Tibarn's team wasn't exactly the beefiest.

On the plus side, Kieran got a lot of levels.

You get Pelleas on your second playthrough. There's a 3rd option, so you can choose not to kill him at all.

As for the Tibarn chapter, on my Normal playthrough, I managed to not put a single unit I intended to use on his team (not a clue why). All I had was Elincia in the spot Volke spawns, and Volke blocking the entrance to it. If Volke was hurt badly, Elincia healed. If he was fine, she went out and killed. After a while, she was level 20 (amazingly enough), and joined Tibarn in killing the enemies. That was awesome (Tibarn pretty much solo'd the entire level).

On my first Hard (note: I didn't know of Ike's memory scene nor Pelleas, so I didn't start on the Clear file), I had a decent team (still the weakest of my 3), and I just gave everyone vulnearies and charged into them. (One group goes straight for him, blocking there for a while, while the big group charges up the right side. The right group splits up, one going North and one West.

On my hard just a week or two ago, my best team was in that group (well, not really. I used like 35 characters this time, and they were all equally level. But both the Paragons were in this group, as well as the Blossom, so people ended up the best here. I didn't even need to use the ones I used here in E-1 and E-2. Anyway, I just rushed around and killed all the enemies. There's plenty of terrain spots there, so place your mages there, and rescue them with Tibarn/Elincia if they die. Pelleas is a bit of a trouble maker though, so you may want to keep him with an untransformed Tibarn decoy with Vulnearies.

(Note: It may sound like I made it on my first attempt every time here, but I didn't - not at all).

All the methods are completely awesome, and makes it to one of the best Fire Emblem chapters ever for me. If you have a save at that chapter, I recommened using it.

Tibarn's team doesn't need to be the beafiest.  Tibarn can practically solo every level and almost feels like cheating.

Ike with Ragnell still doesn't do much damage to the Black Knight.

Have you managed to beat the Black Knight yet? There's a rather obvious trick to it, but it's easy to miss. I'm blacking it, so anyone who has not beaten the Black Knight, don't highlight it.

There are 3 spots on the ground that give + 10 def. He stands on one, so pull him away.

Oh, but don't forget to kill Levail and get the Wishblade first.

Oh my God, are you serious?

Man, no wonder!

I just whooped his ass with a hammer.

I got the Wishblade. Nephenee is a beast-woman with it.

Also Haar is level 20 and maxed out every single stat.

Kurthnaga with a little BEXP is a monster.

If you didn't notice the floor squares in that room, it is worth learning, as the next 3 levels are extremely important that you become very familiar with what is on the floor.

lol, you should always check the floor, but the way I did it was I had Daunt on Soren, and then had them stand back to back on either side of the energy wall. You can't attack through it, but Ike gets all the benefits

So you get a nice 35 avoid added to Ike, and +2 attack.

Shh! Don't tell him that before after he's gone through hell! On my first Hard playthrough, I was owned like hell on 4th and 5th floor. Now that I knew it, it wasn't that hard.

Still, the final boss of FE10 (no spoilers) is very hard, and definitely the hardest among the series.

On a semi-related note, I'm playing Advance Wars (1) for the first time now. I played the latest one on DS, but it was rather dissapointing. This one (1), however is a lot of fun. Well, untill the CO-powers started for real at least...