MMM - Waylaid Wench Wings Workaround to being Washed, Wields Whale With Worrisome Whimsey (Valentines 2024)

I have to say, Greek Mythology is often a lesson in “fuck around and find out”, but even more often it’s a lesson in “someone else fucks around and YOU find out for no goddamn reason”. Case in point is Andromeda, whose mother’s hubris leads to Posiedon getting mega pissed and in the end Andromeda is the one who has to take the fall, getting chained to a rock as a sacrifice instead of, y’know, the one talking smack to begin with.

What I’m saying is if I lived in the ancient ancient Greek mythological era (this is pre-Heracles, after all), I’d be a Cassiopeia hater. At least in the end Andromeda somehow managed to snag the one Greek hero that doesn’t preface tragic in front of it, getting saved and living happily.

And now she’s swinging the whale-dragon thing that she was saved from as a ball-and-chain weapon. Nasuverse, man.

Riders, even at 5*, don’t have exactly an amazing reputation for base stats, and this unfortunately does manifest in Andromeda’s position on the base attack chart - right at the bottom. Sitting under even Medb for base attack, Andromeda hits like a noodle, and her one saving grace is that she isn’t a Caster. Poor Scheherazade. At the very least, Andromeda is compensated with an obscenely large HP stat, by Rider standards, having the highest in the class by a good distance. And in general, her base stat total isn’t too bad, having slightly less attack than Medb in exchange for far more HP, but it’s just a shame it’s put into HP, rather than offense.

Andromeda does, however, have a pretty good passive lineup. Her A+ Riding is typical for the class, providing a moderate 11% Quick boost to her primary card type, putting it to good use, while her Magic Resistance is also solid, providing a passive defense against debuffs.

Of note are her two unique passives, Heroic Wish and Swimming Skills, the former providing her with a 10% Attack buff for 3 turns whenever she revives from a Guts buff, and the latter giving a very potent 5% NP gauge charge each turn if she’s near water for a battle. While both are fundamentally situational, you’ll find that she’s more than capable of setting up her own Guts buffs to be used, and a pretty good number of significant locations in the game, whether farming or main quest content, are near water, so she has plenty of chances to put both to good use.

With a base NP gain of 0.62% and two 3-hit Arts cards to her name, Andromeda hits more or less dead on the average base Arts gain number, getting 1.86 from her Arts cards. While this is more or less whelming to look at, the theme continues with her 4-hit Quicks, producing a decent but very typical amount of NP gauge, and her 5-hit Extra continues the trend.

Point being, her NP gain is painfully average, which is better than being notably bad.

Conversely she’s focused on Quick cards, and her stargen is fairly good as a result. High hitcounts on most of her cards contribute to some solid star generation, doubly so if she can fit a Quick card or two into a brave chain. And as a Rider, good star generation also leads into good NP gain, since Andromeda is likely to be the one capitalising on the stars she makes using her high star weight.

So how is Andromeda overall? On the one hand, she’s having a whale of a time flailing about like Summer’s come early:

However, Andromeda is also chained to her past, doomed to be consumed by crimes she didn’t commit:

I have to admit, it’s slowly getting really infuriating having to evaluate Rider AOE Servants who, on paper, can perform capably as farmers but get slapped with the caveat of being in direct competition with accessible welfare options.

Thankfully, unlike Takeda Shingen or older additions, Andromeda does have more to her than just “punch hard and be capable of farming”, which helps differentiate herself from Santa Nemo or Habetrot. Her taunt-tanking gimmick is unconventional, but thematic and pretty effective when it can be put to use, converting into a weird hybrid of defensive support and critical damage dealer, utilising the Rider class’s naturally high star weight and her potent star generation efficiently, while also having a relatively low-cooldown Guts buff to maintain a safety net in case she fucks around a little bit too much and, as a result, finds out.

A Master using Andromeda won’t be able to actually utilise her in that cool speciality that often, sadly, due to how much farming disproportionately takes up the play time in FGO, but like many other Servants who pack unique play-styles and kits to mess around with, she’s supremely fun to play with when you get the chance. And it’s not like she suffers much for it, either. Even taking the taunt-tank buffs away from her, she still does good damage and refund in any situation you can leverage AOE Rider class advantage. She’s just very solid overall, if nothing overwhelmingly good in the grand scheme of things. Rath™ Seal of Approval.