lets make LOTS effortposts a trend lol, we need to match the hags
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I promised a certain man I would write an effortpost about one of the units in his project after I finished AVT, so here we are. I should note that AVT was the first Fire Emblem romhack I’ve ever beaten, as I often get distracted by trying to juggle multiple romhacks and then never finishing any of them.
AVT is a really interesting game, numbers-wise. Very rarely do enemies threaten you because of their stats, since all stats but HP cap at 20 in this game. What you need to be cognizant of is enemy inventories, both from the perspective of a player who wants to capture some shiny new toys for their training projects and a player who wants to keep said training projects safe. Naturally, the existence of capture requires you to have units with high enough Con to capture bulkier enemies. Capture also cuts your Spd in half, since Capture is effectively the equivalent of Rescuing an enemy unit.
Now, there are many units in AVT that can reliably Capture, whether it’s Carmela with her AYE AYE! or Alva with her 7 mov and access to a crazy array of toys if you put some favouritism into her. Both of these units were characters I enjoyed playing with in my playthrough, but they’re not who we’re talking about today.
No, today we’re talking about the very laconic Armor Knight, Marzano.
For the uninitiated, Marzano is a really funny character. He joins you in Chapter 3, but only if you free him from a Chest that you unlock, which rewards you a Vulnerary. There is no sign-posting or talk events for this recruitment–he just thanks you for freeing him from the Chest and joins your squad near the end of the map. Since I was playing blind, I almost forgot I had left an unopened chest in Ch 3 before I cleared the map. Imagine my confusion when I obtained a Vulnerary, and then my mirth when after said Vulnerary I recruited Marzano!
If there was a word I’d use to describe Marzano, it’s reliable. 5 Mov Armor Knight aside, Marzano has everything he needs at base to perform to Endgame. First of all, he has B rank Lances at base in a game that has no shortage of great lances. He may not be the best recipient of those Lances at all times, but when you have weapons like the powerful Devil Spear or the Glass Spear (which cannot miss in a game where Hit is capped at 99), you can trade around those powerful lances to him whenever you need to do some decent damage or land a guranteed capture.
Ah yes, the real reason I enjoyed using this Paragon of an Armor Knight in AVT:Capture. In a game where Capture cuts your power and accuracy down when taking out an enemy, something drew me to using Marzano. I never went out of my way to show him favouritism or Rescue Drop him closer to the enemy so he could do Armor Knight things, but he continued to impress me with his reliable hit rates whenever I realized my Capture attempt would have risked a unit dying next turn otherwise.
12 Base Strength is only 8 away from capping in AVT, and all he’ll ever really need. Enemies in this game are not known for being extremely bulky. Naturally this leads to Marzano never being too far away from something he can contribute to fighting, be it to weaken or finish off someone threatening or as I mentioned before; participate in a capture.
You might be chuckling and shaking your head at that very prototypical Armor Knight Res base, and you’d have every right to in most circumstances. However, Roze took special care in crafting the variety of Anima tomes in the game to a point where I found that if I played well enough I could have Marzano be in range of a Mage on Enemy Phase and be fine, no Barrier staves needed. Marzano truly is that guy.
I should also point out that in a game where money is tight and mostly obtained by stealing Grey Gems or selling captured Loot, you really don’t need to worry about promoting Marzano. Promo gains as a whole in AVT are minimally to the point where if you are promoting it’s because you’re giving favouritism to a unit you love or you’re doing it for increased MOV or a new weapon type. Marzano has no need for either of those things, or even any stat boosters. Certainly he would have been an even bigger help in my play-through if I had the funds to promote him (I almost bought another Master Seal in Chapter 8, but opted for a Physic staff instead), but those things are hard to come by in this game and are only sold on one map. Save your funds, buy a strong Lance for Marzano instead.
I want to close this Effortpost by saying that in a sea of bittersweet or downright tragic Epilogue endings, Marzano actually gets a really happy and pleasant one.
Would I say he was my favourite unit when I played the game? No, but he certainly left a memorable impression on me when I played; and that’s something I strive to do in my own projects.
This is all to say I want YOU to try using Marzano in your next AVT run if you haven’t already. He’s a lovely man and honestly a really cool unit that reminded me of how much you can do with a character that gets as little spotlight and dialogue as this guy.
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Wyler (Shackled Power)
I usually don’t like trainees. More often than not, they are a liability to train and the payoff is just an above average combat unit, and by the time they pop off, I already have so many other strong trained units that the trainee isn’t remarkable. Shackled Power’s trainee Wyler is no different in many ways from the classic flunky trainee that just isn’t worth it, yet despite this he ended up being one of my favorite units in the game and I was very glad I took the effort to train him. So what makes him special? When I recruited him in ch9, glance he looks like a guy with bad bases and good but not good enough growths. He actually used to be worse than this; when I started my run he had only 2 base luck. Thankfully this was buffed to 8 making him more reliable early.
A fair point of comparison is Hute, an armor knight who joined back in the very first chapter. Hute’s bases and growths look quite similar to Wyler’s and his worse (but not terrible) skill and luck are easily fixable with cheap buyable secret books and goddess icons. So why would I use Wyler when I’ve got Hute and plenty of other solid trained units?
Turns out I used him because he “looks funny.” Now something important for Wyler is his join time. You recruit him partway through chapter 9, which is a long fog map notorious for having the hardest boss in the game. The boss is a paladin on a throne with high stats all around, equipped with a spear and brave sword, and to top it off he’s immune to effective damage. He actually has a battle conversation with Wyler, though Wyler has no business fighting him without rigging a kill.
Anyway it’s a massive pain to kill him reliably and it’s likely a several turn ordeal. This also means you have plenty of time to farm experience on Wyler! Unfortunately his combat here is quite bad; he dies in two hits, gets doubled when using anything heavier than an iron, and has iffy hitrates even with the slim lance he joins with. However, there is a silver lining: this generic lieutenant (bow/bomb promoted class), who I believe is the first promoted generic enemy in the game.
Obviously if this guy attacks Wyler he’s just gonna kill him. However, since he doesn’t have a melee weapon, it’s very easy to set up chip and kill exp for Wyler, which can give him over an entire levelup alone. Aside from this guy, there are a few generics that Wyler can safely attack without risking death like the sword cavaliers and guerillas (unpromoted lieutenants), so between all of these I got him to level 5 by the end of this map. By this point he still sucks and is still a total liability, but he at least isn’t risking getting doubled as much and has slightly better accuracy. But fortunately for Wyler, the next chapter is a defend map that cannot be ended early. This means it’s a perfect opportunity to train him, and Nello, the new paladin you get on this map, is pretty good at setting up kills for him. After this, the next few maps aren’t particularly great for him, but he at least grew out of being a liability and into a real contributor a lot faster than I expected him to. I promoted him at level 20 (he is a trainee after all), which he reached in chapter 16.
Now this is a real unit. Gone is the flunky who needed to be fed kills, replaced with a killing machine. Of course, I have several other similarly powerful combat units at this point, so what is it that makes him more than just another infantry combat unit? His class, halberdier, is one of three promoted mono-weapon classes that have +25 crit, the others being swordmaster and berserker. On top of this, he supports Prosel and Nello, the lord and the arguable best unit in the game respectively. An A+B support with these two results in a nice +12 crit. Late game Shackled Power enemies have enough bulk that it is often difficult for even your strongest units to defeat them in one round without effective weapons or critical hits. Also enemies in this game tend to have very low luck making crits more reliable than usual. Anyone can fish for crits with a killer weapon and/or supports and you even have access to a killer light tome for 1-2 ranged crits, but Wyler has a unique combination of properties that make him shine: high offense stats, 1-2 range, high crit rate, and bulk. While there are good units in the other two +25 crit classes, none of them can replicate both his bulk and crit rate. Unlike what you’d expect from a trainee soldier with good growths, by lategame an invested Wyler is by far the best unit in the game at 1-2 range enemy phase combat due to being able to reliably survive and crit often. Armed with the humble javelin, he can mow down hordes of both melee and ranged enemies on enemy phase without risking death.
In case you’re thinking “wow this unit seems crazy,” he is still far from infallible. He is ultimately a lancelocked infantry unit which means his movement is poor, his weapon options are limited, and he is vulnerable to effective damage from the lanceslayer sword. Furthermore, despite all these green numbers, his resistance stat is notably terrible and his speed cap is low enough that he will not be able to double several enemy types by endgame, especially if his weapon weighs him down. In the end, he excels at his role, but he will never do anything outside of it. He won’t obsolete anyone else because all he wants to do is throw javelins and occasionally kill something with an effective weapon or killer lance on player phase. Players who leave his level 2 self on the bench will not miss him, and once they beat the game, they won’t think “man I really wish I used Wyler,” but for those who put in the time and effort to train him, he’s a very rewarding unit to use.
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