Icelerate

I think Geoffrey desperately defending Crimea from a Begnion invasion would be great.

Yet he'd rather have Edelgard take Derdriu in CF and enjoy the spoils of war from the hard work of others. You can make the argument that Edelgard had been injured so I guess it makes sense for him to do such a thing but I think him convincing Bergliez to do so would be both more interesting and in character. Bergliez could be motivated to do so because he's the ruler of Gronder Fields so his land was trampled by the Alliance and Faergus. I don't think restoring the status quo as a plot point makes the route inferior to a route where the status quo is destroyed. Especially when it is the point of CF to change the status quo and not the point of AM or SS to do such. If SS actually made you feel something, that's actually a good thing.

I gave Itsuki a spd boon. With support From B!Lucina, he can avoid getting doubled by most threats.

I think they thought that Daein is a weaker threat so they wanted to subdue Daein quickly and then move on to the stronger Begnion army. But I would have liked a strategy meeting to explain this. What happened to Soren? He barely speaks after the Apostle's Army is formed and I think some of these details that we're speculating would have been better told in the story. For some reason, they do a good job in the first half of part 3 but for some reason start being lazy in the last third of part 3. It's like an inverse of part one where they did a lazy job of explaining the plans in the beginning of part one but improved in the second half.

I also thought it contrived how the Apostle's Army marches through Daein but a couple of weeks ago, I was looking deeper at the Tellius map and it seems like the distance from Oribes Bridge to central Begnion would be a lot closer when cutting through Daein than going all the way back to the Crimean-Begnion border. The Allaince would have to retake Flaguerre and Mugil, then go through Serenes Forest and risk its destruction without the element of surprise. Then they have to retake Telgam. From Telgam, they have to cross Ribahn River and take Seliora. On the other hand, if they go through Daein, they can cut right to central Begnion and can skip having to retake three forts prior to crossing the river and they don't have to cross the river either if they go through Daein to reach central Begnion. However, the game didn't bother explaining this so I'm not going to give credit to the game's writing when it usually does a good job in explaining what the army is doing and why.

I found Arundel suddenly leading the army on the front-line to be out of character. He's always shown to be a behind the scenes kind of guy who doesn't want to put his life in danger. I think Count Bergliez would have made a better opponent in that battle considering his military prowess is hyped up a lot but we never see it. It could allow Caspar to have an interesting conversation with his father if he's recruited in Blue Lions too.

Your theory makes perfect sense. No, unfortunately you started skimping on details due to taking a break in the middle of chapter 3-7 so your commentary was incomplete in both instances.

The localization made an error unfortunately. Not sure what happened with the translators but the extended script makes more sense.

People complain about BK and Oliver surviving even though I see no reason to. But if he was brought back, it risks making the loss that Daein went through look less than what it was. Technically he can survive if you don't kill him. Same with Bryce so it won't cause a plot hole.

I agree. Even though Ashnard himself didn't care about Daein personally, there is no reason to think Petrine and others fighting under his command didn't think Ashnard wanted to retake Daein. True, people worship Ashera across Tellius. While the average Daein citizen may be less religious traditionally, it's quite clear that when Micaiah came and liberated them, they saw her as a direct intervention from the goddess which would make the average Daein citizen far more religious than before due to seeing her as a miracle from the goddess, perhaps more so than Begnion. So the idea that Sanaki was a false Apostle would be extremely blasphemous especially since she's allied to the laguz and it is a fact Daein is more racist than Begnion, many of whom were supporting the Senate.

I agree that's what they were going for but do you think having him as a sub boss would be a good compromise? For example, Kasatai is a sub boss defending Daein Keep along with Ena.

I also felt it odd this random guy is on the front-line. Micaiah showing up at the end of the battle is also odd. If she were near the battlefield, why was she not commanding the army in the first place? Maybe she was feeling to ill to be on the battlefield? Anyway, I like the Tauroneo idea as well. He is the highest ranking general in the army other than Micaiah. If Micaiah was feeling to ill to lead the battle, the level headed Tauroneo would make more sense than a delusional fanatic. Though in terms of gameplay, Goron would actually be a better leader than Tauroneo and Micaiah due to authority stars. Yeah this game is dumb. I agree with your last point as well. If this guy is such a capable leader despite being simpleminded and delusional, why was he not the one commanding the army in part one even at least once? Maybe the writers didn't want the boss to survive but this doesn't make much sense because they have no qualms allowing the playable bosses of other chapters to retreat.

The Daein army never planned to act on that threat from what is apparent. Their goal was to hold on to the bridge which makes sense because the terrain is favorable for Daein to use. That implies the threat was used to draw the Apostle's Army on to the bridge. I guess one would have to say this is an example of gameplay-story segregation. Gameplay-story integration would be preferable though. Do think the ability to destroy the bridge after the battle is contrived though. The few soldiers still on the bridge should be in no position to be able to accomplish such a task as the Apostle's Army would easily rout them. Probably because it requires Daein soldiers on the bridge to accomplish this and they'd lose a large number of soldiers. Daein fliers alone would be too suspicious and simply be countered by AA, Crimean fliers and Hawk Army. But if the bridge can be destroyed so easily, why didn't Petrine do so in PoR to prevent the Liberation Army from advancing further? The Senate did outwardly support Daein's independence and condemned the transgressions of the occupation force. He's not privy to the details that we are. But I agree, that begs the question, why should Daein citizens even care about the true or false Apostle when this detail shouldn't matter outside Begnion. Would have been interesting if the Senate had hypocritically blamed Sanaki for negligence in the Daein occupation and her being the false Apostle led to citizen of Daein believing that Sanaki was a liar and suspect her of being oppressive.

You're saving your typing energy for the blood pact.

Most of these rosters, if not all, are actually better than the roster we got.

I thought you hate the Flame Emperor.

I think Deghinsea is one of the best written antagonists in the series but his action here doesn't make much sense unless he wants the laguz alliance to die to punish them for starting a war. But that would just make Begnion's counter offensive even worse so he has no excuse here.

Could make for a fun and perhaps frustrating map where someone uses a rewarp staff and then uses rescue to warp non magic units if you fail to kill the rewarp staff user fast enough.

I thought Lekain was just showing his arrogant personality but you're right he may have brought it up to hype up Begnion's magical prowess and make his intelligence gathering topnotch or at the very least appear to be topnotch. Rewarp staves have limited uses and seem to be limited in terms of quantity, hence only present on Senators and Izuka, so I don't think using them on a massive scale would work, but a limited attack mainly to demoralize the laguz alliance could be a good tactic. I doubt the senators would give them to ordinary mages in the army and keep them for themselves because the power to teleport is too great to give to potential adversaries. Now would it make Valtome a bigger threat if he was to use it once as a means to attack and intimidate his opponent at least once? Certainly, I think he'd be a stronger villain as a result. I'm wondering has any FE game made a better use of teleportation magic which wasn't too selective for plot purposes. I think the Tellius games do a better job with warp magic than most but Binding Blade gets credit for not having it at all which is probably for the better.

Sure if the writers wanted to they could. Edit: It was blessed by the goddess which isn't reproducible by magical research. Has any FE game used teleportation as a weapon to demoralize the enemy?

The senators having access to rewarp is fitting as they are the heads of Begnion and have superior magical prowess compared to someone like the Black Knight. Only the laguz can use sending stone.

They didn't make anything worse. Rewarp staves being more powerful doesn't mean anything as I've already explained. It is good writing because it shows Begnion is continuously advancing in their magic research.

My point was that it being flawlessly-executed without an explanation is bad writing. How does he even know when Tibarn was going to go before he can attack Leanne unguarded? Nor do I see this as a reason that the Senators not using rewarp staves to carry out assassinations as bad writing when there is no reason to believe they are as skilled as the Black Knight or even capable of doing much damage. Leanne's case was different because she was needed by Ashnard for her purposes while the Begnion Senators don't really need a particular target dead or alive.

Did he knew the room was unoccupied or took a gamble because he is strong enough to do so? I don't think Lekain would have been able to pull this stunt off even with a rewarp staff.

He doesn't just stop fighting, he has no luxury to do so. Sure he can switch to the staff after attacking with a light tome but he can't just teleport away until after he gets attacked since he's already used up his turn when using the light tome. You can argue I'm taking gameplay too literally but then you'd have to find a counter example in the story where warp is used to carry out surprise attacks so effectively to warrant ignoring gameplay.