MMM - Motorized Immortals Muster Mechanized Military, Mashu Mounts Monochrome Match (LB 5.5 - Olympus)

Anne+Mary, Ryoma, and I guess Orion (OG) have been all alone in the two-in-one combo bin, so it’s nice to give them a new pair of friends. One, a pretentious ass and siscon. The other, an adorable cinnamon roll who needs protection, but gets it from her brother anyway so there’s no need for you to intervene.

Life is harsh sometimes, isn’t it?

Have I ever told you God/Demigod servants get amazing base stats? No? Let me reiterate then - Gods get whack base stats.

For a 5* Saber, Dioscuri have slightly-above curve base attack, sitting higher than Mordred and below Musashi, but in exchange have some extra chunky HP. How chunky exactly? Well, they beat Mordred in HP by a decent margin, too, and have the 3rd highest HP of any Saber overall. 6th best Attack and 3rd best HP is far from a bad combo, nicely balanced.

...but it gets better.

Count those passives. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. Yep, seven passives total, and unlike Alter-egos and similar blue-balling servants, all of them are ‘real’ passives. Space Ishtar got the record under half a year ago and is already beaten! So, to go in order:

• Magic Resistance A gives you your standard Saber ‘I’ll sometimes shrug off a debuff and laugh’ perk. No Goddess Core for this duo means they don’t pack the super-resistance some divine servants boast, but hey, still neat.
• Riding B rank for that teeny 8% boost to Quick cards. They have two of ‘em, and spoiler alert, you want to use their Quicks whenever they pop up, so this is undoubtedly handy.
• Madness Enhancement B-...didn’t expect that one, must admit. I suppose...Castor himself apparently manifested as an Avenger while in the class of Saber (it’s weird), so I guess this is his? At any rate, Busters go boom boom, what’s not to like?

• Ah, yes, the combination of skills we all know and love. To sum it up, They get 6% extra crit damage, gain roughly 3.6% NP gauge per hit taken instead of 3%, and charge 3% gauge per turn automatically. Oh, and your allies get prank’d and get debuffed more easily, but who cares about that?
• Lastly, SUPER DIVINITY! Who cares about the 225 bonus damage on every card - these two get a 5% NP gain and stargen bonus passively! That kind of thing adds up, you know (not the stargen, it’s entirely insignificant, but you get my point).

So in short, good bases, a load of good passives. Dioscuri are off to a good start.

While part of me sees high Arts hit counts and dies inside, for once this isn’t really a death sentence. With BAAQQ card set, 2/4/5/5 hitcounts for Buster, Arts, Quick, and Extra respectively, and a respectable base 0.51% NP gain to match, Dioscuri have a solid spot for both NP gain and stargen.

Their Arts card, taking into account their passive 5% NP gain bonus, is a respectable 2.142 NP gain, similar to most single-Arts card servants, but they have two. Their Quicks, meanwhile, are stronger than you would expect, with 5 hits and their riding+divinity skill together combining for 2.8917 NP gain, similar to Kama’s Quick cards. The 5 hits and passive riding means these Quicks are superb for stargen, as well.

The twins’ Extra and Buster are far less impressive, but their kit is largely based around the pair’s Quicks and Arts, so while those remain worthwhile cards, their card set as a whole is good to go. An AQA chain from the two nets 36% gauge with zero modifiers from their active skills or other factors, not even accounting for their passive 3% gauge per turn.

In simpler terms, their NP gain and stargen alike are excellent.

So, how are the twins in all their blondie bishounen/jou glory? On one hand, you can’t name a more iconic duo:

However, they’re also something of a recipe for disaster:

So on the whole, Dioscuri are strong Arts-based Sabers which, while possessing all the tools necessary to excel at such a role, also suffer from the drawbacks of their kit’s focus on consistency and the card type. While they won’t pull out jaw-dropping damage numbers or work with steadfast consistency regardless of the enemy composition, they work for their role and do it with a number of unique tools (primary their NP’s Absolute Penetration, as weird as it may sound with that phrasing) to support both themselves and their team. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

Sometimes you just need some of that tanned athletic tomboy type to shout at you, call you a bastard, be as quintessentially rude as possible, but get flustered in a storm when anything romantic flies their way.

Just try to forget Caenis is a guy in the sense of both what they want to be, and what they should be. As well as being another addition to the androgynous Servant list. Think of it like a Kama situation at any rate. They do have some pretty feminine hobbies, just saying.

In terms of base stats, Caenis does a good job of highlighting how ridiculous Arturia Alter Lancer’s bases are. Despite standing well above every other 4* Lancer in attack, they’re surpassed by Lancer Alter in BOTH attack and HP, and by a good margin at that. The Saberface favoritism has to end someday.

At any rate, Caenis enjoys the perks of the Lancer class’s solid bases and 1.05 attack modifier on top of their high stats to begin with, making them both reasonably durable and very strong offensively for their rarity. On top of that, they have good Magic Resistance, 225 damage up at all times from their Divinity, and both a 12% Buster boost and 8% Arts boost built into their passives. For a Buster-centric Lancer, those are some solid perks to have.

Caenis possesses what I like to call “Super Vanilla” NP gain. While they have a 0.86% base NP gain modifier, their card set of BBAQQ and 3-hit Arts card lends to it nicely, giving them a 2.78 Arts NP gain, fairly high even for 1-Arts servants, and respectable 2.58 on their Quicks. So long as they land a solid Arts crit when it comes up, they’ll have few problems with charging NP gauge mid-fight.

5-hit Extra with their 0.86 base NP gain is also very good, making brave chains effective for NP gain and stargen alike.

In general, Caenis’s stargen is typical for their card set, workable but not exceptional, and will likely need team support to have a continuous star supply, especially if their star weight isn’t above their fellow teammates’ on the field.

So how is Caenis? On one hand, they’re making the seas part for them:

On the other, they can’t command the waves to retreat:

On the whole, Caenis is a strong Lancer with a focus on raw damage, flexible durability and a savage crit turn to exploit with their NP. I’ve compared them to Lancer Arturia Alter a lot, and the reason is simply because the two are very similar in how they end up performing, both with good AOE NP damage, savage crit damage windows and a focus on one-turn burst. Both have some things the other lacks, but both are strong Lancer options regardless, and can perform “like an SSR” if given grails. Let’s hope Caenis gets a NP interlude somewhat soon down the line, though. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

A ridiculously powerful Divine Spirit-type servant with an immense story role that isn’t a girl? What alternate reality have I walked into?

We are all ROMA now, whether we like it or not. Including the enemy. Not sure if Boudicca is elated to have technically gotten a power-up or crying her eyes out.

Noooooo you can’t just have the same HP stat as Karna, canonically one of the strongest heroic spirits in the series AND have more attack! What about power creep and balance?!

“haha ROMA goes brrrrrr”

Getting my angry Karna fanboy out of the way, Romulus=Quirinus (who I shall henceforth just call ROMA) has some amazing base stats - the HP for 5* Lancers is already very high relative to most 5*’s, so even sharing the lowest HP of his rarity is still decent, while packing, well, the attack stat speaks for itself. With the Lancer attack modifier factored in, ROMA has more attack than any other non-Avenger or Berserker SSR in the game, surpassing even Kingprotea’s absurd attack stat.

To add insult to injury, he has a solid collection of passives, too, with the same rank Magic Resistance as the previous two servants, on top of 9% bonus crit damage from Independent Action, and a unique Divinity (not like we haven’t seen a lot of those lately) which provides 225 damage up and 9% Buster Up at all times.

Yep, he hits hard. You can tell that much from just the attack and passives.

Thankfully, ROMA is a lot more modest in the generation department. With a BBAAQ card set, 0.59 base NP gain and a 3-hit Arts card, He’s pretty much doing vanilla Saber NP gain, with a 1.77 Arts NP gain, a 4-hit Quick that keeps afloat and an Extra which is solid, but not blowing anyone away due to his base NP gain.

His AQA chain produces roughly 31% gauge, which is still more than most servants due to his Arts hitting slightly above-bar, but it isn’t spectacular, either.

Meanwhile his stargen is decent for a BBAAQ servant, the 4 hits of his Quick doing some work, while having 3-hit Busters does go some way to produce stars, but he won’t be flooding himself or the team with stars or anything.

As I said, modest. ROMA gotta stay humble - ROMA wasn’t built in a day.

So how is our incarnated God of Rome and King of the Y-pose? On one hand, all paths lead to him:

However, Rome also wasn’t built in a day:

As much as I’d like to rack up more negatives to seem like a multifaceted and meticulous reviewer, that really is about it. Romulus=Quirinus is really good. He has very strong single-target offense despite being an AOE NP servant, which in a modern meta of many difficult quests involving use of AOE NPs may actually be better, he synergizes very well with the common supports of his card type, he can function effectively as off-support to other servants, and doesn’t lean too hard on the presence of a support to be effective. A solo Romulus=Quirinus can still kick ass, doubly so if he’s literally soloing and so can rack up ROMA stacks up to 9 times over a 3-turn period.

But most importantly of all, he is ROMA. And you are ROMA, too, my countrymen. Rath™ Seal of Approval with a ROMAmmendation.