Ice Dragon

And translation notes since the trailer is out: Arcane Weapon is "魔器" (maki), "Magic Weapon". Rearmed Hero is "魔器英雄" (maki eiyū), "Magic Weapon Hero". The name of the banner, "New Heroes & Rearmed Lif", is "記念召喚　新英雄＆開花英雄＆ 魔器リーヴ" (kinen shōkan: shin eiyū & kaika eiyū & maki rīvu), "Commemoration Summon: New Heroes & Blooming Hero & Magic Weapon Lif". As usual, "開花" (kaika), "blooming", is the word used for the Ascended Hero mechanic. Kind of late for a commemoration, though, isn't it? Shez's epithet, "Rising Mercenary", is "新進気鋭の傭兵" (shinshin-kiei no yōhei), "Up-and-Coming Mercenary". Crimson Blades is "朱傭兵の双剣" (shu-yōhei no sōken), "Crimson Mercenary's Dual Swords". Still allergic to the word "sword", I see. Spd/Def Bulwark is "速さ守備の防壁" (hayasa shubi no bōheki), "Spd/Def Bulwark". Monica's epithet, "Favored Vassal", is "女帝いちの家臣" (jotei-ichi no kashin), "The Empress's Favored Vassal". Wind Genesis is "風呼びの根源" (kaze-yobi no kongen), "Wind-Calling's Origin". Spd/Res Tempo is "速さ魔防の拍節" (hayasa mabō no hakusetsu), "Spd/Res Tempo". Hilda's epithet, "Helping Hand", is "一肌脱ぎますか！" (hito-hada nugimasu ka!), "I Suppose I'll Give You a Hand!". Fuming Freikugel is "劫火フライクーゲル" (gōka furaikūgeru), "World-Ending Flames, Freikugel". "劫火" (gōka) is a term from Buddhism meaning "flames that destroy the world". Alastor from Shakugan no Shana. Velocity is "回避・拍節" (kaihi: hakusetsu), "Dodge: Tempo". Lif's epithet, "Arcane Blade", is "魔器剣士" (maki kenshi), "Magic Weapon Swordsman". Same "magic weapon" as above, if you've already forgotten. Arcane Eljudnir is "魔器エリューズニル" (maki eryūzuniru), "Magic Weapon Eljudnir". Atk/Def Clash is "攻撃守備の激突" (kōgeki shubi no gekitotsu), "Atk/Def Clash". Holst's epithet, "Hero of Leicester", is "レスターの勇者" (resutā no yūsha), "Hero of Leicester". "勇者" (yūsha), "hero", is the name of the Hero class, as opposed to "英雄" (eiyū), "hero", which is the word used for "Heroes" with a capital "h" in Heroes. Warrior's Sword is "武人の鉄剣" (bujin no tekken), "Warrior's Iron Sword". Shez's epithet, "Keen Mercenary", is "前途有為な傭兵" (zento-yūi na yōhei), "Mercenary With a Promising Future". Crimson War-Axe is "朱傭兵の戦斧" (shu-yōhei no senpu), "Crimson Mercenary's Battle-Axe". "戦斧" (senpu), "battle-axe", can also be pronounced "ikusa-ono".

Having inheritable exclusive-tier weapons is at least an okay solution for units who have outdated weapons and units that don't have an exclusive weapon and aren't in line to get one anytime in the near future. Obviously, it would be better to just give outdated weapons new refines, but this is at least a good thing for seasonal units, which weren't ever going to get exclusive weapons in the first place. Being able to do skill inheritance without losing the original copy of the Rearmed Hero is pretty nice. However, if I'm reading the in-game notification correctly (since it's in Japanese for me), it looks like once an Arcane weapon is foddered off to another unit, it cannot be foddered off again. That's a problem for anyone who wants to merge up a copy of Rearmed Lif quickly since it means you can't just fodder his weapon off to a placeholder unit to make the decision of who to give it to later. I think they should change that. It doesn't seem like there'd be any exploits that could happen by allowing the skill to be foddered again since doing so would erase the foddered unit like usual. Also, according to the notification, Rearmed Heroes won't be added to the standard summoning pool, which means Lif is going to be stuck in limbo like Duo Ephraim was. Back to the weapon itself, Arcane Eljudnir is just a really good weapon for all of the slow sword units out there, as it's basically just Coral Saber on crack. I don't care enough about the Three Hopes banner to pull for more than the sparks. My wallet is already planned to go to the Flame banner. Two sparks is nice, though, since it means I can snipe red to focus on getting copies of Lif while still using a spark on Lif and another spark on Hilda for the floret. Also, the timing of this banner makes zero sense since the game's been out for quite some time. I have no horse in the race for reruns of Hall of Forms. The only thing that would make me care is if Forma units are allowed to be merged into Forma units because then I'd be able to get some better skills on some of the earlier Forma units, like Walhart. I mean, she consistently ranks pretty high in CYL. In CYL 4, she was 6th out of the non-"Lord" Three Houses characters (counting the house leaders and Byleth as "Lords"). In CYL 5, she was 7th out of the non-"Lord" Three Houses characters (if you count Lysithea, who wasn't on the ballot, as above her). In CYL 6, she was 6th out of the non-"Lord" Three Houses characters (if you count Lysithea, Gatekeeper, and Marianne as above her).

It seems it was only for the Feh Channel video, as the trailer appears to have her actual artwork. (I could have sworn it was also in the trailer, but it's possible I just never paid attention to her art in the trailer since I only watched it for translating.) In the Feh Channel, the edge of the arm hole goes straight up and intersects her hand below the distal palmar crease (the heart line in palmistry). In the trailer and her actual art, the edge of the arm hole is slanted to the right and intersects her hand between the distal palmar crease and the palmar digital crease (the crease between your palm and finger).

I don't think TMS#FE Encore is a particularly good bellwether for this since all of the characters added to CYL from TMS had already existed since the original release of the game, whereas Engage is going to have brand new characters, and unless this is another game where they show off the entire cast of the game before the game is released, it would be odd to do a "hey look at all of the characters that are going to be in this game" through CYL instead of actually having people play through the actual brand new game to see.

Google has recently been cracking down on purchases made in games that are locked from your region. This is pretty well known in communities for games that are region-locked to Japan where you need both a Japanese Google account and a Japanese billing address in order to make the purchase. From what I've heard, it's something about preventing money laundering or something like that.

With the original Veronica now no longer able to appear in the story, it's possible, but unlikely that we'll be able to get her (especially since it's already been a few months). Water works for her Elivagar version because Elivagar is the name of a group of rivers. Unlikely, but unable to completely rule out. (And as much as I do prefer her new design, I still want her original version to be playable with an updated weapon. Her map/battle sprite is very cute.)

Of the remaining missing leads, Ninian is the one with the highest likelihood of being both green and water. Sothe is likely to be green, but is more likely to be wind than water. Male Robin and Male Corrin both have a possibility of being green, but also have the possibility of being any other color with red being slightly more likely than the others. Awakening Tiki is very unlikely because we just got a green Awakening TIki. Veronica is probably unlikely, but I wouldn't completely count her out since both green and water work for her.

Well, if we can get someone to kill Veronica before the banner is announced, she'll definitely be the new Legendary Hero on the banner.

So I've spent some time this morning brainstorming and I think I've devised a model that could feasibly replace a gacha model... if you ignore the fact that it's still harder to market when players can easily convert orb prices into actual currency. I do think that some amount of randomness is a good thing, as one of the advantages of randomness is that it forces players to make do with what they get, even if it isn't what they wanted, so I think there's value in leaving something up to chance as long as it isn't the focus pulls. There are units that you normally wouldn't use, but you end up using simply because you have them. This is one of the things that makes rogue-like games popular and replayable. First off, the current average number of orbs needed to pull any 5-star focus character from a 4-character 3%-focus-rate banner is about 120 orbs, so I'll arbitrarily make that the base price of a 5-star character. It's a pretty round number, after all. When sniping, the current average number of orbs needed to pull a 4-star focus character (at any rarity) is about 40 orbs, so I'll make that the base price for a 4-star focus character. Again, it's a pretty nice round number that divides evenly into the previous number. When a banner is active, you can buy any of the units on the banner for the above listed price: 120 orbs for a 5-star focus character or 40 orbs for a 4-star focus character. Banner units that are in the SR pool can probably be half off, so 60 orbs. No one who knows what they're doing bothers to pull for focus units that are in the 3-to-4-star pool, so those don't need to exist anymore (but if they need to exist, I guess they could charge 20 orbs or something). Units that are not on an active banner cannot be bought. Buying a character in this way gives you 5 "summoning tickets" for every 20 orbs spent. Summoning tickets can be redeemed for a random roll from the standard summoning pool with each summoning ticket giving you one roll and the summon rates being comparable to what they are currently, minus the focus pool. This is how players will still receive fodder and pity breakers. Sparks no longer need to exist (especially due to the discounted prices), but if the mechanic is retained, they occur after 120 orbs are spent. A problem with Legendary/Mythic banners is that the average number of orbs needed to snipe a specific unit is about 200 orbs, but on average, you'll also pull 2 of the units that share the targeted unit's color and 0.5 a copy of one of the other units on the banner. There isn't really a good way to simultaneously have a high cost per copy of the targeted unit while having a low cost for any focus unit unless the game forces you to buy them in bundles, e.g. it costs 200 orbs to buy Deirdre, Myrrh, and Fae together, but you can't buy them separately. This would also probably force them to make the colors on each banner a bit more balanced in order to actually make it worth buying anything other than the color of the new unit. I don't think anyone would really want to buy a bundle of Seliph, Galzus, and Hugh for 200 orbs, even if it's technically a gigantic discount for the latter two, whereas 200 orbs for a bundle of Deirdre, Myrrh, and Fae sounds like an absolute steal. Numbers could probably use some adjustments, but that's the general gist of what I'd do if I could replace the gacha system with anything else and didn't have to worry about marketing. You can easily convert that 120 orb cost and see that it comes out to 62 USD per unit and that a 40-orb 4-star focus unit still comes out to 21 USD per unit. The use of an intermediate currency is specifically there to mask the actual cost of each item, but when the prices are as transparent as this would be (instead of being further obfuscated by the gacha mechanic), that mask is incredibly thin. And once again just to make sure, no, I don't think Heroes will ever get off the gacha model. Losing all of the EU as a market is probably still more profitable than getting rid of the gacha mechanic.

I've found Summoner Duels S to be significantly less stressful than Summoner Duels R. In S, each player's best units have to be spread out across four different teams, so even if you can't use all of your best units all at once, the opponent can't either. And while it might seem a bit overwhelming to build four teams, you actually only need to build three since the opponent can't veto all three of your "good" teams (though it does allow the opponent to effectively pick which team they want to play against). R is an absolute drain to play because you're always up against the best units the opponent has, and as a general rule of thumb, your opponents always have access to better stuff than you do.

Given that that's a massive 40% discount compared to what we currently have (~170 orbs per focus 5-star when sniping) at the cost of not getting any fodder or pity breakers, I think anyone would take that offer.

If you insist on using outdated units, sure, but every exclusive weapon and refine since CYL 4 has been pretty comparable with each other, which is pretty much every exclusive weapon and refine for the last 2 years. There hasn't really been much all that much power creep in terms of weapons since then, even if the effects have gotten more complex, and most of the power creep has come from more powerful inheritable skills. Even recent inheritable weapons have been pretty strong, even if they aren't quite as strong as exclusive weapons. And then there's Ophelia, who was released 4 years ago (exactly 4 years the day after tomorrow) and is still strong despite having been skipped over for refines and having had no update to her skills since the release of Life and Death 4.

Finished with 10 minutes left on the clock because I was lazy this week. Summoner Duels R is such a chore. Excluding matches where the opponent surrenders on turn 1 or turn 2, it's somewhere like 10-15 minutes per match, which is tedious. Currently rank 971 with a score of 3,879 in Platinum C. Five wins and 2 losses. It looks like higher-tier players are starting to run Canto Control on units that normally don't have it, which is kind of annoying. Duo Thorr being able to remove Bonuses with her Duo skill is also annoying, though at the very least, it's limited to one use per match, and I can bait it out with Duo Nina's Duo skill, which refreshes on turn 4.

No amount of optimism is going to make me think this will upend the gacha system in Heroes. There isn't a way to feasibly get anywhere close to the game's current revenue while still keeping the game free to play as a baseline for a game that is this successful. It currently costs about 89 USD on average to pull a specific focus unit (i.e. pulling a different focus unit won't count towards this) from a banner with 4 focus units and a 3% base focus rate, counting the pity boost and summon circles with no orbs of the correct color. It's much easier to market spending x money on chances to pull the unit than it is spending x money to buy the unit outright (even if it comes with all of the fodder and pity-breaker pulls that come with it), and it's pretty much certain that switching the model will result in reduced sales due to the reduced marketability, even if the expected payout is exactly identical. I assume that Mario Kart Tour has less revenue to lose from removing their gacha mechanics that Heroes does. At best, we might see an increase in the availability of sparks for Feh Pass subscribers (or a higher tier subscription with more sparks) and an increase in orb pack bundles that come with free units.

Grani is written "グラニ" (gurani) in Japanese, whereas Grahnye is written "グラーニェ" (gurānye). Her name is based on Grainne, Diarmuid's wife in Irish mythology.

Grani is the name of Sigurd's horse in Norse mythology. I don't know if it's also a the name of an existing entity in Fire Emblem, but the skill is new to Heroes.

Muspell Fae is cute, but it's also really hard to beat Himukai's Fae in terms of cute. The Resplendent stat boosts bring her up to a respectable 53/40/35/32/37 after Dragonflowers (with the reminder that we recently got a Dragonflower boost). Fae is primarily a support unit due to the fact that her weapon grants her and allies within 2 spaces +5 to all stats as a field buff, but her combat stats are still decent. Her primary weakness in combat is the fact that she doesn't have enough skill slots to have all of the effects she wants, which makes it difficult to justify running the Distant Counter (D) Sacred Seal on her over Quick Riposte: Fae [+Atk / +Res] Eternal Breath [unique] [Assist] Aether / Moonbow Distant Stance / Atk/Res Finish 4 Dragon Wall 3 Atk Smoke 4 / Joint Distant Guard / Canto Control 3 Quick Riposte 3 Her weapon notably inflicts -4 Res on the opponent instead of granting Atk like more recent dragon weapons do, which helps her with activating Dragon Wall. Atk/Res Finish 4 is a viable option when running Moonbow (or Glimmer) due to the fact that she has +1 Special charge rate on the opponent's attacks, allowing her to instantly activate Finish as long as the opponent doesn't have Guard or Tempo. While Fae can run a Menace skill, she already grants +5 to all stats to herself and nearby allies, so it's probably more optimal to run a tier-4 Smoke skill in order to get the secondary effect, Joint Distant Guard for additional bulk that stacks with her visible buffs, or a non-stat support skill like Canto Control or Infantry Pulse. If you don't need Dragon Wall on her for whatever reason, she can run Dragon's Ire and the Distant Counter (D) Sacred Seal. Dragon's Wrath is also an option with Distant Counter (D), but is less reliable since you'd be banking on a one-hit kill with Moonbow or Glimmer. It's also possible to replace Dragon Wall with an HP-based debuffing skill like Sudden Panic or Pulse Tie for a more support-centric build, but it's probably better to use Ninian for that. Alternatively, you can do dumb things like run double Bonus Doubler (or triple with Legendary Eliwood) and just stack a stupid amount of stats on her since she supplies her own bonuses.

Pretty much the same stuff any other Galeforce unit runs: Brave Chrom [+Spd] Geirdriful A Fate Changed! Galeforce Atk/Spd Catch 4 S/D Near Trace 3 Spd Smoke 4 / Atk/Spd Menace Atk/Spd Solo 3 / Blade Session 3 / etc. Spd Smoke 4 is preferable to Atk/Spd Menace since it's more optimal to have a teammate activate Atk/Spd Menace and then have Chrom copy it. Assault Troop 3 is also an option for maps with trenches.

427 pulls from the festival banner: 5 Tana (+1 spark) 3 Lyn 1 Muspell 4 5-star Rinkah 8 4-star Rinkah 16 pity breakers 3.0% focus rate, which is below average (by about 1 pull), though only 9 of the 13 actually matter. 6.8% overall 5-star rate, which is above average (by about 1 pull). Got a +Spd copy for each of Tana, Lyn, and Rinkah, so I'm good with merge bases on all of them. Notable pity breakers were my first ever copy of Gatrie (neutral) and my first +Spd copy of Fallen Dimitri. I'm planning on doing some more pulls later to see if I can get Tana and Lyn to +10, but that'll probably be a few weeks away. This past month has been rough on my wallet with the phantom thief banner, the CYL banner, and FGO's summer event.

Ruptured Sky is worth running on any unit you use often that normally runs a 2-cooldown Special, and even more so if that usage is in the Arena.

Another Tempest Trials, and another Tempest Trials with no Ideal or Catch Sacred Seal. Sigh. They should bring back releasing three Sacred Seals per Tempest Trials again.

Added Mordecai's weapon to the translation notes.

Updated my initial post with analyses. A few highlights and additional observations: While Sothis's refine is really underwhelming, I'm not sure it's actually all that bad. Once Atk/Spd Finish is released, I think she can run something like this: Sothis [+Spd] Sublime Surge [unique] [Assist] Sirius+ Atk/Spd Finish 4 Dragon's Wrath 4 / Lull Atk/Spd 3 / Lull Spd/Res 3 Atk/Spd Menace / Spd Smoke 4 Darting Breath Dragon's Wrath 4 gives her a pretty sizable 55% damage reduction on the opponent's first attack, and Darting Breath in combination with Sirius+ having the offensive half of Tempo means that she'll have Finish's additional effects active pretty much all of the time on enemy phase. Dimitri looks busted. Having both 40% damage reduction and roughly 12~15 points of flat damage reduction is not something to take lightly. It's also worth noting that they specifically distributed his stats to inflict -5 Def on the opponent instead of +5 Atk to himself in addition to the more typical +5 Spd/Def/Res, which means he actually gets an effective +10 Def for the purposes of calculating the damage reduction from Blue Lion Rule. That's kind of ridiculous considering they do the exact opposite for dragons, who get +5 Atk for themselves and inflict -5 Atk on the opponent, which specifically does not benefit Dragon Wall at all. On a different note, I've been doing some testing with Claude's new Deep Wounds nullification. It applies to all sources of healing in combat (not just to his weapon's effect), but does not apply to healing outside of combat. Specifically, I tested Passive healing support from Valentine Robin (5 HP regeneration per unit's attack in combat): Grants +3 HP per attack. Mystic Boost Sacred Seal (6 HP regeneration after combat): Nullified. Recover+ from an ally: Unable to target. The skill description is worded differently in Japanese, and the Deep Wounds nullification is separate from the healing effect. It's also worth noting that the value being rounded down for this calculation is the reduction to healing coming from Deep Wounds (i.e. Deep Wounds reduces the amount healed by 40%, rounded down), meaning the amount being healed is effectively rounded up.

Radiant Dawn essentially streamlined effective damage so that there were three groups of effective damage for magic: "Beast" classes are weak to fire. (Only Laguz Beast Tribe units.) "Dragon" classes are weak to thunder. (Laguz Dragon Tribe and dragon knights.) "Flying" classes are weak to wind and bows. (Laguz Bird Tribe and pegasus knights, minus Rafiel, who is grounded.) Dragon knights ended up categorized with only the "dragon" effectiveness tag and managed to avoid being weak to wind and bows. It's a massive buff to them since bows are pretty common, and they managed to avoid the terror of crossbows. Crossbows ignored the user's Str stat and calculated damage based only on the weapon's Mt, which meant that they had enormous Mt stats to compensate and caused them to have comically large damage numbers against other flying classes.

In Path of Radiance, dragon knight classes are weak to both bows and thunder magic, but in Radiant Dawn, they lose their weakness to bows and are only weak to thunder magic. As Heroes's version of Haar is from Radiant Dawn, he is now not weak to bows.