Gallian Crossfire - Upper Fouzen Expert Skirmish Description

In which death rains from above. Also in which many dice are rolled. And I am not happy about that.
You'll probably want to jump to a bit into 16 minutes in to avoid the boring wait for interception fire to work its (slow) magic.
I'll also note that there's a bit of a discrepancy around 17 minutes in -- I had to leave my computer for an extended period of time, so I saved and continued this attempt later from there. But the rest of the run was from the very first attempt off this save, so this was essentially done in one take as well -- if I hadn't, I would have started from scratch, in the spirit of the rest of this run. (Kind of like how unfortunately, the winning attempt of the Edy Detachment Challenge had a video/audio hiccup due to running out of hard drive space...).

To appreciate just how many dice rolls this full-clear strategy depends on, let's name them all:
In Turn 1:
1) Whether Alicia gets to below 10 HP, but above 4 HP (to avoid needing Mysterious Body to proc in her subsequent actions on Turn 1). In cases where her HP lands on 5 or 6, whether Valkyria proc's on the very first bullet received by Alicia. (As I had come to learn over and over again, Valkyria does not have a 100% proc rate.)
2) Whether Emile survives the mad dash to behind the lift activator. (Many, MANY attempts were ruined by a large number of bullets seemingly resolving as Emile's Never Say Die animation began, or maybe being generated upon the animation's end.)
(2.5 How much HP Welkin has after his action. Helps in determining (9).)
In Enemy Phase 1:
3) Whether the Scout near the goal hits Lynn with 3 or more shots.
4) Whether Lynn dodges the attack of the Scout from the center camp.
5) Whether said Scout dodges Lynn's counterattack.
In Turn 2:
6) Whether Emile proc's Ammo Refill in an opportune moment, allowing him to take out two of the Medium Tank+ units.
7) Whether either of the Scouts in the center camp dodge Rosie's flamethrower.
8) Whether Emile proc's Ammo Refill in an opportune moment (again), allowing him to take out the third left-side Medium Tank+ unit.
9) Whether Welkin actually survives his run. (An especially huge, if not impossibly loaded dice roll if the far-left Medium Tank+ is left in one piece.)
In Turn 3:
10) Whether Emile proc's Ammo Refill in an opportune moment (noticing a pattern?) to take out the last two Medium Tank+ units without needing Claudia to restock him
11) Whether Welkin moved far enough in Turns 1 and 2 to be able to reach the goal with the available leftover CP.

Keep in mind that the penalty for rolling low on any high-priority dice roll (the ones on Turn 1) and more than maybe one lower-priority dice roll is having to sit through Alicia's first action (which normally takes ~20 minutes), assuming (1) is even met.
Yeah, doing this was not fun at all after the fifth attempt. And there were far more than five attempts.


This run was saved entirely by some amazing potential proc'ing on the part of Lynn, with Hard Worker saving the fact that (7)'s dice roll was unfavorable, and Emile proc'ing amazing amounts of Ammo Refill -- so many times, in fact, that Claudia was never needed to restock him. Which is amazing, because Welkin needed every last CP to get to the goal. (In an ideal run, (5) would have rolled favorably, Cezary wouldn't have needed to use a CP to take said Scout out, that CP would have been able to be used by Claudia to restock Emile once, and Ammo Refill would have only needed to proc once in an opportune manner.)
Since she never got her chance to shine: Claudia is the ideal Engineer for this mission. She's the only Engineer to have both Defense Boost (+25%Def. Translates to +3 Defense for Engineers) and Strengthen. Strengthen is the replacement potential for both Invincible (Engineers) and Phoenix (Shocktroopers), and grants resistance to interception fire (a la Strong-Willed, or Resist Crossfire from the vanilla game) when using Ragnaid is chosen as the unit's action. With this, she could reach and restock Emile without batting an eye at the Medium Tank+ interception fire. Cezary is most reliable for taking out the rebellious dodging Scout with Backup Sniping (unlike Marina's My Way personal potential, which does not have a 100% proc rate). Emile is the superior Ammo Refill sniper in just about every way (especially since I messed up by letting Catherine unlock her Ammo Worries personal potential), and keeping the anti-tank sniper's ammunition stock filled is critical to clearing this stage.
Alicia's actions are done in a fairly specific way. She climbs the ladder to ensure that the Sniper that Cezary takes out is turned far enough so that Cezary isn't immediately shot by him upon selection. The Snipers trained on Rosie and Lynn also must be removed for the sake of survivability. Alicia needs to end her final action next to the trolley so that the Scout that shoots Lynn from afar during Enemy Phase 1 turns toward her after shooting -- otherwise, he remains trained on Lynn, and Lynn has very little chance of surviving any action.

On pause buffering: I have mentioned before that potentials and other buffs/debuffs only activate once their text begins to display on screen. This would lead to cases for Alicia where Valkyria may have proc'd, but since Stand Ready or Country Bred was still activating, she would die before this. (This would especially be a problem on her second and third actions.) However, when you attempt to end your turn, all buffs/debuffs that were in the queue are applied immediately, removing the "lag" in between them that otherwise exists. This is very important in making sure Alicia is able to proc Valkyria before dying to interception fire. Also, pause buffering allows for more controlled "steps" with units -- it cuts off the walking animation so that a full step (~5 AP?) isn't taken in the direction chosen. In a stage where most of the map is covered by interception fire and we have to move fragile units (Alicia with less than 9 HP, Emile, Welkin), it's important to remember this trick.

On the note of weapons: we have some more unique weapons for Rosie and Lynn to help them in what they have to get done. Rosie uses the Mags M30R to be able to shoot down the Shocktrooper with Undercover Fire proc'd (trying to avoid using the Ruhm if possible -- feels more correct to only use weapons obtained from Cordelia from my first run through the game, plus Ace weapons and R&D weapons as they're obtained), and make it across the bridge to be prepared for Turn 2, where she attempts to take out the Scouts in the middle camp with the VB FW 2. Lynn uses the ZM MP 7 that we obtained from the Kloden Wildwood Expert Skirmish, which hits like a truck against personnel (80) and has enough of a vsArmor rating (150) to blast out sandbags. This makes it feasible for her to take out the Scout in Enemy Phase 1 (if he doesn't dodge...) and the enemy force that remains in the middle camp after Rosie attempts torching the camp's Scouts. Emile uses the Brondel M20 to have enough of a vsArmor rating to consistently take out the Medium Tank+ units in two shots. Cezary has the GSR-30 to have enough Range to take out the Sniper that's normally trained on him, and to remove the errant Scout in Turn 2 with Backup Sniping if necessary. Largo uses the Theimer M30R to take out the Sniper next to him without any problems. Alicia uses the Gallian-A20 to be able to take out the far Sniper on her second action.
Worth noting: you would think we would use Lancers to take out the tanks, but the Theimer M20 with its 750 Range has nowhere near enough Range to do any appreciable damage to the tanks. Even in the one place where the user would be close enough, i.e. Largo's starting point, the elevation angle is so steep (and so the elevation penalty multiplier so unforgiving) that 4 or more shots are needed to take out just one of the tanks. And then there would be no way to remove the tanks at the top-left.

I should have parked Lynn up the lift to have Welkin proc Sibling Ties while running across the steel bridge, but I think I was just too blown away that I had so many good dice rolls in a row that I forgot that there was no appreciable interception fire at the bottom of the lift if all the left-side Medium Tank+ units are destroyed.
I wasted some AP in Welkin's action in Turn 2. Had I been more careful, I probably would have needed one (maybe two? Probably just one) less CP to move him to the end.
Also, this was the first and only time I've seen the interception fire of a Sniper Elite in these Hard or Expert Skirmishes hit another enemy infantry unit. I'm glad this made it through to the winning run.

Glad this ungodly test of patience is behind me.