Espinosa

I've never had a decent child that I've felt compelled to make a permanent part of my army on any of my runs. Is it because I keep marrying Felicia and Jakob most of the time?

It's pretty legit on Hoshido and IK paths, and there is hardly a shortage of situations in Nohr where glueing somebody like Arthur or Charlotte to a royal or MU saves the day. The defensive potency of the defensive pair-up cannot be underestimated even on a lower difficulty (trivialising it further), and it does wonders to offence on enemy phase which you really don't want to waste.

It would have a playable PvP system. Maybe we wouldn't even need SF-styled Link Arena!

It's not really that Shockstick is good on Tsubaki; it's just Javelins no longer doubling sucks and shifts the focus more on royals, tome, kunai users and also users of magical weapons. I wonder if +mag MU with a Bolt Axe can best Camilla at being a Revenant Knight in the Nohr path!

Braixen was added because of the furries I bet.

Isn't Rinkah a keeper for longterm use considering a lot of Hoshido is lowmanning with the juggernauts like Ryoma and MU? Just keep her paired up with whoever needs strength and a bit of bulk. In spite of his nonexistent magic, I bet Tsubaki is a better Shocksticker than Falcoknight Sakura. Even with one Arms Scroll, it took such a long time to get her to C lances and when she did get there, her combat wasn't that good (namely the durability; magic was fine and speed was sky-high). You either go Sage or just stick to healing if you don't care about Sakura doing any fighting for you. I did like the flight though!

Can't C2 be 3-turned with the Myrrh attacking the mountain brigands down south?

Are you shitting me no

Who even gets to use the Rapier? I see Ephraim starts with a Slim Lance, too.

Other than his defence, Saleh looks pretty OP. Also, having a lord flier is cool.

I love Red Fox of Fire! Good luck with everything.

Isn't it Normal and Hard only?

The only reason to choose GateWay over CFW is not having to spend a ton of time installing large .cia files, I think.

Is Normal Mode in Nohr comparable to Awakening's? The lack of difficulty was almost unplayable. Nohr Hard is certainly challenging enough however.

My bad; the debuffs on that map come from the Adventurer's Weakness staff. It's Nohr classes all the way there, indeed. Elise could end up anywhere in relation to Xander, to attend to healing and aura duties. While doing so, she may cause Xander to entirely void the aforementioned hero's damage. This is, in fact, pointless if slightly curious trivia, as Xander receiving 0 damage or 3 damage from the hero does little to contribute to him somehow dying on that map (the mage-infested left-side is a whole lot more challenging and, on the contrary, it's probably not the best idea for him to go there). I fail to see what point you're trying to make now, but you do enjoy being really picky about isolated details. Benoit is pretty crappy though, isn't he? Not a huge fan of any of the units you mention as wanting an Elfie Pair-Up, but I do agree that she is quite desirable still (often depending on the current situation), and that Xander probably wants her the least. One effective way to use Xander early on is to suck it up and send Siegfried to the Convoy for a short while, and give him the Short Sword or whatever the Nohr path's non-doubling 1-2 rng blade is called, and solve a lot of Xander's midgame problems this way - he gets targeted, counters for heavy damage and doesn't steal experience for other units to grab the kills.

Can you try imagining yourself playing that chapter for a second? Most enemies will not attack Xander, so alongside Xander, you send more units who actually are attacked. Not only are they attacked, but they can die too (what with the ninja debuffs having a great effect on your units' durability), so you will want your premiere mounted healer to both heal and provide +3 def to adjacent allies as an aura. Xander is still impervious to all the other folks anyway... I would say it's him vs. Camilla for the #1 spot, but I haven't tried making a flier MU yet. Probably would pale in comparison to Cammy since she comes with actual weapon ranks and most probably also better stats than what MU can have as a result of (somewhat limited due to the new exp mechanics) snowballing that the MU may receive in the first 9 chapters. I guess flier MU could be better for Hoshido though? I mean, Hinoka is already really damn good, then you get Crimson right when you feel you could use another one, and there's Tsubaki with his 1 chapter availability advantage over Hinoka who's pretty popular among Tonic and Pair-Up enthusiasts the world over. And IK is just ridiculous as far as viable fliers go - Yuugiri and Camilla join so early, and Takumi is practically a meaty chipper on wings with his Prf bow (and he can counter at 1-range on this path too, since Nohr Armoury is accessible, as if you needed more reasons to use him).

So he's taking 3 dmg from the hero (!), which should tell you how much he receives from just about everyone else on the same map. Have him end end his turn next to Elise or pair up with Elfie and that'll be 0 damage. That's exactly what I'm talking about.

My current experience with Hard shows physical enemies tend to avoid Xander even without any non-Sieg defence boosts. Let's not underestimate Leon's bulk either!

That's the problem though - if you want him to not receive any bonus, you have to put his amazing 1-2 range sword into the Convoy and basically just use him as a readymade Silas on steroids.

Really, just how useful is a character who has such bulk that no enemy will bother attacking him anyway? It's almost sensible to have him sandbag himself intentionally, attacking ninja with weak weapons to be debuffed and taking his Prf sword away so that his defence drops to an amount where enemies start targeting him again. Wouldn't be #1 character on my tier list!

Has Stephen Wilton even promised a new PTree? Pretty sure they were done for good. I still need to hear The Incident myself...

You should choose a codec to compress the file and radically reduce its size.

I sorta liked the new Amorphis and not much else. Nothing seemed particularly interesting to check out either, and the things I did check out were mediocre to okay.

I see this set of rules really is the LTC-killer.