The enemy has gunpowder weapons for the first time and it’s important to initiate on them to take out a few (or all 3) gunners before they have a chance to open fire on you. Gunners use the weapon stat (215!) and not their strength stat, so they are quite dangerous regardless of the character’s stats. Hit and run horse archers from the raised fortress squares are a good opener and your stronger cavalry and infantry squads can likely wipe out all 3 gunners before they get to return fire. Note that gunners cannot shoot a square away like archers, but they can fire at squads above them if they are directly adjacent.

Send some light infantry and cavalry into the forest to ambush the forces to the upper right, send a support squad like Sybil to take Port Herald to the lower left and rush the rest of your troops to the fortresses in the center.

Duke Lothair’s cavalry will arrive at the start of turn 3 and new objectives will be added, as well as a new ally squad! Push hard to the enemy base to minimize Lothair’s cavalry hurling themselves against the enemy pikes. The allied units have a lower threat rating than any of your squads should, so keep in mind that they will be targeted before your squads.

The enemy leader has three cannons, so give the base a wide berth until you are ready to charge in and take him out on player phase. Cannons can’t shoot back, so archers can safely soften them up or a cavalry charge followed by infantry should prove effective.

Don’t forget to head by the bazaar before seizing the enemy stronghold. I recruited Lt Archibald, a dragoon leader with shock and awe, as I plan to experiment with Lysander’s AoE healing with a full tank squad and divest his 3 gunners. I also picked up a third dragon and pulled an evolved dragon out of Abigayle’s dragon incubator squad to reinforce MC’s squad.

Interlude

I setup Lt Archibald with Lysander’s 3 gunners and a spearman. This squad has significantly lower capacity than Lysander, but I can’t promote anyone else to gunpowder units at this point anyway.

I outfitted Lysander with 6 infantry units with a mix of beacon and healing attuned traits to leverage his AoE healing as much as possible. While Lysandar’s heal isn’t that large and the beacon bonus is only 25% of that, it is triggered separately for each character that is AoE healed. This leads to a seven unit squad triggering beacon 6 times on each character with beacon!