Atten-shun, maggots! You have just been promoted to the United Kingdom of Edinburgh's (why is Scotland calling the shots now? Probably for the best) most elite division: the 32nd Armored Ranger Corps! You will be expected to accomplish perilous missions behind enemy lines. Your chief weapons, tactical superiority and stealth. To that effect, you will need to fully understand the capabilities of every soldier in your unit. That includes the areas where they excel, those where they falter, and maybe any pop culture references the localization decided to toss in for fun. Keep in mind that the United Kingdom of Edinburgh's armies do not have any manner of psychological screening process, because this is World War 2 and we need every able-bodied anime we can recruit dammit, regardless of psychosis or severe personality defects. Now... dismissed!

Our spotlight today, dropping the whole drill sergeant thing for a bit, are scouts and engineers. I've grouped these two together because they use the same weapons and armor, and coupling the largest group (scouts) with the smallest (engineers) made too much sense. These two are really your workhorses: when you need something done other than the usual killing, scouts (recon) and engineers (repairs) are your guys and gals.

Scouts

Basic infantry built for reconnaissance, equipped with mid-range rifles.

• Pros: Rifles have decent range. Can move long distances, making them tactically vital. Grenade launcher attachment after a class promotion makes them effective at eliminating enemies in cover. Good for interception fire also, as they have great peripheral vision.
• Cons: Fairly weak damage output and defenses.

Further strategies: Scouts tend to work best alone, at least early on, because their enhanced movement range puts them far beyond the pack. That also means that the further they get away from the rest of your base camp and deeper into enemy territory, the riskier it is to leave them out in the open. In the early, pre-promotion stage of the game scouts can use their range advantage to take down any unprotected enemies that might otherwise cause a problem on the enemy's turn - snipers and lancers, mostly - though they're less well-suited for rushing grenadiers. It's often best to have a plan for where to leave a scout once their turn is over, either behind walls/cover or prone in tall grass.

Scouts come into their own once you have the ability to delegate extra leaders, as a unique quirk of the "follow me" order is that everyone moves at the same speed as the leader: this allows a slow-moving unit like a sniper, lancer or grenadier tag onto a scout and cover far more ground than they would normally. The scout leader can then dump them somewhere tactically viable (a high-up place for a sniper, a central but walled-in area for a grenadier, behind a tank for a lancer) while they continue moving ahead. Scouts aren't quite as valuable as they were in the past - they're going to struggle with most units in cover, especially if they've used up their one grenade that turn - but they're still the MVPs of the battlefield.

(NB: Asterisks (*) indicate a potential only acquired after completing that unit's Squad Story.)

Claude Wallace

Claude Wallace is the commander of Squad E and the game's protagonist. Though he's usually in his tank, the Hafen, there are a few restricted maps where he has to go on foot as a scout. Like VC1's Welkin, Claude's a typical wet blanket perfect tactician main character, though I appreciated that he's someone who spent most of his life depressed and eventually found his way out of it due to friends like Raz and Kai. Overcoming his cowardice and joining officer school made him into an indomitable force of will on the battlefield, though he's still a wuss when it comes to personal matters.

He's almost better as a scout than a tank commander because his one negative potential, "Overburdened", has almost zero drawback as infantry: you're not going to be taking down pillboxes and tanks as a scout, after all. He's another character that grows stronger after certain story beats, which is good as he's the game's only compulsory pick. The story-related "Auroral Vow" (after developing his romance with Riley) is especially powerful, though won't become accessible until the post-game. (Iron Will also evolves into a new potential, but its name has a spoilerish hint in it so I left it out.)

Tier: A.

Curtis Blackwell

A standoffish teen who is notoriously brusque with people as a defense mechanism to mask his shyness, and has spiky brown hair and a prominent scar near his left eye... wait, something feels so familiar about all this... damn, if I hadn't junctioned that Guardian Force and forgotten so much maybe I could make the connection.

While gunblades have yet to be commissioned by the Federation Army, Curtis is still a highly effective scout with the right conditions: you have Laurent with you (or Eileen, if you've completed Curtis's Squad Story), you have a rural map, or you make sure Curtis is either on his own or with the above company. Curiously, you do have to let Curtis drop into a critical state at least once for a different recruit to show up.

Tier: B.

Godwin

Godwin is a Darcsen; the game's purple-haired anime equivalent of the Jewish people, though they're perhaps closer to Romani in terms of their itinerate culture. In either case, they're a stand-in for certain groups where the prejudice towards them during the mid-twentieth century lingered as a malignant shadow during WW2, their treatment ultimately leading to the worst human rights atrocity in living memory. I say all this to make you aware of just how important it was for Sega and Media.Vision to handle the inclusion of the themes of racism and genocide with the gentlest of kid gloves, and not fall afoul themselves of any of the negative stereotypes that may have spurred the anti-semitism of the era. Anyway, Godwin is an avaricious person who steals from corpses.

Aladdin's Jafar is one of those units cursed with more bad potentials than good, but makes up for it by having one of those positive potentials be amazing in very specific circumstances. If you use him to grenade an enemy or two, and then his "Scavenger" activates as he walks over the corpses, he'll get his grenade back. A lot of factors have to be at work for him to pull that off, but it almost makes up for how his "Cynic" potential - which seems to activate all the time - makes him a bullet magnet. At least he has more HP than most scouts to soak that damage up.

Tier: C. (Scouts cannot legally dip below a "C" grade because of how great they are.)

Jester Mooney

If you ever wondered what an anime Matthew McConaughey playing a down-on-his-luck gambler might look like, Jester's your man. This perpetually broke Texan cardsharp is one of those characters who is entertaining enough that it scarcely matters that he's mostly useless. Well, if not useless, then merely all right, all right, all right.

The big problem with Van Zanime are his two gambling-related potentials, both negative, that proc quite often. The slightly creepy "Fancies Women" isn't a bad potential though, as half your squad are likely going to be female. Unfortunately, the only compulsory female picks (for the first half of the game, at least) are Kai and Riley for their leadership bonuses, and they don't need to leave the starting base to be useful because of their range. Conversely, scouts are best far afield and going solo, so that potential might not activate too often unless he's tagging along with female shocktroopers or other scouts.

Tier: C.

Thomas "Odin" Kevin

This guy is just weird, even for Valkyria Chronicles. A shut-in hikikomori who imagines himself as a fictional character - "Odin, God of Battle" - to deal with the outside world and his particular stressful situation of being signed up for a war he absolutely did not want to be involved in. He explicitly asks other characters to refer to him by his "Godsona". He feels like a cruel joke someone on-staff is playing on fans they met at TGS.

Despite the one big negative, Mr. Wednesday's actually not so bad once you have his Squad Story potential. "Panicky" only really procs when he gets close to enemies, so you're better off taking them out at a distance, which is made easier if "Hawkeye's Glint" activates. The one problem with "God of Battle" is that you never want your scouts surrounded by enemies if you can help it, since they won't last long under sustained fire.

Tier: B.

Rosetta Valeriano

The Valkyria franchise's first trans character, as far as I'm aware. The game never makes a big deal out of it either, which feels like the right way to do LGBTQ+ characters (less said about VC1's Jann Walker the better). She is a proponent of social justice which is represented here by her camaraderie with the impugned Darcsen people.

The social justice thing has two sides: being around Darcsen boosts a lot of stats, but she also can't stand killing people. Fortunately, scouts are the one unit type that can take the AP hit because they have plenty to go around. The "Neat Freak" negative potential is super easy to get around: just attack before going prone. The more general "Fighting for Ideals" seems to proc a lot though, and is very handy.

Tier: B.

Teresa Leach

Teresa is the sort of woman who might appear in a cop procedural as a perky coroner with an ankh necklace or intense eye shadow. Either that, or a serial killer of the week. Very into death and cutting people open, which works against her unassuming librarian look. She sort of reminds me of Danganronpa's Touko Fukawa, though maybe there's a larger trend of bookish murderers in anime of which I'm not cognizant.

Hanime Lecter's potentials are just strange, and makes me wonder if she wasn't a guest character designed by a contest winner. "Clumsy" is self-explanatory (and very annoying), but "Biology Bias" and "Creepy Doctor" are very conditional potentials - scouts don't need vehicles around, and you don't usually use them for healing - so you probably won't see them too often. "Dissection Obsession" can be very useful, but works best when Teresa is around a lot of enemies - she has to kill one first, then walk over it and use the anti-personnel boost to kill the next, which makes her good for clearing out enemy base camps since they tend to have more than one defender. Oddly, she has the highest dodge stat of any scout, but the lowest accuracy.

Tier: C.

Azusa Tsukikage

Azusa is a Japanese woman who gets turned on by body odor and lying, which makes me wonder if someone on Sega's staff wasn't working through a messy break-up. Her background as an undercover agent for Valkyria's version of the Empire of Japan seems to hint that a future game might perhaps be set in the Pacific theater, presumably after the catastrophic bombing of "Ivory Port".

Pretty Soldier Azusa-chan is who you want with you on a night map, though there's sadly not too many of those. At night, visibility is down making it easier to sneak-attack units (and proc "Stealth Expertise"), and of course her "Night Vision" only works at night. If you're using scouts correctly, she shouldn't be near other units often enough for the super-creepy "Drunk on Pheromones" to activate too often. If you're promoting Azusa as a leader so she can carry people around, just stick her with other women to prohibit that potential from occurring.

Tier: A. (On night maps.)

Nico Emery

Churchy La Femme here is what happens when you cross Ned Flanders with a cast member of Lucky☆Star. Not every day you see a 16-year-old nun on the battlefield. It's hard to dislike the perennially chipper Nico - there's a cute Side Story featuring her and grouchy Godwin - though her battle effectiveness is questionable.

Honestly, it's really a matter of using Nico in the manner in which she would prefer to be used. That is to say, held back so she can protect her friends rather than running into the fray with a grenade prepped, because "Blind Faith" and "Klutz" will make the latter strategy very unlikely to succeed. However, once she's earned "Saintly Smile" you can stick her behind cover in a base with allies and let her shrug off any incoming fire, which is a rare quality for a scout. I don't mention it too often, but scouts can be effective as base guardians due to the large detection radius and range that governs their interception fire. I will also say that "Early Bird" is a freebie if you remember to select Nico first on every turn.

Tier: B.

Millennia Hudson

Hollywood has conditioned me to accept that any "Private Hudson" is not long for this world, and gloomy widow Millennia epitomizes that fatalism with her melancholy attitude. She's sturdier than she looks, though, in part because her potentials and high HP are designed to keep her on her feet. Some small part of me wonders if she wasn't based on the lead character of Satoshi Kon's Millennium Actress, who also fell into a life-long funk after her love interest went MIA one day.

Willennium's "Dedicated" is what makes her useful here, as you might need to use a scout several times in one turn if they need to be somewhere distant. Unfortunately, all that movement also makes "Own Pace" more likely to trigger, so Millennia's best used cautiously. An ideal situation is having her spend two actions to get to an enemy camp on the other side of the map, using her boosted accuracy to take the base and maybe recover any lost health from interception fire via "Her Husband's Will". That, in conjunction with "Medical Knowledge", makes her more capable of surviving on her own.

Tier: B.

(The next three scouts involve mild story spoilers, so I've spoiler-blocked them off. The first joins Squad E midway through the game, and the next two are secret post-game characters.)

Minerva Victor

Potential	Trigger	Effect
The Pride of Squad F	After attacking	HP Recovery
Defiant Spirit	Near Claude Wallace	Attack Down
Soldier's Honor	After spotting an enemy	Defense Up
Noble Commander*	When leading a group	Attack/Defense/Evasion/Accuracy Up

Minerva is Claude's rival throughout the story, with a whole troop of her own, but a certain mid-game tragedy leaves her without her team and forces her to join her frenemy for the rest of the conflict. Though antagonistic towards Claude, she recognizes his tactical genius and falls in line when she joins Squad E. Minerva's one of those divisive fan favorites either in spite of or because she's the rich snobby mean girl sort of minor villain - think Emily from Until Dawn.

Pacifica Northwest is, perhaps annoyingly if her supercilious attitude grates on you, far and away the best scout - and thus unit - in the game. Her normal potentials proc constantly and she has a permanent leader status. Combine that with high stats and a broken potential that triggers when she has followers ("Noble Commander", though you can only earn it post-game), and she's best suited carrying a small team deep behind enemy lines and wrecking shop. Just don't leave her near Claude or the Hafen.

Rank: S.

Christel Ward

Potential	Trigger	Effect
Claude Hater	Near Claude Wallace	Accuracy Down
Skilled Scout	After spotting an enemy	AP Recovery
The Pride of Squad F	After attacking	HP Recovery
Unbreakable Bonds*	Near Minerva	Accuracy/Defense/Evasion Up

Anime frequently teases lesbian relationships between two close female friends, but Valkyria Chronicles recognizes that war is no place to be tiptoeing around that bullshit. Christel is every bit as openly out and romantically devoted to her boss (Minerva) as Waylon Smithers, and occupies a similar role that is both sycophantic and sweetly affectionate. As with Mr. Burns, Minerva is either oblivious to this adoration or pointedly chooses to ignore it.

Poppin' Christel At The Club is the game's first "secret" character, mostly because she - sorry for spoilers if you got this far - dies just before the point of the game when Minerva joins Squad E. She's not playable for the whole story as a result, but can be resurrected in the special post-game cenotaph area - usually for those units you lost while playing - and put into your squad. She's already a Corporal, which means she can be assigned a leader right off the bat, and her potentials are overall exceptional. Since you're using Minerva anyway, most likely, it's best to have the two team up as often as possible.

Rank: A.

Brian Haddock

Potential	Trigger	Effect
Composed	When taking interception fire	Accuracy Up
Soldier's Honor	When spotting an enemy	Defense Up
Neurotic	When at half AP	Evasion Down
Seasoned Navigator*	Start of turn	Accuracy and Evasion Way Up

Brian's the navigator on board the Cygnus, the deus ex machina icebreaker warship that appears midway through the campaign. He's a secret scout recruit and inaccessible until you've completed a specific post-game Skirmish, along with the other three Cygnus crewmember recruits. In the story, Brian occupies a sort of reserved and pragmatic foil to Claude's idealistic recklessness, with a milder version of Minerva's ressentiment towards him after Cygnus's veteran captain, Morgan, takes the young commander under his wing.

As you might expect from a post-post-game secret character, Brian's a very effective soldier with few drawbacks. "Composed" and "Soldier's Honor" proc almost constantly, though "Neurotic" can make it dangerous to push Brian too far into the enemy's midst. If you have "Seasoned Navigator" - which requires completing the hardest Squad Story in the game - he can be a real monster.

Tier: A.

Engineers

Support units with multiple unique functions.

• Pros: Highly versatile in a support role - can restock ammo/grenades by walking past units, clear mines, and repair sandbag barricades and ladders, all without using up their action. Can also repair tanks and resurrect fallen infantry. A decent movement range, if not quite as high as scouts, gets them to where they're needed most.
• Cons: Not great in combat, between weak defenses and a limited number of combat potentials.

Further strategies: Engineers are simply too valuable to not have one, but not combat-effective enough to have more than one. If it's a map with vehicles, I usually keep the engineer behind the Hafen or inside Dan's APV, Cactus, until I need them. The ladder repair feature, though only relevant for a few maps, is absolutely essential. They're also required to have on hand when a map heavily involves snipers, lancers, or grenadiers because of their constant ammo restocking needs: this is especially true for maps based around boss fights.

Generally, engineers do fine taking down the same targets scouts have - enemies outside of cover - but a relative lack of combat potentials should make them a last resort for a push into enemy territory. However, they will sometimes need to go on ahead to clear out minefields or fix the aforementioned ladders, so it's sometimes smart to use a long-range unit like a sniper or grenadier to make sure the road ahead of them is clear. Worth noting that engineers are the only units that can resurrect others, but if the engineer is taken down there's not much you can do but evacuate them and order a new one from a base camp.

Aulard Abington

The requisite engineer who is a big fan of tanks; the bigger the better. To phrase it in some more contemporary vernacular: Tonks -> Heftytonks -> Megatonkers -> Aulard, he comin'.

Because of their many specialities, the game's few engineers each embody a different skill in the engineer's toolbox. Stank the Tank Stan is your repair expert, with useful potentials that activate near vehicles. I usually have an engineer accompanying either the Hafen or Cactus at all times unless they're needed elsewhere, and Aulard is more than capable in that spot.

Tier: B.

Rebecca Longhurst

Rebecca's a nurse with a tragic past, and has since closed off her heart to the suffering of her fellow soldiers. This makes her a pretty crappy healer until you can sort out her post-traumatic stress with a Squad Story.

Ms. "Walk It Off" has a critical flaw with "Conservationist", as it can often trigger around units with quarter- to-half of their health left, which is a non-critical range but still dangerously low. Generally speaking, though, you want to be healing units with engineers when they're close to death or actually down for the count, and "Conservationist" won't proc for those. Rebecca embodies the engineer virtue of being an effective medic, at least once she gets her final potential and is greatly boosted when dashing in to help a fallen ally. She also has the highest health of any engineer, though they're not really intended to be damage sponges.

Tier: C.

Rita Raywater

Rita's that one man-hungry gal in every sitcom who just can't find the right guy. When she's not starring in ABC's T.G.I.F. prime-time lead-in "Taking On Raywater", she's an effective all-round engineer that's handy in any role.

Suddenly Susan might actually be the best engineer. She has no big weaknesses - "Chatterbox" isn't as bad as it sounds, since it only affects the handful of allies that count as "close friends" - and "Unintentional Flirt" and "Tank Lover" are amazing potentials for keeping her alive. "Seeking Mr. Right" only works when she's in a group, but it's a coup when it hits. Rita doesn't occupy any specific role as an engineer: she's just as effective up front removing mines or at the back keeping the Hafen trucking. She's also the most accurate engineer too, for whatever that's worth.

Tier: A.

Eileen Blackwell

Eileen can only be recruited if Curtis falls in battle but does not die. She's an overbearing kid sister type, and dotes on Curtis as much as anyone else. It's kind of cute if inexplicable that his little sister takes on the arduous elite ranger corps training program so she can be there to patch him up, but that's anime for you.

Onii-chan embodies the engineer's in-the-field supporting duties, in particular hanging around lancers, snipers, and grenadiers to replenish their ammo. She's the only engineer I'm aware of that has a potential that activates after restocking nearby allies, and it's handy if she's in the thick of it: all she needs to do is move close to another ally and she has a chance of getting a decent amount of HP back. This makes her better suited than most for running across the battlefield dodging gunfire. Suffice it to say, if you're using Eileen you'll probably want Curtis around and vice versa (unless you haven't completed their Squad Story yet, in which case they're best kept separate).

Tier: A.

(There's only one secret character that's an engineer. Spoiler-blocked, like before.)

Andre Dunois

Potential	Trigger	Effect
Expert's Touch	When repairing a vehicle	Repairs All Damage
Hangover	Start of turn	AP Down
Stubborn	Near allies	Accuracy Down
Seasoned Mechanic*	After repairing a vehicle	Bonus Action

Andre's another Cygnus crewmember and secret post-game Squad E recruit. He's your archetypal ornery ship mechanic who drinks a lot and can't be doin' with all these young 'uns. He's more immediately sympathetic than most of the stuck-up Cygnus crew, however, and an early ally of Squad E. Being a mechanic, he's naturally suited for engineer work also.

Boat Grampa is probably the worst of the Cygnus secret recruits to be honest, but that's not saying much given how good the rest of them are. As can be reasonably expected of a man of his advanced age, it's best you don't send him ahead too far and instead have him hang back and repair the Hafen and Cactus whenever they're in need. "Expert's Touch" and "Seasoned Mechanic" are both great potentials if your tanks are getting battered a lot.

Tier: B.

Current Tier Chart

Next Week: Shocktroopers and Snipers! Time to get serious.

Millennia, Vancey, Rebecca, Brittney, and yeah, Minerva is stupid good. Rebecca is a real pain in the ass but I couldn't help it, had to use her.

I just find the ppl I like personality wise and stick with them. I almost don't want a perfect squad. The game isn't that hard so I think it's fun to have just ppl you click with.