You can restart the scenario and modify your starting placements. Also I believe a restart reseeds the beginning so it's not always the same. On a different note, not sure the tutorial covers this, but if you hit the Q key, you'll see the entire coverage of the whole enemy team, so you can precisely place your units.

Thank you. I did know about most of those tips, except the seeding. I'm not sure repositioning will help. There's only limited space to place troops in the beginning.

So with reseeding in mind, I restarted it. I put my highest-level brute in front. The first reload, he got lucky, and the attack missed. The 2nd reload, he got devastated, killed before he could even take a turn. And since it was a charge attack, the guy behind him was knocked down to half health.

I typically play games on normal. You can see screenshots of said battle here - https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/id/jcservant/screenshots/?appid=1328160&sort=newestfirst&browsefilter=myfiles&view=imagewall&privacy=8

I'd rather not play a game where, on normal, I have to rely on save scumming and RNG to get through a fight. But even setting aside this one, possibly whacked battle, I think I can see more problems like this down the road as a result of "The entire team on each side goes all at once". Again, it's just too easy for the enemy to gang up and KO one of your guys - and then you're fighting the remaining battle with one arm tied behind your back. That's a 'me' problem...I know that numerous tactical games use this approach - I just prefer something like Final Fantasy Tactics, Pathfinder or Baldur's Gate, which has a bit more back and forth.

If you're playing on challenging, it may be difficult to get through the game expecting characters to never get downed. Death rolls aren't too punishing; most characters that go down will recover on their own after battle or guaranteed if visiting the infirmary on days you don't go to the arena. I do get the mindset, though; it took a game like FTL to "accept" when a character dies. If you are liking some parts of the game but aren't liking the potential character death, consider choosing a custom difficulty when you start a run, which will let you customize things like what happens to characters when they fall in battle.

That said, I can see you were dealt a rough hand in that battle. Cavaliers on their own are pretty scary, with their high mobility, good survivability, and nasty attacks like Charge. Add in the level bonuses for being a team leader and he's going to be a problem. It also doesn't help that your starting area is open, flat terrain, so it's harder to pick your engagement. If I were approaching this battle, I would probably deploy a sturdier team (i.e., unbench the spearman and swordsman) since the ones deployed are a bit squishy. It would be hard to avoid taking any attacks from him, but someone like your spearman could probably tank his opening attack best. If feasible, I might also try to move the team to less open terrain.

Also, there is a lot to Together in Battle. If you feel like your roster isn't working out for you or you aren't satisfied with your settings, there's no shame in starting again. Either way, good luck if you give it another chance!

Originally posted by JCServant:

In the fifth(ish) fight of the demo, the bad guys all get to go first, and a couple spring up and start the fight within spittin distance of my team. They all take their turn first and the leader charges and cuts down my front line fighter's HPs into the red, stunning him to erase his next turn. Brutal. I have to move my healer up (since he cannot move). The next round, they just focus fire and take out the healer, who is now slightly out of position, along with another character the next round.

Hey JCServant, thanks for the feedback! The game is supposed to spawn all enemies outside of move-and-attack range, so this seems like a bug. If you send me your save file, I'll take a look under the hood and see what went wrong here, then push a hotfix ASAP!

(Info on how to do that is here, btw: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/1267210/discussions/1/3485249057147466383/)

I just finished a playthrough on Challenging and while I had many characters go down during a battle, I actually only lost 1 character during the game. In your particular battle, I'd probably put the Spearman in the spot and stack all the best armor you can on him with the biggest shield and he might be able to tank the hit.