Should You Pull? Rerun Festival: Shrine Maiden & Magician of the Scarlet Night

Leaning to Yes. While this banner coincides with the Ultra Festival Rerun: Lunar War Servant & Gardener banner, it does not affect this banner's value as both Friends have strong capability in terms of farming and dealing with hard content. Reimu (Scarlet)'s utility relies on providing Accuracy and Yang DEF support for the team. When it comes to farming, her abundant Youkai and Fairy Killers makes it easier for her to deal with a wide range of enemies. On the other hand, Marisa (Scarlet)'s utility is CRIT oriented as she provides CRIT DEF DOWN and CRIT EVA DOWN debuffs to enemies. For farming, she can easily deal with a wide range of enemies due to the abundance of Youkai Killer in her spell cards. The rerun banner will end on April 3rd at 7:59 UTC.

In addition to the two Friends above, the 5* story card Congress of Sages has an increased chance of being pulled. This card provides a 40% Light Bullet Power UP augmented with high YANG ATK stats. This will definitely support Reimu (Scarlet)'s spell card 2 and Last Word as well as Marisa (Scarlet)'s spell card 1, allowing both of them to showcase their prowess.

The God Crystal Step UP for this banner is an Ascending type (60 -> 160 -> 260 -> 360 -> 460) with 2 guaranteed Friends at Step 5. This is an incentive as most players can access the 1st step, which gives them 10 Fortune Dust even if they did not get any of the featured Friends and story card.

Reimu (Scarlet) and Marisa (Scarlet) can be exchanged for 150 Exchange Points and will not be added in the General Prayer pool as they are both Festival Friends. Additionally, Congress of Sages can be exchanged for 50 Exchange Points.

+Very high damage, in farming and hard fights alike
+Solid Breaks, including P0 Solo targeting Wood on her Spread Shot
+Provides Accuracy support

-Doesn’t have quite the scaling of other top tier units for harder fights

+Extremely damaging and frontloaded All targeting Last Word
+Fantastic CRIT and Killer Support
+P0 Fire on a Basic Shot

-Doesn’t quite hit the damage levels of other meta units

[Numbers in brackets are buffs at Max Limit Break]

• Spell Card's Light Bullet power 20% [40%] UP (1T).
• When Spell Card is used, Sun DMG from enemy 20% [20%] DOWN (3T).
• When Spell Card is used, DMG from Rabbit 20% [20%] DOWN (3T).

In the game Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, released in 2002, the world was introduced to the modern version of Touhou Project. Whilst the first five games were college projects by ZUN, the creator of the series, this sixth game was the start of Touhou as a professionally sold game series, which would lead to it becoming a massive franchise. In that game, the vampire Remilia Scarlet blanked Gensokyo in a smothering scarlet mist, to blot out the sun so that she could go outside without a parasol (and really, for kicks and to get some attention too, that’s half the reason for most incidents). The shrine maiden Reimu Hakurei rose to stop her, with the newly created Spell Card rules, and it’s from this point in time that this Scarlet coated Shrine Maiden hails from. She’s the first in what one could consider a retro series of Festival units, which all hearken back to their older appearances.

For starters, let’s take a look at the fledgling incident resolver’s skills: her character ability gives 1 level of Yang ATK UP for 1 turn to the whole party whenever Reimu boosts. Yin-Yang Orbs is your usual self-buff, giving 0.75 Spirit Power UP and 2 levels of Yang ATK UP for 3 turns to Reimu. Additionally, Tiny Purification Rod further grants 0.75 Spirit UP as well as 3 levels of Yang DEF UP for 3 turns to the whole party. With the two skills combined, Reimu gets two Spirit Power on turn 1, which is effectively 2 Yang ATK up for the whole party. Lastly, Divine Power grants the entire party 2 levels of Accuracy UP for 3 turns ensuring that units with at least 75% Accuracy can hit, as well as giving herself Charge, to make sure that she moves after your debuffers. She also has Power Link and despite being abundant these days, is always nice to have.

For attacks, the shrine maiden flies with grace. Her Spread Shot, Homing Amulet, gives her access to a repeatable 0P Solo targeting Wood Break, with perfect accuracy. Her 1st spell card. Spirit Sign: Experimental Fantasy Seal gives her entire party 2 levels of Yang DEF UP for 3 turns, a single target 2 levels of CRIT DEF DOWN for 3 turns (though this may be hard to make use of as Reimu doesn’t fit super well in CRIT comps), and 4 Wood plus 2 Sun Solo targeting Breaks at 3 Power - which will usually be a somewhat above average 4 Breaks with flexibility to do 2 Breaks to a Sun weak target instead, but will rarely be 6 whole breaks. Her 2nd spell card, Dream Sign: Experimental Sealing Circle further boosts her Accuracy support, by inflicting 2 levels of Evasion & CRIT Evasion DOWN for 3 turns, alongside an above average 1/1/3/4 All targeting Sun Breaks for 0/1/2/3 Spirit Power. Both Spell Cards also have high damage potential for Arena, with her 2nd spell card being particularly noteworthy for having a mix of Accuracy Support and All targeting damage (with 60% Hard scaling on the first line), great traits for the multi-wave Arena.

Finally, her All targeting Last Word, Experimental Fantasy Nature, is potent enough to deal a final blow to end any incident. With a 1-3-1 layout complimented well by the Spirit Power UP in her skills, 80%/80%/100%/0%/0%/120% Hard scaling, a wide range of Killers (most notably Youkai), and 3 Wood plus 3 Sun Breaks, 2 Yang ATK UP for herself, as well as 3 Yang DEF & Crit ATK UP for 3 turns for her party, it’s a top class Last Word. Overall, this Scarlet Shrine Maiden is a great unit, and is a very good pickup if you’re looking for a powerful miko but don’t quite want to go for a Ultra Festival unit, with their higher spark costs and requiring Divine Dolls.

Hailing from a land where she and Reimu have failed to resolve the Scarlet Mist incident (as featured in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, the game which started modern Touhou), this version of Marisa is still sharpening her skills. Her Spell Cards are experimental and prototypes, but she’s still raring to go, Mini-Hakkero blazing, shooting first and asking questions later. Still, she’s less selfish than some other versions of Marisa, as a supportive nuker. She’s also wearing socks and not shoes, for some reason…?

The cornerstones of Marisa Kirisame (Scarlet)’s kit are her skill Borrowed Grimoire and All targeting Last Word, Prototype - Blazing Star. Each lowers all targets CRIT DEF by 2 levels for 3 turns, letting her inflict a staggering 4 levels of CRIT DEF DOWN against every enemy. Whilst she can take advantage of it herself with her Youkai killer, this is particularly stellar when paired with other CRIT or Killer focused attackers. Otherwise, the rest of her kit’s all about attacking - starting with her skills, her character ability gives her 1 level of Yang ATK UP (1T) for Boosting and Agility (1T) for Grazing, alongside an additional 20% damage UP to effective elements - meaning anyone weak to her will fall over real quick. Hidden Items provides 2 levels of Agility UP (3T) for her entire party, Rusted Mini Hakkero provides 1 Spirit Power UP and 2 Levels of Accuracy UP (3T) for Marisa, and Borrowed Griomire gives Marisa 2 levels of Yang ATK UP (2T), a further 2 levels of Agility UP (3T) for her whole party, and the prior mentioned 2 levels of CRIT DEF DOWN (3T).

Meanwhile, whilst her attacks may be experimental, they pack a huge punch. Magic Missile (Scarlet) provides 1 Solo targeting Fire Break for 0 Spirit Power, making it very spammable. Magic Sign: Stardust Reverie provides an above average 1/1/3/4 All targeting Star Breaks for 0/1/2/3 Spirit power, and grants Marisa 2 levels of Agility UP (3T) and inflicts 2 levels of CRIT Evasion DOWN (3T) - the former is only really noteworthy in longer fights, and compliments the Spell Card’s 50%/0%/0%/0%/50%/60% Slicing scaling well. The beta version of Master Spark, meanwhile, is no slouch either - Love Sign: Proto Spark doesn’t quite have the control yet to be All targeting, but it still inflicts a solid 3 Fire and Star Breaks for 3 Spirit Power, alongside raising her Agility by 2 levels (3T) and inflicting 2 levels of CRIT DEF DOWN (3T) - complementing both its 40%/0%/50%/0%/50%/0% Slicing scaling, as well as its solid Youkai Killer. Lastly, Prototype - Blazing Star is reckless enough to lack the Solo targeting finesse of its finished version, instead being an All targeting nuke with a ton of buffs (3 levels of Yang ATK UP (3T), 2 levels of Agility UP (2T)) and the prior mentioned 2 levels of CRIT DEF DOWN (3T). Between its 90%/100%/100%/0%/0%/0% Slicing scaling and the Youkai killer, it’s a devastatingly strong Last Word perfect for farming and harder fights alike.

Overall, whilst this version of Marisa may be getting dunked on by Remilia still, that’s more a testament to how powerful the Remilia of her world must be. She’s an incredibly potent attacker with great support for CRIT and Killer attackers - just watch out for her lies, she hasn’t quite broken out of that habit yet.