The Banner Saga
39 Achievements
1,000
25-30h
Master Tactician
Win a battle on Hard difficulty in the camp Training Tent using 6 rank 5 units.
25
0.33%
How to unlock the Master Tactician achievement in The Banner Saga - Definitive Guide
Can do this on Easy mode, then switch to Hard mode and do training camp (how I earned the achievement). I advise waiting to do this achievement until Chapter 6. You get Eyvind near the end of Chapter 4, who is already Rank 5. In Chapter 6, there's a village you come across called Reynivik, which has an event as soon as you get there. Make sure to choose the option to Rush to Help, as this will recruit Sigbjorn, who is already rank 5. As you're playing through the game, find four characters that you like that will live through the end of the game. Keep in mind that you want characters that you get early on to build them up, as you need 14 kills and 50 renown for each character to make them rank 5. You can use any character that lives until the end; I personally used Rook, Iver (he leaves in Chapter 4 for just a little bit but he comes back so don't panic), Gunnulf (can die in Chapter 3 trying to save a cart, just pick options ordering him to let go of the cart), and Tryggvi. You get all these characters early in the game, making them easy to level up, and they're the easiest to keep alive in my opinion. Once you recruit Sigbjorn, I suggest doing this right away because once you get to the next city (Boersgard), training camp is no longer available. If you don't like the set-up (enemy positioning or player positioning) you get when you do training, just quit out and go back and it will give you a different set-up. Can make it easier or more difficult.
For the battle itself, it isn't too tough, but it can be if you're not used to playing on Hard. The enemies have more armor and strength and they are much more numerous. Focus on the bigger enemies first, they can one hit your characters. Abuse the willpower system to get more damage out of your attacks. Instead of focusing on outright killing the enemies, lower their strength as low as possible. Reason being is when their strength is super low, most of their attacks will deflect off your armor, and if they do get through it does negligible damage. Also, more enemies in the battle means it takes longer for them to cycle through all their turns.
You can also use synergies with characters special abilities (use Tryggvi's Impale attack, then use Iver's Battering Ram attack). When using Eyvind, using his Arc Lightning, focus on diagonal positioning of enemies as it does more damage each enemy it passes through, but be careful you don't shock your own teammates! Gunnulf and Sigbjorn can both be incredibly powerful using their Tempest attacks as well as they generally have a high strength number, causing more damage to more enemies with one attack. Using Rook's special when your teammates are surrounding an enemy will cause him to do armor damage, followed by your teammates attacking them if they're in range.
If anyone else has any advice please let me know and I will add it to the solution, otherwise good luck, and if you don't win the first time just keep trying!
Just in case it wasn't clear, you cannot use Hakon and his crew for this, so if you're going solely for this achievement, don't waste renown on leveling them up. Focus on Rooks group. I messed up and didn't realize this, and got extremely lucky being able to level up 2 more characters to Lv.5 just in time.
Missable!
You do this either on your normal playthrough if you back up your save to the cloud to download afterwards (as you'll have changed the difficulty to hard), or on your hard playthrough itself. Getting 6 rank 5 units is much easier then it sounds as half can be easily gotten with no trouble.
Eyvind: Joins in chapter 5 at rank 5.
Sigbjorn: Joins in chapter 6 at rank 5.
Gunnulf: During Chapter 1 & 3 make sure to rank him up to rank 5 (give him the Five Ring Necklace too). He'll then join you in chapter 6 at the rank he was at the end of chapter 3 which will be 5.
That leaves you just needing 3 rank 5 characters to get.
Remember that you can't use the training tent when you get to Boersgard, and if doing it when going for innocent to not use Alette. If you are, then back up your file and load it after getting this trophy.
You will want to do this achievement at some point after Sigbjorn joins your party. Eyvind and Sigbjorn are both Rank 5 when they join you, so that is two out of the way. Focus on four other characters you enjoy and get them to this point as well. If you level up too many characters at once, or buy too many supplies/items, you may run out of renown to get enough units to Rank 5. To rank up a unit, you also need to get a certain number of kills before you can even spend the renown, so make sure you are getting the final hit on enemies with the characters you want to rank up (Rank 5 = 14 kills).
I would suggest you focus on some combination of Rook, Alette, Tryggvi, Gunnulf, Iver, and Hogun or Mogun. Some of the other characters in the game won't be with you at this point, so spending renown on them will be a waste. Make sure you do a manual camp site sometime BEFORE reaching Boersgard. This is the final destination of the game and the training tent is not available after that.
The actually battle is not that difficult. If you've reached this point of the game on Hard to even attempt it, you'll be well prepared for it.
[If someone wants to test something - see if you can level up your characters on an Easy "Warmonger" run and then try to get this achievement simply by switching the difficulty to Hard when you have enough characters at Rank 5. I can't find any mention from the PC version is this does or does not work.]