MMM - Feudal Flunkies Flop Final Fight, Fraternal Failure Finishes Self Fruitlessly (GudaGuda 2020)

All joking aside, they really got me with that. I was seriously convinced GudaGuda had ended with the previous event. I guess throwing Okita and Nobu at FGO is going to be eternal.

But keeping on track, this new event is set in the Yamatai Kingdom, a somewhat-Apocryphal kingdom within the Japanese Archipelago around the 2nd to 3rd century AD. Himiko is something of a mythological queen of that era, and so it’s natural she’s a Servant for the event. Just consider her kind of like the Gilgamesh of Japan’s equivalent to Uruk and you have a decent idea.

So far as Rulers go, Himiko reaches firmly in the middle of the pack of her SSR companions, reaching a good balance of HP and Attack, or at least relative for the Ruler class. With both 3rd best Attack and 3rd worst HP, she’s hardly breaking any conventions, but for where she’s placed, her stats are still higher than average, trading 313 attack for 893 hp compared to Amakusa, or 828 hp for 682 atk compared to Qin Shi Huang. So no matter how you look at it, she’s gotten a good deal out of her stats.

Moving on to her passives, Himiko is actually a rarity in the Ruler class, possessing more than just one passive. While she possesses the standard high Magic Resistance, letting her shrug off debuffs fairly frequently, she also packs A-rank Territory Creation, giving a notable boost to her Arts cards, and a unique passive - Pure Body. Well, it’s actually a subtle Japanese pun using most of the characters for the skill we know as “Natural Body”, but if that isn’t hard to translate, I don’t know what is. Anyway, this passive makes Himiko immune to both Poison and Curse, something that could be useful, but likely won’t come in handy until we suddenly get thrown a hellish Challenge Quest using it.

So far as generation stats go, Himiko has the rough of it...at first glance. With a base NP gain of 0.57 and two 3-hit Arts cards, her base Arts gain clocks in at a very average 1.71. However, with her passive Territory Creation that bumps up to 1.881, which is certainly more reasonable, if not close to exceptional. So far as her other cards go, her 1-hit Busters won’t be generating anything, her 4-hit Quick is decent on both a stargen and NP gain front, and her 5-hit Extra is more or less typical for her base NP gain.

For stargen, Himiko isn’t too impressive. Her card set doesn’t lend much to it to begin with, and while her Quick’s hitcount is good, it’s ultimately limited by the fact there’s only one of them. Having 1-hit Busters doesn’t help, either. So on the whole, nothing spectacular in either respect.

So how splendiferous is the timely charms of Queen Himiko? On one hand, she’s a treasure to behold:

However, she’s also something of an outdated relic:

All-in-all, Himiko is far from a bad Servant. She takes and uses the benefits of her class fairly well, acting as a versatile mixture of Buster support and selfish crit Servant, and she doesn’t necessarily have to commit to either even within a single battle. Whether with the support or others or left to her own devices, Himiko is capable, being able to dish out damage and endure NP’s in pinch moments, while enduring a fair sum of damage. She may not reap the benefits of an exceptionally focused kit, but she’s not going to be a bad option for the majority of single-target quests. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

Man, there’s something about the dude’s expression that I just like. Maybe I just like the “casual hitman” kind of characters anime throws out sometimes. Or I’m expecting him to scream “I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING” whenever he NP’s. It’s a mixed bag.

As almost seems typical now for Japanese 4* Sabers, Saito doesn’t have a bad stat spread, but he’s certainly a little weak in the stat total area. When you’re only slightly better off than Nero and Hokusai Saber, that certainly shows. Being very middle-of-the-pack in both HP and Attack, neither is really a weakness for Saito, but hey, still kind of weak on the stat department in general.

So far as Passives go, Saito is slightly deviant from what’s typical for Sabers. No surprise on the low-ranking Magic Resistance considering his time period, but he also has a neat bonus of Independent Action, giving him a minor boost to his crit damage. For an Arts-focused Saber, it’s better than Riding, at least. Not bad.

In the department of NP gain and strargen, Saito is frankly pretty lacklustre. With 0.76 base NP gain and 2-hit Arts cards, his Arts NP gain of 1.52 is handedly below average, and while his sole Quick is solid due to its own four hits, neither his Extra or Busters are going to help much. And unlike Himiko, he doesn’t conveniently have Territory Creation to fix things.

Saito’s stargen is more or less the same situation. With his card set he was never set to spew out stars anyway, but his Quick is the only reliable factor so far as stargen goes from his cardset.

All I’ll say is, historically, when an Arts-focused Servant has had slightly gimped NP gain, it’s to balance out their NP refund. Does Saito fall under this category? We’ll see…

So how keen is Saito’s blade? On one hand, he has a form without equal:

However, he also has an ugly side to his swordplay:

Saito, despite being probably the least complex in the series of Arts crit ST 4* Sabers (ranging from Saberlot, to Yagyu, to Summer Medb, to Hokusai Saber), manages to keep efficiency in his simplicity. He hits hard. He’s focused on just ensuring his damage is high, he has a defensive tool down without having other parts of his kit tied into it, and most importantly his NP spam is one of the most absurd in the game, allowing him to keep his NP rolling on itself even with poor card luck or low star supply. When he has those things, Saito is just downright vicious. He might face stiff competition from Hokusai Saber due to the sizable gap in NP damage, but frankly Hokusai Saber is also absurdly good in the present Arts-focused meta, so it’s no real drawback to be playing second fiddle to her. Saito is just superb. Rath™ Seal of Approval with a recommendation.

Hah, I have to say it’s a pleasant surprise he’s in the game. His status as a 1* Archer is fitting considering in lore he can only manifest by leeching off Nobu’s Saint Graph, and on top of that his kit is, well, I’ll get into that.

Also with his ascension forms he’s technically the first swimsuit male that isn’t a costume, so go him. Pako just knows how to draw the hot boys.

While it’s hard to assess for a 1* Servant...it’s needless to say Nobukatsu’s base stats are awful. For his rarity, he has absolutely abysmal attack after the Archer 0.95x attack modifier is accounted for, being roughly second-worst in the game, after Mozart, and roughly even with Mata Hari. His HP is “high” to compensate, but remains still barely above average for a bronze Servant, which again, is still poor in general.

Grails might be able compensate for that, but his low stats to begin with means the scaling from them is pretty terrible. So yeah, Bronze life in a nutshell. At least he has cheap levelling/ascension and free NP5.

For Passives, Nobukatsu has the standard you’d want from the Archer class. As in, both Magic Resistance and Independent Action, but at pretty low ranks. Neither will ever be of much use to him, but they’re there, at least.

Nobukatsu’s NP gain isn’t...too bad, I guess. With a BBAQQ card set he’s sort of gimped in that front regardless of what he does, but 0.75 base NP gain with a 3-hit Arts card results in 2.25 Arts NP gain, which is solid, if typical for his kind of card set. His Quicks also hit above belt, with the same hit counts as his Arts card. Throw in his 4-hit Extra being not too bad (in comparison to some Bronzes, at least) and his natural Archer star weight letting him draw more stars, and his NP gain is inconsistent, but far from poor.

In the stargen department, Nobukatsu is...there. 3-hit Quicks aren’t ideal, but he has two of them and an okay hitcount on his Extra, so BQQ chains will produce something for you. Just don’t depend on him for it. Nobukatsu is the opposite of a dependable man.

So how useful is Nobukatsu in actuality? On one hand, he performs a noble duty for the sake of his team:

However, he also performs that sacrifice for a damn good reason:

As with almost all bronze Servants, Nobukatsu is hard to measure. Usually bronzes can struggle to perform and compete with higher-rarity equivalents unless they particularly have useful niches to balance out (such as George’s taunt and durability, or Chen Gong’s farming capability). Thankfully, Nobukatsu is only competing with a fellow bronze for the position of dying on the job, and he does that exceptionally well. By applying all the benefits of his kit then doing a ghetto “Battle Suit Swap”, Nobukatsu can give all the advantages of his existence while not actually existing. Simply scattered, reduced to atoms.

But in all seriousness, outside of the suicide lead with Arash and setting up a super-buffed Nobu, he’s not too spectacular. It’s good those two niches are fairly versatile, especially when 2 of the 3 Nobus are in a “Universal” class. With the kind of buffs Nobukatsu throws out, even the mess that is Maou Nobu can put in some hurt. He’s practically free, costs little to raise and deploy, and he is both fun to use and kind of hot, so I see no issues there. Rath™ Seal of Approval.