Part 82: Trial Maps - Lonely Isle

I don't know. Just go with it. To unlock this map, complete the game on Normal or Hard difficulty.



As you can see, the enemy here is 100% flyers. Wyverns to the south, Ravens to the north. We've got a few flyers of our own, too.

Time to meet the team:



Not bad, Shinon! That 400% total growth thing clearly counted for something in the end. Plus, he's decently fast and has capped skill. Wish he had a bit more strength though, Rolf's kinda putting him to shame.



Aw Jeah. Naesala's used those three extra levels to become just a bit more awesome, like he needed it that much, but there you go.



Lucia has shamed her class by not capping speed, but she's nevertheless decently strong for a swordmaster so that's something.



Janaff's certainly a bit awesome, too. And these are his untransformed stats at that.



Ahaha, where the hell did this come from?



Tanith is, like Marcia, pretty zippy and has respectable defence, so that's nice.



Jill, however, is almost as fast, a bit tougher, and much stronger.



Tormod hasn't capped anything, but he sure has racked up a hell of a lot of speed and a respectable store of strength for carrying those heavy tomes around.

And, introducing Mystery Guest #2:



It's General Shiharam, back from the dead and hopefully not too annoyed with Jill for that whole "murdering me" thing. You unlock him by clearing the game five times. Yeah, seriously. Anyway, he brings us a free Tomahawk and a second Full Guard to play with, and he's also a lot less useless than Oliver, what with his respectable strength and decent defences - it's just that he's a tad slow. I'm sure we can find a use for him, though. Sadly, he tends to not see frequent enough combat to really leverage his Stun skill.

Also, introducing Super Special Mystery Guest #1:



It is my very great pleasure to introduce you to Lord Sephiran, who I was able to persuade to join our team by means of a variety of dark sorceries whose details I will not bore you with. He's been leveled to 20 for all the good that does (he has zero growths), so he's stuck with low speed and defence, but... well, let's just say that he has a contingency.



He also represents a second chance for us to get our Light Magic on, but, sadly, due to some glitch or programming oversight, he has battle (cutaway) animations but no map animations, meaning the game will crash if you involve him in any use of staves or any matchup that doesn't go to a battle screen (eg, using siege tomes). Also, I suppose we get to play with that Mantle skill too.



The last Trial Map was a walk in the park. This one is... less so.

---





Janaff immediately transforms. That'll help some.

Now, here's some more fruits of my gleeful hax investigations...



...portable ballistae! From what I hear, ballistae are represented in-game by terrain tiles that are tied to an instance of a ballista weapon. When you stand on the tile, you can use the "Ballista" command to temporarily equip said weapon and use it. Of course, if you're using hax, you can also add them to a unit's inventory and then bust 'em out wherever.



I'd have some moral hangups about "cheating", but a) this map isn't fucking around and b) this is far from the most egregious Thing We Shouldn't Be Doing that we're doing today, so eh.



Naesala's Vortex is also a command skill that equips a weapon.



Vortex is identical in every way but name to the Elwind spell, right down to being effective against flyers and thus a better choice here than attacking normally.







Tormod's also got a Blizzard tome and by god he is going to employ it.



Oh, why the hell not?



Anyway, we take our Defensive Positions. We want people who can Actually Take Hits to the south, and everyone else far away from the wyverns.



Except you three. You three can do whatever.



Lucia is going to be doing quite a bit of raven duty today.



Her magic is quite respectable for a swordmaster, so she's got the Runesword. I considered giving her the Sonic Sword instead, for its additional damage, but...



...well, I was going to say you can't turn down free healing, but... goddamnit.



The Holy Guard aren't quite as useful as they once were.



In fact, they are almost entirely useless.



Their redeeming feature is their dodginess, which allows them to survive what would otherwise be one hit god damn kills.



In any case, these wyverns mean business. They're all packing 25 defence and either Spears or Silver Lances. You've got to be really careful not to let them get near your less defensive units, otherwise there'll be trouble fast.



Of course, this is more a problem for some units than others.



Shiharam has just enough defence to render the ravens nonthreatening. He gets doubled, sure, but for not much damage.



However, he's quite bad at actually hitting things. A shame.



The enemies all move up.



Right. As I was trying to say before...



The Runesword's healing effect is going to come in very handy for Lucia.



Ballistae, portable or otherwise, are still held back by their fixed Mt, so Shinon breaks out the big guns instead.



Tormod has another treat for us (and them)...



Rexflame! Another weapon that's impossible to obtain legitimately, but it's here nonetheless.











That certainly is a flame there.



He also dodges the counter because it turns out that Tormod is actually pretty awesome.



Right. Cleanup.



Away with ye.



Jill does what she can to help out.



Oh, right. Jill has Adept.



It occurs to me that we probably want to have someone guarding the door. Just a thought.



Anyway, Tanith is really outfitted and specced for dealing with the ravens. She doesn't really have the defences or HP to cope with the wyverns for any extended period of time, but she's fast enough to double the ravens and she's got those handy anti-laguz weapons.



And she's got crits.



Well, I hope that Holy Guard down there has one hell of a plan.



Ok, well, that's a crit, which is something, but it's not really enough, is it?



...yeah.



...



...um.



...



...ok. She's good.



Lucia's doing her thing too.



Janaff and Jill both weather assaults too.



And finally someone tries attacking Sephiran.



Possibly due to them never having forseen the guy ever being in a battle, Sephiran uses a bishop model that doesn't at all reflect his costume... although he does have unique hair if you look closely, so... yeah. I don't know.



He also has unusually high luck, so he can actually dodge pretty well.



Mm hmm.



Mantle is a pretty handy skill, isn't it?



But the real thing about Sephiran is that Mantle kicks in after all the rest of the Combat Damage Considerations are handled, so to the AI, he looks like a slow defenceless mage. This makes him rather good at diverting enemy attention.



His only real problem is that he's too slow to double anyone, so he frequently can't actually counterkill enemies. Shame.



Oh boy.



Six more wyverns enter from the southwest, and six ravens from the northeast.



Right. Cleanup. Again.



We bust out the portaballista a second time. Hey, it's useful!



So is Blizzard.



Janaff and Lucia stay on the northeast side to help with the raven intercepting effort, while Jill retreats to chug an Elixir. I love being able to use these limited items with no penalty!



That Holy Guard has actually bought us some valuable time. We've used it to get our guys into a serious defensive formation, with Naesala, Ike, Sephiran, Brom and Jill protecting Tanith, Shinon and Tormod.







It takes three of them to finally kill her.



After that, the geniuses all target Sephiran.





He doesn't appreciate that.



Elsewhere... the fight goes on.



Ike continues being Ike.



Without the Runesword, Lucia actually finishes a turn on non-full health.



And here's the downside to the Holy Guards stalling the enemy; now they're bunched up and all going to attack at once. Fuck.







Through the wonders of ranged weapons, we clean up while holding our positions.



Otherwise, there is healing, and waiting.



Sometimes, it's actually annoying that enemies love attacking Sephiran so much, because as invincible as he is, he still has issues killing people.



That said, though, the wyverns are generally tough enough that even our best units (ie, Ike) can't do it in one round.



Lovely.



Also lovely.



And this is just great.







Right. You know how this goes.



Lucia picks up the Runesword again in preparation for the onslaught. She gets a very helpful crit.



This lot of crows are too fast for Janaff to double, but he'll make do, I'm sure.



Finally, Brom sees action.



He.



Sure.



Does.



Tanith, less so.



Jill, more so.



And why not?



Bring it on.



They do. All of them attack Sephiran. Only one dies.



And here comes the backup.



Once again, Lucia gets hurt and heals herself. Critically.



The rest of the ravens have to make do with just being crippled.



Hrm.



Janaff uses the last of his TP to finish off a raven.



Meanwhile, we're doing the cleanup dance again.



We've gotten quite practiced at it.



Lucia breaks out the Brave Sword.



And Ike and Tormod finish off the last remnant of the current wave.



Let's have Naesala greet the next lot, shall we?



I'm not apologising for using this thing.



Well, that's looking much more manageable.



Two of the approaching wyverns are close enough to attack Ike, and are reduced to low health. The other four just charge.



Similar deal over here; any ravens in range attack (and are subsequently annihilated by) Naesala.



Yeah, I think he'll be fine.





At the end of turn 6 (reminder: we're defending for 8 turns), four wyverns arrive on each side.



Naesala isn't going to be very effective against them (seeing as they all have Spears, so none of them will melee him), but he can still kill one with Vortex over two turns while counterkilling ravens.



Right. Let's kill all six of these motherfuckers. One.



Two.



Three.





Four. (Damn Tormod is awesome.)



Five.



Six. Assholes.



Janaff applies a handy Laguz Stone so he can be useful in the last turn.



Suddenly it's looking almost optimistic!



One of the eastern wyverns tries to attack Ike, with the usual result.



Meanwhile, Naesala murders the two ravens in between effortlessly dodging Spears.





Oh boy. On the last turn, the game spawns fourteen ravens.



Naesala racks up one kill now and will get several more on the last enemy phase when every one of those ravens that can reach him vainly tries to attack him.



Shockingly, Naesala actually gets hit this time.



Meanwhile, we clean up the Wyverns posthaste using Shinon, Ike, Brom, Lucia and Tormod.



Finally, we position Janaff and Tanith in raven-range, that they might rack up counterkills.



The final enemy phase begins.



Gah! Twice?!



Janaff is both fast and tough enough to shrug off any raven threats here.



He's also fast enough to double all of this lot, so that's fortunate.



On...



And on it goes.



Then they start going for Tanith.



That, too, ends poorly.



When all the ravens on the east side have suicided themselves, the western lot try to go for Naesala.



So, just imagine I'm posting this screenshot five times, and you've pretty much got the experience of the thing.



The last two guys can't quite reach him. So ends turn 8. We win!



Obviously, Tactician is a freebie here since the mission is of fixed length. Getting the maximum battle rank, however, is more of a problem, since you really have to keep on top of the reinforcements. There are 68 enemies total, but only 54 of them are actually on the map during player phases, so you need to kill at least one of the final-turn ravens - more in my case, since there were three wyverns Naesala couldn't kill. Still, I managed to do it comfortably.

This wasn't exactly the team I would've picked were the choice entirely up to me, but I guess it all worked out in the end! We may want to vote a bit more carefully for the next map, though...

---



Here's Trial Map Three, Strange Turn. I can't wait to hear this one justified.

Five units may accompany Ike on whatever the hell it is he's doing here, of which one is going to be Mystery Guest #3, meaning you've got four units worth of voting to do. You may want to think carefully here.

Units still available: Titania, Gatrie, Soren, Mia, Ilyana, Mist, Lethe, Mordecai, Volke, Kieran, Nephenee, Sothe, Astrid, Makalov, Stefan, Muarim, Devdan, Reyson, Ulki, Calill, Tauroneo, Ranulf, Haar, Bastian, Geoffrey, Largo, Elincia, Nasir, Giffca, Tibarn.

(ahahah no way am I bringing Reyson on this one)

Reminder of the rules:

• Once a unit is voted in one one map, they may not be used again
  
• Only one unit of any given class per map
  
• At most two laguz per map
  
• Only one staff user per map (Soren, Ilyana, Mist, Elincia)
  
• You don't strictly speaking have to apply these rules to your votes (ie, you may vote for two units of one class if you want), but they will be enforced after counting.

You've got [insert very definite and confident timeframe here]. Proceed!