Damn, I wanted Zealot again. I suppose I'll have to pick Sue/Noah next time, slotting in Astol/Chad when one of them get picked. Having a thief is handy, but they're not worth picking until you absolutely have to.
Maybe I'm not thinking this through entirely correctly, but I wanted to call Jowy's not picking an early healer, out of principle . Without Warp, there won't be reliable ways to skip chapters (not being able to Warp a refresher for a rescued Roy seems like it would make fly-skipping very unreliable), so past the earlygame when an untrained Roy can take a couple of hits after being dropped by the gate, a lot of these seizes are going to look more like routs. Long story short, I think I can delay picking up a flier/thief, and that having the second healer isn't paying as high of an opportunity cost as it seems, while serving as a real impediment to Jowy, forcing an early promotion or a lot of vulnerary usage.
And now Noah get sniped right before I was going to pick him. El Grillo is picking up a pretty decent team here, and I'm coming off a bit worse than my previous outing.
Lott is probably going to be my final 'real' combat unit; after this I'm going to focus on utility: high movement, staff usage, good weapon ranks, thievery etc.
I don't really know how useful Thieves are in this setting, especially as you don't need to draft them to get promotion items, but all those extra money, weapons and stat-boosters ought to be worth it.
Well, let's put my earlier words about thieves to the test. Even without HM bonuses, Rutger's fast Clarine support has promise. I'm pretty satisfied with my core fighting units, and my friend recommends Ray, but I think getting the second midgame flier takes precedence (Ray also went 29th in the first draft).
Yeah, her stats suck, but she can cast Aircalibur and Restore at base level, so she's worth it in my book. Having at least one Anima user is pretty handy just for Aircalibur.
Next unit will be one of Echidna, Zeiss or Niime. Not decided just yet, but I'll probably go with Echidna if she's available - I need good combat units.
Nice, Fenn helped me make the choice between Lilina and Cecilia
As for my second pick.. Ray is my back-up for Lilina. If she doesn't work out, I can promote Ray to get staves.
Ray is a decent magic user in his own right. Slow though, as you'd expect from a foot soldier.
I might be able to get away with just one of Lilina or Roy, but there's no-one available that I would particularly hate to miss out on.
Hooray, she didn't get sniped. Honestly I question Jowy picking Lilina and Ray this early, I don't think they're good enough to worry about just yet; units that start out weak and become pretty good with training are not what you really want in a draft, but maybe Normal difficulty is kinder to them than I'm anticipating.
Next pick will be Niime - mostly I want to deny her to the others, but she's really good in her own right, even without Warp.
I talked to my much more knowledgeable friend last night about what else I should try and take. We settled on Zeiss as a second flier with possible combat relevance (needs a few levels to promote and joins late, but a flier's a flier) and Niime as a Nosferatu nuke (it weighs 6?!?!?), A-rank staffer, and Apocalypse hopeful. Other candidates included Gonzales and Treck, and I suppose I should take Cath at some point.
. Without Warp, there won't be reliable ways to skip chapters (not being able to Warp a refresher for a rescued Roy seems like it would make fly-skipping very unreliable), so past the earlygame when an untrained Roy can take a couple of hits after being dropped by the gate, a lot of these seizes are going to look more like routs. Long story short, I think I can delay picking up a flier/thief, and that having the second healer isn't paying as high of an opportunity cost as it seems, while serving as a real impediment to Jowy, forcing an early promotion or a lot of vulnerary usage.
