Fire Emblem: The Amazon Challenge Introduction

I've recently held the desire to go back and re-play Fire Emblem.  Back in 2004, shortly after the game came out, I was quite into it (as can be seen from many of my game design documents that I have from back then which very much ripped it off took inspiration from this wonderful game).  I beat the game several times back when I was a frequent player of it and have only played it sporadically in the time since then, but in coming back to it, I've decided to spice my experience up just a little bit.

I intend to restrict myself to only using the female characters.

Setting up the Game

Right at the start, I was presented with a dilemma.  At the beginning of a game of Fire Emblem, the player provides a bunch of data which results in them being assigned to one of seven affinities.  Characters of the same affinity gain a small but nontrivial bonus to their accuracy and evasion.  Such was the decision I was faced with: Should I report my data honestly?  Should I maximize the number of units who benefit from this?  Should I make sure Rebecca benefits from this?

Birth Months	Affinity	Benefacting Units
Jan	Light	Florina, Louise
Feb, Nov	Ice	Ninian
Mar, May	Wind	Lyn, Priscilla, Fiora
Apr, Oct, Dec	Lightning	Serra
Jun	Anima	Farina
Jul, Sep	Fire	Rebecca, Nino, Vaida
Aug	Dark	Isadora, Karla

Well, as it turned out, all of those are provided by my actual birth month (September), so it ended up being a nonissue.

The Rules of the Game

As I've seen several different sets of rules for this challenge, I will list the ones that I intend to use:

1.  When possible, Male Units should not even be brought into the battlefield.
2. Nils counts as a Male Unit when he is Nils, but not when he is Ninian.
3. Only Female Characters may be used in any sense that makes the game easier.  This includes not using male characters as meatshields, bait, thieves, lock-openers, item-retrievers, etc.
4. An exception to Rule#3 occurs when the game forces the player to perform a certain action as part of a tutorial.  (ie. Kent and Sain killing a few enemies in the first chapter in which they appear)
5. Unit recruitment can occur when at least one of the involved units is female.  Thus, a female unit can recruit a male unit in order to gain the items he is carrying, or a male unit can recruit a female so she can take part in battle.
6. In order to allow Karla to be recruited, Bartre may train in an arena to become lv.10, promote, then become lv.5.  (This does not affect me, as I will be doing my playthrough on Elliot's path, where Karla is unrecruitable). 

Continued in Part I.