With New Years REM coming this Friday for the celebration of Lunar New Years it’s only natural I go over the possible cards that you can get from the REM. Spoiler: I don’t recommend it.

Similar to the XMas article I’ll be going through the old offerings and then discussing the new ones. This time I managed to find some of the JP data so I’ll be adding some calculations along with that.

Last year’s lineup and my thoughts on the cards with respect to the current game.

Medjedra: Very mediocre card to have. Has decent awakenings but otherwise lackluster. Could be made much better with a killer awakening to put him on par with XMas Freyja or Robin Hood, but then again he’s a silver. The active skill is just very poor for the cooldown. He may as well be called New Years Predra because he sells for 3k MP.

Kaguya-Hime: Randomly spawn 3 Light orbs from non Light orbs. Should probably read randomly roll 3 Kaguyas from NY REM. 4 turn cooldown for a simple 3 random orb generation. Personally I find that quite long. Her awakenings are none too unique, there are better cards that feature dark resists if a resist team is something you’re trying to make. Maybe she’ll have some niche uses as an inherit base for this purpose but I much prefer cards like Halloween Thothdet over this.

Tengu: Basically the same as your standard old farmable Tengu except that he has light sub attribute here. This doesn’t seem like a big deal except dungeons like Special Descended Rush specifically bind dark cards, though, you also need high SB for some of the ALB setups. Hence, NY Tengu is used. It can also be used to avoid no-dupes requirements when running with a standard Tengu (such as in rankings). There are some other niche uses. NY Tengu also saves you the hassle of evolving one from scratch. To new players… KEEP THIS CARD. IT’S 4 SKILL BOOSTS.

Dolphin-san: Terrible. Active is on a very long cooldown, has a weak shield and buffs healer types which is not a terribly popular buff. Furthermore, no SBR and only 1 bind-resist. Yes, a single bind resist making it 50% of the way to unbindable. Seeing the awakenings of the card makes me feel like they had a good laugh in designing the 4 stars or replaced the unbindability of Dolphin-san with a single light row enhance. Either way, not something to aim for.

Jeanne D’arc (new addition): 6 autoheals but at least this one has a skill bind resist unlike Misery from the Halloween REM. However I’d compare this card more to Halloween Mulan because they have similar actives. Mulan however comes with 3SB and a lower cooldown than Rodin if you want to use her to button a cloor, say, after using Anji for dungeons such as Tans. Anji and 3 Mulans gives you 10SB vs using, say, 4 Awoken Ras which gives you 8SB (still enough to activate Ra, just saying you can get more SB in specific situations or for those that don’t have 4 ARas). I don’t see any use for this card personally.

Onto the 5 stars, it’s gold so it must start to get good right?

Hanzo: Similarly to Buttsume from XMas REM, we have similar awakenings, 2SB and a dragon killer (with some others). L/D attribute is also quite hard to find, residing in Pollux, CP, Baal, Hanzo. So it’s an interesting niche card and I would not be upset at all having one of these. Or 5. His active skill fixes Saria boards on a 5 turn cooldown meaning he would also be fine as an inherit onto, say, Revo Venus since Saria > Revo Venus will come up at about the same time.

Spica (new addition): When I saw the news for the announcement of Spica I was excited. I’ve been gated out of owning the constellations 1 series and really was hoping to get maybe a color swapped version for general use (or the same spica with different awakenings or skills). Well, they nearly carbon copied Christmas Castor and Pollux (CP) and instead of L/D, made Spica L/W. The awakenings are the same, stats are very similar, skill is the same (of course swapped dark to wood). I still haven’t found a use for my 5 CP. I know Reco had fun using a Spica system for a 7 minute A1 clear but it was done more as joke so take it with a grain of salt.

Mitsuki: When Xiang Mei was first released, Mitsuki was the MVP. It allowed me to solo Machine Hera with her niche machine killer awakening. She converts wood and dark to hearts, flooding the board and generally guaranteeing full activation for Xiang Mei. However, Xiang Mei is not used at all nowadays with the onset of Myr heavily displacing the heart hungry Xiang Mei. Since getting Myr, Kaede and other heart cross leads, I have not used my Xiang Mei nor my Mitsuki. Outside of the machine killer and bind clear awakening she is quite lackluster.

There’s only one six star and that’s who I claim to have the best art in the game, Leilan. Just having her as a box cheerleader and to use in my fire teams when the dungeon is not strict is pretty nice. I absolutely love the art and they gave her something unique. Within the Chinese pantheon (Leilan, Karin, Meimei, Sakuya, Haku), she is the first to feature a light main attribute with tricolor board even including all the seasonal/collab/normal REM variants. I thought that was a fun fact since normally the light Chinese is covered by Sakuya which is always a rainbow leader. Another fun fact, she is the only one in the NY REM with an evolution (ultimate evolution for color swap). While I generally like this card, I have not found a use where another card would not be superior (given a large enough box).

Onto the seven stars! That was quick because there’s not much in this REM

Eggplant Chicken, Horus: Well… I wish I could say he’s good for a seven star but I’d be lying. He has a really terrible mishmash of awakenings, leader skill, and active skill. As a leader he pales compared to ADQXQ and Lightning. His activation is harder, forces you to make a 5 match (meaning no TPA or row bonus), and has less damage overall. That’s not even mentioning the fact that his sub pool is horrendous. Oh wait I just mentioned it. His multi-boost was a nice addition to do nearly nothing. Multi-boost awakenings are primarily used for buttoning. His attack stat is not high enough and his active skill is longer than, say, the brave blades or Jizz. This makes him a very mediocre choice as an inherit base for a team. Furthermore, his leaderskill does not include an RCV buff to compensate for the fact that at max level, Horus has NO RCV. So by leading Horus on both sides, you are forcing yourself to have 2 out of 6 cards without RCV right off the bat. Fire type cards with RCV are rare enough and don’t forget, you’re restricted to cards that are rainbow oriented. Overall, the card is very awkward and as much as I wanted to love it after rolling it on my old account, I just couldn’t do it.

Yamato: You know how I kind of liked XMas Hatsume (Buttsume) for a bit? Well, Yamato from the NY Rem is a straight upgrade in awakenings and stats. He’s a very strong card, featuring his triple SB which his normal REM form is known for, while also fielding a dragon killer and a multiboost awakening. That’s right, dragon killer and a multiboost awakening. Dungeons such as SDR which are made up of all dragons (except for Scarlet) can see drastic improvements in team building with a Yamato. With the multboost, his effective base stats in coop are about 890 but rogue dungeons will see a huge benefit over him since multiboost applies on plus eggs. I would be VERY happy rolling multiple copies of this card.

And drum roll please (for 8 beats, no more no less), we’ve come to the 8 star cards.

Amaterasu: I find her art a bit weird, messy, and her hair looks like it’s stamped out of a flat piece of plastic. As for her awakenings, she loses a skillboost and TPA and gains a devil killer. Remember that killer that nobody really wants to run because it makes arena farming horrible? Yea, that one. Noctis and Anaphon had very big issues with devil killers making Parvati extremely difficult in arena. Out of all killers to add to a card, devil killer, even though devil is one of the 3 big types (Dragon, God, Devil), it makes it very annoying for arena and doesn’t add much value over her normal REM form which has the same active and leader skill. At the rates of the 8 stars for this REM, I’d be upset if the only one I rolled was Amaterasu. Note that she is also the purchasable card for 300k mp, further devaluing her in the REM.

Kanna: The queen of the NY REM. Great art, buffed with the standard Kanna buff and given better stats and awakenings (fun note, she has 777 weighted stats, lucky!), Kanna is an amazing pickup from the NY REM, if you can roll her that is. Like the normal REM version, she features unbindable awakenings and 4 TPA. however, the big difference is that she trades one skill boost for a TE. This is in my opinion very strong difference as it helps users get those last couple of combos in on rainbow teams like Ra Dragon where she will see a lot of use. Each additional combo adds .25 to the total damage for the turn (applies to RCV as well) and also helps you cycle all the orbs on the board. The SB is lost with 1 turn of stalling difference and in most dungeons the SB is not needed. NY Kanna also has slightly higher attack and HP to give her an even bigger edge over the standard REM version. Lastly, her leader skill is unique.

Dragon & God type cards ATK x4, RCV x1.5. ATK x1.5, reduce damage taken by 50% after matching Heal orbs in a cross formation. 

So we have a 1/16/2.25 unconditional and 4/36/9 heart cross conditional. 36x ATK seems low, and it is by todays standards. Myr in comparison is 59.29. However, we’re also leading with quad TPA cards with the opportunity to bring 2-3 TPA subs giving you a very strong effective damage, even just from the unconditional portion. This includes cards such as Ariel (unbindable, 3 TPA), Apocalypse (2 TPA with a good active skill). The biggest issue is really the time extends. For most players, the 2 time extends on the leads total (1s) compared to the effective 4 time extends per leader for Myr (4s) is a very big jump. Only time will tell if she will make it on the tier lists but I for one would be excited to at least try it. Unlike Xmas Grem I haven’t come up with a team for NY Kanna yet, but check in with me on the server if you want to discuss it!

To finish off the analysis and opinions of the cards, we have the new 8 star,

Yomi: This Yomi is the first in North American PAD (and presumably in Korean and European PAD) to feature the 7 combo awakening. When matching 7 or more combos, cards with this awakening gain 2x ATK. This is roughly as strong as having a single controllable killer against everything you fight. Meanwhile, it’s wrapped up neatly as a single awakening unlike Aten having 9 killer awakenings (though this lets him reach up to 27x from the awakenings alone). This Yomi comes featuring the triple TE that the Awoken Yomi is known for as well as the other standard Awakenings, just light enhance swapped for Awoken Yomi’s dark enhance. The active skill is the same, so not much to comment on there other than the fact that it’s 8 turns, making it quite long if you wanted to inherit over it. The active skill was always nice for pairing with board changers where the resulting orbs won’t necessarily be enhanced. However, her leader skill got a very interesting and strong change compared to Awoken Yomi.

Matched attribute ATK x4 when matching exactly 5 connected orbs with at least 1 enhanced orb. All attribute cards ATK x2.5, 25% all damage reduction when reaching 6 combos.

This makes her a 1.78/100/1.78 lead that’s relatively easy to activate. Not to mention that in fully activating her leaderskill, you’re 1 combo away from activating the 7c awakening giving your leaders 200x damage, HOWEVER, if you want to damage control you can do 6.25x (6 combos), 12.5x (7 or more combos), 16x (5 orbs 1 enhanced, 5 or less combos), 100x (5 orbs 1 enhanced, 6 combos) and 200x (5 orbs 1 enhanced, 7 or more combos). This gives you many options for scaling with 16x being a very good spot for dealing with Sopdet. This is strong enough to clear Ultimate Arena 3 with the right team, it was done in JP already, however it’s not an efficient way to farm A3.

The art style is very similar to Amaterasu’s art, and they feature each other in the art.

To conclude my analysis and opinions of the individual cards, I would just like to point out that the 3 cards that I rated very highly are 7, 8, and 8 stars respectively (Yamato, Kanna, Yomi). I would be extremely happy rolling a Kanna and Yomi, as well as multiples of Yamato as subs. I don’t see much use in having multiple Kannas while the usefulness of multiple Yomis deteriorates quickly since her active skill is fairly long for inheriting over and doesn’t do that much by itself. But what are the rates like? Luckily (or unluckily if you like being optimistic), we have the rates from JP. I tallied up some of the results I could find from those doing 50+ rolls, you can also wait for me to finish my rolls or for iizaya to do his standard 200 rolls per seasonal and collab if you want data from NA before deciding. But I figured it would be good to include it:

8 star rolls counted: 15

7 star rolls counted: 43

6 star rolls counted: 32 (keep in mind, the only 6 star is Leilan while there are two 7 stars)

5 star rolls counted: 231 (wow is there quite the pickup in rates)

4 star rolls counted: 611

Total rolls counted: 932

It’s clear as Willy’s tank (the whale not the chocolatier) that going for those 7 and 8 star rolls is not for everyone. The rates work out as 1.6% for any 8 star, and if we assume that all the 8 stars will be roughly the same rate, a smidgen over 0.5% for the specific 8 star you wanted, or 1.07% for one of the two 8 stars I rated highly in my analysis. It would theoretically take you 100 rolls just to get a single one between Kanna and Yomi, but you could also just keep getting Amaterasus every 70 or so rolls. Hence, this REM is for the whales that really want to add something niche while also doubling as a box cheerleader (most of the art is pretty nice or at least unique in PAD, except Eggplant Chicken Horus).

Don’t forget to pickup a free 297 from the dungeon!