Heart-crosses are now a thing whether you like it or are cross about it. However, GungHo has decided to branch out and start creating leader skills that are reliant on colour-crosses to deal damage. This has led to the highest multipliers in the game; however, can overwhelming damage compensate for a lack of survivability? Furthermore, how powerful are the non-6 star rolls? Outside of the colour cross theme at the top, the lower end monsters offer numerous True Damage options to truly let your button teams shine. To top it off, all the following monsters qualify as assistants for Skill Inheritance due to evolving into a 5-star form.
Ruroni Kenshin Collab REM
6 Star base
5 Star base
4 Star base
Video Overview
I am trying something new here by summerizing all the rolls from the Kenshin Collab via a YouTube video to give you another medium to learn all about your favourite cards and may become a trend moving forward for other Collab/Godfests/major Monster Analysis articles.
6 Star Rolls
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Notes
Himura Kenshin
Balance
6 star base —- 2
2
+ 2 turns fire & light skyfall
6 turn CD —-
3x ATK for each fire or light cross. 2x ATK when light and fire combos made 2,916x ATK
2,916x ATK is not a typo, but is also not as easy nor as overpowered as it sounds. First off thing to achieve 2,916x ATK, you need to make 3 unique colour cross combos which is a tall order on a 6×5 board as you will encounter horrible spacing issues along with a low combo count. More realistically, 2 colour cross combos is 324x ATK and is far easier to match; however, you will still suffer from a lower combo count along no additional damage source as you will be unable to utilize TPA or rows. 1 cross combo is only 36x ATK and that will feel flat by comparison along with no health or recovery multiplier. You are able to deal less damage with 4x or 9x with dual colour or single colour cross respectively, so there is some damage control.
Exploring other high multiplier/high tier leaders, it becomes apparent that pure damage is not enough to make you a strong leader. For example, You Yu who is widely considered one of the top (or top) damage lead available is not ranked highly on tier charts due to no survivability. While Kenshin is challenging to activate, You Yu is easy to proc and much more reliable in dealing damage. By comparison, Ra Dragon , Xiang Mei , and Myr are all able to deal sufficient damage to clear any content in the game. Thankfully, all of these leaders have a defensive component factored into their leader skill that allows them to survive challenging mechanics. Kenshin has none. Thus, he will mostly excel in dungeons where you require high burst damage that require little to no stalling and can use an active per floor to kill quickly.
Stepping outside of the meta viability of Kenshin, his awakenings are synergestic for his leader skill as the only offensive awakening he can take advantage of is enhanced orbs. In addition, his team is heavily reliant on time extends to manipulate your orbs into position. Your subs should ideally generate either fire or light or both orbs through their actives as it will be challenging to recover after taking damage. Such subs include, but not limited to Leilan , Tsubaki ,Saria , and Terra . Furthermore, with Kenshin’s active being on a 2-turn cooldown, you are able to have 67% skyfall uptime and more if you bring haste cards.
As a sub, Kenshin will not have too much value as Fire is still lacking an ideal top tier leader and row based teams demand more value for the active than a sub generating 2 fire orbs.
Until GungHo starts introducing leaders with 50M+ health on a regular basis with no ridiculous mechanics will Kenshin thrive. However, this is unlikely and I foresee Kenshin being more of a novelty leader that you bring out to do damage tests or to water your own ego flower.
You can do your own research by using the 流浪人・緋村剣心
Saito Hajime
Attacker 6 star base —-
200k True Damage to a single enemy
5
10 turn CD —
3x ATK per dark cross combo. 2x ATK / 2x RCV on turn active is used
324x ATK / 4x RCV
Saito Hajime follows the same style as Himura Kenshin as his damage multiplier is tied to forming purple crosses. However, unlike Kenshin, Himura can only cap out at 324x ATK as you are only able to fit in 2 purple crosses on a 6×5 board. This also means that you receive 36x ATK on a single dark cross. However, he has a 4x RCV multiplier when using an active skill which can come in handy when stalling (if you can spare an active). RCV multiplier has more of an impact in coop due to the fact your health is already bolstered by four extra cards and it becomes paramount to replenish your health after taking a hit.
The extra damage component for Saito’s leader skill is of less concern as you are most likely using an active to generate sufficient dark orbs and 81x ATK is still respectable on a card that has 5 enhanced dark orb awakenings. Unfortunately, when your RCV is also tied to your active usage, you will find is challenging to stall as you are trying to preserve, not use actives.
I can see Saito Hajime (like Kenshin) excelling in short dungeon encounters that lack absorption or challenging stalling phases as you can use an active per floor and simply blow up every boss before you. However, he will be gatekeeped from true end game content as he lacks a reliable way to survive dangerous mechanics.
Due to Saito Hajime’s attacker type, he will often be overlooked as a sub as he cannot fit on the various God / Devil teams.
5 Star Rolls
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Notes
Aoshi Balance
5 star base —- 6
2 turns skyfall
9 turn CD — 4x ATK with 6+ combos. Deals 10x card ATK to all enemies after every orb elimination
Aoshi feels rather lackluster as a 5-star roll due to mediocre awakenings and only 700 weighted stats. There are not many water prong teams in existence and his main usage would be on both You Yu and Rukia teams. However, Aoshi’s active is reasonably powerful and unique as it allows you to correct poorly formed board changers by creating 6 more water orbs along with two turns of skyfall. This may help you achieve that extra combo for full activation on either team and I feel he will be used more as an assistant through Skill Inheritance.
However, there is a niche use for Aoshi: cheesing your way through resolve bosses. Due to his modest multiplier, you can pair him with another combo leader and kill a resolve boss and have the 10x ATK hit execute the boss after the resolve is triggered. Niche, but worth mentioning.
Sanosuke Physical 5 star base —-
Void enemy defense for 1 turn. 100k damage to a single enemy but reduce team HP by 50%
7 turn CD —-
1.5x HP / ATK Physcial. 3x ATK with 2+ wood combos
2.25x HP / 20.25x ATK
Sanosuke has a very interesting active as it combines several different elements, but has a short cooldown due to the 50% self HP reduction. By comparison, Balboa has an 11 turn cooldown for a full defense void (although he does grant a 50% shield). As such, Sanosuke can be more easily inherited for push button teams who are trying to farm content quickly. For example, Awoken Liu Bei teams are able to farm Mythic Plus Rogue Descends and love having more options for dealing with the PreDRAs . In addition, the defense void carries forward on a sweep and is important for Linthia where you can kill the Dub Mythlits then PreDras with only a single active.
Outside of this niche role, I can only see Sanosuke being a seldom seen inherit for a safer HP reset for Dark Metatron teams, albeit with no enhancement component.
Sojiro Attacker 5 star base —-
2
99 True Damage to one enemy
3 turn CD
Sojiro is the final 5-star of the Kenshin Collab and is yet again another niche active/role. Most encounters have multiple high defense monsters spawn and by being able to nuke down only 1 can prove problematic due requiring either another active or lots of matching to kill the other spawns. In addition, the two light orb generation is okay, but will feel underwhelming, even if on a 3-turn cooldown. However, you can make use of such a short cooldown to allow Sojiro to be a base for Skill Inheritance on your mono-light teams. The three light rows and situational Attacker Killer awakenings do help with damage output and you will be able to safely inherit an active of your choosing. Only downside is average base stats and no diversification of other awakenings.
4 Star Rolls
The four star rolls have a surprising number of reasonable cards who all qualify for an assistant via Skill Inheritance due to them all evolving into a 5-star form.
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Notes
Kaoru Attacker 4 star base —-
Top row
Bottom row
50% HP heal
12 turn CD —-
Kaoru is an amazingly powerful 4-star monster who can evolve and thus be used as an assistant through Skill Inheritance. Sporting an amazing 9 awakenings, Kaoru can be used as either a sub or assistant. As a sub, Kaoru can be found on various mono-water teams as a means to add consistent damage through their awakenings and free water row formation. Furthermore, because the top row spawns the water orbs, you are able to hoard orbs at the bottom to help form a second row. In addition, you may find uses on Awoken DQXQ or Lightning teams, but be careful you do not overwrite existing colour activation orbs.
However, Kaoru may have the most value on Machine Zeus teams. Machine Zeus requires you to be at full health to deal your maximum multiplier and the 50% heal can help ensure you stay in your sweet zone. Furthermore, many button teams love fixed spawn actives and you are able to simply match your premade rows and be on your merry way.Works both as a sub on water-heavy MZeus teams or as an inherit. What a time to be alive.
Finally, one last interesting usage for Kaoru is for button teams who use full board changer and require a certain amount of combos to bypass a shield. You pop the full board change of your primary colour and use Kaoru to generate easily matched combos after.
Misao Balance 4 star base —-
6 turn CD
Misao is another powerful 4-star monster who can be evolved to act as an assistant via Skill Inheritance. What makes Misao powerful is their unique active as it allows you to remove jammers (sadly not poison) and light orbs to help flood your board with more fire. This functions as an upgraded Chiyome active for only 1 additional turn of cooldown. You can combo with Leilan to form a 2/3 fire board. Unfortunately, fire is lacking a supreme leader and may be a box cheerleader until you can upgrade someone’s skill.
Takani Megumi Healer 4 star base —-
5 turn bind recovery
9 turn CD
Megumi will function as a powerful assistant through Skill Inheritance as a means to upgrade an existing bind clear. Five turns of bind clear is quite significant along with being able to remove poison, jammer, and dark to convert them into heart orbs. This can be quite powerful on heart cross leaders such as Myr as it will allow you to remove binds and put up your damage reduction shield. Outside of this, Megumi will have few roles as her sub potential is marred by weak awakenings/stats.
Kamatari Attacker 4 star base —-
99 True Damage to all enemies. 3 turn wood skyfall
8 turn CD
Kamatari is another useful 4-star collab roll as he was blessed with a true damage nuke along with three skill boosts. This allows him to be a sub on push-button teams that are farming PreDRA or Tamadra Infestation or can be inherited onto a stronger card.
Yahiko Attacker 4 star base —-
Right column
5 turn CD —
Yahiko rounds out the 4-stars from the Kenshin Collab REM and has surprisingly high value on light based team. Yahiko can be found on both Cloud and Machine Zeus teams as a simple active solution for sweeping a floor. You can easily form the 5 light orbs and match a TPA for wonderful burst damage.
Conclusion
The Himura Kenshin Collab will provide some value from nearly every roll although the top prizes will mostly be damage test trophies. Being able to deal ridiculous damage is nice, but impractical in today’s meta, especially when you will struggle to survive mechanics or exercise damage control on absorption bosses. However, a few rolls will yield you some niche assistants for Skill Inheritance and many button teams will love an additional member.
What do you hope to roll and how many stones have you saved?
I’m glad you enjoyed the video =D I actually write the post first, then record the video for youtube. I have been getting good feedback on the video and will continue this pattern moving forward.
Also, some people can’t sit through a 10 min video and rather skim read etc so now I appeal to everyone =D
You Yu is actually ranked quite high (same level as Sumire) but I think that’s because he can do damage so easy that you can afford to bring utility subs. This guy here is impressive but it’s too difficult and active consuming to do really good damage and leaves no good room for utility, Plus blue tends to have more health than red.
Yeah, YY is just silly when it comes to damage and can afford more sub flexibility and is far easier to proc than either Sumire or the Kensin collab cards. Kenshin is a novelty at best. Merp
Hey Mantastic, great review. Two minor editing notes:
In Saito’s review you refer to him as “Himura” in the second sentence (“However, unlike Kenshin, Himura can only cap out at 324x ATK as you are only able to fit in 2 purple crosses on a 6×5 board.”)
And I just thought it was a little funny that you used the gender-neutral “their” to refer to Misao, who is indeed a girl, but used the feminine “her” to refer to Kamatari, who is actually a male cross-dresser. 😀
I appreciate the 4* this time around and if I weren’t saving my stones for PAD Island (want that 4* water Sherias cosplaying cutie) and also the upcoming GFE REM (AVritra has made me realize I need Zuoh, and desperately) I’d give the Kenshin dragon arm a few handshakes. The water/light rowmaker in particular has caught my eye and also the heartmaker for Myr. I *almost* wish Toy Dragons were still in the REM so I could inherit Angelion onto Myr hahaha.
I am uncertian if we will ever get the GFE REM, but PAD Island is much better value by comparison to Kenshin. Thankfully the water/light rowmaker is 4 stars =D
I personally dislike pure heart makers on Myr teams as you do need light orbs to use in conjunction and Angelion does compete with DQXQ for light
In your video you say that Kenshin can’t regulate his damage but If I’m correct Kenshin’s damage multipliers are as follows
Red and Light match no cross = 4x
1 Red Cross or 1 Light Cross don’t match other color = 9x
Then as you covered
Red and Light match with 1 cross =36x
Red and Light match with 2 cross = 324x
Red and Light match with 3 cross = 2916x
Granted he still doesn’t have any tanky stats or recovery multiplier but I though I’d mention that he can control his damage to an extent. I really want to pull him due to having 3 Tsubakis and 2 Leilans.
Someone on Reddit brought up a good point about Aoshi; he can be used to cheese your way through resolves. The nuke portion of his LS finishes off any boss left at 1 HP before they can act and he can be paired with YY/Rukia to somewhat make up for his lackluster multiplier. Not too great but, probably worth mentioning in the guide.
Yukyuzan Anji is pretty good for a farmable monster. Skill boost and 3800+ HP.
Mission of Salvation – Reduce enemies’ defense to 0 for 1 turn. Effects carry forward on sweep. Inflict Dark damage equal to ATK x50 to all enemies. Affected by enemy element and defense.
Once you get used to making crosses it really isn’t that hard with 8+ seconds of movement time. Bicolor boards 10-20 of 1 color, which is very common, can easily make 6 combo with 2-3 cross in 6×5. Any cross heart player can usually combo decently while making crosses. They only problem would be the combo absorb but with some planning it is not as hard as it seems.
2 cross of light and fire only (2+ million damage each unit) 1 shot nearly every descend boss. 3 cross can 1 shot kali 50% shield with just kenshin solo damage. The damage is so big for 2 matches that you don’t need to combo for extra boost. Only time I combo with him is for x36 or stalling otherwise it’s just 2 simple match (for experienced cross player) each floor.
great lord, I had a level 6 unevolved Kenshin on a team of not fully awakened subs (Awoken Leilan/Tsubaki/Saria/NY Leilan) and he was still doing millions in damage easily and frequently. He’s like a fire Sarasvati. I’ll pull him out whenever I want to see a bunch of large numbers
or Lightning 
Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons 
uhhhhhhh NY Hanzo Converts Fire -> Light, not Water -> Light
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whoops, my mistake. Thanks for letting me know =)
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Only doing a souvenir roll this time. Summer/Island has a firm clutch on the rest of my stones. Here’s hoping for Kaoru or Kamatari.
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I feel most people are in the same boat as you. Kenshin just has bad timing and is simply an average collab
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I like the videos, but I was scared it was going to mean no text posts. Glad I was wrong! Sometimes at work it’s not possible to watch/listen.
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I’m glad you enjoyed the video =D I actually write the post first, then record the video for youtube. I have been getting good feedback on the video and will continue this pattern moving forward.
Also, some people can’t sit through a 10 min video and rather skim read etc so now I appeal to everyone =D
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You Yu is actually ranked quite high (same level as Sumire) but I think that’s because he can do damage so easy that you can afford to bring utility subs. This guy here is impressive but it’s too difficult and active consuming to do really good damage and leaves no good room for utility, Plus blue tends to have more health than red.
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Yeah, YY is just silly when it comes to damage and can afford more sub flexibility and is far easier to proc than either Sumire or the Kensin collab cards. Kenshin is a novelty at best. Merp
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Hey Mantastic, great review. Two minor editing notes:
In Saito’s review you refer to him as “Himura” in the second sentence (“However, unlike Kenshin, Himura can only cap out at 324x ATK as you are only able to fit in 2 purple crosses on a 6×5 board.”)
And I just thought it was a little funny that you used the gender-neutral “their” to refer to Misao, who is indeed a girl, but used the feminine “her” to refer to Kamatari, who is actually a male cross-dresser. 😀
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One thing I have learned about PAD is gender is always ambiguous! Think about Noah XD
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I appreciate the 4* this time around and if I weren’t saving my stones for PAD Island (want that 4* water Sherias cosplaying cutie) and also the upcoming GFE REM (AVritra has made me realize I need Zuoh, and desperately) I’d give the Kenshin dragon arm a few handshakes. The water/light rowmaker in particular has caught my eye and also the heartmaker for Myr. I *almost* wish Toy Dragons were still in the REM so I could inherit Angelion onto Myr hahaha.
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I am uncertian if we will ever get the GFE REM, but PAD Island is much better value by comparison to Kenshin. Thankfully the water/light rowmaker is 4 stars =D
I personally dislike pure heart makers on Myr teams as you do need light orbs to use in conjunction and Angelion does compete with DQXQ for light
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Keep up the commentary videos over your guides, i enjoy listening to explanations over reading them, thx 😀
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Glad you enjoy it and I will continue this trend =)
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In your video you say that Kenshin can’t regulate his damage but If I’m correct Kenshin’s damage multipliers are as follows
Red and Light match no cross = 4x
1 Red Cross or 1 Light Cross don’t match other color = 9x
Then as you covered
Red and Light match with 1 cross =36x
Red and Light match with 2 cross = 324x
Red and Light match with 3 cross = 2916x
Granted he still doesn’t have any tanky stats or recovery multiplier but I though I’d mention that he can control his damage to an extent. I really want to pull him due to having 3 Tsubakis and 2 Leilans.
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Thanks for the update! I must have overlooked it and the written analysis is corrected, but the video will remain the way it is XD
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Someone on Reddit brought up a good point about Aoshi; he can be used to cheese your way through resolves. The nuke portion of his LS finishes off any boss left at 1 HP before they can act and he can be paired with YY/Rukia to somewhat make up for his lackluster multiplier. Not too great but, probably worth mentioning in the guide.
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Thanks for pointing this out! I added it in his section accordingly =)
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Kaoru can combo with a one-color board changer (Zeus-Dios) to easily bypass combo shields, making him a valuable inherit for ALB teams.
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That is a very good point! I added in a section accordingly =)
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Terra is S tier sub on Kenshin along with the others listed. Could perhaps be his best sub. Glaring omission which you may want to include
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Thanks for pointing that out, added them in!
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Loving the video overviews so I can passively have you playing in the background when doing other things.
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Huzzah! Glad you enjoy them =D
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Yukyuzan Anji is pretty good for a farmable monster. Skill boost and 3800+ HP.
Mission of Salvation – Reduce enemies’ defense to 0 for 1 turn. Effects carry forward on sweep. Inflict Dark damage equal to ATK x50 to all enemies. Affected by enemy element and defense.
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Yeah he is a pretty spectacular monster! And the fact he is farmable too! However, I focus on the REM side for these collab articles
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Once you get used to making crosses it really isn’t that hard with 8+ seconds of movement time. Bicolor boards 10-20 of 1 color, which is very common, can easily make 6 combo with 2-3 cross in 6×5. Any cross heart player can usually combo decently while making crosses. They only problem would be the combo absorb but with some planning it is not as hard as it seems.
2 cross of light and fire only (2+ million damage each unit) 1 shot nearly every descend boss. 3 cross can 1 shot kali 50% shield with just kenshin solo damage. The damage is so big for 2 matches that you don’t need to combo for extra boost. Only time I combo with him is for x36 or stalling otherwise it’s just 2 simple match (for experienced cross player) each floor.
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great lord, I had a level 6 unevolved Kenshin on a team of not fully awakened subs (Awoken Leilan/Tsubaki/Saria/NY Leilan) and he was still doing millions in damage easily and frequently. He’s like a fire Sarasvati. I’ll pull him out whenever I want to see a bunch of large numbers
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Yeah, he has a place as a super glass cannon and will probs be used similarly to Sara =D
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Hajime 729.00 unlikely but possible on 6×5
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