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7. Aias (Sacred Stones Chapter 13 Eirika route)

The boss of a defense map is often a bit of an oddity. While there are some that can be killed to end chapters early, hint hint, there are also plenty whose life or death has no impact on completing the chapter. Denning the living meme from FE7, Takumi in Conquest chapter 10, Ike himself in Radiant Dawn's 3-13 (which also has a meme sniper...I must have snipers on the mind today or something) and many others all serve the dubious roles of being "bosses" that you don't even have to bother with if you don't want to. In some cases, there isn't even much of an incentive to fight them! Generally speaking the ones you actually want to fight are the more interesting, naturally.

And that brings us to Aias, a great knight who, much like Narcian, decided that the best way to take advantage of being mounted was to never move, although he does at least benefit from the fort he's standing on. You'll want to kill this guy for two reasons, the first being the Knight Crest he drops, and the second being, of course, that the chapter ends when you do. And this map features a pretty nasty group of reinforcements towards the end, with a ton of enemies backed up by a moving siege tome boss, so you definitely want to get out before that happens. On the other hand, you probably *don't* want to end the map as early as you can, because doing so prevents you from being able to recruit Cormag, who spawns on turn 5 and doesn't enter a square Eirika can reach to talk to until turn 6. So even if you have everything set up to get the boss kill, you might have to hold out against his reinforcements for a time anyway, making things a bit more complicated.

And Aias himself is certainly no pushover. He may be quite slow, but he's also tremendously durable, with 48 HP, 20 defense and 13 resistance, and 19 strength ensures he'll be hitting hard. He's also very well equipped, starting off with a Short Spear in hand but also having a Silver Blade to switch over to against axe users or just for extra damage, and a Swordslayer of all things to annihilate units like Gerik who would otherwise match up well against him. Most of your units struggle to do meaningful damage, but the magic users who can hit his lower resistance stat can't hope to take two hits from his Short Spear, limiting how many rounds of combat they can safely engage him in due to needing to be healed after each one. Axes can handle the Short Spear but will struggle to even land a hit if he switches to the Silver Blade, and the best axe user, Gerik, is both lacking axe rank and gets wrecked by the Swordslayer. You have a Horseslayer, but its effective 21 might is 1 less than his defense + fort bonus, which is good but far from great and has shaky accuracy. It performs much better if he switches to the blade, but then you have to find someone that can bait him into using it on enemy phase.

And that's basically what makes him interesting, his weapon variety. Few units perform well against all of them, with even Seth needing to fight with weapon triangle advantage against his Silver Blade to perform truly well against him. He ends up being a boss that you tend to have to wear down over the course of an entire turn or even two, thinking about which of his weapons he's going to be using on enemy phase at all times to ensure you're not accidentally leaving someone in position to get wrecked (I may or may not have once had Gerik survive the Swordslayer with 1 HP remaining because I forgot to use the brain). If you're smart about it, you can bait him into whatever will benefit you most, for example finding a non-myrmidon/mercenary sword user to bait him over to the Swordslayer, which operates like a reaver weapon, and then getting to use the Horseslayer with double weapon triangle advantage. Because Aias so durable, you end up having to actually engage his gimmick instead of just ignoring it by wrecking him before he can even do anything. For a random dude that exists for one chapter, he's got a surprisingly versatile set up that makes him less straight forward to tackle than most Fire Emblem bosses.

Up next: Another well armed guy you don't need to kill, except this time you probably won't even try...? That's weird...

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