FE8 RR 0% LTC Ch.10B (with Commentary)

[@queenlyarts]

Wow, that was very quick! I feel like I glanced away for like, 5 seconds and somehow missed so much. I think what confused me the most was recruiting Joshua, because I remembered Cormag to be a reinforcement that you typically recruit while in the central area of the map. Looking at the Wiki, it seems Cormag does indeed start on the map, but in the southeastern corner, so the mod moved him next to the village so he could be on land. Since Tana got swapped with Forde though, it looks like specifically being moved up there and not closer to Cormag's actual starting point was pretty impactful for this full recruitment LTC, since you couldn't just fly to him. Also, I looked at the Reddit write up afterwards and was like, "wait, we got Natasha?" I didn't realize Duessel could just be recruited after the battle without ever talking to him. Like with Cormag/Joshua though, that's very convenient for the run, so we take those. Now I finally see who you were talking about as being important due to their newly pre-promoted status from Reverse Recruitment! I understand waiting until the next part to discuss the new units, I was just thrown off since somehow their introduction at the end didn't really click with me right away haha. Imagine if to keep the Cormag starting position, the mod made Joshua a Wyvern, or even better... a Fleet. He's already got the Pirate hat and everything, why not let him sail the seas?

[@osfe_]

That's actually a really good point! With how fast the chapter was, doing commentary was a bit difficult since there was so much to cover in so little time. Thankfully (but also unfortunately) there are a lot of rout maps with lengthy enemy phases coming up so there will hopefully be more time to talk about some more general stuff about the run apart from the moment-to-moment strategies for each map; stuff like investment choices and other long-term planning decisions, among other things. But yeah I completely forgot to mention the significance of the Cormag replacement getting moved but it is absolutely a big part of what makes the 2-Turn clear possible. I don't even want to imagine if they just stuck Joshua on the fort out in the ocean and I had to find a way to get Forde there to recruit him. I do love the thought of Fleet Joshua though lol And yeah there's actually a surprising amount of recruitments that work similarly to Duessel in this run. In FE8 generally any time there's a Green Unit that you can recruit, you'll get them anyways as long as they survive the chapter. This is true for Garcia & Ross, Duessel, L'Arachel & Dozla, and Syrene in this run (though the same applies for all the recruitable Green Units in Eirika route). An interesting and kind of funny exception to this rule is Ephraim Route Marisa, who shows up as an enemy in Ch.12 but still automatically gets recruited as long as you recruit Ewan and have him survive until the end of the chapter; almost like they expect people won't wanna expend the effort to recruit her with Ewan. I had no idea about any of this though until I started looking into LTCing the game; it's not something that's usually super noticeable in a casual playthrough.

[@queenlyarts]

I didn't even realize that Cormag starts on a one-tile island with a fort, I thought he was just flying above the water, which is why I suggested Fleet Joshua lol. So technically he would have land to stand on, but I don't think Forde would be able to recruit him at all, with Joshua not being able to move and Forde not having space to be dropped. Clearly the work around for the Reverse Recruitment mod should have been adding Thracia Capture, an Entrap staff, or a reverse Silence staff that lets units be even louder and talk from long distances.

[@osfe_]

Those all seem like pretty good ideas that'd probably work, should add all three while we're at it though juuust to be safe. And hey, if those changes end up helping save turns elsewhere that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make (: