Kotono: I just managed to pull off a 1-star of Retake the Castle, with nothing higher than level 35 troops, by starting off by essentially copying the opening deployment from your video guide (and replacing one of my silver units with a copper level 14 mage, which was -just- what I needed for that cluster of troops at the end). Thank you so, so much for that!

Now to do a bit more leveling so that I can get a 1-star on the fourth fairy village mission! I'm suddenly much more optimistic.