Othin

I mean, that is the sort of thing they've been doing for Ascended/Rearmed/Attuned Heroes. But if they planned to have games like Awakening and SOV switch their New Heroes characters entirely to those types of alts, I'd think they'd be doing more to ease them into it by now. Like, if we started going back to getting those sorts of alts as normal heroes on a banner, or as a GHB, that would be telling. But we really haven't done that sort of thing in a while - the closest recent thing was SOV's pegasus knights, but it never started taking the same approach for Valentia-exclusive characters after trapping up the trio. The best precedent for banners where the banner units are primarily or exclusively alts are the recent SOV+Heroes banner and CYL, but those were multi-game banners that still have new GHB units. (SOV+Heroes was multi-game in a way that other banners with guest OCs haven't been, in that it gave Forging Bonds slots to the Heroes units rather than having a full lineup of SOV units.) That's why I think those are the best model for banners that would seek to offer more of those sorts of alts for completed games: occasional banners where the rare units are Asecended/Rearmed/Attuned/etc alts from a mix of games, while GHBs and any demotes are new units from any game. Doesn't that seem both more in keeping with current precedent and less likely to result in backlash than having every cycle offer a full alt banner for every completed game? That makes sense.

You know, thinking about it more, we're both wrong. There is, in fact, a precise precedent for the type of banner you're proposing. The banner that was their attempt to try going deeper than ever on alts of popular characters, that was so hated that they haven't done anything like it in the five years since then. What you're proposing is a regular return of Adrift. As for your schedule, I'm not sure why you're so concerned about a situation that you already acknowledged the game probably won't last long enough to reach in the first place. Even if it does last another five years, we'll most likely have another game by then, so a more plausible yearly rotation would be something like Archanea x2, Genealogy x1, Thracia x1, Radiance x1, Dawn x1, Engage x2, New x2. That's perfectly reasonable. And if they do want to dip somewhat into that space for new alt banners, there are less extreme solutions than giving every completed game an alt banner on every cycle. I think last time we had this argument, I proposed a banner of all Ascended/Rearmed/Attuned/etc Heroes from a mix of completed games. By the time we have seven completed games, we could do two of those per year rather than needing a whopping seven Adrift banners per cycle. That would also help take some of the pressure off the seasonal/elemental banners - which are not as desperate for the help as you suggest. Over the course of a typical year, seasonal+legendary+emblem banners together contribute over 90 units! Guaranteeing a minimum of five slots per completed game per year would still leave plenty of room for other flexibility with those slots.

Again, excluding a title from standard New Heroes banners which it no longer has the material for is not dropping the title as a whole. It's still eligible for seasonals, legendary/mythic/emblem banners, Fallen/CYL, and anything else they might come up with. If they care that much, they can turn up its presence in those, such as giving it regular seasonal banners to itself.

There is precedent for having games not get banners on consistent cycles. It took years before they started having a rough cycle, TMS has never been part of the cycle, and there's various points of weirdness within the cycles like Tellius games sharing a single slot and recent games appearing more often. So there would be no conflicts with precedent in removing a game from the New Heroes cycle.

Booting games from the New Heroes rotation does not imply abandoning them, it means not throwing away entire New Heroes banners on games that are out of new heroes. There are plenty of other banners where they can feature alts of units from those games. Introducing those sorts of regular alt banners for completed games just to keep them in the New Heroes rotation would be absurd and unprecedented. Which isn't a guarantee that they won't do it, but there's no more reason to expect it than any other strange way they might hypothetically screw things up. For now, we should default to expecting that it won't happen. Interesting. I wonder which relevant dancers would be willing to give up their personal skills for WoM, or other Attuned skills.

Wait, does that include the basic Sing/Dance skills as well, or just the upgraded ones? The basic ones are still technically personal skills, so if they're incompatible as well, that's quite a limitation. I don't think it depends. Doing it for any game slows down our pace of wrapping up that game's cast and booting it from the New Heroes rotation to open up more spots for other games. Losing a new character is losing a new character, no matter which game they're from.

As of this, top missing Fates characters by CYL8 score: 112. Scarlet (641) 152. Mitama (446) 168. Shura (389) 256. Hisame (203) [259.] Anankos (197) 291. Izana (159) 311. Sophie (133) 317. Layla (126) 331. Haitaka (112) [336.] Anna (106) 343. Sumeragi (99) [358.] Reina (84)

Immediately relieved by the title only mentioning one alt, which is an odd feeling. I'm surprised to not see Scarlet, but Mozu and Hayato have been pretty high-profile omissions, and Yukimura is a neat bonus. I'd expected him to be overlooked for a lot longer, but I'm delighted to see that he wasn't. Meanwhile we get to finally start breaking into the capture units with Candace.

I hope there isn't a second alt, not on a banner without an insta-demote. That'd be particularly weird for Fates. Where does the term "Asset Hero" come from, anyway?

I'm primarily interested in the April banner, which will probably be Fates - although I'd love it if Tellius slipped ahead. Looking at the CYL7 rankings for missing Fates characters: 79. Scarlet 102. Mitama 116. Mozu [126. Reina] 146. Shura 211. Anna 237. Sophie 239. Izana 285. Hayato 288. Candace 297. Layla 300. Sumeragi Scarlet seems like a safe bet, and a simple way to round out the banner would be Mitama, Mozu, and Shura as the GHB. That'd be burning through a lot of the game's top material fast though, which they sometimes do, but not always. Personally my ideal lineup would be Scarlet, Shura, demote Sophie, and GHB Sumeragi. Huh, that's a lot of S names. For a Rearmed/Attuned hero, there are all sorts of possibilities. Too many to even guess, really.

I've been advocating for this for years, so I'll take any support for it.

Emmeryn's staff is neat. Like usual, I'll only focus on the demote for now, and on that note I like how Lissa gets an axe. I wonder how significant it will turn out to be that Robin F's "second action after assist" effect can work on receiving an assist as well, rather than just using one. Certainly has some potential for shenanigans.

I waited for almost the end of Caeda's banner to decide whether or not to bother sparking for her and then ended up pulling her on the first free summon.

Lucina doesn't have a duo yet. Maybe put her with Owain? Or Robin M+F, like the Winter Byleths.

We haven't gotten Young Sothe yet in the first place, but yeah Anniversary Sothe would probably be Younger Sothe. FE9 Sothe seems older than most anniversary characters. Boyd also shows that there's an opportunity to round out these banners with earlygame group members who haven't gotten into the game normally yet. They could also use characters like Sanaki, Pelleas, Elincia... I think they could make it work if they wanted to.

We already got FE7, but also I don't think time travel to include Alear would be too strange. Radiant Dawn is also a possibility, although not necessarily a more likely one than SoV.

SoV already got a full Valentine's banner to itself. Getting an anniversary one is just a matter of time. Assuming the game stays running for long enough, that is.

Ephraim+Lyon was the second duo (Nov 2020), Hector+Lilina were a month before (Oct 2020).

Summon #4: Alear Summon #5: Claude Guess there's no need for me to go for the spark. Opens up the option of spending those orbs to spark for Caeda, although I'll have to see the Double Special and Emblem banners before committing.

I'd like to get Demonic Beast Dedue, but I doubt he'd be a Rearmed Hero. And we need more armored beasts in general. Nidhoggr makes for our first non-colorless one, but we're still missing blue and green. It does seem likely for Nidhoggr to get additional versions, though, which will probably stay armored beasts. Admittedly, all Nidhoggrs released will be a ways off, and probably uninterested in an Arcane weapon released before them. Still, I personally don't think of either Rearmed Hero slots or Fallen Hero slots as particularly precious resources. We have pretty much all the relevant kinds of conventional Arcane weapons, after all.

Yeah, Fallen banners avoid the usual concerns. Rearmed Chrom isn't even any different from usual Fallen banner fare. Honestly, I do kind of hope we get Rearmed Fallen Three Hopes Edelgard at some point even though she'd be sort of a duplicate, because she'd offer an arcane beast armor weapon. Not like we'd be missing out on anything particularly new for it. December was Rearmed+Mythic, but yeah, ultimately the same story. I'm glad Thracia didn't lose a character slot though, and I hope we get another full roster in April. At least Jun-Dec aren't an issue since they get insta-demotes to make up for it (aside from CYL, which is its own story). Maybe sometime they'll start doing insta-demotes for Jan-Apr as well, to make it a moot point.

Last year's Fallen banner had Rearmed Chrom. I think it's a safe bet that this year's will have at least one of Rearmed/Attuned, potentially multiple.

Shura GHB next month is still a possibility, given that he and Castor could have different bow colors. I really hope April isn't another double-alt month. But it'll be interesting to see how they handle the Fallen banner in May.

Argh. Gaiden wasn't a one-off, this is another banner with only three new characters. Caeda looks surprisingly like Lucina here.

Sylvain's weapon certainly portrays him as stopping to make out with one of your other units before running off to stab something.