Introduction

The New Year REM is returning to mark the Lunar New Year and this time, there will hopefully be no Monkeying around as this is the year of the Rooster. To mark this festive occasion, GungHo has released several new cards along with buffs to preexisting monsters.

Overall, the NY Collab is quite powerful as it does offer value at essentially every rarity bracket, but it does fall short to the standard that Bleach set. Regardless, the cards available may be of substantial value for many players and whether you choose to roll or not will come down to how much these cards can benefits your teams/box.

All players above rank 50 will receive 1 free pull on the New Year Rare Egg Machine.

Video commentary

—video goes here—

Rolls overview

New Year Rare Egg Machine Overview
8 star rolls
7 star rolls
6 star rolls
5 star rolls
4 star rolls

8 star rolls

NY Yomi

God / Balance
4,372 HP / 1,536 ATK / 205 RCV
813 Total
      

Active Skill:
Enhance all orbs
+5 seconds to orb movement time for 3 turns
8 turn Cooldown

Leader Skill:
4x ATK for matched ATT when erasing 5 orbs with 1 enhanced. 2.5x ATK & 25% damage reduction when reaching 6+ combos
100x ATK / 43.75% damage reduction
Effective: 1.78x HP / 100x ATK / 1.78x RCV

Pros	Cons
100x ATK 43.75% damage reduction  2x ATK for Yomi with 7+ combos Ample time extend Can overcome combo shields Flexible team building Some damage control	Must make 6+ combos for shield Deals 6.25x ATK to gain shield Vulnerable to binds Stalling is not as practical on fragile bosses Must have an enhanced orb Weak base active Low sub value

Impressions

New Year’s Yomi is everything I could ever want for Awoken Yomi’s  future reincarnated evolution as it preserves the fun 5o1e combo leader that is capable of dealing amazing burst damage along with defensive capabilities. NY Yomi features the new Enhanced Combo  awakening that allows them to deal 2x damage when reaching 7 or more combos. This can be viewed as a Killer awakening, but with the ability to somewhat turn on and off (skyfall permitting). This combined with 100x ATK should lead to wonderful burst damage.

In terms of activation consistency, you should always have at least a 6 combo-able board in order to proc the damage mitigation component. Achieving 6 combos will lead to a 6.25x ATK multiplier which can make stalling on fragile bosses problematic, but against higher tier content, it should not be an issue. However, once you match a 5o1e, you will unlock 16x damage for that respective colour. Keeping these two components separate yields some form of damage control, but also the capacity to deal 100x damage.

My experience with Awoken Yomi was that it would sometimes be impossible to achieve 7 combos when including a 5o1e; however, 6 combos would always be doable. Thus, NY Yomi should always be able to achieve their 100x and the limiting factor would be having sufficient light orbs. Unlike a heart cross, 5o1e are more space efficient and allow for easier matching overall.

However, NY is not without fault and her main downside is not being AS competitive with the other top tier leaders. Granted she does have an achievable multiplier from an activation point of view, but she is lacking when it comes to bind vulnerability, a weak base active, and the overarching need to have an enhanced orb.

Stating that a leader is weaker due to a vulnerability to binds holds true in today’s current meta as essentially all the strong leaders are bind immune and this dramatically changes how you team build as you no longer need to bring a hard bind clearer to circumnavigate challenging content. In addition, NY Yomi does have a somewhat lackluster active skill. The enhance component is nice, but not needed on two cards along with providing a smaller burst compared to other enhancing options available. However, it can be used to provide an enhanced orb should your light orbs be removed and your orb changers fail to produce one. This has most applications against full board poison/jammers as all the orbs become unenhanced, but this is a niche situation at best. Finally, while the damage mitigation is helpful, it may not be sufficient when compared to other heart cross leaders and you will find yourself requiring a shielding sub/inherit.

---

NY Amaterasu

God / Healer
3,821 HP / 1,011 ATK / 682 RCV
812 Total
      

Active Skill:
40% maximum HP heal
4 turn bind clear
1 turn haste
8 turn Cooldown

Leader Skill:
Increase ATK for Healers based on current HP. 4x ATK when full. Heals 10x RCV when matching orbs
16x ATK

Pros	Cons
Offensive bind clearer Devil Killer  Dual SBR  Powerful bind clearing active Can purchase for 300k MP	Lackluster leader skill 1,011 base attack Very similar to REM version Don’t purchase for 300k MP please

Impressions

NY Amaterasu is a returning 8-star roll who remains lackluster overall. She is essentially a reskinned version of her REM counterpart but trades a TPA and Skill Boost for Devil Killer  awakening. Granted this is an upgrade for the most part, but you expect more from the rarest Collab roll.

Regardless, NY Amaterasu is an offensive bind clearing option when facing devil bosses. Her defensive and utility awakenings along with high recovery will help any mono light team, but through skill inheritance assist system, you are able to bring a better body and simply inherit a bind clear. Not only will this prevent you having a bind clear on the boss (if used part way through a dungeon), but allow you to use someone with more universally offensive awakenings.

Even though NY Amaterasu is available for 300k MP, I strongly encourage you to not purchase her unless you truly love the card or simply swimming in Monster Points.

---

NY Kanna

Dragon / God
4,078 HP / 1,680 ATK / 403 RCV
878 Total
        

Active Skill:
2x ATK God & Dragon type for 1 turn
1 turn haste
10 turn Cooldown

Leader Skill:
4x ATK & 1.5x RCV for Dragon and God types. 1.5x ATK & 50% damage reduction when matching a heart cross
36x ATK / 2.25x RCV / 75% damage reduction

Pros	Cons
4x TPA Bind Immune Leadership potential Amazing sub for Myr & Ra Dragon	Lackluster active

Impressions

NY Kanna will be one of the most coveted cards from this Collab REM. Not only is she considered a key component for Ra Dragon  teams as she can be used interchangeably with the REM version, but has will also see popularity on hybrid/TPA Myr  teams.

The core Ra Dragon team utilizes Kanna for her bind immunity and massive spike damage potential through 4 TPA awakenings. While NY Kanna has slightly higher weighted stats than her GFE counterpart, the fire sub typing may mitigate the gains compared to light. Regardless, the difference is small and mostly comes down to either a Skill Boost  or Time Extend  awakening. This could be equated to either a player skill issue or which Gemstone you end up using, but again the differences are small.

In regards to a TPA Myr team, Kanna is the best fit as she provides an incredible amount of damage from a single heart cross and TPA match. This will allow you to sweep through trash floors with ease along with reducing the number of orbs required for activation.

Despite all of these benefits, NY Kanna’s main drawback is a lackluster active. Essentially every damage enhance is a better option and the lengthy 10 turn cooldown can make inheriting over problematic.

Stepping outside of a sub role, NY Kanna is capable of forming a respectable leader. Granted her multiplier is lower than Awoken Izanagi  and Myr, NY Kanna comes ready to use as there is no evolution required along with being bind immune compared to Izanagi.

7 star rolls

NY Horus

God / Attacker
3,255 HP / 1,874 ATK / 380 RCV
750 Total
   

Active Skill:
Enhance all orbs but water
1 turn haste
7 turn Cooldown

Leader Skill:
4x ATK when matching 4 colours. 4.5x ATK with 5. 2.5x ATK when matching 5o1e for that colour
126.56x ATK

Pros	Cons
126.56x ATK Coop Boost  Best Leader Skill name in the game Year of the Rooster	Less reliable than NY Yomi Hard to activate Fragile as no HP/RCV Lackluster active Lacks sub potential

Impressions

NY Horus is another Glass Cannon leader amidst a sea of durable teams. To further complicate the issue, NY Horus has a challenging activation requirement as you have to match all 5 attributes along with a 5o1e that is ideally fire. This will greatly lower consistency as you have to deal with orb troll on two fronts.

Granted you would be able to deal wonderful burst damage, but the challenging activation requirement will be off putting for most players as you will be better served with nearly any other glass cannon leader.

As a sub, NY Horus could be potentially valuable due to his ability to guarantee all fire orbs come enhanced, but hardly any fire team has that requirement. Perhaps if Horus had a stronger active skill he would see more usage as the Coop boost does add significant buik, but is less ideal than those with Killer awakenings for farming content. Perhaps the dual fire and light enhance could have some merits on Tsubaki  teams, but the light is usually not required and underutilized when using Dragon Killer Tsubakis . However, he can also make a niche inherit on other teams if you lack an Awoken Yomi.

As a parting note, we should all admire the amazing translation for NY Horus’s leader skill:

---

NY Yamato

God / Dragon
3,473 HP / 1,301 ATK / 428 RCV
750 Total
       

Active Skill:
 
 
Enhance heal orbs
8 turn Cooldown

Leader Skill:
1.5x ATK/RCV Dragons. 2x ATK when clearing 4 Fire or Light orbs. 4x with 8+ connected
36x ATK / 2.25x

Pros	Cons
3 Skill Boosts  Coop Boost  Dragon Killer  Wonderful farming sub Sexier Yamato	One fire row  Lower value in solo

Impressions

New Year’s Yamato possesses the same active skill as his REM counterpart, but has significantly different awakenings. NY Yamato trades a second and third row for a Coop Boost and Dragon Killer awakening. While this lowers their everyday solo usage on row teams, it significantly opens up their role as a farming sub.

Generally speaking, farming teams are coop based (thus gaining 50% more stats) and amusingly, many high end content are dragon heavy. All of this when paired with Yamamoto’s  speed, NY Yamato has found a happy home. In addition, these types of teams require numerous skill boosts to have their active skills ready in time and the passive damage cuts down on either active skill usage or combos required to sweep a floor.

However, NY Yamato loses steam when taken out of this context as their base stats are somewhat low along with lacking the three fire rows of the REM version.

6 star rolls

NY Leilan
 
God / Dragon
3,335 HP / 1,577 ATK / 302 RCV
750 Total
    
   

Active Skill:
All    
8 turn Cooldown

Leader Skill:
3.5x ATK matching any 3 of Fire, Wood, Light, or Heal. 2x ATK when matching 5o1e
49x ATK

Pros	Cons
Colour swap gives flexibility Flexible inherit with stat buff Ilm  & Minerva  sub Synergy with Silk	No SBR  on fire form Does not make hearts No haste Lower value on Krishna

Impressions

The seasonal Chinese Celestials have historically had mediocre value as were always competing in a heart cross meta with a full board changer that failed to produce hearts along with any collateral benefit. However, there has been a significant push towards Fire/Light teams through Ilm and Minerva.

Ilm and Minerva teams require both fire and light orbs for activation and NY Leilan fits in beautifully. In addition, Leilan’s colour swap allows you to build either a fire or light team more efficiently along with providing 100% orb enhancement. This helps diversify your damage as these teams tend to stack rows. In addition, the orb enhances are beneficial on Tsubaki  teams.

However, with all that being said, NY Leilan has diminished value on Krishna teams due to redundancy of so many orb enhances. Krishna teams want to push rows as dual leaders already provide 10 enhanced fire orb awakenings.

Lastly, I want to point out that with the changes to Skill Inheritance and the assistant card transferring stats on same primary links, the choice of Fire or Light is beneficial.

5 star rolls

NY Spica

Machine / God
3,220 HP / 1,585 ATK / 333 RCV
750 Total
        

Active Skill:
Left Column  
Right Column 
1 turn haste
8 turn Cooldown

Leader Skill:
1.3x ATK & RCV for God & Machine types. 5x ATK for 5o1e
42.25x ATK / 1.69x RCV

Pros	Cons
Active helps 5o1e teams Dual SBR Modest leader Cute	Split offensive awakenings Hard to find an effective home Rarely need both colours

Impressions

NY Spica is certainly cute and follows a similar pattern to Christmas Castor & Pollux  in that they have a dual colour generating active along with orb enhancers. Presently speaking, the only leader who can make use of both of these elements effectively is Awoken Apollo , but he is by no means a popular leader. As such, we need to find viability for NY Spica and generally speaking, 5o1e teams can make the most of the dual columns.

NY Yomi is currently the strongest light (and wood) 5o1e leader and the ability to instantly have your connected 5 ready made can cut down on time spent puzzling allow you to focus on your other combos. However, you must also be careful that you do not overwrite too many orbs and prevent yourself from achieving 6+ combos (rare situation, but should be aware).

As an inherit, Spica has less value than Castor & Pollux as the duo could at least be used on a Yomi Dragon team, but wood lacks as powerful of a 5o1e leader.

---

NY Mitsuki

Healer / Attacker
2,124 HP / 1,379 ATK / 592 RCV
685 Total
    

Active Skill:
   
8 turn Cooldown

Leader Skill:
2.5x HP for Healers. 3x ATK when matching 6+ linked heal orbd
6.25x HP / 9x ATK

Pros	Cons
Machine Killer	Low base stats Lackluster active Low value if no machines

Impressions

NY Mitsuki can at best be a situational sub for Xiang Mei  or a niche card when playing through a machine heavy dungeon. Outside of these two instances, she is an awkward monster. Her weighted stats make it challenging to justify her usage and her longer cooldown means it is harder to inherit a more powerful active skill.

---

NY Hanzo

Attacker / Devil
2,089 HP / 1,898 ATK / 480 RCV
749 Total
  

Active Skill:
  
5 turn Cooldown

Leader Skill:
1.5x HP & RCV, 2x ATK for Attackers
2.25x HP / 4x ATK / 2.25x RCV

Pros	Cons
Rare fire to light active Dragon Killer  Powerful farming card	Lesser Wedding Akechi  active

Impressions

Killer awakenings enable what would normally be an average card situational greatness as they can comprise key components to farming teams. Being able to unconditionally deal 3x damage to a boss greatly improves clear times and consistency and all of this applies to NY Hanzo. Dragon Killer is relatively rare for Light and this is paired with the rarely seen fire to light orb changer. Granted this does compete with the superior Wedding Akechi, but that he is a rare Collab roll and few people actually have him.

By possessing a fire to light active, you are able to beautifully combo with Saria  to form a 2/3 light, 1/3 heart board. This can be key when playing through challenging content as you can remove the need to bring a burst active.

Overall, I’d say NY Hanzo has more value than most of the other seasonal ninjas.

4 star rolls

None of the following 4-star monsters possess an evolution and are not able to be used as assistants via Skill Inheritance.

NY Tengu

Physical / Devil
4,126 HP / 1317 ATK / 0 RCV
676 Total
   

Active Skill:
Switch places with your leader. Use again to swap back
4 turn Cooldown

Pros	Cons
4 Skill Boosts  4 turn active cooldown Avoids dark binds Light sub colour Strongest 4-star roll from NY	Must love farming

Impressions

NY Tengu is nearly identical to his farmable cousin  as both possess the crucial 4 Skill Boosts along with single SBR and 4 turn base cooldown. All of this translates into a key farming sub as you are able to have all your required actives and inherits ready in time. With a 4 turn base cooldown, you are easily able to inherit an active skill of your choice to help counter the various dungeon mechanics.

The marginal benefits over the farmable version are slight, but worth noting. By swapping the dark for light sub colour, you can open up new team building compositions for all attribute dungeons along with avoiding the dark bind preemptives (such as floor 1 in Special Descend Rush). In addition, you are able to still use two Tengus in No Dupes restrictions as they are different cards.

Overall, the benefits are small, but you should keep duplicates of NY Tengu if you ever consider farming content in the future.

---

NY Kaguya-Hime

Healer / God
2,195 HP / 1,409 ATK / 623 RCV
709 Total
      

Active Skill:
3   
4 turn Cooldown

Pros	Cons
4 dark resists Short base cooldown	Underwhelming overall

Impressions

NY Kaguya-Hime is an underwhelming card in this day and age. Outside of the situational 20% dark damage reduction, she simply does not offer very much. Ariel  does everything better outside the passive damage reduction and Ana Valkyrie  is a stronger farmable monster.

Damage reduction is valuable, but has diminished returns in a heart cross meta along with teams having significant HP/RCV multipliers.

---

NY Medjedra

God / Balance
2,723 HP / 1,358 ATK / 371 RCV
670 Total
      

Active Skill:
Reduce damage by 50% for 1 turn
1.5x ATK Balance for 1 turn
8 turn Cooldown

Pros	Cons
5 orb enhances	Lacks laser beams and viability

Impressions

NY Medjedra could have been significantly stronger if their base active skill was shorter in order to better inherit something over top. However, that is not the case and with an 8 turn cooldown, it can be challenging to accommodate considering the base stats are quite low.

Perhaps the team that could potentially find the most relevance would be Acala  who can only push her already high damage output via orb enhances with the shield providing niche value.

---

NY Sandalphon

God / Healer
2,445 HP / 1,207 ATK / 555 RCV
671 Total
 

Active Skill:
2x ATK for Healers for 2 turns
35% damage reduction for 2 turns
14 turn Cooldown

Pros	Cons
Offensive awakenings	Awkward active skill No Skill Boost/SBR 50% bind immunity

Impressions

NY Sandalphon is simply in an awkward place presently speaking as he does nothing well. The two turns of damage enhance is alright along with the 35% damage reduction shield. However, neither of these two components excel in their respective categories and essentially add on additional turns to the cooldown.

Perhaps if they gained full bind immunity they could have more value, but for now it is mostly a sad silver.

NY Jeanne d’Arc

Dragon / Attacker
3,002 HP / 1,556 ATK / 262 RCV
695 Total
       

Active Skill:
Light attack of 10x your ATK to all enemies
2x RCV for 2 turns
5 turn Cooldown

Pros	Cons
6 auto heals	6 auto heals Lackluster active

Impressions

NY Jeanne d’Arc is the newest four star to be added into the NY Collab, but she is almost pointless. You would think a newer card would be positioned well or at least a bit better in the current meta, but Jeanne d’Arc does not do really anything. 6 auto heals is a little funny to look at, but then you realize it will become a waste of 9 Tamadras to unlock.

Maybe you can semi justify the 4,800 worth of healing in the future when teams have poor RCV and larger HP pools, but not with a card like Jeanne d’Arc.

---

Conclusion

The New Year Collab REM is quite powerful as it offers value at all level of rarity. It may not be as powerful or game breaking as Bleach, but this is still a respectable Collab to roll in. Perhaps the main drawback is a lack of outstanding silvers as Tengu is nice, but only a few players will gain true value from it.

However, one thing you have to take into consideration is the roll rates if you are chasing the elusive 8-stars as they will have an even lower hit rate than the top prizes from Bleach.

What do you think about the New Year REM and how much do you plan on rolling?

Happy Puzzling!