Learning About: Flier Emblem

I never had much interest in building a flier team, but with the game encouraging the development of multiple teams with its new game modes, I figured: “why not?”. It’s important to have competent teams to grind HM for in TTs and for the upcoming Squad Assault game mode. This would also provide a good opportunity to test out the effectiveness of the Cordelia Galeforce build for myself.

Unit Builds

The first question to answer is whether I’ll be using Spring Camilla or not. Being the team’s only source of both ranged and magic damage, having her would make clears much more consistent. When outfitted with Gronnblade and provided with flier buffs, she can often overpower the most problematic foes.

That’s good and all, but I’m going pass. I’d rather focus on the viability of melee-only teams and how much flier terrain advantage can help address the various weaknesses. I’d also learn less from using another Blade Tome-centered team as I’d just fall back on old habits to clear maps which would defeat the purpose of using fliers in the first place.

I’m also going to focus on ease of access. Outside of Heavy Blade on Cordelia, Brave Axe+ on Cherche and Hinoka herself, I opted for skills and units that are available at 4-star or lower or though a unit’s default kit. Cordelia can run a standard Brave Lance build and still be effective and Hinoka is just there as a bonus unit. Brave Axe is pretty much a requirement for Cherche, but even then the team is still reasonably accessible.

I don’t expect going melee-only to be easy, though. Especially since I’m not going to use Distant Counter, either. However, I’m optimistic that the team is good enough without such tools and I’m looking forward to learning a different playstyle.

Without any ranged or colorless threats, having access to WTA over all colors is essential. Having a red answer to common green Arena threats like Hector, Nino and Julia is a basic requirement at this point. Not to mention having a red is great for manipulating the positioning of blues which are quite common nowadays.

For fliers, the only red options are Caeda and Palla. I’m going with Palla since she was a quest reward on top of being a 3-star so she’s very easy to access. It also helps that her default kit is outstanding, coming with Ruby Sword, Moonbow and Goad Fliers; all skills that we’d want on her anyways. Even Wings of Mercy, her fourth default skill, is totally legit.

As I don’t have a +Spd boon — probably because I blindly fed them off for Moonbow fodder — I’m going with the neutral IV from the quest reward. I believe +Spd is ideal to minimize the chances of being doubled. Even with Ruby Sword, buffed Gronnblades can still do significant damage so preventing as many doubles as possible is critical.

I’m not a huge Fury fan anymore, but it’s the only skill that increases both Spd and bulkiness on both phases of the game. I’m planning to use her in a bait role, but she’ll have do some lifting on the player phase as well so Fury is the best fit. I’m definitely going to keep an eye on its performance, but, to be honest, I don’t see a great replacement short of Distant Counter. If you’re running a Wings of Mercy-based team, Fury could perhaps help getting that online. If I was using her as a standard offensive unit I’d probably lean toward Swift Sparrow. Iote’s Shield is another possibility, I suppose, and I do run into random Merrics once in a while, but I don’t like the skill very much in light of other choices.

Drag Back is a popular choice for fliers for good reason. From my previous experiences with the team, I found it made the Arena much easier to navigate as, in conjunction with Reposition, the team had enough movement to make effective hit and run attacks. The only other choice I see for her is her default Wings of Mercy. It’s the preferable choice for Arena scoring, but is harder to use; seeing as I have almost no experience with the team I want to keep the training wheels on so I’m going with Drag Back for the entire team.

Hit and Run is another possibility I could explore. I’m not really sure how it performs in practice, but on paper it seems inferior to Drag Back. The only situation I’m aware of that Hit and Run outperforms Drag Back is when Drag Back won’t allow you to retreat if the unit you’re dragging can’t go onto the tile you attacked from. It’s a downside, but pretty narrow and can be planned around.

Cordelia’s Heavy Blade-based Galeforce build is one of the major reasons I’m trying out fliers. It’s picked up popularity with the release of Firesweep Lance due to its very high Mt, making it easier to enable Heavy Blade. The idea behind the build is to combine Heavy Blade with the Quickened Pulse Seal to trigger Galeforce on the first attack. With QP, Galeforce will start at 4 cooldown. A double attack with Heavy Blade will then trigger Galeforce, giving you two actions on your first attack. This gives a huge starting advantage and successful execution usually leads to an easy win.

There are some constraints, though: 1) the unit must have higher Atk than the target (Heavy Blade), 2) it must have 5 or more Spd than the target (to double), and 3) the first target must be tanky enough to be doubled. There are also certain skills that counter this like Lancebreaker and Wary Fighter.

With flier buffs, (1) and (2) are reasonably easy conditions meet. Cordelia is generally considered the best unit for this strategy due to her amazing offensive spread. A +Spd boon is highly recommended and is what I’m using. Firesweep Lance is preferred over Brave for its higher Mt and the Firesweep effect is a huge advantage over Silver. It opens the door to safely taking on WTD match ups on top of nullifying enemy-phase skills such as Vantage and Quick Riposte. (3) is a weird one, but must be met to proc Galeforce from 4cd.

I’m unsure how Drag Back will work with the build. My first reaction was that it will move her out of range of potential second attacks, but at the same time it could move her closer to other ones. Wings of Mercy could be a viable replacement. It’s too bad she doesn’t take damage on offense because Escape Route + Galeforce could be used to safely overextend into enemy territory and assassinate a high priority threat.

Hinoka is here as the bonus unit so I didn’t put too much thought into her and used a cookie cutter build. She should give me a decent idea of how a Brave Lance performs with fliers. She has a +HP/-Def IV, but any non-Atk bane is usable on a Brave build, especially after factoring flier buffs.

Cherche is here mainly because I already had her built. I also have a Minerva, but figured for the purposes of this post it was better to go with the 3-star vs. the 5-star. She’s +1 and her IVs are +Atk/-Res. I suppose -Spd would work too, but considering her Res is so bad she’s never going to bait mages so there’s more upside having Spd.

She’s a very strong unit, but I don’t think she fits in well on this team. Mainly because she’s redundant with Cordelia and Hinoka in that she’s mainly a player phase unit. I’d much rather have a role player like Palla that is competent on the enemy phase. With her dismal Res, she can’t be used as bait against common blue mage threats.

As for the build itself, I’d prefer to run one of the 3cd specials over Moonbow since QP will be used by Cordelia. The rest seems fine.

For what I’d use as an enemy-phase replacement, I was thinking about the standard Camilla. She has the highest Res of all flying axes which would make her a good counter to all the scary blue mages. I’d envision using Emerald Axe and Distant Counter on her, but I’m not willing to put that level of investment into her or any flier; at least not until we get another Hector focus.

Arena Results

I’ll admit right off the bat that I had a lot of trouble putting together a deathless run. There are about 5 failed runs before my first deathless. The team is so much different than anything I’ve used before. I first had to get used to living almost exclusively on the player phase which isn’t the easiest thing with a melee-only team. I also had to learn to use the terrain and Drag Back to my advantage. I’m still horrible at it, but it got easier with each battle.

Battle 1

Ah, the Alphonse bait. On a map where fliers have no terrain advantage. The horse mage match up is where the lack of Distant Counter bait really hurts.

The strategy was to lure Xander over to the right side with Cherche and Reinhardt to the left with Palla. This was successful, but the presence of Cecilia and the lack of a DC bait unit to take full advantage made things awkward. So instead of countering after the first turn, I had to drag it out a bit longer to get them to clear the obstacles. Cordelia immediately showed off Galeforce which was pivotal in getting a clean win. Cherche was also key in isolating both Alphonse and Xander.

Battle 2

Now the classic mage-dancer team. On a map whose walls essentially reduce fliers to regular infantry and makes Reposition awkward to use. Perhaps the only saving grace being no Reinhardt to deal with.

I fell back on my usual strategy on this map which is attempting to split the enemy forces to the top and bottom of the map. I generally prefer engaging on the top since the tree in the middle makes retreating easier since I can take advantage of movement skills where the AI usually does not. However, as long as you split the enemy team the map is fairly easy.

Thankfully, the initial luring worked and made things relatively easy. I think the way this battle played out is pretty typical for the team. There’s really no opportunity to overextend since you lack range or a dancer to compensate for sloppy play. This makes careful positioning and knowledge of your enemy’s skills key. It also means you’re more likely to kill enemy units over several turns instead of multiple in a single turn.

Battle 3

This might be the best map for fliers in this rotation as being able to ignore the water gives you a huge mobility advantage. Doubly so here since the AI has to work around Hector’s clunky armor movement.

Palla’s ability to shrug off Nino was a huge asset and made the clear predictable and safe. Having to clear multiple green threats is the reason I’m not a huge fan of Fury, but it proved to get the job done; at least at this level of enemy merges.

Battle 4

This played out pretty much like the last one. For whatever reason I moved Hinoka thinking she had Goad Fliers (on top of Hone). That could’ve been a fatal mistake, but it ended up no mattering.

Battle 5

I feel like fliers should have a huge advantage on this map, but when I faced horse teams on it I was usually overwhelmed by their movement range. I still have a lot to learn and I should probably do some research to see how other people address this map. Luckily, this was an armor match up so it wasn’t too difficult.

Going into this, I was somewhat apprehensive about facing Bride Cordelia with a flier team, but I quickly found that she was fairly easy to deal with. I often found myself unable to double Ryomas with Cordelia due to my poor management of flier buffs.

Battle 6

This map also seems to favor fliers quite a bit; the difference here being that I’m able to take advantage of that fact. Perhaps it’s because of the different orientation of the initial positions which makes horses much less threatening. The basic strategy was to lure Bride Cordelia to the right side with my two lowest Def units (probably Hinoka since she could double her) while having Reinhardt run ahead like an idiot in pursuit of Palla. Clean up after that was trivial.

Battle 7

Not the map I wanted to see on my last battle, but only having Julia as the only ranged in a dancer match up is about as innocuous as that gets. Julia didn’t fall for the Hinoka lure and instead went with the rest of the pack after the lower Res Cordelia. I really should’ve switched their positions, but I had a pipe dream of taking out Athena and Marth in the same turn with Galeforce. Luckily, Julia lagged far enough behind the pack — due to destroying a wall — to make a subsequent Palla bait effective. The rest was simple.

Assessment

Despite me sucking with the team, I found the challenge to be refreshing. Rather than get discouraged, I was motivated to get a better understanding of how the AI operates as well as how to best take advantage of a flier team’s strengths. I feel like I’m slightly better with positioning and utilizing Drag Back now. Granted, I still have much to learn so I’m looking forward to using the team more in the future. Although for TTs I’ll almost certainly use Spring Camilla since I couldn’t stand the grind otherwise.

That being said, there’s definitely room for improvement on the team. I still believe that running even a single Distant Counter unit would make things so much easier. Especially with so many horse teams running around. I’m reluctant to feed any of my precious Hectors away, but having them rot in my barracks isn’t doing me any good, either, so I might just bite the bullet. Decisions, decisions.

The Cordelia build was neat, but didn’t seem necessary by any means. There are times when Galeforce makes clears much easier, but I find it to be somewhat inconsistent. It seems like a luxury, especially since Brave Cordelia is good enough as is. I suppose planning better Goad positioning and merges would help consistently trigger Galeforce, but for those without access to Heavy Blade you’re not missing too much.

I did miss Spring Camilla, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I can understand how not having a ranged unit would turn people off of flier emblem, but the team is still very strong without her.

Overall, I was pleased with the performance. Despite being all melee with no Distant Counter, the team felt powerful and I think there’s a lot of potential. Horse emblem is still superior for the average player due to accessibility and ease of use, but hopefully some good ranged, Distant Counter and/or GHB fliers are released someday to help bridge the gap.

Going Forward

The run scored 4,834 which is somewhat underwhelming, but good enough to get to tier 20 most weeks. The highest single battle I fought was 696 so had I fished I could potentially get a 4,872 run. Which isn’t enough to guarantee a stay in tier 20, but a few merges should allow for a 4,900+ run. “A few merges”… Right. But the merge requirement to hit 4,900 with this team is much less than for a typical horse and/or range teams due to the higher BST.

If I were to make the team more competitive, I’d first focus on making Distant Counter red and green units. I could also switch their builds around for better scoring. If they’re used as bait, they don’t need Drag Back as much so I could use the higher scoring Quick Riposte or Wings of Mercy instead. Perhaps Aether could be used, too, but I’d have to run the damage numbers to avoid enemy Wings of Mercy blowouts. Distant Counter itself is good for scoring, too.

As for what I’m actually going to do, I’m not really sure. I might invest some feathers into some Cordelia merges since she’s a good unit even outside the theme team. I could see making a Distant Counter unit as well, but I’m going to wait and see how much I actually like the team before committing. I’ll also need to run damage calculations to see if the units are even viable.