MMM - Wicked Witches Wallow in Walpurgis, While Whimsical Woman Works Over Wardrobe for Worth (Halloween 2021)

It’s rather bizarre how I feel the need to make the “Foreigner” distinction for this Servant despite there being no alternate versions of her in FGO itself. Jacques De Molay (the real one, might I say) is an Arcade exclusive at the moment, but DW has deigned to implement his Innocent Monster’d alter ego (not the class) into FGO, a devil-worshipping fiend whose reverence of Baphomet was enough to even warp them into an alluring woman.

No, I’m not kidding. That’s the reason it’s a genderbend. Worst of all it sort of makes sense.

Then I suppose this harlot got a different sugar daddy as she’s a Foreigner (or was Baphomet the Outer God to begin with?) We’ll live with it, I suppose.

Boy, we’ve actually got a pretty large lineup of Foreigners now. It doesn’t feel like a unit-starved Class any more. That role belongs to the Pretender class now, of course.

That does mean we can measure up Jacques against the other SSR Foreigners pretty cleanly, though. With the 2nd worst Attack and best HP of any Foreigner of her rarity, Jacques may first seem to be poorly specced and typically positioned in return, but she gets a good sum of mileage out of her low Attack - compared to Van Gough-chan above her (and boy does it feel weird to refer to both names as females), she exchanges roughly 250 Attack for a hefty 1143 HP, which is about as good a tradeoff as you’ll get.

Naturally her Attack stat being relatively low is a drag regardless, but at least she has the 4th best HP in the game in return.

In regards to passives, Jacques is relatively modest for a Foreigner. With the typical Entity of the Outer Realm, she has some minor passive stargen and a little bit of Debuff Resistance. Territory Creation A is a really appreciated boost to her Arts NP gain and damage (even if she only has one of them), and B-rank Divinity provides a minor boost to her regular card damage.

On the whole, she’s packing some hefty durability in exchange for mediocre offense, which isn’t the worst situation to be in. You could be Scheherazade and trade it for goddawful offense.

With a BBAQQ card set, Jacques is clearly in the Quick gang, a refreshing change from a number of almost-solely Buster and Arts Servants of late. With a base NP gain of 0.78% and a 3-hit Arts card, Jacques clocks in with an impressive 2.574 base Arts gain, well above average even for 1-Arts card decks. Her other cards continue the trend, with her two 5-hit Quicks clocking in very good NP gain, her Extra card performing a little above typical, and even her Busters provide decent NP gain in an Arts chain at 3% gauge apiece, being the first Servant in a while to do so.

This superb NP gain is also reflected in her stargen, with her high hitcounts and the Foreigner class’s solid passive stargen providing her with consistently high star counts on her chains. And that’s ignoring her mere presence on a team provides another 2 stars each turn.

So Jacques just flat out has excellent NP gain, even after considering her low Arts count. With her Foreigner star weight she can just produce a large sum of stars, soak it up, then crit for an excessive sum of NP gauge.

So how is Jacques on the whole? Well, on one hand she’s so good it’s almost sinful:

However, she’s also offering a cursed chalice:

So far as an Extra class Quick Servant can get in 2021, Jacques is pretty ideal. She hits the necessary benchmarks to be a competent universal farmer, if admittedly not the best one around, while also providing enough supplementary tools to enable creative team compositions or perform well in Challenge Quests.

To put it in simpler terms, Jacques is both good and fun to use, provided you’ve got the right Servants to work around her. Not that you should expect a Servant born from rumors of depravity and devil-worshipping orgies to not be fun. Now if only we could get the actual Jacques in FGO too…

Damn you, Arcade! Rath™ Seal of Approval.

When even the Servant and Master themselves in the actual game question why the hell this lady is dressed so skimpily, you’re probably doing something incredibly...right?

I’m honestly not sure whether to call being horny based or debased at this point. In any case, Zenobia is a cool historical figure, essentially a Syrian Boudicca, with one of the sadly shortest-lived empires in history. At least those 3 years are good ones, right? Yet another thing to blame the Romans for, I suppose.

Courtesy of her oddly-insane lore stats (seriously, she’s got Saber-tier stats and is competing with Asvatthaman and Superhuman Orion for strongest Archer lore-wise), Zenobia has a strong set of base stats, packing the 7th best Attack stat of the SR Archers, and 7th best HP stat. Even if she’s not claiming a medal, being in the top cut of both stats is telling of a really good base stat total. As a result she has fairly good offense for an Archer, on top of reasonably good bulk.

So far as passives go, however, she’s fairly typical. Her Magic Resistance is handy, but fairly low-ranked, and she’s supplemented offensively by B-rank Riding and Independent Action, giving her small boosts to both her Critical Damage and Quick cards, of which she has two.

Just going by the baseline, Zenobia is above average in all aspects, but nothing exceptional either.

Seeing as Zenobia had the audacity to be an Arts AOE Servant in the year of our lord 2021, she’s been made to pay the NP gain tax.

With a base NP gain of 0.47% and two 4-hit Arts cards, her base Arts gain clocks in at 1.88. Respectable, considering she has a more NP gain-focused deck, but not high enough to compensate for the hit she takes to the NP gain of her other cards - her 3-hit Quicks barely produce anything worthwhile despite her Riding, her Buster is notable for a high hitcount but little else, and her Extra provides her dead-on average NP gain. Essentially, her Arts cards will be the only worthwhile ones for her NP gain.

Conversely, her stargen is decent. While 3-hit Quicks are nothing exceptional, having two with Riding boosting them is handy, and the good hitcounts on her Buster and Extra allow her to produce reasonable sums of stars in a proper brave chain. That said, it’s hardly going to be her focus.

So how is Zenobia on the whole? On one hand, she’s a liberated woman in every sense of the word:

However, in some sense she’s still bound by her shackles:

I’d say there’s little more you can ask for out of an SR Servant trying to dip their toe in the Arts farming metagame. Zenobia has some incredibly consistent looping setups, can run more intense CE choices to pump up her damage when not facing class advantage, and can turn her attention to CQ’s as a fairly good AOE Critical Damage queen.

She may lack some of the cool utility options or defensive consistency of other farmers around, but her accessibility as a permanent SR in a class that is otherwise low on her niche makes her incredibly valuable, and a strong pick to add to the collection. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

I thought we escaped her. For years, even. But no, this damned walking dragon steak and her alts always come back in the end. My eardrums can’t handle much more, so I’ll get this over quickly.

So far as base stats go, Cindy Liz is pretty solid. With the 7th best Attack of her class and rarity and 5th worst HP, she’s clearly got a lesser base stat total, but she at least puts it toward the attack stat, so she isn’t too lacklustre offensively. For a Rider, at any rate.

On the passives front, Cindy Liz shockingly has little to offer. Her EX Riding is great for boosting her Quick card, of course, but she’s even missing the Rider class’s Magic Resistance, despite her knight class permutations having it at A rank.

So there’s surprisingly little to speak of here. A decent more offensively-leaned stat lineup, and a singular good Passive.

Cindy Liz packs a traditional BBAAQ card set, with traditional NP gain / hitcounts as well. With a base NP gain of 0.87% and two 2-hit Arts cards, her base Arts NP gain comes in at 1.74, more or less average. She performs better with her sole Quick card, her Riding coming in to boost it to 3.9, a very good score for a Quick card, if only one of them.

Conversely, Liz’s Busters aren’t anything too great for NP gain, and her Extra card is also fairly average, being carried by Liz’s relatively high base NP gain. While she won’t be shattering her NP gauge’s cap with a single Arts crit, her NP gain is respectable enough to get good sums of it when she pulls off a chain.

On the stargen side of things, CIndy Liz is nothing particularly special. Her Quick is very good for generation, but she only has one of them, and her other cards don’t provide any exceptional hitcounts.

So how good is Cindy Liz on the whole? Well on one hand, she’s the center of the ball, with all eyes on her:

However, once the clock strikes midnight, a Liz is a Liz, and nothing more:

The seasons change, the world meets a pandemic, Cadbury’s Creme Eggs reduce in size and nobody notices, but if one thing never changes, it’s that Liz sucks. As much as I’d like to sardonically congratulate Cinderella Liz on continuing the tradition, it’s just a little sad.

It’s not as if she was doomed to be unviable due to present meta, Buster is in a fairly good spot right now. It’s simply that her kit lacks spice, and feels like, well, a 2016 Welfare kit. Certainly not strong enough to be abused by the Koyanskaya skill CD reset, nor to provide enough incentive to run her in a team. She’s still a reasonable option if you’re incredibly limited on offensive Riders, but you could blindfold yourself and make a dartboard of all the offensive NP Riders and odds are a dart throw would hit a better Servant than Cinderella Liz.

So yeah, unfortunately she’s probably best left in the archive. And good for it, too - I wouldn’t want that mirror to be abused any more than it already has been.