Friday Stride: School Etoile, Olyvia

So for the past two weeks I've covered two of Bermuda Triangle's new stride units, and now it's time for us to move on to the third and probably final entry in Mermaid Season 2015. If you've been paying any attention to the titles for the last couple of weeks and took more than about three seconds to look at what's in Academy of Divas you can probably guess what's coming even without looking at this article's title. That's right, we're going for the true star of the clan booster, School Etoile, Olyvia.

They'll also never forget how much the SP costs.

I've always felt Bermuda suffer from a 'too soon' problem, in that their boosters have a habit of coming out slightly before innovations in the core booster packs, forcing them to wait a year for them to get the new mechanic. EB02 was the last set before Limit Break entered the game, resulting in them being the last block 1 clan to get this mechanic outside the then-incomplete Nubatama. EB10 was, again, the very last set before Legion, and the last set to have clan restrictions on cards before Clan Fight became standard for Japan, giving them with a whole new subclan with a completely outdated mechanic, with the clan's legions being released as promos and in the new clan booster.

EB06 wasn't quite as bad, but it's Japanese release came just before BT11 - the first to introduce new characters as subclan Perfect Guards - meaning a PRISM Perfect Guard was passed over for an Elly reprint for no practical benefit. It's probably been to the clan's benefit that every single English release prior to the newest one has been moved forward in the release shedule, as it's given the clan a chance to shine as well as make sales in a market which places less values on the concept of 'waifu'.

Fortunately, this time around the mermaids have struck gold and the new counter charge icon makes it's first appearance here, however the following set still gives a minor change that would have been quite useful for Olyvia.

So what is this shift? Well, her skill has a lot of conditions tied to it, at least one of which would have been redundant had Bushiroad started printing Generation Break on G units one set earlier. To explain in chronological order: When she attacks, if you have a face-up unit in the G zone, you may counter blast 1 and flip up a copy of herself to choose any number of your rear-guards. If those units have different names, you can then return them to your hand, and then if you returned three or more units she gains a critical and can call up to two units to different rows, that is one in the front and one in the back. The whole thing is a massive chain of conditions and could probably have been cut down even without GB2, but she's a somewhat efficient unit.

The first restriction of note is that she cannot bounce multiple copies of the same rear-guard. No doubt this was to stop Duos engaging in the sort of mass draw shenanigans they do with Meer's break ride, but it does mean you need to think about where you place your units to make sure your bounce targets are in place. The second is that you need to bounce 3 units to gain the critical and calls. Whilst there are times just returning two may be viable (such as against Link Joker with the other column already locked) most of the time Olyvia's an expensive way to do it, so with only two calls you're going to need a unit you won't put back. For the most basic attack pattern, which is a rear-guard column followed by Olyvia resetting it and then both rear-guard columns, you'll either have to sacrifice a booster, either on Olyvia or one of the later rear-guard attacks. Since Olyvia has a lot more power than almost any rear-guard, she's usually going to be the one going solo.

However, all of this only considers her in isolation, and doesn't consider what the deck around her is doing. Her bounces can set off all sorts of skills, including drawing cards, gaining power and counter charging, and the recall can fire on-call and Harmony skills, all of which give you more advantage. One of the most impressive performers in this show, however, doesn't directly benefit from either the bounce or the call, and is just using the restand. Admired Sparkle, Spica, a card I mentioned previously, deserves credit for what she can bring to Olyvia's turn.

Spica's skill is deceptively simple: When she's attacking the vanguard at GB1 whilst boosted, she can counter blast 1 to bounce a rear-guard to call another one with 3000 extra power - the same skill as Somni, under different conditions. However, there's an important point to note with this skill - the new unit can be any unit and called anywhere - you don't have to call what you bounce and you don't have to call it to the same place. This means that rather than bounce what's behind Olyvia, you can instead pick up both front row rear-guards, along with a booster, call down a column with Spica in it, and after Olyvia has attacked with a proper boost Spica can pick up the used booster to put down an attacker in the vacant front-row spot - and if that column has a standing booster, there's always the option to put down another Spica to set up yet another attack, provided the counterblasts are still there. By the time she's done, Olyvia's turn is going to look more like something Aqua Force or Nova Grapplers did than what you'd normally expect from Bermuda Triangle.

Olyvia isn't quite the finisher that some other persona strides are, but she doesn't need to be. Returning your cards to your hand gives you a lot of flexibility in what you do, allowing you to play cards you want in your hand to generate more offence before picking them up once you draw into better units. Like most good strides for rear-guard centric decks, her skill provides a springboard from which the rest of the deck can launch their own plays, extending combos and bring together a whole greater than the some of it's parts. Ultimately she isn't something you should be passing up on - unless your budget doesn't stretch to her (as a GR persona flipper she's not cheap, and that's ignoring the SP version).

There'll be no Friday Stride next week, because I won't have access to the machine I produce these on.