Othin

Shura GHB next month is still a possibility, given that he and Castor could have different bow colors. I really hope April isn't another double-alt month. But it'll be interesting to see how they handle the Fallen banner in May.

Argh. Gaiden wasn't a one-off, this is another banner with only three new characters. Caeda looks surprisingly like Lucina here.

Sylvain's weapon certainly portrays him as stopping to make out with one of your other units before running off to stab something.

Damn, one of the ones I already have. Maybe I can at least get Alear and Claude from the banner.

Sylvain finally gets a non-demote version, complete with bonuses from finding one of your units to have a fling with. Lack of Karel is disappointing, but Framme at least offers a newcomer.

I'm interested in this math!

Yeah, that was quite a surprise. I don't know whether to expect that to count for this book or not.

I hope the next "new unit type" is combining one or more existing special unit types like Rearmed and Attuned with Ascended Heroes. We already have more than we need, it's so silly that the number keeps increasing.

Aww. I really wanted Gullveig. Alear and Claude are the two remaining units I'm missing, so I guess I'll switch to Alear.

Huh, so as a result the Jugdral path has had the only 5* first-tier for two years in a row. The third set also had just one, but that was Berkut for Archanea+Valentia. Oddly, they did have at least one qualifying unit in the form of Halloween Xane - but I guess that would have left them without a Valentia character?

According to this chart, the orb income for the current calendar "month" is about 321. We can also look for posts like this for previous posts for more data: for example, the Mar-April calendar last year covered about 311 orbs for the month. At a glance at a number of others, it looks like the average is still 300+.

New Divine Code lists are up. Winter BK is at 1200, Brave Corrin and Anniversary Hector are each at 1600, and all six paths have a Rearmed Hero at the end. Wild.

Legendary Marth, Legendary Micaiah, and Mythic Altina all introduced three prfs, even though some of those prfs have reappeared on later units. But it's a rare occurrence, and none of them fit into existing inheritable skill patterns like Dragon's Roar does.

There's also the picnic theme they used for the first April banner. That month seems solidly booked these days, but it could work just fine for March.

I already have Edelgard, Peony, and Dimitri, and the first two of those are facing each other, so I'm going Gullveig.

If we do get Awakening, Nah alluded to the possibility of Nowi joining the spring festival a few years ago.

Now I'm curious about the game distribution of past spring banners. 2017: 2 Awakening, 2 Fates 2018: 2 Heroes, 1 Archanea, 1 Fates 2019: 3 Heroes, 1 Archanea, 1 Sacred 2020: 1 Archanea, 5 Binding 2021: 1 Archanea, 2 Sacred, 3 Awakening 2022: 1 Archanea, 3 Valentia, 2 Awakening 2023: 2 Heroes, 1 Archanea, 1 Blazing, 2 Three Houses Totals: 7 Heroes, 6 Archanea, 3 Valentia, 5 Binding, 1 Blazing, 3 Sacred, 7 Awakening, 3 Fates, 2 Three Houses Jugdral, Tellius, and Engage have not gotten any spring presence. Jugdral hasn't been tending to show up on silly seasonal themes, but Tellius and Engage may be ones they want to explore, as well as more Three Houses.

Fascinating approach, and I guess we can expect the Solm banner to do the same thing. We finally have Arcane weapons for all the launch weapon types! Also I'm glad I was right about Rosado not being the demote. Mauvier seems a bit squandered as a GHB, but maybe he'll get a cool prf.

I'd also like to see her with Mani Katti, but yeah, Engage suggests an Emblem Lyn is not likely to go that route.

Huh, we're up to Paralogue 95 now. July should mark #100.

The ones I already have are Edelgard, Peony, and Dimitri, so if those are the matchups, I'm going Gullveig.

According to the wiki, Thite>Thea happened 7 years ago when Heroes launched, while Ulster>Scathach happened three and a half years ago in the Aug 2020 update. Yulia and Jubelo getting a fix would be nice, and if they do make them and Cecil the main pool units, I think it'd be really odd to not have Lorenz as the GHB.

Hmm. The capturable bosses will probably be GHBs, and while I've been expecting Shura to be the next Fates GHB, he could very well be on the banner instead.

CYL8 won't influence any banners anytime soon, but I doubt it's the only popularity metric IS uses. I'd be willing to bet that they do smaller-scale data gathering throughout the year, and the CYL8 results can probably give us some idea of what that previous data might have looked like. As for gender, the banner shouldn't exactly be short on women, and Rosado might be pretty enough to further help his chances. TIL Engage has a sword/lance variation of the Hero class.

That makes sense. I never actually played Engage, so I'm not as familiar with its progression. Hmm. Rosado being a demote would surprise me - he seems quite popular, and looking to CYL8 results, he outscored Goldmary there. Archanea's roster doesn't have a ton of standouts left, but Xane has a solid CYL lead, and Lorenz could make for a good GHB. The others with 100+ votes on CYL8 (but all below 200) are, in order: Arlen, Etzel, Midia, Yuliya, Castor, Wendell, Radd, Jubelo, and Cecil. For Fates, Scarlet, Mozu, Mitama, and Shura all outscored any of the Archanea candidates, and I'd bet on getting 2-3 of those this spring. Others with 100+ votes are Hisame, Izana, Hayato, Sophie, Layla, Candace, Yukimura, Haitaka, and Anna.