Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles - Tactician No Grind: Argath (Ziekden Fortress)

Challenge playlist:
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Renewing this challenge by starting a fresh run. Seeing how very early on in the game my Dorter Trade City run ended up being a battle of provision seeing if I can keep the party alive before running out of Phoenix Downs as they get one-shot. Despite the Tactician damage modifiers being a substantial aspect of the run, for some reason I was rusty enough to think I could play "efficiently" with all my party members slowly learning Gained JP Up and Movement+1 as Squires and not crumble under the raw inequality in numbers seen. This obviously resulted in an impossible run, as my sole Chemist spent the Dorter fight incapacitated and didn't get enough job exp to reclass into Wizard the following battle. Everyone who knows this game well the sheer dominance of the Wizard class in the first chapter (and Summoners, too, but getting there takes a bit longer and the MP is hard to find this early).

So, what I did was start an entirely fresh run and reset twice or thrice until two of my generics had good compat with Capricorn!Ramza and decent enough Bravery/Faith stats for the roles they would play. I then hired another generic female with the same traits. This team of four should last for the rest of the challenge. I then did Dorter with a single Wizard and took my turns more defensively, baiting enemies and avoiding getting one-shot by the Wizards. Sacrificing getting Move+1 and even Gained JP Up in a few cases early resulted in a much more tolerable fight, and I will eventually get both through spillover JP, mainly from guests. I kept my females Wizards for the rest of the run, the male generic going into Chemist (it's hard to find a replacement for one) and Ramza taking his time learning Squire skills. Because physicals suck in chapter 1, especially on Tactician, his role is reduced to merely increasing his allies' speed with Tailwind. Ramza sticks around in Knight class to be able to equip heavy equipment as a Monk later, as having 200 HP instead of 60 makes a world of difference for direct combat. Much like Uber Squire, Monk is a treasure trove for abilities.

There were some interesting fights in chapter 1, two Wizards decimating the Fort Zeakden encounter that would've proved fatal on my initial run, and Miluda and Wiegraf mostly rushing to their deaths. While the first Miluda fight allowed me to kill all the foes for their chests and combat experience, the latter two assassination maps against the aforementioned foes were simply not reasonably doable with a rout objective in mind, to use Fire Emblem terminology. The fact that the bosses were ahead of everyone else in straightforward offence made it almost a no-brainer to kill them - this was the best way to deal with these fights, and that's how I normally handle them when playing FFT on any kind of playthrough I start, which I do often, as it's one of my all-time favourites.

Argath was the final chapter 1 map, and a notable fight in many ways. While I failed to kill him before he would rob me of my old Bravery bonus on Ramza, he was also harder to reach as a ranged unit, not to mention harder to kill with Auto-Potion in spite of the 32 Brave. I had to learn Blizzard spells before the fight, and had a party reunion so that I could cast Haste on as many of the key units as possible. Delita is stuck in his base class, as all guests are, ending up really useless and even outright detrimental to success here, as otherwise we would be able to draw Argath in instead of giving him a lot of space to manoeuvre. Generally, I require comparable firepower to vanilla to take him down, as Magick Boost on one of the Wizards makes her almost as good as a vanilla one equipped with Gained JP Up for most of the run focusing on efficiency.

So far the big difference would be the OHKOs, and playing efficiently I can't just grind to unlock solutions to these by either getting overkill offence or overkill defence.