For those of you asking about the Tiki Emblem or Nel and Rafal... I don't own the Engage DLC so I didn't even know they counted as manaketes? I'll look into them for a possible follow-up.

Of all things, Warriors tiki shows how a dragon unit should've been made: does physical damage up close with claws, but can shoot magic flames to hit you at range.

Corrin's dragonstone has some extra uses beyond tanking. Its high might but inability to double makes it ideal for setting up kills for your allies to help them gain EXP, which is useful in Fates' earlygame since Corrin will likely be your highest level unit by a significant margin. When looked at in combination with the defensive bonuses it grants, this makes Corrin fill a role similar to the traditional Jagen archetype. Another use involves one of the signature mechanics of Fates, Dual Strikes. When performing a Dual Strike, you can never double; the damage you deal is half the damage of a single attack. With that in mind, a weapon that sacrifices the ability to double for additional damage is ideal. Not only that, Corrin's personal skill gives allies using them for Dual Strikes buffs to their damage, durability, and hit rate. These two roles complement each other nicely, as powerful Dual Strikes are also very useful when trying to train a unit with a weak starting position like Mozu.

Taguel, Kitsune and Wolfskin don't have just cavalry effectiveness, but beast effectiveness and every horse and pegasi class is considered beast, which gives them effective damage against wide range of enemies.

I find the undertones of Awakening shifters to be very interesting. Namely the fact that you can buy stones like common jewelry, suggesting that a large number of manaketes and taguel are dead, likely killed by humans.

When I first played Awakening, the manaketes were my absolute favorite units just for the sheer cool factor of having an entire dragon in my army. I hope IS brings them back in some form for the next Fire Emblem. As an aside, (minor spoilers for Engage), I think that Ch25 Lumera should’ve dropped a dragonstone for Alear to use instead of a second unique sword. Even if it had an identical mechanical function, making Alear’s endgame upgrade a dragon transformation just would’ve been pretty hype.

I quite liked the Awakening-style manaketes: their very class isn't tied to a specific part of a game, yet they had a unique wyvern-killing niche and were okay as generalists 1-2 range tanks with 6 move.

My favorite Manakete in the series is probably Myrrh. She's a lategame powerhouse who can easily take on every enemy the game throws your way, but you only get 50 uses to last you all 6 remaining chapters, that's only about 8 uses on average. It's pretty easy to train her up since noone can really hurt her, so I usually let her solo the cav reinforcements in ch16, give her the boss kill in ch17 when I want to end that map and from then only let her attack if it's really necessary. Mechanically she's also a pretty interesting unit to field I think. You try to avoid exposing her to too much combat, not because of her lack of survivability, but because you need to avoid her going on a rampage and waste unnecessary stone uses.

I think we’re ready for early-game axe fighters as our next unit type. Barst, Bartre, and Boyd - oh my!

Here’s what I think would be an interesting take on a manakete… They would have a default Dragonstone. It has no or very small stat boosts and is locked to 1 range, but has unlimited uses. Later, you get access to a single Dragonstone+. It has large stat boosts and 1-2 range, but it has limited uses. This way you have the interesting decisions behind when to use your Manakete but have a backup option so they’re not at risk of being dead weight.

What about the Engage Tiki Emblem and the Fell Twins?

I once had an idea for a "pseudo-manakete". The player character would be a mage in training, and at the point in the story she promotes, she's captured by the enemy and forced to dig for a Dragonstone the bad guys want. She finds it, but hides it away, trying desperately to draw some kind of magic from it that can get her out of there. At the same time, there's an abused Wyvern kept in the mine that she befriends. And by sheer chance, she's able to empower the Wyvern with the Dragonstone for a brief moment, causing it to breathe fire. Realizing what happened, the MC and Wyvern promptly team up, with her invoking the Dragonstone's magic so the Wyvern can use the breath weapon, which is a physical attack. Together, they break out, take down a wall to give the rest of the army a way in, and become a powerful unit for the rest of the game. With the only true Dragon in the party unable to use Dragonstones (and partial to his magic anyway), this makes the Dragonstone a sort of "Prf" for the main character, allowing her to take down other mages (especially Mogalls and Gorgons) more easily.

The video I've been waiting for, I love manaketes so much. Really cool characters conceptually and fun units to use, unfortunately they don't get much time to shine since they join so late. But cute girl plus dragon transformation is peak fiction to me. I think Awakening is my favorite version of them because they're usable relatively early and have 1-2 range.

Would love to hear you cover Pegasus Knights! Their my favorite unit, but in all honesty it’s mostly for aesthetic reasons

My favorite Manekete is Awakening Tiki - Soloing Priam Chapter with her on Hard difficulty was the funniest thing

The Awakening Dragons design is interesting for two reasons. First, Fire Emblem always ends with fighting a Dark Mage and a Dragon haha. But second, the Dragon-with-Effective-Dmg-against-Dragons reminds me of Pokémon, where the legendary Dragons were essentially in their own little world. It's neat to envision Manaketes as your army's connection with the more mystical/legendary aspects of the Fire Emblem universe, as they do fierce battle with the other legendary dragons you face in the endgame.

I love how 5/7 games with manaketes are just Tiki

I guess this is the best counter to wyvern knights. There is no dragonstone breaker that will allow wyvern knights to dodge attacks. Manaketes have enough bulk to tank anything the wyvern knight can dish out.

You know what I'm going say at this point, I'm rooting for them :D

Even though they’re always a little different, manaketes always end up being my favorite units in fire emblem and i think thats because they get to flex atypical character progression. Tiki doesn’t need to get stronger in FE3, she’s end game ready. But if you want you can massively boost her flexibility by getting more dragon stones for her. I really like Fates’ dragonstone users because the dragonstone makes then the best dual striker in the early game and the dragonstone+ comes back to make them the best in the late game too, if youre willing to deal with the gap between those two. These kind of characters usually just to to flip the standard means of building strength in their head.

There is one archetype that I've noticed across multiple games but im not sure if they have a name. That being the late game General that defects to the Player's side for reasons xyz. Lorenz, Hannibal and Douglas comes to mind as examples. What really interests me is how overall terrible they're perceived as despite being pre promotes. They have bad speed and movement, and usually they have a difficult recruitment where you have to either talk to them with a unit or just not kill them as enemies. I wonder if there's any way to make these units more useful other than late game filler

I find awakening did the least interesting iteration of manaketes in the series. I like IS giving manaketes some kind of restriction to both keep them in check and make them unique compared to other more normal units. 1 range lock in ds and gba fe is one way to do it, limited stone uses in gba is also interesting, 1-2 range but permanent 0AS in fe3 is also cool and generally keeps bantu and tiki from killing everything while also being almost invincible (although tiki still has pretty high crit rates when trained so she will still ohko a bunch of things). But in awakening they get unrestricted 1-2 range and almost unlimited weapon uses while not having any kind of additional restrictions, which imo just makes them feel like any other unit, especially in a game like awakening in which powerful 1-2 range is plentiful

Bantu chads rise up, I loved trying to use him in my army in fe11, yeah was he great... no, But it was fun because he's still an f-ing dragon I will say even if they're not the best units and not the focus of this video the Dragon Laguz in radiant dawn are probably my favorite version of the dragonshifter, at least in concept Big hulking units that are super resilient, with clear weaknesses like magic for red and physical for white, Thunder magic for all of them. Black being the royals having the distinct ability to fly (but not Canto sadly) 1-2 range with breath weapons. But they aren't just Stat sticks, dragons are just innately powerful and being next to them buffs you. From both tactics and world building it's a really cool thing to see. While laguz in that game are a bit flawed and in a theoretical remake I would prefer to see something more akin to dragonstones, and more availability especially for Ena and Kurth, I like them a lot. They're really cool units. Other than those, only games I've played thus far that have manaketes is SS and Myrrh was pretty good, great necro dragon killer and pretty decent wall but only around for like 2 chapters, but has a nice niche.

You forgot Nel and Rafal

I think other cool units to cover would be the rare light or dark magic users. Alternatively, a more lengthy video about lord design.

Its very stupid how Manaketes don't have 1-2 range. They do transform into huge dragons and... breathe fire... and have sharp claws. 1 range: Str stat and deal physical damage. 2 range: Magic stat and deal magic damage. Manaketes need to be like this in every single future emblem game, tabletop adaptatio n and mod.

Honestly I don't blame you for forgetting about Engage, never finished that shit anyways.

Since their 100 Years and older their clothing Style should always look out of touch in some way.