Though I haven't played in a few days I did make some significant progress over the weekend as I was away and could play a lot while travelling. I'm really quite annoyed that I didn't have internet access, because I completely forgot about the reward you get for saving the villagers in the fog chapter, which I failed to get. I really wanted to use Neimi and to upgrade her as early as possible, but now it looks like I'll have to wait for either the master seal or make sure I have enough money for an Orion's Bolt at the secret shop, which shouldn't be to hard seeing as I remember where to pick up the Silver and Gold cards. Otherwise things have been going pretty well, apart from my haphazard loss of Franz in Chapter 8. TBH though Franz isn't the greatest of cavalry units, and I much prefer Forde/Kyle, who were much higher levelled than Franz anyway, though that was mainly because I knew about Orson's Betrayal and loss as a playable character beforehand.
I have already beaten the game twice once going with Eirika and once going with Ephraim, so I decided to choose Eirika's path this time mainly because that was the one I did first before and it is the least fresh in my mind. I have to say though that I abused the hell out of the Tower of Valni when I got it open. I grinded Ross up to around level 15 alongside Lute, even though I don't quite have their promotion items yet, they are definitely 2 units that I want in my consistant squad. I also bumped Gilliam and Vanessa up to level 20 and promoted them both, Gilliam to the obvious choice of General and Vanessa to a Wyvern Knight, seeing as I plan to promote Tana to a Falco Knight later, and I prefer splitting their promotions in that fashion.
Chapter 9 was a bit of a pain in the ass though, I had to restart 3 times, mainly because I was going for perfection. I wanted to stop the bandit that spawns at the top of the map from destroying the village so that I could grab the item from it and I also wanted to recruit Amelia, which was tougher than normal because I didn't have Franz. It meant I had to move all my units within her range before she departs on turn 12 and I had to take all weapons off of Eirika so that she wouldn't kill Amelia on the counter attack. I managed to get through it though and wound up getting what I wanted so it was all good in the end. I feel though that I'm gonna start blasting through chapters now, seeing as I have a few promoted unit and a couple who are on the verge of promotion. I also don't really plan on using many of the units you get in the later chapters as pre-promoted guys, barring a couple, I'd like to be using my original guys for the majority of the playthrough, but we'll have to see how far my patience will take me, especially when I reach Chapter 18, which if I recall is a gruellingly long map with some real heavy annoyances.
I haven't really been concentrating too much on support convos, I never really bother with them that much, but I want to develop the Joshua/Natasha one seeing as I have never used Natasha fully before and I have a feeling that she is going to become a pretty powerful unit. I think those two would work really well together on the battlefield, especially with the support boosts. Colm and Neimi is the easy and obvious support relationship to develop, but I find it difficult to keep them together on the field of play, mainly because I let Colm run off towards the nearest chest/door and let Neimi do her own thing.