What Would Your Fire Emblem Chapter Be?

[vanguard333]

If you could create a chapter for an FE game: the objective, the environment, the layout, the enemy placements, the main gimmicks, etc., what would it be?

EDIT: I should give an example. 

My chapter would be a multi-part chapter where the heroes have to lay siege to an enemy castle, and there's no secret entrance that makes things easy; the heroes have to get in the hard way. 

• Part 1 is storming the front gate. Objective: Arrive at the tiles blocked by the castle gate. The player's army has to approach the front gatehouse and find a way to get their army inside. They have two options: seize control of the upper part of the gatehouse and open the gate, or have your units wheel the battering ram up to the gate and have it destroy the gate. It takes multiple turns for the ram to destroy the gate, however, and the ram can be destroyed by the enemies. To get to the upper part of the gatehouse, one must get up the front wall and get inside. Flying units could just fly up to the wall, but the wall's littered with archers, and the gatehouse towers have ballistae. One could have their infantry units carry siege ladders to the wall and ascent the wall via the ladders. However, enemies can knock down the ladders on their phase, and the fall damages your units. 
• Part 2 is seizing the courtyard. Objective: Seize the entrance to the keep. This chapter comprises of taking the castle's courtyard. The wall is littered with enemy archers and mages, and the stairs to the walls are guarded by knights. The layout of the courtyard is divided into multiple sections; each of which is separated from the others by a wall and a gate. Again, flying units can fly over the walls, but the large number of archers and mages makes this a bad idea. But these gates aren't nearly as challenging to breach. 
• Part 3 is taking the keep. Objective: Defeat the enemy commander at the top floor of the keep. This is an indoor chapter where all mounted units must dismount (if dismount is in the game) or have their movement significantly cut. The layout of this mission is a multiple-story map with multiple rooms. One has to ascend from the bottom floor to the top floor. 

Edited February 8, 2020 by vanguard333

[Reality]

Kill Boss :  Layout of #  - Enemy has Rescue Stave Bishops everywhere, who are equipped with 5 durability "glass" weapons for the purpose of trading to the main boss - who will use this ad-hoc mobility to restock, attack you, and escape all in the same turn - Gimmick for the player is  either trying to isolate him in one big turn or break the psedo teleport network by killing the bishops first

[vanguard333]

29 minutes ago, Reality said:

Kill Boss :  Layout of #  - Enemy has Rescue Stave Bishops everywhere, who are equipped with 5 durability "glass" weapons for the purpose of trading to the main boss - who will use this ad-hoc mobility to restock, attack you, and escape all in the same turn - Gimmick for the player is  either trying to isolate him in one big turn or break the psedo teleport network by killing the bishops first

Interesting. What do you mean by "Layout of #"?

[Dandy Druid]

I would love another level to be like RD Part 2 Endgame - Elincia's Gambit. There was proper buildup to this battle and it truly felt like there were stakes put on the line. Although the best thing about the battle was that there was plenty to do and there's different ways to play it. If you just want to hold chokepoints, you can do that. If you want to defend until the Crimean Knights come in as backup, you can do that. If you want to defeat Ludveck, you can do that. If you want to get some great items, you can also do that. This level also utilized the elevation mechanic as well, allowing the player to play around with different parts of the map.

[Icelerate]

There is an enemy supply convoy that you have to loot and after looting it you have to escape from the map. Make sure everyone else escapes before the lord like in FE5. There can be a time limit as well because a hit and run raid needs to be executed swiftly to avoid reinforcements. 

Another idea is that the enemy is constructing a fort and you have to destroy it before they can fully build it. It is not similar to a mere seize mission because you have to attack the fort a lot, forcing you to use multiple units, while having to sustain attacks from enemy reinforcements unlike in traditional seize chapters.  

Another idea is an escape chapter where you need to make sure at least 5 people escape from two different points on the map. 

Finally, a chapter where you defeat the enemy commander and take them captive while being forced to flee while carrying them would be pretty interesting considering how it'll be harder to escape when one of your unit is carrying the enemy commander. 

So far only Thracia 776 and Radiant Dawn has impressed me but even still, the idea can be taken much further than those two games. 

[Hawkwing]

An objective to blow up a bridge is one I've had for a while. The first objective would be to reach the middle of the map, defend the section for a few turns while engineers set up the explosives (barrels of gunpowder), and then it becomes an escape chapter, perhaps with an optional objective to kill the enemy commander if they have story relevance. A possible twist would be that the explosive fails to go off, resulting in the protagonists having to fight their way to grab an ancient/legendary fire spell to light the explosives that way. Bonus points if the action of using the epic spell is controllable and the player can have some fun blowing up some mooks before destroying the bridge.

 

Another idea is that the two enemy forces are unknowingly fighting on the backs of two ancient giant beasts, and said beasts awaken during the battle and fight each other. Every turn, a different section of the map will have warning/caution signs over them, warning that an attack will occur there next turn. This would give repositioning skills some use, as the player can  move the enemy around so that they will be in these caution areas and take severe damage on the next turn, perhaps with the caveat that the enemy will attempt to do the same to the player. Visually, it would be awesome to see two giant creatures fight up close, clawing and stabbing and crushing each other, especially if they get creative with the attacks.

An alternative idea for the above is that instead of the battle taking place on the top of a giant beast, instead two or more superhumanly powerful characters duke it out on the battlefield, and both the player and enemy have to watch out to avoid being caught in the crossfire as their fight takes place all across the map.

 

A third idea would be to have an escape/rout map, where in the mountains, the players army is flanked by an infamous group of bandits that prove to be scarily competent and not afraid to fight dirty as they intend to capture or kill your forces. You can choose to either fight back or make a run for it. Beforehand, I think this would work best if the rest of the game doesn't have the series standard "first few enemies are bandits" cliche, so that when they do show up, it's a twist that they're far from pushovers.

 

Two ideas for a tutorial level:

1. This one is better if the tutorial is optional, but people playing a DnD-esque game that uses similar mechanics to Fire Emblem and features the DM trying to explain the rules to his new players. It could be a humorous and informative way to teach new players about how Fire Emblem works, and they could have some fun with it, such as the units being questionably drawn like sketches, light jabs at the questionable usefulness of certain classes and weapons among other things, battles being cut out paper on Popsicle sticks (or whatever the medieval equivalent would be) "attacking" each other, and the "final" boss being represented as a plush dragon toy. It would be helpful to newcomers and hilarious to veterans. It could even take a lighter or darker turn in the main story, with the participants of the game being characters on either side of the conflict.
2. The tutorial fight is a historical battle, with a small group of famous characters attacking an antagonist. It would be a nice way of setting up the tone, providing some lore that could have a twist later, establish certain characters and weapons that could reappear during the main story, and do this in a context that doesn't overwhelm a new player with gameplay information.