Should You Pull? Lunar War Ultra Festival Collection

Maybe, leaning more toward Yes. On par with other 1st Anniversary special prayers, the Lunar War Ultra Festival Collections stands out as yet another good deal, but a limited one at that. This prayer functions similarly to the Festival Collection special prayer, revolving around a rotation of available Featured Friends with a shared Exchange Point rate. This time around, the rotation only goes a single time in 72-hour intervals, which can be seen in the image above. These rotations still have 2 Friends per set, this time themed around the release order of the Lunar War Combatant reruns. 

This prayer can be suggestive to pull on, especially with all of the other new Friends currently running, from E1 Flandre Scarlet to the A7 variants of Yukari Yakumo and Alice Margatroid. R8 Youmu Konpaku is still around too, but most of these Friends are arguably better than her, matching her Ultra Festival status. While you might think you have to be fast on your choice, considering each set of the rotation ends in 72 hours after starting, you can always exchange for any of the 6 Ultra Festival Friends, meaning you can always obtain a Friend through sparking (or pity) if you really want them.

As usual for an Ultra Festival-type prayer, there is no God Crystal Step-UP, but there is x2 Fortune Dust if you are pulling with God Crystals to slightly sweeten the deal.

+ Great Killer bullet types and amazing damage when at full Spirit Power boost
+ Fantastic team support, among the best if not the best in keeping a team alive
+ Great Breaks, including P0 Sun and Wood on her basic shots
- 1-1-3 Bullet layout makes her 1-Turn damage mediocre without Spirit Power support
- Really wants accuracy support for consistency

+ Incredible damage output.
+ Great support for Yin & CRIT attackers, with decent support for Yang attackers.
+ Good Element access, including P0 Fire and Star on her basic shots.
+ Can put out a lot of Burn Barriers.
- CRIT DEF support is situational.
- Bad Spirit Power generation on her Shots.

+ Utterly incredible damage in both short and hard fights, on spells and Last Word
+ Solid teamwide buffs, including Yang DEF, Yang ATK, Agility, Accuracy support
+ Great Breaking ability, including P0 Water and Sun on basic shots
+ Minor amounts of Paralyze on her Spell Cards, though it mostly only serves as Accuracy support for her own Spell Cards and those of her teammates.
- Bad Killer bullet types, making CRIT support necessary for maximum damage

+ 0P Moon break on Focus shot
+ Good Moon and Metal breaks on spells
+ Heavy amount of Agility and Accuracy buffs for self and allies
+ Solo-target Last Word can unleash devastating damage
+ Good All-target spells with Freeze anomaly potential
- Mediocre farming capability
- Teamwide Agility buffs limit support potential

+ Very good turn 1 Last Word damage
+ Above-average mix of Earth and Moon breaks
+ Provides good attack and defense support
+ Teamwide Accuracy support in the form of Evasion debuffs
+ Barrier restoration on a skill
- Accuracy debuffs are situational
- Mediocre Killer bullet types

+ Large amounts of healing on Last Word and skills
+ 0P Star and Wood breaks on basic shots
+ Amazing CRIT DEF and Evasion debuffs
+ Good Slicing scaling values
- Inconsistent damage output due to relying on her own CRIT Accuracy
- Mediocre Killer bullet types

All of the Lunar War Combatants might be part of the Technical class, but their roles heavily vary based on who you are using. In this section, we will briefly go over all 3 rounds of this prayer from the first set to the final one. Each previous Should You Pull article of their rerun will be linked as well if you desire a deeper look at each Friend, as not much has changed regarding their usefulness since their release, let alone during their reruns. 

In the article, these characters will usually be introduced with their Lunar War Combatant codenames, but afterwards by their first name to avoid confusion. An interesting fact about all of the featured Friends is how well they synergize with each other, especially in terms of Spirit Power generation and CRIT support. Since each of them have at least one skill to increase their own Spirit Power and another to increase everyone’s Spirit Power, they can easily reach 3P at Turn 1 by themselves! Of course, going for all of these Friends and raising them is definitely costly, but still a very interesting design choice.

As a small, fun sidenote, the order of these Friend releases appear somewhat chronological. Reimu and Marisa for their introduction in Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Sakuya appearing later in the same game and Youmu coming from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom, and finally Reisen from Touhou 8: Imperishable Night with Sanae from Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith. Just an ironic detail, seeing how this order does not match their debut appearances in the B3 story. If you’d like more information on their appearances there, click the article below!

Round 1: Shaman and Enchanter

Starting off strong with what can be seen as the “main characters” of Touhou Project are the Lunar War Shaman and Lunar War Enchanter themselves, Reimu and Marisa. Reimu is one of the best units to stick into longer fights, all thanks to her heavy defensive utility that she isn’t shy to share with others on her skills. With some setup, she can even hit high numbers comparable to some of the strongest units in the game! Meanwhile, Marisa is sadly lacking some of the utility, instead focusing on insane Turn 1, instantaneous damage. She does hold some CRIT support, potentially useful when targeting Killer bullets on the right foe, as well as some Burn barriers for Yin debuffing. Marisa can stick to favoring the heavy firepower, but most of the time Reimu’s durability will save your skin a ton.

Round 2: Gardener and Servant

Up next are the Lunar War Gardener and Lunar War Servant, or Youmu and Sakuya. Youmu took some notes out of Reimu’s book, focusing a lot more on defensive buffs to optimize her Hard scaling on her attacks. She sacrificed specializing in one type of team utility to get there, but that just makes her even more versatile in team building. Sakuya might be in a somewhat similar camp, focusing on teamwide Agility buffs that only benefit Slice scaling-users, but she makes up for it with her own high damage output and heavy Moon and Metal element coverage. She cannot bring her own Freeze anomaly breaks to break the Freezes she inflicts, but that’s where the rest of the team steps in!

Round 3: Soldier and Oracle

Last but not least, we have Reisen and Sanae standing in as the Lunar War Soldier and Lunar War Oracle respectively! Reisen’s Turn 1 damage output is also very good like Marisa, but unlike the magician, she holds very helpful team support via healing and Barrier restoration. Additionally, with her combat expertise, she heavily debuffs enemies’ Evasion to supply as teamwide accuracy support. If you need someone to focus on healing however, take Sanae, one of the best healers out there! (She probably would be the best if not for a certain other B3 Friend…) Her healing skills have ridiculously low cooldowns to ensure a team’s survivability is high, and she has some high CRIT-related debuffs to act as CRIT support for the rest of the team if her support wasn’t high enough! No matter the rotation, you are basically guaranteed high damage, with the choice of utility up to you!