I’m pretty sure there’re a lot of Fate/stay night fans are all pretty excited about this collab but to be quite honest I’m not exactly satisfied with the execution of this collab. There are a lot of things to go through so let’s get started.

As a leader

Shirou’s leader skill parameter is very powerful however it does come with a good amount of drawbacks. To use Shirou to his full potential it requires the entire team to be either / or /. It would be great if we can construct a team to utilize his leader skill to the fullest but most often we cannot fulfill that while making sure all the subs are strong. When looking at subs for Shirou, you’d definitely prioritize / or / cards, but the key point here is if you cannot find a suitable / or / sub then you should move on and decide what your team actually need. If you need a card that provide damage then make sure it has attribute. On the other hand if you need something that provides utility and you’re not expecting any damage from this card then you should definitely make sure that it has attribute. This strategy would pull out a better team rather than trying to get everything under the / / limitation and have mediocre selection of subs. The important thing to note here is you only need a certain amount of HP, ATK and RCV. These numbers may change from dungeon to dungeon and for example if I were to take a team to Alt. Arena I’d look at the highest preemptive damage, 145185 from Goemon , then attempt to have my team reach that level of HP. If that is not doable then I move down and check if I have a 35% shield and can raise the HP level to 94371 or higher, if not I move down to 50% shield and see if I can raise HP to 72593 and higher. Raising HP value beyond that makes miniscule difference since you’d mostly be looking at execution damage from spawns and those are evadable with proper planning and board management.
In terms of the parameter we wouldn’t be looking at a solid 4/324/4 all the time. On average most of the board will give you 7 combo without issue and I’d consider 256x to be the ATK multiplier we’re working with. Shirou himself also doesn’t provide much damage but under 256x we aren’t too concerned. In fact having 3 offensively oriented subs on the team should provide enough damage for a huge selection of dungeons. One thing to note is that with less amount of offensively oriented subs, you also lower the amount of latent killer you can utilize which in turn lower the flexibility of the team. With regards to HP/RCV multiplier you would just be looking to reach the HP level that the dungeon may require.
Shirou himself as leader does a few things. First off from his super awakening you can find FUA which lowers the flexibility requirement coming from leader skill, but some of the subs can provide FUA so you might not even take it. Instead you might want to take time extend. It’s a helpful awakening to have especially since Shirou doesn’t provide any and having extra time does help with reaching higher combo count. Secondly his awakening set does not provide any damage but from his stats he does provide a decent amount of HP and RCV. The high HP/RCV value under leader skill multipliers can still benefit the team greatly. Thirdly his active is pretty powerful in several ways. The active skill provides a decent boost in damage as well as securing max ATK multiplier all the time, but the most important part is that it makes VDP board with Bicolor boards active so much more consistent.

As a sub

I really wouldn’t consider him since he doesn’t provide any utility or damage. The only usage out of him would be the active but that alone is not enough to justify running him on a team.

Buffs

Leader Skill: 4x ATK for Fire Att.; 2x HP & RCV for Light Att.; 2.5x ATK when 4 or more combos up to  5x  at 9 combos
(Previously only up to 8 combos)
Awakenings: added.
Stat buff: +500 HP / +150 ATK / +120 RCV

So the first thing about this buff would be the added ATK multiplier on the leader skill. It’s not a condition that we can consistently reach but with Shirou’s active skill it is reachable. So what this buff really do is allow Shirou to output more damage on floors that require certain setup so maybe VDP with +3 combo from Shirou’s active. It can effectively alleviate the need for actual burst active for a handful amount of scenario, but in the end we’re still looking at a 256x leader in terms of consistent damage.
The added time extend is great since his role is a leader and that means the pairing Shirou will also provide another time extend so total we can have a full extra second. It makes Shirou easier to play with but to skillful players this would just be a decoration.
The added HP and RCV is great since that’s all he’ll be providing to the team. 500 HP and 120 RCV each Shirou translates to 5000 HP and 1200 RCV under limit break and leader skills. In contast the added ATK stat pretty much didn’t do anything since he had no offensive awakening to multiply the stat.

How satsifying was the buffs?

It certainly isn’t bad but Shirou was already a decent leader to begin with and there aren’t too much you can give him without making him too strong. The buffs were made mostly with the idea of making him less of an eyesore on his own team and they did that fine. So overall I’d say it’s a somewhat underwhelming buff since it didn’t really allow him to do anything that he could do already.

I wouldn’t consider a standalone double blind resist assist or a standalone double jammer resist assist to be powerful but today we’re dealing with the two combined. The enhanced wooden sword provides a huge amount of utility and flexibility in teambuilding. Namely it’s very useful in A4, A5 and AA2 due to the high amount of Jammer, Bomb, Blind and Super Blind that the dungeon offers. Aside from the resists, the active skill is also pretty applicable for most teams. It is somewhat of a reliant active as it doesn’t generate any damage on a bad board and would rely on another active to do so. It acts somewhat like a burst but it also provides great utility towards awkward spawns such as Ena . Also don’t forget that it also comes with a time extend awakening just to make life a bit easier.

Buffs

Stat buff: +500 HP / +150 ATK / +120 RCV

Just added some stats, not much to look at here.

As of Shirou

Honestly it is kind of hard for me to make a clear differentiation between which one is better solely because Shirou’s base form have potential as a leader but it’s strictly box dependent. It can range from a decent leader to a very powerful leader depending on what you have. On the other hand, the Wooden Sword provides a whole lot of utility that is usable by all teams. It is however a luxury and there are a great number of setup that will not require it to operate. In the end I’d still say the Wooden Sword is more useful but there are cases where Shirou can hold his own weight as a leader so you just have to look out for that.

Did the buff change my mind

No, not at all. You’ll still do well with Shioru even without the buff and the Wooden Sword holds this unique value that’s irreplaceable so there’s no way of making comparison here. If anything it’s still make the one that is more helpful to you which in most cases would be the Wooden Sword.

As a leader

The 35% shield from having 50% or more HP is pretty nice. It keeps you safe and is relatively easy to maintain. The only issue with it would be multi-hit attacks and that’s a mechanic that you’ll always have to watch out for. The color matching part of the leader skill is pretty amazing. One thing I really like about Saber is the fact that you have a whopping 144x ATK multiplier from just matching 3 colors. That alone is enough for a huge amount of spawns and we’re not even talking about maximum activation which caps out at 256x.
The best thing I like from Saber’s leader design is the fact that you aren’t associating VDP damage alongside combo enhances. Meaning if you want VDP damage you just make a 3×3 and if you want damage you just need to ensure combos. This is something that a good amount of the leaders don’t do. That aside, the main source of damage is still going to come from combo enhances on the subs but the VDP enabling active would be a double orb changer that includes rather than needing two actives. Overall I’d say Saber is a pretty solid leader even if you don’t have the best rainbow sub pool ever. She operates well even with tricolor boards and she can definitely bring you up to end game content once you have gathered better subs.

As a sub

In terms of farming, a double VDP card with balanced typing is pretty valuable since it will work nicely with most farming builds, note we’re not taking the super awakening here since the context here is co-op builds. On solo speed farm setups she’s even stronger having an extra VDP padded on. The only issue with her in speed farming is that she is Water Att. and GaiaDra is fairly tanky and will take reduced damage from her but it’s nothing a burst active can’t fix.

Buffs

Leader Skill: 4x ATK and reduce damage taken by 35% when above 50% HP;  3.5x  ATK when matching 3 or more colors, 4x ATK when matching 4 colors,  4.5x ATK when matching 5 colors. 
(Previously 3x ATK when matching 3 or more colors up to 4x at 4 colors. Bold parts are the changes.)
Awakening: buffed to
Stat buff: +500 HP / +250 ATK
Gained Dragon type.

Rather than the maximum multiplier increase, I’m in fact more concerned with the increase of multiplier on 3 colors. Going from 144x to 196x is about 36% increase in damage and honestly Saber would be pretty strong already if we stopped at 3 colors and never went to 5 colors. I’d go as far as saying that playing Saber as a tricolor leader is valid since tricolor have ways to generate large sum of orbs in a specific color thus generating damage that way. In fact comparing the full activation of 324x to 196x of tricolor you’d notice the extra damage is only about 65%. After factoring in the fact that we can focus our orb supply on a specific color with more ease it’s in fact a valid strategy to play Saber as a tricolor leader.
The extra time helps but it’s not that major of a change.
The added HP and ATK stats is about 625 HP and 312 ATK under limit break. They are both pretty great addition to both make her VDP damage stable and provide tankiness with the HP conditional shield.
The added Dragon type doesn’t really do much since she’s already a Balanced type. In fact if they were to push out Dragon type shield on spawns it would just make Saber worse. So this is more of a nerf rather than buff.

How satsifying was the buffs?

It is very satisfying because Saber can now be played like a completely different leader due to the low end multiplier being incredibly high for a requirement of only 3 colors. Other addition are nice but nothing too game breaking.

As a leader

From a glance Saber’s ATK multiplier isn’t really amazing especially for a rainbow type leader. She does however make it up with her own strong offensive awakenings and that’s really the saving grace of this low multiplier. Now to fully enable her we have to drop the overall HP to 50%, which is about 1.125x of the team’s HP without any multiplier, and then add the shield on top we’ll be working with roughly 2x effective HP. In terms of HP managing, Saber will require the player to know how much damage spawns will do to them in order to preserve active for the floors that are otherwise troublesome without having multiplier straight up.
Overall I just have one big issue with Saber’s leader skill archetype and that is the fact that the subpool is not mature yet. There’re currently only a handful of cards that have low HP boost awakening that also works with Saber. Aside from these you’ll end up needing to rely on combo enhance and that brings up another question: Why are we resorting to a bothersome play style if we are going to run combo enhance cards that work with other teams just fine? Low HP boost awakening is a type of awakening that provides damage without needing any combo and the fact that combo shield has been such a common occurence in the newer arenas makes me wonder why are they pushing low HP boost awakening for actual content tackling and not others such as farming.

As a sub

Saber’s sub identity sticks with her leader identity. She’s stuck with the low HP boost rainbow archetype and outside of that she’s not exactly useful unless you’re actually trying to use her nuke to kill spawns then have her provide damage. Honestly that seems far fetched but if she has any identity then she would be a sub because if you can make a good Saber Alter team then you can find a better leader that uses her just as well.

Buffs

Leader Skill: 3x ATK when below 80% HP; 1.5x all stats for Dark Att.; 3x  3.5x  ATK and reduce damage taken by 25% when matching 4 or more colors
Awakening: One buffed to
Stat buff: +100 HP / +450 ATK

The leader skill buff is pretty straight forward. It added more firepower to the team and didn’t really change how the team function that much.
The awakening change makes the team easier to play but it’s no big change either.
The additional ATK adds up to 562 under limit break. It’s a great amount of ATK added consider that she already had a huge amount of offensive power and you can still fine tune her to do more with the super awakenings.

How satsifying was the buffs?

This level of buff is well within the range of expectation. It didn’t change her identity at all but at least the buff made her better at what she’s doing and honestly this is fine considering her other form is really strong already.

I really dislike the fact that this thing has fixed 6 turn cd. It makes inheriting solely for the awakening pretty much impossible, or at least very hard to manage and most likely will be a nuisance compared to other low HP boost assists . There really isn’t much to extend on this thing aside from there’s more tools for this leader archetype.

Buffs

Stat buff: +100 HP / +450 ATK

Just stat buff, nothing to look at here.

As of Saber

For the love of god keep her in the normal form. There is pretty much no reason for anyone to make her into other forms unless they just want a new toy.

Did the buff change my mind?

Not much has changed aside from normal Saber looks even better. It just made me even more set on the normal form being better.

As a leader

The chance of at least having one part of the leader skill activation fullfilled by a natural board is relatively high so we’re pretty much approaching Rin with a consistent 25% shield up all the time. The ATK multiplier between the two condition are split quite evenly and the only way for Rin to have a relatively usable ATK multiplier is by having both activation at the same time. That’s not really an issue since we always have a shield and we can just stall until we do have a board that activates her leader skill. All looks well except her leader skill by design has some issue with FUA.
The problem with FUA and her leader skill design is that you have to dedicate 5 solely for the FUA. This wouldn’t be an issue if you had another 6 orbs of a kind laying around but when you don’t you may have to resort to an active skill. The active that one would consider in this situation is a tricolor board. Tricolor board averages at 10 orbs in each color and namely we’d be looking at . However in order for Rin to have full activatoin we need to have some and at least 6 and if we wanted to activate FUA then that’s another 5 which is a sum of 11 total. At this point I think we can reach the conclusion that there’s no consistent way to have FUA and full activation at the same time.
A smaller issue with her would be the fact that she cannot utilize bicolor boards. On the same note trying to VDP using tricolor boards are a bit risky. Yes you can attempt to fix the board by using her own active but that’s taking away 4 of the irrelevant color away which may as well kill your activation.
Overall I have to say Rin is a pretty underwhelming leader by design. She is a fun toy to play with but she does not have the flexibility that leaders need to tackle end game contents safely.

As a sub

Having to maintain HP at a high level just to provide damage isn’t really something you’d find reliable in harder contents. On teams that have 4x HP you may find her more manageable just because a single hit won’t drop your HP level straight down but aside from that I really won’t find her useful. As far as FUA goes, I wouldn’t say she’s as competitve as other better ones such as Cotton, Kyo for their strong offensive power or Hestia and to an extent, Mel for the immense healing power. Rin’s active also doesn’t provide much power with Yobi holding up a farmable 2 turn CD unlock while having a skill boost at the same time. Overall I’d say she’s not that useful, more or less replaceable by others but if you have nothing then she still works fine.

Buffs

Leader Skill: 3.5x ATK and reduce damage taken by 25% when matching Fire+Light; 5x ATK and reduce damage taken by 25% when matching 6  5  or more connected Water, Wood, Dark, Heal, Jammer, Poison, Mortal Poison or Bomb orbs

Awakening: buffed to
Stat buff: +500 HP / +250 ATK / +60 RCV

The orb count for the second part of Rin’s leader skill dropping from 6 to 5 is actually pretty incredible. First it just completely voided my argument on it not being consistent with any board when FUA is needed. Secondly it made comboing easier and is just overall a lot more consistent in terms of activation. Overall this change made her a super easy and reliable 306.25x leader.
The awakening changes makes her team easier to play with but it’s just an extra second together as leader.
The most potent part of the extra stat is probably the HP since it does addup to be about 1975 HP per Rin under limit break and the shields.

How satsifying was the buffs?

The buffs for Rin is in fact incredible. They fixed the inconsistency issue coming from design and made her a lot more consistent. Rin just went from a borderline toy to a straight up capable leader and there’s no complaining about this buff.

As of Rin

Not a diamond you’d be happy about rolling. She has great thighs though. Her thighs are great. I’m a man of culture.

Did the buff change my mind?

Totally, in fact you’d feel pretty good rolling her as long as you have some tricolor boards around.

As a leader

Gilgamesh provides tremendous amount of firepower for a 7×6 leader. The apparent issue with him is the fact that he has no defensive power. In terms of pairing you’d want something that gives defensive parameters such as HP multiplier or shields. The second issue is that to consistently navigate through a 7×6 board would actually require a good amount of movement time. This is especially true since we’re more concerned about clearing the board and not just making 8 combos. The first thing that come to mind would be Roche as she pretty much provides everything that we have asked for. Miru is a bit far fetched and harder to utilize with heart cross but also valid. Another I’d like to mention would be Christmas Romia as Gilgamesh would make the color matching less of an issue and Romia provides everything Gilgamesh would otherwise want. His active kind of has a unique usage with Sopdet . Imagine using the active for 750k damage on Sopdet then rely on the 5x ATK he has while using partial activation from your partnering leader. It’s creative but honestly far fetched as your subs would still need to be God type. So overall Gilgamesh is a pretty strong leader but we have to keep in mind that it’s a 7×6 leader nontheless and it does make some mechanics more annoying.

As a sub

Gilgamesh doesn’t provide too much as a sub. If you chose to have super combo enhance then your damage won’t be reliable unless you’re playing 7×6. On the other hand if you chose combo enhance then you’re damage is just too low to be compared to a handful of other cards. In the end he’s just not a sub.

Buffs

Stat buff: +500 HP / +250 ATK

Pity stat buff. Extra HP is nice which adds up to about 750 HP but that’s about it.

The main value coming from Illya is just the active. It’s unique but in terms of usefulness that will depend. Currently there are not many L-attack oriented teams around mainly due to the lack of distinct trait and the fact that there are not a lot of options for the leader archetype to pick subs from. For the uniqueness I’d try to get one and just wait and see what GungHo decides to do with the archetype but for the most part you will not be looking to gain value from her anytime soon.

Awakening: added.
Stat buff: +700 HP
Gained Physical type.

The buff didn’t really change much, her main role is to be inherited and aside from the occasionally more HP when base is also Light Att. there’s not much she really provide.

Shinji’s active is the shortest lock all effect that doesn’t mess up the current board. The added combo count kind of helps for those that want to gamble on bicolor board having 7 combo VDP but realistically speaking the extra combo isn’t going to help much. The leader skill multiplier is just too low to make him any relevant so he’s there really just for the short lock board active.

Awakening: added.
Stat buff: +700 HP
Gained Physical type.

The buffs are pretty irrelevant since there’re very little use case of him to begin with.

The active skill deals with hazard mechanics such as poison, mortal poison, jammer, bomb, lock, blind and super blind nicely. It offers you a new board that doesn’t gaurantee anything but for the most part you are still expecting a well distributed board. It does become worse when there are lock or hazard orb skyfall buff present and the 2x ATK burst isn’t really going to help much with it either. In the end I’d say leave the locks to L-attack and unlock actives, and leave the hazards to their respective resists.

Awakening: added.
Stat Buff: +100 HP / +200 ATK / +60 RCV
Gained Machine type.

With the potential of having double combo enhance Archer is in fact a decent choice for a sub. Especially since he provides a good amount of time extention which Red teams often have difficulties finding. Not to mention he’s also balanced type so he can be tailored accordingly.

Normally I’d rate double row changers quite valuable however with this one not so much. The main issue is with the attribute of the rows he generates. and are both popular attributes that people would invest farm teams with. Issue here is that Lancer’s active cannot work with either red farm teams or blue farm teams because it will only generate one rows under their monocolor boards . He will still work with green, light and dark farm teams but compared to red and blue, green have less resources to work with while light and dark teams are much harder to make. So in the end I’d say he’s not worth the chase especially since we’re getting another double row maker just free.

Awakening: added.
Stat buff: +350 ATK

Lancer received a decent amount of offensive power from this buff and is definitely a lot more powerful as a VDP option. You’d feel a bit better about rolling him if you didn’t have a blue VDP option to begin with but that’s about all there is to him.

For that amount of cooldown I’d rather just have a vanilla 75% shield. The only case where Berserker’s active would be better than 75% shield would be if you are at a very low HP level and have a good amount of HP pool. In that scenario you will receive a good amount of value out of his active but that is just too far fetched to be a consistent use case.

Awakening: added.
Stat buff: +700 HP

The buffs made him a powerful L-attacker but finding a team for him would still be an issue. The other issue is just that his active isn’t really dedicated to the design of L-attack so in the end he’s still a mess that doesn’t really make anything work.

I wonder if anyone’s gonna try to use Rider’s active on a Yog or Verse farm setup as a nuke and heal. That’s definitely possible and there’s no replacing her but the delay animation would still trigger me to hell and I’d honestly resort to some other actives that heals instead. The sub value for Rider does exist with 7×6 teams but aside from that she’s pretty useless. She covers damage while having FUA which is not bad the only question here is what team are you even going to put her on. In the end she’s just not gonna find a team to call home.

Awakening: added.
Stat buff: +300 HP / +50 ATK / +90 RCV

I’m actually not sure what they are trying to achieve here. The stats are all over the place and the skill boost doesn’t really make sense either. The buff is all over the place and it doesn’t get anything done. The only thing to take from here is that this is a 4 skill boost card in solo mode.

Aside from Caster we have 2 more cards that also have double column maker. If there was a build then it would’ve appeared regardless of how hard it would be to make them, there would be some JP whales that have made it. So this kind of states that we currently don’t have a good setup utilizing double column actives but Caster is setting up a good foundation for potential future setups. The double column actives are strong because they can guarantee damage over 2 turns by only matching one column each turn. It’s an active that works with match 5 or more connected orbs or 5 orbs with 1 enhanced type leader skills, aside from the leader skill it’s also usable alongside L-attack. As far as her awakening goes, she has the typing to stack the same latents so those are great and she’s not a bad pick up except there aren’t any immediate usage of her.

Awakening: added.
Stat buff: +210 RCV
Gained Healer type

One thing I want to make note at is that the killers lined up with some of the spawns in Normal Arena and in turn it generated some pretty weird setup for Normal Arena. It’s a worthwhile setup to look at if you don’t have GIGA but have Veroah and are interested in getting some fodder EXP going quickly.

Before Kirei was introduced, there was only one other board active with 2 turn haste that works with Ilmina’s leader skill. This particular active does two things: firstly it charges other actives back up and secondly it activates Ilmina’s leader skill multiplier. These tiny things can come in very important in ranking dungeons. For example back in Courage cup one of the better strategy was to make use of 2 turn haste from Christmas Sonia so we can charge up Ilmina’s active skill and use it twice. This strategy relied on the pairing leader to provide all the multipliers the team needs because Ilmina’s leader skill will not activate with Christmas Sonia’s board. Kirei will relief the stress on needing a high multiplier from the pairing leader. He does however put some stress on optimizing as the only card that wouldn’t attack while having high amount of skill boost would be Odin . Overall he might be something you want to get if you’re really into ranking and don’t want to miss out on any of the easy strategy but aside from that reason he’d just be a big waste of MP.

Taiga’s sub value is designated to heal but realistically speaking her RCV value is too low for heal orb enhance and team RCV requires the team to have some decent RCV in order to provide value so she just doesn’t have any value as a sub. Her active can buy you a few turn in stalling but there’re others ones that does the job better. In the end she is free so compared to other options she has that advantage.

Interestingly this is actually an unique combination of active skill effect. In some odd chance that some new spawn that does both that isn’t Lakshmi we might find this active useful but until then she’s not going to be that useful. The main issue is just that this active doesn’t save you in enough situations. Giving you extra time isn’t going to save anyone when the board is bad. In comparison to more useful awakening unbinds , Sakura makes most oncoming damage tankable while Ren can buy a precious turn on a good amount of spawns. In the end she’s unique and free so I’d still get her.

So his active alone brings a lot of value to farming especially to those that don’t have another double row active. Double row actives are commonly used alongside monocolor board to either make combos or make VDP boards. In case you’re wondering but here are some of the solves with this particular active: combo setup, FUA setup, VDP & SFUA setup and fast 8 combo setup. The added 200x ATK nuke can be paired alongside other nuke actives to completely bypass a floor sometimes. The use case of this won’t be common but it’s something nice to keep in mind. Another thing to keep in mind is that the attribute of the nuke will depend on the base card using the active skill. Overall as a free card he’s too good to pass on, so yes get him no matter what.

It’s been a long while since they have pushed out a capable poison type leader skill and I am excited about it. Compared to the REM cards he’s far from being strong but for a farmable card that has a fairly unique playstyle he’s not bad at all. His active is kind of a mess since it can actually place the poison orbs on the heal orbs causing no poison orbs to spawn. In turn rather than using his own active as consistent supply, he’d rely on others such as Hel . Speaking of Hel , I’d like to mention some trivial knowledge that you should know if you plan on playing around with True Assassin. Hel’s active skill converts to , it is a random conversion but it does have a mechanic of its own. The active skill will ensure there’re at least 3 of each orb when converted so in turn it will gaurantee you at least 3 each if you had 6 or more total to begin with. If you had less than 5 then the active will prioritize making first so you’ll need to make sure you have at least 6 total on board if you want to have activation for True Assassin.
Here’s another trivia: Justine & Caroline from Persona collab is the only other active skill that is the same type of skill as Hel despite its active skill phrasing like a board active. In case you wonder how it works you can just check this video.

Conclusion

This collab is kind of underwhelming, the REM line up aren’t exactly strong straight up and golds don’t hold a great deal of value. I’m mostly just concerned with the Assassin(s) since one provide great utility while the other one is a fun new toy. This is a collab you wouldn’t feel bad skipping out on since you’re really not missing out on anything important.

After buffs

I’d like to say that the buffs made the diamonds better but that’s still less than 10% of the REM and overall value is still very low and there isn’t many reason to pull this REM unless you’re just a big fan of the franchise.