User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail Chapter 488: The Two of Us, Always, Review/@comment-73.191.17.103-20160609020656/@comment-24546844-20160610020735

@Nick Isn't this war as whole "a gamble with minimal chances of success, high risk and little possible gain"? From a logic point of view Fiore never had any chance against Alvarez and as you pointed August's presence or absence wouldn't change this. But stupid as it was, Mest's effort was one that could at least postpone their inevitable defeat if they're truly expecting some miracle that can save them.

They know they stand no chance against August in a direct confrontation, they know that they have no guarantee that August will accept their arguments, and they know that even the "peaceful resolution" isn't a viable option when they're fighting to protect Mavis and Zeref is hellbent on stealing her body and using it to annihilate every human alive. Assassinating key targets that pose a big threat to your army before they can make a move is a basic strategy of war. Killing August quickly and being the closest they can to being at full power when Zeref arrives at their stronghold would be the most desirable situation. Also it would be a moral boost to their troops if they knew that Zeref lost his strongest soldier.

I'm not defending Mest, but I understand his actions and had they succeeded Alvarez's military power would be reduced, because we know Alvarez power can be summed up by "12 strong guys plus Zeref" and August is exactly the strongest of those 12, and they wouldn't need to concentrate on the eastern front anymore focusing solely on Zeref's troops and Invel.

So I believe that yes, it would have helped in the war effort even though from the start I believed that this war was lost from the beginning, and I haven't changed my mind. But it's just as Sane pointed in our discussion before, the logic in this universe works in a different way and Alvarez is way lower on the power scale than it should realistically been, and Mest is wrong for trying anything but a direct confrontation.