I really hate ordering people what to do as a part of strategy development, but it seems like we're going to have to do so to get through this. Again.
Alright, priority times:
1. Heal Iolani. She dies next turn. Rescuing is a possibility, but given the likelihood for one-shot kills, not a good one.
2. Chalco stays up. He's hauling a fallen Prince Titon, and if Titon dies, we lose.
3. Heal Cyrus and Irza. They're down, but we have a couple turns here. Worse off is Irza, who will be easily cut off and killed.
4. Kill Salvar. The catch - anyone he knocks out dies at the start of next turn unless we heal them before the end phase of *this* turn, and a decapitation strike will not help us with the other assassins.
So, problems. Most of these are already known, but I want to outline everything:
1. Salvar
kills 1d6 investigators per round will regularly hammer anyone he hits. He can hit almost everyone from outside their range, and of those who he can't, two hit his strongest defensive stat on the counter-attack (if they survive to make it) and won't do much more than scratch damage (if that; sorry, Io). He can deal effective damage to both fliers, and he may as well do so to anyone with low RES.
1a. Corollary: our reinforcements are all fliers with low RES.
1b. No one can guarantee a hit on Salvar. The closest appears to be Alice, with 93%, but she can't attack this turn.
2. Chalco and Lizbet can't get out of range of effective bow damage.
3. Irza is about to be cut off, and
she can't be airlifted out she can be airlifted out only by Chalco, who is carrying Titon at the moment (
Corrected with thanks to Cricket and Crimson).
4. Our reinforcements are two full turns away at a minimum.
5. Crits everywhere. I'm just going to assume any hit is a one-shot kill, because that's the worst-case scenario.
What I'm seeing for available players right now:
Lizbet: 8 damage, 83% chance to hit, range 1 (7 damage, 73% chance to hit, range 2)
Chalco: 13 damage, 67% chance to hit, range 1
Niccola: 11 damage, 69% chance to hit, range 1
Lian-Ziu: 13 damage, 65% chance to hit, range 1
Sen: 10 damage, 80% chance to hit, range 2
Titus: 13 damage, 71% chance to hit, range 1 (9 damage, 61% chance to hit, range 2)
Santoku: 14 damage, 55% chance to hit, range 1
What this means: short of a very lucky crit, we need at least three successful hits including two from our main damage-dealers (Santoku, Lian-Ziu, Chalco, Titus) to connect if we want to one-shot him. We can only *deal* three hits due to our map positioning, and that only if one of them is our weakest attacker, Lizbet (who is the only one who can work around behind the line, albeit at the cost of turning into a pincushion next turn). If we miss once, we lose. If we get entangled, we lose. Conclusion: keep ignoring Salvar. He's in god mode, and will continue to be until we ourselves can promote.
Assassins: Better EVA than Salvar, same three-shot problem (though now we don't need it to be our primary three pain-deliverers; any three people can take down one Assassin), but they have the speed to double a lot of our people and the crits to do the job in one. Plus sides are that we have triangle-advantage for our lance-heavy squad.
Pahravites: Hee, no. We don't need to attack these people to reach our reinforcements, and I'm not even going to look at the numbers. Plus, healers. Any attacks we make here won't make a difference.
Honestly, part of me is wondering about the merits of suiciding the squad on the regular soldiers. I don't even have a plan yet; I'll just post these to see what others think.