Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen - any% RTA notes.

Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen - any% RTA notes.

These notes are an accompaniment to the 1:24:44 run I completed live on stream November 28, 2016 after a 10-day push to improve the time in this game from the two-years old record of 1:36:41 by Grystor.

VoD on Youtube: https://youtu.be/dHdtJNdSUAI
VoD on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/eunosxx/v/104073336
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There are many improvements in this run over the last two weeks. The main theme is better boss fight management, requiring fewer total Tarot cards.  This allows us to slim down the route's resources. I'm happy with how the run turned out -- it's a very beatable time, but I was able to do much of what I set out to in terms of routing and execution.

I started by resetting a bad opening hand before this (ripped some other godly hands, too).  Early game time saves and losses are just due to boss fight RNG (MISS!). Debonair in Zenobia is the first fight that almost always requires cards for speed. It's a good place to dump many of the damage cards that become less effective later on: Devil, Chariot, Justice, Hermit, Magician.  Gares in Avalon usually goes well -- Judgment can help us out of this fight.  Just remember that any kills made by a card's damage goes to your hero, not the battle party -- anticipate the need to use them so the XP goes on the battle party.

We start Liberating fewer cities/temples than the previous run at Island Avalon to save time. The cost comes at fewer free card pulls, and a smaller end scene reward which also would have paid for Jokers (random Tarot cards).  In this run, I lose a minute to bad fight RNG on Mermaids. Even if I'd had more damage cards they aren't very effective in this fight.  I'm not going to burn a high tier card like Fool here unless I had three or four of them. Better to just heal up and go another round, as is also expected in the Ares fight and later Prochon. In both of the latter two fights, a Sun card is very effective for whittling down the ninja minions, while Judgment and Chariot are effective once the boss is alone.

At Shangrila, I relented and liberated the two optional cities because of how poorly my hand was doing for mid-game cards. This was probably the wrong call; however, it netted me a Judgment card which is useful on Gares or Prochon as needed and a valuable Empress. Note that if we skip the cities here we need to maneuver the leader farther right and around some extra enemies. At Fort Allamoot, we can skip liberating Minach Torahn and the hidden temple (the temple sometimes gives items). Shifting Tristan far right just for Twins lets him hit the leader right away. In this fight missing isn't usually a problem; instead, each twin can use Gale, a very strong physical spell against our whole party that cannot be blocked by World. Having a Priestess or two can be nice here to keep the back row alive.

Throughout the run, I'm storing certain cards for when they are most valuable. There are not many Joker purchases until I buy a deck at Zeteginia after selling Notos. Until then the Fools are most useful for Shulamana and Xanadu. World cards were hardest to come by in this run - I ended up fighting Baron Apros and Rashidi without one. On the Black Queen though, one World card can save many healing cards. Most importantly Emperors and Empresses picked up throughout the run are all going toward the final battle.  Ultimately, I was able to skip shopping in the final battle since my hand was already healthy.

A couple of routing changes include adding things as well. First one I think is a simple time saver: our party fights much better in daylight, so we buy two Sunshines in Zeteginia's shop town to fight the Black Queen and Gares+Rashidi. Use the Sunshines before Midnight to avoid upkeep costs. The second addition is to fight two extra non-boss encounters in the final battle to gain two levels on the battle unit. This costs some time up front, but improves damage and survivability. Ultimately, this strategy is meant to protect the run from bad RNG on Diablo (Quake instagibs). First bonus encounter happens at Allied Base with the battle unit guarding, then at the Enemy Base after Summons. Doing these in the day light will save an All Heal use.

In the final battle and some other places, it can be very useful to pay attention to the turn order and rounds in combat so you can switch to Strong to reduce damage from strong enemy attacks, and back to Weak during your attacks.  Even a tactical use of Retreat before taking an impending and devastating attack can save time or the run.  For example, if we had to do Black Queen without World. She has four or five rounds of attacks, but we only have two and a half. We can retreat the battle after our final attack in the second round to even out damage trades and heal up without burning cards. In this run, I retreated from Twins after one full round to compensate for a lack of healing cards.

I think the more mundane but nevertheless critical aspects of the route, such as where to move units, can be ascertained by watching the video and playing.  This is an easy enough speedrun to learn for a game that took months to play through casually for those who managed to finish at all.  Shout outs to Opus614 who got me into running this, Brisulph for writing the FAQ, Zombrero for live help on mechanics, the Japanese runner who wrote the route notes we started from and the person who translated them.