Friday Stride: Flying Mermaid, Frederica

So it's that time of year again, when that one clan which hasn't been seen in a main set since before about half the clans had even been introduced gets their booster and keeps the fanboys happy for another 12 months. OK, so this year the fanboys don't seem to be as happy, because a lot of the cards seem to be rather...well, lacklustre, for want of a better word, but they got waifu cards (literally - they're mermaids in wedding dresses), so Bushiroad will still sell boatloads of this set, and with any luck most of the normal holos will be easy to get hold of at reasonable prices. So let's get into Mermaid Season once again for 2016, and check out the easiest to pull of the G units in this year's booster.

Flying Mermaid, Frederica

~I believe I can fly, I believe I can touch the sky~

Frederica is oddly similar to another G unit in her clan, and even more suspiciously she's not the only G unit we'll be looking at over the next few weeks with an effect we've seen before. If she hits, you can flip another card in the G zone face up to bounce one rear-guard in harmony, call one unit from the hand, and give one rear-guard a 5000 power boost for that turn whilst it's in harmony. She also has the harmony ability herself, allowing her enter harmony with a unit called behind her that turn - especially useful for Bermuda Triangle, where you're likely to want to pick that unit up at some point.

It should be clear that Frederica is very similar to Fluffy Ribbon, Somni and Legendary PR♥ISM-Duo, Nectaria, in that both have on-hit skills to allow extra attacks. The differences between them may seem minor, but they have a big impact in where these two cards fit. Somni and Nectaria function identically aside from the latter's heart restriction and greater power boost, so I'll only look at Nectaria where she differs from Somni. I'll also ignore the Duo heart skill, as it's not relevant to today's card.

First up is Frederica's harmony skill, which makes it very clear that she's designed for the harmony deck over anything else. Being able to turn on the harmony skills of anything called behind her allows for much more flexibility in how you play cards which rely on being in harmony. Somni lacks this, only able to enter harmony if a unit with the ability is behind the vanguard when you stride and remains there throughout the turn, whilst no Prism cards use harmony, making it unnecessary for Nectaria.

Moving on to the main skill, and Frederica's G unit flip cost makes her nominally more costly than Somni's costless effect. However, turning a G unit face up isn't that great a cost, and in fact is likely to give more benefits than drawbacks. The harmony build doesn't have a huge range of G units it needs to use, and with their newest ace also flipping up anything (and gaining more benefits from more face-up units) there's plenty of room for tech choices. Being able to get to GB2 at the end of your first stride turn is also very nice for the GB2 grade 3's the harmony build has access to. Miracle Voice, Lauris can gain 5000 power defensively if you can call during the opponent's turn turn, and Secret Smile, Puumo and Magical Charge, Vita both give options to enable this. The new Great Ascent, Liddy gives a continuous 2000 power for everything in harmony, as well as having a built in option to both call and bounce whilst she's under attack in order to activate harmony skills. Frederica needs to hit for this, however, which prevents her ensuring that GB2 - ironically she'd be better if she paid her cost up front rather than when she hit.

Somni can bounce anything, but she has to return something if she can. Frederica can only return units in harmony, but she can elect not to bounce if you don't want to, even if everything is in harmony. Given the greater set-up Frederica needs, you're less likely to want everything to stay on the field - needing a front row and a back row unit for harmony to be active means triggers can be passed to one and the other bounced - but should the need arise, or should you just want to keep your current setup and call a drive checked card to an empty circle, you have the option.

Frederica's power boost is larger, and can be given to anything - allowing a new call to snipe out rear-guards whilst a trigger buffed column is made bigger still - but relies on the unit being in Harmony for the boost. By contrast, the others power up the incoming unit, which helps ensure they can attack but might not be what you would rather do. Under ideal conditions this is a trivial concern, but if you lack rear-guards and are bouncing her own booster to call a card from your drive checks you may not be able to get it into Harmony. Somni's power boost gets any grade 2 or greater Bermuda Triangle card called

Overall, Frederica is designed specifically for harmony builds, and here she's stronger than Somni under most circumstances. The older card isn't entirely useless, being able to function better when you lack usable rear-guards, but she's much better for builds without access to enough harmony cards with the exception of Prism, who also have their own version of this effect in Nectaria.

Next week, the return of an old favourite.