Myrmidon, Swordmaster, Infantry Monoswords
The Fire Emblem class Myrmidon, also known under names Swordfighter and Samurai, is typically a sword-using class that is characterized by a statline of high speed and skill. Usually, they also have mediocre strength, though Myrmidons with solid strength tends to be more common than Myrmidons with mediocre speed. The monosword class Swordfighter originates from the first Fire Emblem, represented by Navarre and Ogma, and they promote to Hero. In FE4, Ayra became the first Swordmaster, which is the promotion the modern Myrmidon is associated with, while Chulainn, also of the Swordfighter class, promotes to what would eventually become the modern Hero. In FE5, this differentiation brought about the modern Hero, with Mareeta, Shiva, and Trude all promoting to Swordmaster from Swordfighter, but Machuya gains axes instead of movement. In FE6, the unpromoted classes finally split into Myrmidon versus Mercenary, and when FE1 is remade into FE11, Navarre was assigned Myrmidon, while Ogma was assigned Mercenary.
Myrmidons can trace their roots to various swordsmen media, such as the Wuxia and Chanbara fiction genres, which features extraordinarily skilled swordsmen who excel in duels. Characters in this class often are depicted as extremely skilled fighters and duelists, or as someone in the process of training to reach that goal. Visually they tend to have high amounts of flair, with flowing coats and flashy animations. Looking cool doesn’t necessarily mean combat effectiveness, however. As a mono-weapon unit type, they lack the flexibility of multiweapon classes, and as infantry, they have less movement than mounted units. Swords as a weapon type also generally have low might, to compound on the class often having mediocre strength. For a Myrmidon to be worth considering a deployment slot on purely gameplay merits, they need to have things the rest of the army can’t do that make these drawbacks worth the tradeoff. The official titles accomplish this to varying degrees of effectiveness.
In Official Titles
Note: I played most (but not all) titles on highest difficulty so that’ll likely be what I’m most familiar with, and while I played everything FE4 and later, I’m significantly more familiar with some more than others. If I leave something out, it’s probably because I don’t remember enough to be confident about using them in this analysis. I should provide enough examples here to illustrate my points, however.
Rutger is one of the most notable Myrmidons in terms of combat effectiveness. His stats are very high because of hard mode bonuses, which allows him to kill bosses really well. Swords are a good weapon type in FE6, since half of lances and almost all of axes have very unreliable hit rates. Swordmasters gaining +30 crit, while not necessary for them to be good under FE6’s system, is icing on the cake on the fun factor and does make the crits more reliable to get. Fir is a clear training project and does start weak, but hard mode bonuses does actually make her bases quite high for her level, and she does join in a map full of axes. While not as effective as Rutger, and isn’t intended to be, she nevertheless is a fun training project with reasonable payoff with how friendly FE6 is toward Myrmidons.
FE4’s Ayra actually has a similar on-the-surface level setup to Rutger. Her stats are insanely high for her join time, she has the skill Astra, and she will likely win in a 1v1 against the majority of your units, hence many people having trouble with her recruitment. Swords are also the best physical weapon type in FE4 due to unmitigated weight. The issue with FE4 is the maps are just too big. Ayra’s overwhelming offense doesn’t quite make up for the vast advantage having both 3 more mov and canto, and roads giving a percentage increase in movement further compounds a horse’s movement advantage. Gen 1 maps, at least, do have split objectives, so in some maps infantry can still reach the next castle faster than the mounts can get back from the previous castle. Gen 2 is significantly more hostile toward infantry in layout, and in fast play her twins often get left behind despite their high initial stats and strong skill layouts. However, because Shannan having Balmung skews the scale so much further, enough for him to perform well against endgame enemies at base, his combat is still very relevant, but his movement flaws are still very present as a balancer.
FE5 in contrast has smaller maps than FE4 and also fatigue and dismounting. This incentivizes players to use different units for indoor vs outdoor maps: fatigue coupled with FE5’s relatively low enemy stats makes a good environment for team rotation, and mounts suffer strong penalties dismounted between being mostly locked out of their main weapons and having less mov than standard infantry classes. Swordmaster and Hero split in FE5 and the main tradeoff is +1 mov vs Axes. While axes do have some perks like having a more accessible 1-2 that runs off strength and the new Build stat mitigates some of the effects of weight off attack speed, its poor hit in a 1-99 1RN system makes the Swordmasters having 1 more mov a more appealing indoor choice.
Lances and Axes got a hitrate increase in FE7 and 8, and swords are no longer the dominant melee weapon type in those entries. While having sufficient personal stats can still make a unit fairly effective with just swords (e.g. Joshua, Raven before promotion, Jaffar), FE7 and 8 have a number of underwhelming Myrmidons. While Guy has pretty ok bases and does get Hard Mode bonuses, despite having a 70% speed growth, his problem is actually that he’s not fast enough. Guy is held back by poor con that causes him to lose 3 points of speed on Killing Edges, and while he does have a solid showing in specifically 13x, between his bases not quite being high enough to handle being weighed down by the moderate damage swords, and Swordmaster doesn’t gain speed on promo, he loses out doubling thresholds against a good amount of the enemies that warrant super high speed on. This is compounded by Raven joining soon after with better bases in all relevant stats, and 3 higher con on top of that. Hero also has speed on promotion and the improved axes are a better tradeoff here against the +15 crit of Swordmasters. Karel also joins with not enough speed to matter and also loses you a Brave Sword. Karla and Marisa of FE8 are completely understatted, with neither the writing nor the payoff that classify them as ‘intentional training projects’, unlike Fir or Mareeta. In the cases of Guy, Karel, Karla, and Marisa, they cannot hit enough offensive value to even put the tradeoff of raw offense vs flexibility/utility on the table.
FE11 introduces reclass, and in most reclass entries, Myrmidons tend to be unfavorable picks. Most of the time it is because Myrmidon as a class is just fairly underpowered in the entry they’re in. Awakening and Birthright, notably, are heavily enemy-phase focused games that wants 1-2 killing power. While Fates does have ranged swords, like most melee-based ranged weapons, they cannot double and weighs down a Myrmidon’s avoid. Lon’qu has good stats, but you can put Lon’qu into Wyvern and then he’s a good Wyvern and not a Myrm anymore. Hana is frail and ill suited for the enemy phase. Hinata’s actually pretty solid for earlygame, but his speed scales poorly and ends up a better backpack. In FE11 I also tend to put Navarre into Cav whenever I use him. Similarly, Engage’s Kagetsu’s claim to fame is that he can just not be a Swordmaster and go into a stronger class (also like the aforementioned Wyvern Lord) and bring those stats with him there.
However, this is not the case with every reclass entry. FE12 has Swordmaster be a very potent lategame class for a few reasons: FE12 lategame enemies all have capped speed, so being 27 speed or higher means you don’t get doubled by anything, and with SM’s huge speed base and 30 cap, it’s pretty easy to get your team mainstays to hit those thresholds. SM grants automatic C swords, which gives access to Wyrmslayer to deal effective damage for a very big portion of the lategame. SM is the only class that can sometimes dodge anything in FE12. One notable matchup in the lategame I remember off my 12 Lunatic run is getting SM!Palla to face 30 hit from a lategame Berserker. Berserkers hit very hard, and while you should make sure your strat accounts for getting hit anyway, not getting hit means you can spend your heals elsewhere which helps with action economy and pacing momentum.
Speaking of dodgetanking, and also going back to Fates, there is the elephant in the room: Ryoma. Narratively, Ryoma is the strongest warrior in Hoshido and also the crown prince, so he has the stats and equipment appropriate for that role. Gameplaywise, Ryoma bypasses pretty much every flaw inherent to Swordmaster as a class. Raijinto can double and does not drop speed at range, and even gives Ryoma +4 str for free if it’s in inventory at all. It also gives +10 avoid. Dodgetanking on its own isn’t reliable in Fates because of hybrid RN, but Ryoma doesn’t only rely on dodgetanking. His own bulk is good enough to take at least 1 hit, often 2, as a safety net, and because his ranged offense isn’t gimped, he has much better chances to proc Astra in most combats, which in Fates grants a full shield gauge and he can just negate damage that way. While some may argue he’s still better in Paladin, that is at least a path of some resistance, as he joins midway through the game and will have to build an A support for it with a unit the player may not be even using, and Swordmaster Ryoma is plenty effective enough. While Ryoma’s setup can be a bit too far on the unit balance scale for players preferring tighter design, breaking down what makes him, him, is still a useful exercise. Not all sandboxes need the same level of balance–it is a single player game after all, and in single player, being fun is more important than being perfectly balanced.
The Takeaways, from what worked and didn’t work in Vanilla
- The tradeoffs for having swordlock should be appealing.
- This can be skills or it can just be having enough of more stats. Sometimes more stats is mov.
- Swords themselves ideally should be a competitive weapon type.
- Ideally, every weapon type should be worth using.
- The easiest way to accomplish this is to have every weapon type have some options that have unique effects only that weapon type have access to.
- As a pure combat class, their combat needs to be good enough to matter as a tradeoff to other classes having more flexibility and/or utility.
- It’s fine to just give them sometimes a lot more stats.
- Sometimes it’s fun to have a narratively hyperdominant prepromote, and Swordmaster is a fitting class for it, while the inherent drawbacks of the class can help balance the unit out a bit.
- Ryoma is so overwhelming because he basically can just ignore every drawback present in Swordmaster as a class. The designer can choose to dial back some of those aspects if that is something they care about. They may not.
- Shannan is a good example of a powerful-but-flawed unit because his combat is so good but movement is also too dominant in FE4 that it’s unignorable that he doesn’t have a horse, yet Balmung’s contributions cannot be ignored either.
Implementation in Hacks
As creators of Fire Emblem fangames, many of us have our own takes on Myrm characters and how they should play in our works. I’ll go over what I’ve done as a dev, as well as examples that I’ve found notable in other hacks.
In My Hack, Which Is Epic
Some of you probably think I just do art for Dream of Five and Homecoming (and to a much lesser extent, Drums of War). This is false. While it is true that Parrhesia does the vast majority of gameplay design on our three complete hacks as of this point, I do custom code occasionally, playtest with actionable feedback, and I’m fully responsible for the +15avo in addition to crit idea and implementation for Swordmasters in Do5 and HC.
Playing the Percentages
My inspiration was FE12 Lunatic. Palla dodging that Berserker felt really good. Do5 isn’t nearly as extreme as FE12 Lunatic in either enemy quality or avoid reduction through formula, but it does still have fairly strong enemies, and there is a formula change (skl * 2 + luk instead of luk/2 for hit) that makes dodging less reliable. Giving Swordmasters 15 avo for free gives them back some of that reliability with less requirements, and that allows for more reliable matchups against hard-hitting axes and even be a good option to bait Silver Longbow Snipers while on terrain, even if they can’t counter. The same principle is why we gave Rena +15 luck on Gilded Edge.
Generic Myrms hit 20 spd as of C11 and are 19 spd during C10 and 10B. The bulky lances don’t take a lot of damage from these guys, but it does take 2 people to kill before Nikita’s final iteration.
Onduris route has a lot of Myrmidon enemies, given the worldbuilding. Midway into the route, they start hitting 20 speed. Dream of Five enemies tend to be on the bulkier end of reasonable, which does mean generally enemies cannot be oneshot outside of effective damage. Because nobody can double Myrmidons, nobody can oneround them at that point, even using good equipment. I’ve tried earlypromoting Eilene, but earlypromoting full combat units in Do5 gimps their long term hard enough that it would be a poor exp allocation choice to then feed Eilene enough exp to level up twice to hit 24AS, as that requires precious boss kills that early on. On top of that, Eilene gets weighed down by most lances and has low enough str to miss kills while doubling anyway. My usual play involves promoting Kolbane, a bulky lance who fares well against Myrms in general, during C12. C12 is where lv1 promoted units can finally gain a good amount of exp killing normal enemies, and with Kolbane having a reasonable shot to cap speed at lv20 unpromoted, a +3 promo bonus, he has good chances of hitting 24AS by the end of the chapter to then double everything into c13 and 14. However, that’s still only 2 chapters of a 9-chapter route. Myrms hit 20 speed before that point.
Note the 21AS as a boss but 24Speed when you get to use her
The solution to that is simple. The player can recruit a prepromote Swordmaster, Nikita, on 10x/11, by defeating her in chapter 10. Late into development, as a result of my testing, we ended up giving her 24 base speed so she can double myrms for free. To make her boss fight manageable, we then swapped out her Silver Sword for Steel, which weighs her down by 3. This allows her to still be a tricky but doable boss with the tools we’ve given the player up to that point. We’re happy with the results; Nikita through my multiple tests feels the best to use out of any act 2 prepromote and slots comfortably into the lategame.
The unpromoted myrm, vi’Shen is less initially glamorous by comparison. However, his bases still put in work for his join and he scales offensively better, while Nikita’s scaling is more full avoid focused. He also has the option to instantly promote, or to gain a few extra stats while unpromoted before he does. People who have used vi’Shen generally reported positively.
Bases vs insta-promo comparison.
We kept the +15 avoid Swordmaster into Homecoming. Both enemy and average player bulk have been dialed down, but weapon power has been slightly skewed up, so everyone is easier to kill. The weapon triangle has also been dialed up for better counterplay matches. The Myrms in Homecoming recruit each other this time, in a chain of
- Lasse, who made up a few things on his resume but is still a decent sword-arm, just in over his head;
- Gwyngyll, who Studied The Blade™;
- Brychan, an old master, may or may not be cultivating, who knows;
- Dryche, last war’s veteran, the realest deal;
Lasse has slightly above par combat stats compared to most of the party bar Anghara and Ludolf, but not overly so. Gwyn has better combat stats overall than a similarly-levelled Lasse, though worse avoid and res. Brychan goes all-in on res (as well as the standard SM stats of skl and spd) for magic sword synergy. Dryche…will be discussed in a later section.
Homecoming magic weapons (mostly swords) runs off res, taking inspiration from FE5’s mag=res system. This did make Pegasi really offensively powerful, though Pegasi are still quite a bit frailer than Swordmasters. While a few of the Swordmasters do have too low res to really make the best use of Magic Swords, those tend to be the ones with high raw combat stats to use the rest of the swords really well. For Swordmasters who have just enough res, via a combination of boosters and pure water, however, this gives them a defensive edge over Pegasi while using magic swords, between higher raw bulk, avoid bonus, and not dying immediately to bows.
The Intentionally Overstatted Megasword
When the original Dream of Five ended production in 2015, I also took a break from the hacking scene. When I returned to revive Dream of Five in 2023, the first hack I played was Parr’s previous hack, Drums of War. In DoW, Estrelle was a standout both in character presence and in gameplay, with her overwhelming stats. Later, I recommended her for several lategame strats in Toffee’s 100% growths LTC run despite the party being otherwise comprised of units who have, well, been grown with growths set to 100%. All she needed was 2 strength levels for everything she needed to do, or the equivalent of a strength booster. Estrelle does use bows as a secondary, so she’s disqualified for an in-depth analysis here, but she’s the first of the NQR Megaswords.
In 2010, I created Thyra, though under a different name at the time. She used to be an earlygame Myrmidon, shifted to be a midgame Swordmaster due to earlygame sword saturation, and then changed to a custom class as I learned how to do custom animations. Her design evolved with both my art abilities and changes as a person, and as of 2015 her design no longer suited a standard Swordmaster stat profile.
The 15 crit is really just there so the animations will play. I spent a lot of time on those crit anims, you know.
Come 2023, it’s finally time to make chapter 17. Thyra’s combat abilities are heavily inspired by wuxia novels, and convergently comparable to Kiryu Kazuma far before I even played Yakuza. Someone who’s meant to be that powerful of a fighter should have the stats to match, and I took inspiration from Estrelle and Ryoma and Shannan. Dream of Five’s mounts are fairly good, so for an infantry melee unit to not just be viable but to really stand out, we needed to push quite a bit of her stats and it took a few iterations. Tianlong Jian was always meant to be a 1-2 chainsword of sorts, but since Dream of Five is a game designed with a degree of balance in mind, we do want to avoid a straight up Ryoma. I coded Tianlong Jian’s conditional 2 range stat decrease. Narratively it’s because it’s an imperfect design. We also gave her a notable flaw in having 0/5% res backed by lore. This limited her ability to completely juggernaut up the game, but she has the third highest Battle/Win numbers for a unit joining more than halfway through the game in the 0% LTC and is used for the final boss kill, so I’d say we hit the right spot in that unit design.
In our next game, Homecoming, Dryche [Major Spoilers Ahead] is designed to be Asbjorn’s Navarre. She takes inspiration from both Navarre and Ayra, and as a unit continues the trend of the overstatted megasword in our projects. Narratively she fits with “Navarre, 20 years later” fairly closely, but her design is based off a sketch I did of a Gen 2 Ayra, and a lot of her gameplay design elements call back to her as well. Moon and Star is a reference to the FE4 sword skills, both in name and its effects (pierce, +15 spd–which originally was brave until that was found to be a bit too broken), and even has reduced mov for an injured leg.
Honestly she’s basically Shannan.
Dryche’s design thesis, from Parr, was to see if he can get me, specifically. to use a reduced mov unit (as resident big fan of the mov stat) that isn’t spamming staves or have strong 3+ range, and he succeeded. I might have shot myself in the foot by designing her after Ayra, who is my favorite FE character despite what I said about FE4’s infantry issues, but Homecoming also accommodates her well. Chapter 21 is a multi-bosskill that has some close bosses she can gank while the mobile bosskillers take the far ones. Chapter 22 is turnfloored and on a pure gameplay level she carves through the chapter boss like butter whereas several other top tier units do poorly against her, so she has plenty of time to amble down. Chapter 23 is big and on first sight her mobility would hurt her here, but Homecoming’s rescue staff (S rank, received at the end of 19, her join chapter) has 15 uses and 23 is a high deploy map anyway, she can be moved using rescue. She’s mandatory if you want to 1 turn Final. Dryche managed the movement-power tradeoff by being the most powerful tactical nuke.
Myrmido’s and Myrmidon’ts
There is, of course, not one singular correct way to handle Myrmidons, but to hit the right class feel, generally it all comes back to killing more things than other units, or dodging more things than other units, or both, in the end. I’ve enjoyed a good amount of the Myrms and Swordmasters I’ve used in hacks I’ve played, and I do want to highlight some standout examples.
Cerulean Crescent
Since the remaining hacks I’m talking about aren’t mine I only have my endgame saves so you’re getting their endgame stats instead of bases. Rohesia is one of the highest-levelled characters I have this file, which is my first CC run, done on Misery mode. Granny saved me.
Cerulean Crescent’s Rohesia has a skill that gives her 100% crit on initiation, outside of a few weapons that can’t crit. While on Normal mode she’s often overlooked for units with built-in refreshes and higher mobility, on Misery her ability to kill anything ever and not fall off in doing so is incredibly valuable. Because she can crit with everything outside of Rondel Dagger (def pierce), Fancy Stabber (1-2 canto), and magic swords, her selection of what can crit contains weapons with extremely high mt, like Silver Blade, effective weapons (which contains the Da series effectives in the lategame that is effective against anything non-infantry) or things that mitigate enemy counter, like Brave Sword and the swords that do follow-up before counter. Killing with her feels good because you can move her up to any enemy not holding an anticrit item and expect them to be gone with the right weapon choice.
She also doubles as CC’s megasword given her narrative role, high base stats/level, and the ability to remove almost unit you want from the map. Except she joins in chapter 5 and is just good forever. Her drawback is lack of in-built refreshes, which is a reasonable balancing factor. Her movement itself otherwise, however, is actually pretty good, at 7 base movement and is only exceeded by the chickens and people with built in refreshes until units can promote.
Hag in White
He did eat 2 HP boosters for that HP, but one of the HP boosters was dropped on Endgame-2 so it was more or less a vanity use. One HP booster is very good on him, however. I recommend it.
Kairos is my favorite Hag in White character for both writing and combat. He joins very early and kills everything really dead with his flame sword. I thought he’d be pretty flame sword reliant given his higher mag than str statline so that’s why I started hopping on Lopezcoin, but turns out you do actually get a second free one fairly soon and they’re pretty reasonably priced anyway.
Kairos keeps on being extremely dominant in raw damage numbers and his tradeoff is that he is very squishy. While his access to range is less restricted than most Myrms out there, Flame Swords at range do not give sword exp, so you do need to do some melee combat (can still be with Flame Sword) to get his wexp up. While this is a gba bug of sorts, it nevertheless creates a fairly interesting dynamic while using him.
Kairos has the option to go Spellblade (basically Sage but keeps swords too) or Swordmaster, and Spellblade is generally regarded as the stronger option, for good reason. I went Swordmaster myself because I just thought it’d be something Kairos would do, and it’s still fairly potent. A fun strat I use in Swordmaster is pure water into baiting an axe user + the 3 sages behind them, which is made more reliable in Swordmaster because of higher speed, even with the avo reduction formula. For someone who is rather physically frail I actually did a nontrivial amount of calculated enemy phase plays with him, and if you’ve been getting the shrine Kestrel Swords, that allows SM damage to keep up with endgame levels just fine.
Faces of A Stranger
Faces of A Stranger by ArcherBias reworks Myrmidons into Duelists (and Swordmaster into Pitfighter) for vibes and a statline rework. On principle of ‘it’s worse for a slow unit to have poor skill than fast since they only have one shot to hit’, Faces goes for a medium strength/low skill/high speed offensive layout.
It’s very rare I’d use a melee unit with this little bulk. Tarka manages it. This is taken as of end of C16, the most up to date chapter as of time written for Faces.
It works pretty well for the sandbox; Tarka has very high pow/spd and can still get fairly reliable combat by picking the right sword for the matchup. Their bulk is low, but it’s good enough to live 1 hit in most cases, and like Kairos above even with reduced avoid formula they can pull off matchup-based dodgetanking using terrain while facing specific enemies with the right weapon. Most units in Faces have ‘enemies they’re good at killing’ and ‘enemies they’re bad at killing’ and for Tarka, a much bigger proportion is more like ‘enemies which sword is good at killing’. Usually I don’t like melee units that are too squishy, but Tarka’s combat has been absolutely worth it. It helps that as a monoweapon unit under Faces class design principles, Tarka has +1 mov over the 2-weapon infantry, similar to how FE5 has for Swordmaster vs Hero. While the Hero equivalents in Faces are also quite good, Tarka having 7 mov promoted allows them to pull off some fairly aggressive play that is very fun to do.
The Four Kings
Vin wasn’t part of my team on the final merge but it’s pretty undeniable how useful he was during the full-deploy party split.
I think it’d be a sin to discuss dodgetanking without mentioning Vin. I didn’t go hard invest into Vin, but given how The Four Kings works with the route split full deploy I might as well have him do what he’s designed for. Main Gauche lets Vin dodge basically anything with the drawback being having fairly low durability compared to some other PRFs so if he’s tanking in melee he’ll have to watch for that, and that it doesn’t have much damage so if you’re looking to train up Vin he’ll have to kill stuff the normal way, which he is pretty ok at before promo. For being fairly low invest and mostly used for Main Gauche and given kills only when opportune, he contributed a lot to clears by being functionally immortal while Main Gauche is equipped.
Wheeeeeeeeeeee
Even with just 13 mag, doubling with any reasonable implementation of Runesword is pretty effective.
Candace is the Swordmaster in 4K I actually used more of but I can’t talk about her in more unbiased lenses given that I fed her 90% of my boosters and turned her into a runesword tank which is probably not her design intent, but hey, worked for me!
Isekai Emblem
Lennart is a strange unit. In terms of story role and intended design, he’s meant to be the Jagen. However, while he’s a good unit and still do occupy the space of being top 1 or 2 earlygame, he’s not quite strong enough to full carry. He does have very high growths, and ends up playing more like Wolf/Sedgar in FE11 than a proper Jagen.
Self Explanatory.
Earlier I mentioned that people who do care about balance should probably not go full Ryoma, but Isekai Emblem isn’t that kind of game, and I do enjoy it for that. Lennart ends up being kind of build your own Ryoma. After having to contend with scaling with high growths but low exp gain, Lennart will promote at a point in the story. Lennart’s promotion is, technically, still a Tier 2 internally to the game instead of Tier 3, so resetting his level allows him to gain exp quickly at that point in the game, and his promo itself is pretty hefty. Lennart’s high speed and luck on default gba formulas already allow him to dodgetank reasonably well on his own, but then Runeswords become buyable a few chapters after his promotion. He does have a good Magic stat, so lategame Lennart is near-invincible. The maps themselves still give plenty to do, so Lennart being that powerful didn’t feel like a problem.
I will, however, give a point off for the other myrm, Lana, who did feel too noodle-armed and didn’t have enough good matchups to feel good using, despite me wanting to give her a chance.
Myrm Emblem
I can’t write a writeup about Myrmidons and the various ways hacks handle them without talking about Myrm Emblem. Myrm Emblem takes every Myrmidon across the series (at the time it was made, so no Engage characters) and a number of the Kaga Saga characters as well. For a project that is made of all Myrmidons, it does a great job differentiating characters. While some characters got options to go into a class that grants another weapon type (ex. Owain and Felix got access to Mortal Savant that gives them tomes and staves, given Owain being Odin and Felix having a secret aptitude in magic on top of 3H mechanics, Fates T1 Samurai can promote to Master of Arms that gives them access to lances and axes, etc), most units remain swordlocked.
Myrm Emblem class distributions tend to be grouped by their origin, though a few titles share classes and a few classes (like Mortal Savant but also Trueblade, which is given to Stefan, Ryoma, and Shannan, again highlighting the Megasword status) are not tied to entries but are just special cases entirely. For example, I used Fir in my run, and her class skills gained eventually allowed her to reach 100+ crit for the true FE6 Swordmaster experience. Judgral Swordfighters that go Forrest/Hero are given access to Hero With Axes, and the female Judgral Swordmasters, or Od SM Gang who is not Shannan, got a mix of FE4 and FE5 Swordmaster attributes with very high caps and also the 7 mov. Many characters got personal weapons based on their FEH appearances to further help differentiate them. Hana, for example, have her armorslaying personal weapon, and while I didn’t keep her long term, I found her earlygame incredibly helpful between Darting Blow and her ability to delete any armored unit.
A small selection of the units I used in Myrm Emblem and a showcase of the various Myrm-related classes based on game of origin or narrative. Of course I put boots on Ayra.
Myrm Emblem is a game designed for players to be able to use their favorite Myrms across the series while doing a good job of giving most units a solid identity. I highly recommend any Myrmidon fan giving the hack a shot.
Conclusion
Myrmidon is a class that have a lot of inherent drawbacks, being locked to a weapon type that traditionally have more limited ranged options (whether through availability and/or cost) than the other melee weapon types, and not being mounted. Some may take the reactionary balance route on swords and give them a javelin/handaxe equivalent, but all that does is flatten out weapon identity and doesn’t necessary actually make the Myrmidon good if they’re still bad at killing stuff. What actually makes them good is just give them an environment where they are better at killing more stuff than units with more utility, and the higher damage actually matters. Being able to dodgetank a number of otherwise threatening high damage units better than normal units via terrain and good weapon choice, while not necessary (it’s actually very hard to dodge in mid-lategame Myrm Emblem, for example), can help make them feel even better to use. And sometimes, you can just give them a ton of stats and that is fine.