Friday Stride: Celebrate Voice, Lauris

So we reach the thrilling conclusion of this year's Bermuda set, and for the final entry we'll be looking at the sets Generation Rare cover card, and the new boss of the G era harmony build. It's also, as could have been predicted several months ago, the next form of the build's centrepiece Miracle Voice, Lauris, so let's get right into Celebrate Voice, Lauris.

Card games on DDR machines?

As a grade 3, Lauris had a few elements to her effects: Harmony, returning units to hand, gaining a critical, giving 5000 power boosts, and drawing a card. In her new form, she keeps all of these except for the ability to draw cards, but with some boosts to other aspects of her skills. As before, she has the harmony skill, allowing her to enter harmony with a card called behind her - which will be a necessity later. Her main skill is active at Generation Break 2, and for a counter blast and turning any G unit face up, returns a rear-guard for each face-up G unit and then gains another skill - when she attacks, if all of your units are in harmony, she can give three units 5000 power, and herself a critical. This skill certainly fits Lauris, and is at least coherent and self-supporting, but overall it's somewhat...uninspiring.

For her cost, she gives at least 2 bounces, allowing on-bounce skills to be used, as well as the re-use of on-call and on-harmony skills. This also re-sets harmony to ensure the second part of her effect is live - however that requirement for everything to be in harmony does make it a little trickier to get everything set up, and requires you to plan your attack and effect orders carefully to ensure the skill is active. For example, if you have a Cherished Phrase, Reina you intend to use, you'll have to use Lauris first - unless for some reason Reina's alone in her column, in which case you'll need to use her first to get the non-harmony unit out of the way.

The main phase bounce has utility with a couple of the new support cards, who rest rear-guards as cost for their effect. Prestige, Cetia can rest another unit and counter blast for 5000 power, as well as a GB1 on hit counter charge, soul charge, and bounce, whilst Garland Blossom, Ayna can counter blast and rest herself to give every other unit in harmony in the same row and in the same column 5000 power until the end of turn. Bouncing them with Lauris allows you to functionally restand them to reset the power gains of these cards, but both these skills cost counter blasts, and the G era bermuda deck was already counter blast heavy before this set, which makes it difficult to really use them - neither skill is especially appealing when you could be launching extra attacks with either Admired Sparkle or Sparkle in Her Heart, Spica.

There are unflip options, but none of them are ideal for Celebrate Voice. From the new set, the most interesting is Magical Charge, Vita, who can bounce at the start of either Main Phase for a soul blast, and then unflip if the vanguard is grade 4. However, her unflip relies on her living through the opponent's turn - doable, but she may get a target painted on her head - and in fact she's more useful activating the original Lauris' GB2 on the opponent's turn for a free 5000 shield against every attack on both it and another rear-guard. The only other new unflipper is Wholehearted Dream, Meruru, who can counter charge and give the front row a 3000 power boost if the vanguard is in harmony. She's not too bad, but one unflip isn't going to help all that much, and to get the most out of her you want the power boost to matter. There's also the promo Wonder Frill, Nanoka, who has the same hitting issues as Cetia, but at least gives you more counter charges than you had to spend to use it.

The standby unflipper is Image Master, Kukuri, the perfect guard from the previous set. Like all such perfect guards, she works (most of the time), and gives you some more damage to work with over the game. It comes at the cost of using the new perfect guard with harmony, but that one has a really bad skill - seriously, discard to return it to hand? In this clan? - so you can just ignore it. The last two are the strongest unflippers, but lacking harmony means they're going to dig into the reliability of getting Lauris with a full field. Magical Yell, Nina and Duo Clear Parasol, Kura are functionally identical, and soul blast 2 to counter charge 2. A decent trade-off before, but the deck is a bit more soul-heavy now, and a 5000 power grade 1 can sometimes hurt. The last, Duo White Crystal, Ricca, counter charges and soul charges when bounced, generally giving instant payback for whichever effect was paid for to bounce it as well as building up soul for Vita. 8000 on a grade 2 isn't great, but as a front row unit she'll be able to benefit from most of the deck's power boost.

Using these cuts down on the space you have for harmony cards, but those cards themselves don't help by ranging from decent to awful. For alternate grade 3's, Spica is the best choice, the new Great Ascent, Liddy can pretend to be Lauris if you want that defensive power, whilst Whitely Noble, Fantine can do fancy tricks to keep Lauris running but probably isn't worth it. For Grade 2's, we've covered Vita and Nanoka, and the new Dreaming Step, Shizuku is functional, especially with the old one, but that's more or less it. The new Brilliant Ocean, Elly is a fun concept but lacks enough impact (though I'd like to see more support for this idea later), whilst Artless Charmy, Wakana is crippled by not only being only in your turn, but requiring you to reveal your hand for the power boost. Other than the maybe 1-2 other units you intend to put straight back down you'd never want to give up that information. It's probably a good job Spica is still just that good you won't care it's not a harmony card, otherwise there'd be issues. 

In grade 1 units, you're really down to the older Superb New Student, Shizuku, who still works well at thinning out the deck. Ayna does have one last trick, however, which might just save her - when she enters harmony at GB1, she can give another unit the harmony ability, allowing two cards without harmony to enter a harmony state. The ability to drop harmony onto a unit somewhat mitigates the issue of lacking harmony units, so she's worth a look if you want more non-harmony grade 2s than just Spica.

As for triggers, you do have two stands, but Lauris gives the power boosts when she attacks, which has no synergy with stand triggers. Bermuda didn't work well with stands to begin with, but with a vanguard which really wants to go first you'd be reliant on those stands having very good effects - and they don't. The older Dreamer Dreamer, Kruk is passable, returning to the deck for a bounce and re-call, which can be nice to extend attacks, but isn't quite enough to overlook that your other key stride, Olyvia, is going to reset your columns anyway. The other stand, the new Jump to the Water Surface, Amelie, is an act skill; move to soul to draw and 2000 power to something. The draw skill was seen as an unrestricted skill on critical triggers way back at the very start of the game, so in effect she's GB1 and harmony restricted for....2000 power. Yes, that's it. Don't bother.

So this isn't looking great - a lot of the intended harmony support doesn't look very good - but don't give up quite yet, because what hasn't been dumped has potential. With more Spicas for more multi-attack shenanigans, the deck retains it's aggressive edge, and with more critical pressure from the vanguard you have at the very least a functional mid-tier deck. With any luck Bushiroad will make next year's set just that bit better than this one, and if we're really lucky we'll see support before then - after all, Lauris doesn't have the name-restricted grade 1 and 2 units every other strider GB2 unit has been getting yet.