# 18 - Matilda

             Yeah... Gaiden characters don't have very good artwork. Gaiden seriously needs a remake like right now.

                So here we have Matilda, the best cavalier in Fire Emblem: Gaiden (take that for what it's worth). Matilda joins half-way through her game right around the time Alm starts to slow down. What many people note about her is that her speed is excellent for her game so she can still double attack even if she's equipped with a weapon (yeah Gaiden's different like that. You don't even have to equip any weapons and you can still fight. Equipping a weapon to your character will increase your character's damage output but can also slow your character down and in this game you only need a speed difference of 1 to double attack).

            In comparison to Zeke and Maisen (your next best Cavaliers) Matilda: "winds up with the lowest HP and is tied for lowest Defense, she gets the highest Skill, Speed, Luck, and Resistance."

 Source: http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Matilda)

  ^ According to that same source Matilda crushes Clive / Clerbe (Clerbe-a-derp) in every stat except HP. Clive / Clerbe is the only cavalier who joins earlier than her and as for the other two Matilda joins significantly earlier.


Her growths are also either average or pretty good. Let's compare her growths to the growths of some of the best units in her group:

Matilda's Growths:

HP	S/M	Skl	Spd	Luk	Def	Res
40%	30%	20%	40%	10%	30%	0%

 
Alm's Growths:

HP	S/M	Skl	Spd	Luk	Def	Res
50%	35%	40%	30%	20%	30%	0%

Clair's Growths:

HP	S/M	Skl	Spd	Luk	Def	Res
20%	30%	50%	40%	50%	10%	0%

Cliff's Growths:

HP	S/M	Skl	Spd	Luk	Def	Res
50%	20%	40%	50%	20%	40%	0%

 Her HP growth isn't far below Alm and Cliff's yet twice as high as Clair's. She also is tied for second highest Strength growth and isn't far behind Alm's strength growth. Her skill growth sucks but her base skill is high enough to compensate for it. Her speed growth is also tied with Clair (in addition to having a high base speed), her luck sucks but her defense growth is tied with mother freaking Alm.

So what was the point of all this? Well Alm, Clair and Cliff are some of the best units in the game and Matilda can keep up with their growths while also boasting some great base stats:

Matilda:
HP - 26
Strength - 12
Skill - 14
Speed - 12
Luck - 13
Defense - 7
Resistance - 10
Movement - 8

A few notes about Matilda's base stats:

• Her Resistance is pretty darn high in comparison to most of the units in your army. Only Clair has a higher resistance by this point and only a Dread Fighter gets a higher resistance than her. A Dread Fighter is a third tier class btw. There are two other characters who beat her in resistance, but they both have less than half as much defense as she does so screw them. Moral of the story: Matilda is a magic tank in a game where very few characters actually have resistance.

• 8 movement. 8 movement is great no matter what game you're playing but in Gaiden most of Alm's army (the army that she's in) consists of infantry units. There are 3 other cavaliers and only 1 pegasus knight (Clair) and 2 of those cavaliers show up after Matilda so her having 8 movement is a big advantage that she has over most of her fellow troops.  

• Her Skill and Luck base stats are high enough to offset her crappy growths in both stats.

            Matilda wishes that her HP and defense were higher. Alm starts the game with 2 more HP than her. Matilda also shows up half-way through her game which hurts her because from here on out every cavalier above her (except for 2) shows up within the first 5 levels of their game while having offense that's greater than hers.