Welcome back to another New School Year event! Historically, these have been pretty mixed bags – on one hand, units like Thunderbird, Musashi, and Ose have all been introduced in past New School gachas, but on the other, so have units like Oz and Avarga.

Let’s take a look and see if this gacha is as variable. Here’s the tl;dr:

New Units Self-sacrificing disabling support Strong offensive support to one lucky unit on your team – at the cost of their health Offensive powerhouse that doesn’t like to be hit Mixed support that wants to keep your team almost dead No new AR cards this time round – maybe we’ll see some in part 2?

The fourth of the Hakkenshi to appear in Housamo, Tanetomo brings some strong support abilities to the table – Charm at 50% (60% with Glint) coupled with Taunt makes for a powerful combination of abilities that should lock down a good number of enemies for your team to finish off.

Healing on a slash range to allies in front of him is a nice bonus, but not super reliable. Combined with Blessing from his LB2, you can expect some healing from him, but probably not enough to keep your team alive (also note that the two skills have different ranges – you can’t get both on the same ally!).

He also brings some minor offensive support in the form of Vigour, though his 3★ will have to choose between giving this buff or hitting the enemies.

His LB3 is a bit unexciting, really – suppressing enemy charge skills comes into play pretty rarely for me to value it on a team.

His 4★, sporting access to Bind, a better heal, and Tenacity to allies, will generally make things a bit smoother for your team.

Tanetomo’s durability is quite lacking, relying largely on his Valiant attribute to stay alive. Either bring another defensive support, or plan to lose him in the first few phases of a fight.

Countdown on a CS is interesting (and we’ll see it again later) – though 20k HP reduction over 2 turns (assuming level 1 here) isn’t all that exciting when we now have units that can readily hit 1 million+ damage, combining it with a skill that disables enemies (Charm) is almost a free kill for no cost. This, again, means your team has plenty of space to deal with other threats on the board.

That’s a lot of offensive buffing.

I think Leanan Sidhe is the first None-type unit that I’ve actually had a positive initial impression – Vigour and Limit (with Glint thrown in) for a cost of 300HP is a potent combination (plus, a thematic win, which always gains points in my book). Combined, even at full HP, gives an attack multiplier of 4.8x, which is almost Crit+ (5x).

Her 4★ takes this even further, with Ardour and Arousal acting as CP accelerants (as well as a direct boost from her LB3) in addition to more damage – there aren’t many units that can’t act as primary damage dealers with 3 offensive boosts behind them.

I am a big fan of her omnidirectional movement increase on her 4★ – until we get the ability to lay out how our teams start fights, additional horizontal movement is crucial for getting set up.

She brings decent self-healing to the table, though her durability is otherwise limited – largely, she’s relying on whoever she’s boosting to clear out any threats.

Her CS is almost always going to be appreciated, as she will have done a decent chunk of damage to her supported unit. Even more damage in the form of Crit seems almost unnecessary at this point.

I’m not entirely sure what the point of Darkness is on her CS (though it’s not unwelcome!).

Wouldn’t be a Housamo gacha without some new names that I need to be careful to spell properly (edit: of course, his is the one I actually get wrong – thanks /u/xOnlyShots for pointing this out).

Cthugha is pretty straightforward – he gets a stack of buffs (both offensive and defensive) when he appears, and loses them when he gets hit. To get them back, he needs to receive other buffs.

As simple as this mechanic is, it’s strong – Brawn and Adamantine are both solid, as well as relatively uncommon (though, admittedly, Adamantine is less useful when you lose it on getting hit). Throw Rage into the mix, and Cthugha will be putting out a good chunk of damage by himself.

Burn plays nicely into his Charge skill, essentially acting like an additional damage boost for it.

His pair of skills that trigger when he leaves the battlefield are… spicy, for lack of a better word. 5k HP reduction (or 10k, on his 5★) and Burn to enemies is a nice bonus, but 1k HP reduction and Burn to his allies has the potential to wreck you if you’re unprepared for it. Take care with him, I guess?

His 5★, doubling down on both offensive and defensive buffs, will be a fantastic damage-dealer for many teams. Stack buffs on him when his charge skill comes up for glorious results.

Leanan Sidhe, if you happen to pull her too, will make a great pairing for this guy (he even mitigates her HP loss!).

Updated note: Remove Buff does not count as a debuff for the purposes of triggering Rage from his LB3, but he shouldn’t be hindered by this too much – there are plenty of sources of debuffs available.

I was a little bit disappointed when I read Horus’ kit (with the added sting that Horus is one of my favourite mythological figures).

Having considered his skillset some more, I am no longer disappointed (though his 3★ is very limited). I’m going to talk about his 5★ first.

Horus is a frontline support that aims to get the most out of Limit – this means keeping your team as close to 0 HP as possible, while keeping them free of any debuffs.

There are a couple of components to this.

The first is Guts, which Horus can apply consistently every even turn.

The second is Remove Debuff, which relies on Horus himself receiving buffs – fortunately, he has access to 3 when he moves, not including Guts or Protection on Phase Start.

Finally, he needs to consistently apply Limit – I’d be a bit surprised if he couldn’t do this, but we have seen stranger things happen. Fortunately for us, he has it readily available.

What this (hopefully) means is that any team with Horus will wind up working better the longer the fight drags on. It is a little bit of a risk/reward playstyle (you are planning on your team being almost dead!), but it’ll be very effective if you can pull it off.

His LB2 plays into this a bit as well: to get down to low health, you’re going to need to take some damage – so why not punish the enemy for it?

His CS is basically a death sentence for the first two enemy rows – particularly effective on wide maps, but valuable in standard ones too.

Now, the less fun part: his 3★ is basically hamstrung in every part of his kit. Lacking all of his self-buffing capability means he’ll need to rely on other units to trigger his debuff removal, and his Guts and Limit trigger chances are both reduced.

That said, his CS is still brutal on standard-width maps, and he still has a solid chance of triggering his Guts/Limit combo – for a 3★ unit, he can still bring good value to a team.

There we have it! Though the variance in past New School Year events was really high, the strength of these new units seems pretty consistent across the board – I certainly wouldn’t be mad to roll either of the 4★ units, and both of the 5★ will certainly live up to standards.

Good luck to those rolling!