with high HP pools like Seliph.
Edited by Glennstavos
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