Introduction

PAD Cross has finally arrived in North America to celebrate the Puzzle and Dragons Anime that can be found somewhere on the internet. Hopefully people are not too Cross about the delay in gaining these new evolutions. Thankfully, unlike other Collabs, PAD Cross does not involve an extra REM to roll from. Instead, it provides ultimate evolution options for some existing farmable and regular REM cards. This is fantastic as players do not have to spend additional magic stones and may already own some of the required cards from Godfest rolls. None of these evolutions are mandatory, but give players the option to modify some of their favourite cards.

Video commentary

New REM evolutions

Ana Typhon

Dragon / Balance
        

Active Skill
All     
2 turn haste
13 turn CD

Leader Skill
1.35x HP / ATK for Dragon and Balance type. 6x ATK and 35% damage reduction when forming a heart cross.
1.82x HP / 65.61x ATK / 57.75% damage reduction

Typhon was once a sculpted ab warrior who could inspire fear into the heart of his enemies by matching heart orbs. Unfortunately, since we are playing Puzzle and Waifus, he has been converted into a pretty girl in his (her?) newest incarnation through PAD cross. Ana Typhon gains an additional 200 HP and 50 ATK and an improved leader skill that joins the heart-cross meta. You are capable of forming a 1.82x HP / 65.61x ATK / 57.75% damage reduction team while prioritizing Dragon and Balance types (otherwise you only gain 36x ATK and 57.75% damage reduction). You can get away with using some non-dragons/balance types if they bring valuable stats/actives, but you will be at a slight disadvantage.

Ana Typhon’s leadership potential is quite powerful as you are bind immune with the devil killer awakening and posses a reasonable board changer that creates fire, water, dark, and heart orbs along with two turns of haste. Unfortunately, this active is at the mercy of RNG so you may need to bring a back up active to ensure you are able to form a dark row and heart cross. In addition, the lengthy cooldown makes it challenging to inherit a stronger active as you may be waiting too long. The cooldown was actually increased by 3 turns due to the additional turn of haste. Another drawback to using Ana Typhon as a leader is a lack of time extends. Forming a heart cross is challenging and the difficulty only rises when you must also form a dark row.

You should not hesitate to evolve your Typhon into Ana Typhon as it is a stat upgrade, active shift, and a leader skill improvement should you wish to join the heart-cross meta. You may find it challenging to use him/her due to the lack of time to move orbs, but with enough practice, you should be able to tackle plenty of high end content.

---

Ace Bastet

God / Devil
     

Active Skill
Mass attack for 3 turns
Reduce enemy defense by 50% for 3 turns
6 turn CD

Leader Skill
2x ATK with 4+ combos, max 8x at 10. 1.5x ATK with 3+ wood combos
144x ATK

Awoken Bastet  was once a top tier leader as you could easily capitalize on the bountiful wood TPA  cards to deal spectacular damage (at the time) with relative ease. Unfortunately, powercreep has not been kind as new leaders began to gain higher multiplier for less effort along with augmented defensive stats. This left Bastet under-used and sidelined for many players. However, with the introduction of Ace Bastet, you are now catapulted to a 144x ATK with 10 combos and 3+ being wood. This is challenging to achieve, but thankfully, her leader skill scales with 4+ combos so you have a  certain degree of damage control and flexibility.

A 144x ATK will somewhat place her into the glass-cannon category as she has no defensive components. However, we are experiencing a golden age of glass-cannon leaders who have both a higher multiplier and easier activation clause. This is partially due to the inconsistency in hitting 10 combos and the inability to form rows or stack TPA as efficiently. Thus, I foresee her not seeing much use and the modification to the active skill is not strong enough as a 50% defense break is not going to help very much against PreDRAs .

However, with all that being said, Ace Bastet may find uses as a sub on mono wood teams by acting as a base for skill inheritance. The god killer awakening along with ample time extend may make her a desirable choice. Furthermore, her evolution is relatively easy as it only requires basic evolution materials and no descend bosses. Sadly, I still prefer the original Awoken Best Cat art.

---

Ana Ceres

God / Healer
 

Active Skill
Full HP heal and bind recovery
1 turn haste
12 turn CD

Leader Skill
1.5x ATK for clearing each wood or light in a cross (max 3 on a 6×5 board). 4x ATK when wood and light attack as the same time
182.25x ATK

Ceres, whether Awoken or non-Awoken was seldom used as there are better bind clearing options and the main attraction was her non-awoken forms for their full HP heal on Machine Zeus/Hera teams. However, with the introduction of Ana Ceres, players have a new option for wood bind clearing. One of the main problems with the other Ceres evolutions was a lack of offensive awakenings as it essentially makes them a “dead-weight” sub as their only contribution is the bind clear (this was changed with the additional killer awakenings, but does not help Awoken). Thankfully, Anna Ceres boasts both Devil and Dragon killer awakenings which means she can deal 3x to those types of bosses and 9x if they have both.

Compared to G/L or G/D Ceres active, you are trading 2 turns of cooldown for a single turn of haste, but you have a shorter base cooldown. Unfortunately, you will be forced to use Pys to complete 4 skill ups so you have to determine what is easier/feasible for yourself.

However, many people will be eyeing the new leader skill as Ana Ceres a hard hitting colour cross leader. You gain 36x ATK for a single cross and wood/light match and can quickly ramp up to 182.25x ATK. Unfortunately, Ana Ceres has no orb generating active nor time extend awakenings. Cross teams are heavily reliant on additional time to move orbs and Ceres will be no exception. Furthermore, she will feel rather underwhelming when compared to Kenshin  and while 182x ATK is a lot, it may feel lackluster with a low combo count and few enhanced orb awakenings.

Overall, Ana Ceres is an interesting upgrade to the existing G/L Ceres as you are resetting the skill ups on the active skill. She makes for a fun, albeit inconsistent leader who will most likely not see too much playtime. Finally, G/D Ceres is the prettiest of them all.

---

Ace Horus

God / Attacker
   

Active Skill
       
8 turn CD

Leader Skill
4x ATK when matching 4 colours. 6x ATK when 5 colours. 2x RCV for God & Attackers
36x ATK / 4x RCV

I think Ace Horus is doing Falcon Kick (I prefer Punch), but regardless, the hottest chicken in PAD has a new evolution that dramatically increases his sub potential. Awoken Horus was been quite lackluster for a very long time as his multiplier has always been on the lower end because you have the option of matching 4/5 elements. Furthermore, with the advent of super chicken (Ra Dragon ) regular rainbow teams could not compete. Thus, Horus was somewhat forgotten outside of early/mid game content as his active had very little value as a sub or as an assistant for skill inheritance.

Thankfully, with the introduction of Ace Horus, players now have the ability to create a full board changer that is akin to Light Kali  with the additional fire orb enhance and 1 extra turn of cooldown. This is an improvement for Horus, but unfortunately, Light Kali-style actives are not as in demand due to no heart orb generation. Regardless, it does give various teams a new board changer and can also act as an assistant via Skill Inheritance.

New farmable evolutions

Ana Valkyrie

Healer / God / Attacker
  

Active Skill


6 turn CD

Leader Skill
3x ATK for Healer and God types. 2x ATK with 3+ light combos
36x ATK

Valkyrie has always been known for having one of the longest evolution trees in the game and she continues to hold that crown with an ultimate of an ultimate of another ultimate evolution! She was always considered the best (and prettiest) of all the heart breakers, but had begun to fall out of favour partially due to her primary teams losing viability along with the heart-cross meta taking over. However, with this new evolution, Ana Valkyrie comes with augmented stats along with an upgraded active.

Ana Valkyrie’s new active has to be reskilled up with Shynpy, but will now allow players to convert heart orbs into light along with enhancing all of them. This is quite powerful for only a 6 turn cooldown, but unfortunately cannot be used as an assistant via skill inheritance. However, by packaging two abilities into one, you will be saving sub/active slots and Ana Valkyrie has strong weighted stats and awakenings so there should be no problem with using her as a sub.

Perhaps the main drawback of Ana Valkyrie is a lack of potent teams you can use her on. With Myr  and full rainbow teams dominating the light scene, it leaves little room to use Ana Valkyrie effectively. Regardless, you should not hesitate to at least acquire the evolution materials and make the change if a new leader is released.

---

Ace Zeus

Balance / God
   

Active Skill
35% Gravity
1.5x ATK for God types
27 turn CD

Leader Skill
3x ATK when HP is full
16x ATK

I spent a good 5 minutes uncontrollably giggling at the artwork for Ace Zeus. I cannot decide whether the giant Zeus head, funky angel wings, or the giant lightning palm is most comical, but the entire package is simply hilarious. Unfortunately, the joy and jokes end when trying to find the viability of Ace Zeus. Regular Zeus had his peak during the release of Mythical Friday dungeon years ago, but even then his uses were niche at best. This trend continues due to the fact that when max skilled, you are still 27 turns for a 35% gravity and 1.5x God enhance. This will prove to be very difficult to work around as that is an eternity of stalling required along with poor awakenings. Will mostly be an amusing trophy card.

Conclusion

The PAD Cross evolutions provide additional value to already existing cards. This is wonderful as you do not need to spend additional magic stones as you may already own some of the cards from previous Godfest pulls. Even if you are on the fence about using the Ace evolutions, you should still acquire the required evolution materials as you may find a use in the future (just make sure you carefully follow the evolution tree).

Who are you most excited for and how do you plan on using them?

Happy Puzzling!