Specialty Squads
Lysander Beacon Squad
Lysander’s unique AoE heal is useful on its own, but it has an incredibly powerful interaction with Beacon. Each character with beacon will receive 25% of Lysander’s AoE again for each other character healed by the AoE. This is only made more powerful by Lysander’s incredible leadership score enabling his squad to be among the largest in your army. Everyone having beacon would be the ideal, but the front line characters are the top priority.
Lysander + beacon leaves you many options, but I like to put bodyguard on two front liners & have Lysander positioned so they both cover him. Arcane barrier on a paladin is another great choice & if you convert Lady Clarimonde to a paladin you can get arcane barrier, beacon, bodyguard and guardian all on one character!
The above squad is what I used to anchor stage 12 on warlord, but sentinels in the middle is over focusing on defense. Utilizing Officer’s Regalia (-15% damage taken on defense), Hulking Pavise(-15% firearms damage) and St Teresa’s Bulwark (-25% damage to the front line) makes the squad incredibly resilient to cannon fire.
Temporal Modulator Squad
The modulator enables your squad to attack first when defending (limit three times per phase), so classes that will attack in the first round on defense are a must. This eliminates all the mages but sorceresses and the MC, so we’ll employ those on the back line with a mix of light and heavy infantry to avoid overkill.
MC and the sorceresses could also be replaced with a dragoon/gunner back line or Stefan + two assassins. Either will give three separate attack groupings and will be less random than magic, albeit with less overall damage. MC + eight sorceresses is likely unstoppable, I’ve just never had that many.
The Black Belt (+25% damage on defense) and the counter attack leader skill (+25% damage on defense) stack together and can be further augmented with traits like Bodyguard (+20% damage done, -20% damage taken) to all but assure a first turn wipe. Cold Blooded (+25% damage to wounded enemies) also works well with sorceress and MC’s AoE spells.
General Ragavi’s unique skill Soul of Sayunaa is a weaker version of the modulator, but it only works for swordfighter, swordmaster and blademaster and only once per phase. Note those classes all attack at the same time, so you won’t be able to distribute the damage to multiple enemy lines, beyond the randomness of Narima’s attack. It is useful to annihilate the enemy front line when they catch Ragavi’s squad on enemy phase, but she is probably better suited for player phase/ambush attacks overall.
Skull of Rowdain Squads
The Skull of Rowdain (squad is locked at fearful morale, defeated enemies surrender if able, penalties to all attributes) is a significant tactical disadvantage but provides a huge boost to gold income and technology advancement by increasing surrenders. It can be hard to keep the squad alive, particularly early on, but the rewards can snowball hard.
The first variant is designed to obliterate the enemy squad in round one to avoid taking damage and maximize surrenders. To reduce overkill, I used two different types of mages as well as a mix of light and heavy melee characters which results in three different attack waves. Jaromir isn’t critical, but he has high leadership and does damage while Lysander’s healing isn’t very useful here. Stefan could also be interesting, as he would enable attacking the back line.
For a slight variant that can defend a little bit, employ plenty of arcane barrier and another paladin for the front line. Lysander could also be useful here as the leader with his AoE heal. Even with a heavy infantry front line, expect that you’ll need plenty of auxiliary healing and revives though.
If you also have the Temporal Modulator you can leverage them together to mitigate the damage you’ll take with the fearful morale penalty. Of course, the morale penalty also will make it harder to wipe out the enemy before they attack, but if you stack enough bonuses it can work.
Sin Credo Flying Nuke Squad
Beatrix makes the best use of Sin Credo (+1 attack for leader, -25% damage for followers) and doesn’t need much damage assist from her followers. Giant’s Thresher (+25% against larger squads) gives her another 25% damage boost and undoes the damage nerf to her followers. The Bloodlust trait will fully heal after Beatrix’s all target AoE too. Jade Figurine lets you do all it over again .. sometimes.
St Teresa’s Tiara Squad
Paladins, valkyries and Diana have both high strength and magic so are the first candidates to hoist the crown (Converts all magic to strength, +20 skill). Assassins won’t benefit quite as much from the conversion but do benefit from skill and will strike the back to avoid overkill. Swordmasters are another good choice: they will strike before heavy infantry and with the combined strength and skill bonus, three of them have a decent chance of taking out the front line.
With other hybrid artifacts like Balmung (the +magic will apply and then be converted to strength), you can reach +120% strength for paladins, valkyries and Diana in this squad. The swordmasters will get more of a 50% boost, but will still hit incredibly hard. Traits like arcane might and skill will give the full bonuses, but arcane barrier won’t work with tiara.
Soha’s Blood Shard
The blood shard (dealing damage heals the squad, -10% hp at end of phase) enables healing without squishy healers, which can enable building a resilient bruiser focused squad that can take damage and sustain quite efficiently. The 10% hp damage can be completely mitigated by Belinda’s Field Kit (heals 10% hp at the start of the phase), but that is probably not necessary if the squad will be constantly engaging in combat.
Without the need for healers I tend to focus on classes that can deal significant damage and are at least somewhat durable or evasive. If I put in a mage, they need to have at least arcane barrier, but arcane vigor works really well with the blood shard too. A combination of samurai and Narima for the front line enables lifesteal on ranged attack/response as well.