I tend to prefer dodgy units over def-kings in hard mode. I'm not sure why, exactly, as I cannot prove it by statistics. Anyway, you could consider that.

That must have been on of the 5% critical hit chances.  They seem to happen far to often on hard, but since that level is so short I doubt you would have lost much time.

@Pineapple, how can you go wrong with Nolan?  He has earth support, so getting him an A support with anyone will give you a minimum 22 evade bonus (this is higher if you get support with Laura).  I would argue that a character with earth support is better than most of the higher evade characters purely based on the strong support stat boost earth give.  Basically, Nolan is easily one of the best characters in the game because of the earth support.

I have no idea what the hell I was talking about.

Macaiah's team has several earth support units, and when playing on hard you will have a lot of trouble without having A supports with Nolan, Volug and Zihark (if Fiona wasn't so underleveled when you get her I would suggest her too).  Even looking at the rest of Micaiah's team, you easily have almost all the best support attribute's, most of the other useful character's have thunder and wind.  Now on the hard, it is extremely usefull to give some A supports with Volug/Aran and Zihark/Jill and then avoid using Volug and Zihark through all of Part 1.  Basically the only good thing with Macaiah's team is the fantastic supports you can get (and the 25 evade bonus Macaiah and Sothe have).

You probably knew all this already, but I couldn't understand how you could prefer anyone over Nolan, who is almost the best character in the game because of earth support.  I would even argue that the dodgy characters would be better with a heaven support, mainly because a Tibarn/Stefan A support with Gamble on Stefan makes for a dangerous combination (although Tibarn should be supporting Kurthnaga in the final chapters).