The bad thing about Tactician so far IMO is the first battle relies entirely on luck. Since you can't find weaponry or items to supplement whatever you might have gotten at the start (oh look, sword+shield for my dual-wielder, not weapons!) your up for the grabs. Later on you atleast got some basics from the the tutorial dungeon and beach.
It does and it doesn't. I can reliably beat the first battle without luck but it requires me to customize the characters in a min/max way. Max strength, dual wand inquisitor with max int respeced with regen and spider. I have done it with other minor variations but it is hard to start with the rogue classes and certain stock items.
I could experiment more to find other ways to open it, but don't care strongly to find out as I don't think the game was meant to be fully balanced initially in tactician/honor modes.
