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Saikyo Cardfighter R

Cheerfully Etoile, Olyvia  So once this week's over the boss is off driving around...somewhere, which means odds are he won't be around to upload one of my ramblings disguised as professional journalism either. But anyway. Olyvia here gains 5k during your turn for every face-up School Etoile Olyvia in your G Zone. Her second skill activates whenever you Stride into G4 Olyvia: look at the top 7 cards of your deck, and if all of them have different names, add one of them to your hand, another to the soul, and shuffle the rest back into your deck.  Ah, what a pain in the ass. Having to have different Perfect Guards and so many triggers with different names. But at least it isn't Mystery Flare levels of unrealistic. Having said that I do not appreciate having to spread Grade 2s, 3s and 1s so thin for this to be consistent (because if you're running a deck around this lady you run 4 of her of course, idiot), and can you really get away with less copies of Shandi...?  No. You can do better. Grade 3 Spica is more relevant to your needs paired with Lauris. Will Olyvia do better with Lauris? Probably. Will Lauris do better with Olyvia? Not really. So there you have it.  2.5/5

Winston Fairwinds

Grade 3 Olyvia is a gimmick that can definitely work, but a gimmick nonetheless. Olyvia's continuous power from her top skill has less fuss than G3 Lauris's GB2 effect, but Olyvia only gives herself power and not your rearguards, and when you're trying to push for game, you might want more power on your rearguards in case your opponent has a spare PG lying around. Now, for the bottom effect that's pretty polarizing. You get nothing for striding into anything that's not G4 Olyvia, but considering she's your pressure and finisher, that ain't a huge negative. Since you call 2 and sink a card from your hand into the soul, you're basically using G3 Lauris's on-stride effect (a hard +1) without using a counterblast or risking drawing into a trigger At first, you might think that Olyvia makes your deck inconsistent because you can't really run 3-4 copies of any unit and also rely on G3 Olyvia's on-stride effect with high probability. However, when you look at Bermuda's card pool, most of your cards achieve the same effect, for example: Girl's Rock, Rio; Duo Falling Heart, Quancy; and Ideal Walking Weather, Emilia. Hell, Magical Yell, Nina and Duo Clear Parasol, Kura are the same damn card. Furthermore, you'd just run triggers of all different names to make your ratio of success pretty high. But here's the kicker: as far as competitive play goes, you DO have to run 3 or 4 copies of certain units. Specifically, Emilia (because Resist is too useful to run less than 3), and to a lesser extent, G2 Spica, Shandee (your stride fodder), and Lauis's crit trigger. I bring up Emilia specifically because you want 3 copies against all the control decks running around. Quancy is very subpar when it comes to offering Emilia's level of utility. G3 Olyvia's uses are pretty niche, even though her +1 is free compared to Lauris's +1. I've personally only been using G3 Olyvia to bait out Dankface's GB2 and make them consume their soul so I can call freely towards the endgame. Olyvia is nice versus Kagero too, but Bermuda in general already keeps up pace with their retire from hard pluses and bouncing units back to hand without having to run a weird Grade 1 and 2 lineup. In summation, Cheerfully Etolie, Olyvia would make for a decent backup Grade 3 if you didn't need to run 3 Emilia and 3 stride fodder. Yeah, that seems a bit rigid, but it's true. Running 3 of any same unit hurts your probability, and side decks don't exist in Vanguard. You'll still win games with G3 Olyvia though, but Lauris's consistency is inherently better.  2.5/5