# 3 - Younger Marcus (FE 7)

                   Ah Marcus. Where do I begin? Marcus basically exemplifies everything that a powerful paladin / cavalier should have: High base stats, weapon triangle control and growths that allow him to stay powerful throughout the entire game. The primary ltc strategy for Fire Emblem 7 usually revolves around letting Marcus rush ahead and kill everything while everyone else stays behind and cleans up the left-overs.

              So what can be said about Marcus's base stats?

                 "Amazing. 15 str pretty much 2HKOs any generic enemy for the first half of the game (e.g. chapter 25 cavaliers have around 32 HP, 8 def to Marcus's 24 atk with Iron Axe and WTA), 11 spd doubles a huge portion of early-game enemies that hover around 6-7 AS, and 31 HP, 10 def allow Marcus to take an incredible amount of combat before succumbing" (dondon151 FE 7 character ratings: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=23766)

            Note: If dondon151 says amazing about something, you know it's going to be amazing because virtually nobody gets that kind of comment from him.

                  I should note that 11 speed is about as high as what Matthew gets at base and Matthew's a thief. Except unlike Matthew, Marcus has a horse, complete weapon triangle control and actual durability (Matthew is a scrub btw).

            Marcus starts out with an A rank in swords and lances and a B rank in axes. That's Percival level weapon ranks (except for an even better weapon rank in axes) except Marcus joins your army at the beginning of the game. Marcus can basically use any weapon he wants outside of Silver Axes and the regalia / S rank weapons. Marcus will probably be your first unit to use all of those weapons anyway just based on the fact that his weapon ranks are so much farther ahead of everybody else's.

                
                   Also being a prepromote has an advantage in a game where promotion items exist: He doesn't have to compete with anybody over who gets said promotion item. Also, many ltc players won't even get all of the promotion items because it costs too much turns. I realize that this applies to a good number of units on this list but for some weird reason I forgot to bring that up until now.

                The only reason why Marcus isn't higher on this list is primarily due to his growths (especially his speed growth). Marcus only has a 25 % speed growth so he's averaging 1 in 4 speed level-ups. Thankfully for Marcus this isn't as much of a problem for him as one might think due to the fact that FE 7 enemies and attack speed don't often mix so his base 11 speed will be enough to allow him to double scrubby generic enemies throughout the early and mid game. His defense growth is also really bad (15 %? Yuck!). Thankfully we have stat-boosters that rectify these problems but the thing is the two higher ranked cavaliers don't have this issue.