In Challenge Mode you will be facing the entire continent from the limited position of one base initially and 10 knights you unlocked during the campaign, with a total hardcap of 20 knights.

This is not an issue. As long as the expansion is planned to quickly conquer territory surrounded by central nodes which close those areas off and relief all knights within from guard duty. This can be done and held with barely 12 knight even during the lategame or rather 8 if some of those are water bases. You'd just have no one to quest if you'd limit yourself to that low number.

All of this should be familiar from the normal campaign, depending what difficulty was chosen.

The entire run will be in hard mode with only two settings (capture and base defense) available. Do not deactivate capture, that is how you will dismantle decent chunks of the enemies gifted armies. You will conquer and dissolve them or add them to your ranks. For the base, play as you like.

After the continent is united, all factions respawn with Lv.20 elite armies. Their behavior is scripted and the most challenging will be the Bahamut group due to range attacks which blocks stand-offs and skirmishing which is dangerous close-by. The strongest army should handle this, for example the temple knights with hydras.

There are different approaches that can be taken for knights and army composition and all are not only valid, they complement each other. There are just some that are superior.

1) The archers, like Elena or Ratka. Together with a complement of High Centaurs, they can eliminate commanders when the situation demands to finish it quickly and pick of dangerous units. Their sometimes 50-70% hitrate may demand some savescumming for a new RNG seed though. With both of them at RunePower A and with slight equipment or levels they can field a full team of them.

2) The temple knights, the women of the lake. Together with two water snakes they will turn any coastal or lake base into a whirlpool of death, fighting off armies 4 times their strength. Once lv 20 their grand wave hits guaranteed and has two depth in range.
This will be the main source for quick -40% and 1 unit runs later on as you will need to push on other frontlines for speedpoints. Since enemies will be reliably at 12-16k lategame, doing so with 1 knight becomes very unreliable. As such they will ensure your top leader can prevent the risk of being overpowered during an assault by leading the worst of them. Early on your top leader (Rudo preferred) should do this to acquire points though.

3) Rangers or Swordsmen with skirmishers and dodge tanks. This is your Fenrirs and Bahamuts and Simurghs. Even if a cheese strategy is employed (centaurs, elementals etc.) a decent and reliably weak target which is hard to hit can help deter enemies from wasting your precious revival stones. They can further ensure that a target you want dead is truly dead by delivering focused high damage to a frontline, opening a passage.

The AI will employ many healers, which does slow down the temple knight water trap, but it can't outheal the water snakes and their versatile attack options and water healing. In general the other knights can quest while one fights and trains to find equipment in Proud Valley once acquired.

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The campaigns is set in three stages. The 10 turns, the 15 turns and the 20 turns... and kinda a fourth, the finale.

During all of these, the scoring has suspicious low values per turn. It is heavily implied to use these downtimes to gear up and train as there is little to lose for doing so. Overall there are many points attainable beyond the 30k needed, so the 2-3 breaks can be chosen as wanton, as long as the bonus goals are being fulfilled. The best phases are highlighted in yellow.

All bonus goals need to be completed in the turn when the next base goal is taken. To avoid overextending and losing a phase bonus, never conquer more than 3 bases if 1 base is left or 4 bases if more is left.

There are several risks to the score and the most obvious is being blocked on a tri-conquest or failing to account for the right -40% defense or offense strategy. The AI will reroll invasion each time an attack phase is finished (the rewards are rolled on switch from organization to attack though). This means all invasions and defenses of the turn can be checked by saving in the first battle in turn 1 and retreating all battes until all are confirmed. Then reload. This is a bit time intensive, but will ensure that no tri-conquest is unwillingly blocked or any -40% attack is stiffled. If they are, end the attack phase again. If nothing changes, send more reinforcements or attackers in the organization phase to the spot to prepare.

Important:

To attain the -40% rating the available attack power needs to be 59%, not the used power. Not deploying knights does not count! If you get attacked use all you have, no point holding back. To ensure this is the case, save in the organization phase, end to the attack phase and compare the values. If your defender is too strong compared to its potential attackers, reload and remove a creature. This should solve the issue.

This -40% defense (later best done by a temple knight with 2 water snakes in a water area) will secure all bonuses short of the special bonuses for replays of Challenge Mode with Aurora and Zoar and of course the tri-conquest.

Below is a link to my completed save, aside of the Gallivard recruits Will if Will is in destroyed Norzalea event. It will offer you to play whatever mode you want with whatever characters you want. Since the former "save" offer is locked behind the OneDrive changes and not available, I will offer a replacement.

Inside of it are all 6 factions at the Zoar boss in the campaign before the endboss on Easy, Normal and Hard. None of which use elementals, they aren't the best units, but they do use the powerful High Centaur / Archers and Water Snakes.

Another save is Challenge Mode one turn before finishing a tri-conquest and thus securing 30k points in the midst of phase 9 (of 10). Finishing this battle of Lorentz by attacking with the last unit - for example killing the Pegasus for EXP - will make Unimaru retreat.

Afterwards 30k points is reached and triggers the achievement. There are about 6-8k points left if you wish to go for the "True Unification" and win.

You own a powerful army lead by a terrifying Rudo. Two archer/centaur squads. Three elite temple knight/water snake squads. One mixed temple knight/snake+lizard squad and some skirmishers and elementals if desired. I expect winning this in the remaining dozens of turns will be possible. I have faith in you! Finish the job Master Chief!

For the complete record achievement you need to open the records book.

That's it. Have fun in Challenge Mode.

Brigandine: Legends of Runersia Completed Save[nedrear.hpage.com]

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