Top 10 Most Busted Mechanics in Fire Emblem # 5: Mounted Units, Jagens / Oifayes, Fliers, & Canto

# 5: Mounted Units, Jagens, Oifayes, Fliers, & Canto

So let's start with a simple question: How many Fire Emblem games can you name that do not have a single mounted or flying unit in either the top tier or high tier? 

Go on. I'll wait. 

Yeah, me neither. I can't think of a single game. Literally every single game has a unit on horseback, or a flier, that's at least really good. And when a high movement unit isn't balanced, they tend to break the game. 

Starting off the list are mounted units, aka units that are on horseback. Why are they on the list? Simple. Movement is the best stat in Fire Emblem, and cavaliers / paladins tend to have high movement. So right off the bat they can move from Point A to Point B faster. In addition to that, these classes often have good enough stats to obliterate enemies with ease. In the most unbalanced games they make infantry classes obsolete. 

In addition to that, they usually have partial or total weapon triangle control, rescue utility in some games (we'll get to that at a later post), and powerful skills. It takes a really powerful drawback for these guys to not get used at all. Most Fire Emblem games don't have that. So as a result, pretty much every Fire Emblem game will have at least a few mounted units seeing use destroying enemy units. 

Jagens / Oifayes

One of the most notoriously powerful types of cavaliers are Jagens. They're basically the pre-promoted character that joins the player at the beginning of the game. They're typically the best character in the early game. Their stats are better than everyone else's and they have better weapon ranks, which usually translates into more damage dealing since they almost always start the game pre-equipped with Silver Weapons. 

In short, these are efficient high movement killing machines. The old school wisdom used to be that your growth units will eventually surpass these guys by the end of the game. The problem here is that this growth takes a long time, and by the time the growth units catch up, the Jagen will have already carried your team for a substantial portion of the game. Base stats are more important than growths when ranking units, and Jagens pretty much always have better bases. Also, what happens when the Jagens growths are good enough to sustain them? That's when you get these guys...

Seth and Titania, two gamebreaking characters that are notorious for starting powerful and staying powerful. The real question is this: Why do Fire Emblem games continue to hand Jagens out to the player? At this point, it seems like tradition for tradition's sake. If a Fire Emblem game wanted to be truly innovative, they'd get rid of the Jagens.

Fliers

So let's take everything that I said about cavaliers and now give them the power of flight. Meet the flying units. They can do everything a mounted cavalier can do, but better. Fliers get the additional bonus of ignoring terrain that could otherwise potentially slow down a mounted knight, or an infantry unit. If a mounted knight isn't at the top of a tier list, chances are it's because the flier beat them. Pegasus Knights and Wyvern Knights also tend to dominate the games that they're in. 

"But bows and magic can deal effective damage against fliers. They already have a drawback."

That might sound like a legitimate drawback on paper, but in practice: 

• There usually aren't enough of these enemies to make a difference.

• When they do show up, they're easy to play around.

• Some games provide items that nullify effective damage. Sometimes a flying unit can simply dismount to avoid the effective damage drawback too.

• Wyverns are typically bulky enough to survive an attack from effective damage.

So enemy archers and mages are not sufficient to hold flying units in check. Sadly, fliers have only gotten stronger with more recent titles. In Awakening, the Dark Flier has Galeforce and great stats, Wyverns and Malig Knights are really powerful in Fates, Palla's really powerful in Echoes, Three Houses is Wyvern Central, and I've heard that Engage also has a flier problem (can someone confirm or deny this?). 

In addition to all of this, mounted and flying units also have an additional skill that really makes them busted:

Canto

Say hello to Canto, the "skill that grants mounted units the ability to move again after performing certain actions, assuming the unit has not already moved their maximum allotted spaces in that turn." (Source: https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Canto)

Why is this skill busted? It's busted because a mounted unit can attack, and then can continue to move forward even after attacking. In other words, you can maintain a powerful offensive momentum throughout the entire game. This is a skill that mounted and flying units had that infantry units didn't. As a result, it gave additional utility to two types of classes that didn't need any more.

Canto could also be used after rescuing a village, rescuing an allied unit, or using an item. It just gave additional movement strategies to the classes with high movement. This made mounted and flying units even better since it meant that there were more strategies one could employ with them.  

I should point out that moving after attacking was limited to the Jugdral and Tellius games. In the GBA games, it was slightly nerfed since high movement units couldn't use it after attacking, but it was still good. 

So, to summarize everything

• Mounted and flying units have better movement, better stats, partial to full weapon triangle control, rescue utility and canto. They're classes that dominate their respective games because they can do everything that infantry combat units can do, but better. 

• If Intelligent Systems wants to improve the gameplay of future Fire Emblem titles, it should figure out a way to truly balance these classes so that infantry units are more worth using.