With 9 turns and two objectives in opposite directions it’s clearly time to split forces. The Tidereaver base is full of assassins and mixed archers squads. The former should be old hat by now and the latter is really not that much of a problem. The warbows have superior range and damage, but with the mixed squad makeup they won’t have as much punch as your dedicated archer squads & the AI will prefer to use them at range on enemy phase.

On the right side the enemy infantry and archers will be pretty standard for what you’ve faced so far. Their cavalry forces are fairly mixed: the southern quartet have raiders while the norther trio has scouts instead. These more conventional forces should prove susceptible to smash mouth tactics. I sent the skull squad east to the southern assassin group and then back west to face more traditional forces there to maximize surrenders.

This is the first bazaar in quite some time, so I sent Beatrix shopping. I recruited Kaffi the Curious, Sorceress with dark affinity, and bought two legendary artifacts: Temporal Modulator and Jade Figurine. The modulator is possibly the most powerful artifact in the game because it allows defenders to attack first! Even with a patch to limit this to 3 times per turn, it can be leveraged in amazing ways. Offense is truly the best defense if the enemy never gets to attack, even when they initiate combat.

The Jade Figurine gives the squad a bonus turn 33% of the time, which is incredibly powerful when it happens. You can even follow it’s activation with blessing to give a squad three turns and a chance to trigger Jade Figurine again for a staggering four turns in a row.

The treasure chest at the far lower right is extremely out of the way, but you can either send a flying squad to reach it or burn a teleport power to zip a squad across the bay. For your trouble you will find a medal of valor.

The boss was strong enough to stand up to one round of six cannons (cautious mode), but not strong enough to withstand Jaromir’s skull squad follow up. With Jaromir taking point on the right hand side I ended up with 115 surrenders and a few squads contributed mostly by healing him. It might be more efficient to have some squads with 2 or 3 healers to support the skull squad. Even a full healer squad is possible, but seems a little overkill.

Interlude

I have built up a silly amount of arena tokens: 5 bronze, 3 silver, 1 gold, 2 platinum. I’ll be using the gold and platinum to experiment with temporal modulator and other squad changes, but not sure I need the others at this point.

For the temporal modulator I want a squad that maximizes first turn damage, but unlike most damage squads it cannot rely on fire, ice or even lightning mages: they won’t cast the first turn on defense. Beatrix is an obvious choice here, but her squad is setup with the Giant’s Thresher such that she can force surrender, take an attack, annihilate everyone in one attack and heal back up from bloodlust traits. Perhaps after I’ve unlocked all the techs I’ll change my mind, but for now I want Beatrix padding the surrender numbers along with Jaromir’s skull squad. MC casts on the first turn and is one of my top 3 capacity leaders, so I will repurpose her squad for the modulator.

Sorceress is often seen as a lesser mage class, but she does cast on the first turn on defense and that will let me put Kaffi the Curious to work immediately. Sorceresses can also stun the enemy to mitigate damage in case the first turn clear fails. Champion and swordmaster seem like the next candidates for damage, but centurion could also be interesting for buffing other damage dealers and splash damage. Now that light units attack before heavy mixing these characters together with mages will result in three separate attack phases to maximize chances for fully wiping the enemy.

MC’s squad is using the Temporal Modulator, Black Belt (+25% damage on defense) and Ataraxia (+2 strength, +4 magic, 5 squad capacity), which resulted in flawless annihilation of the first three enemy squads to attack. Likely MC will have to work harder in chapter 22 than gold arena, but this looks quite promising. I am actually going to avoid using it too much until I reach max tech level, because obliterating the enemy on enemy phase will minimize surrender chances.

Beatrix gains the Jade Figurine for more chances to force surrender squads from full health. I also considered giving it to Jaromir’s skull squad, but I prefer Jaromir with St Teresa’s Bulwark to protect the front line and Landis’s Fixed Dice for more drops.