MMM - Naval Ne'er-do-wells Nominates Near-Nude Infantry, Neglecting Nation's NNN (Illusory Scramble Gacha)

Table of Contents

Van Gogh
Nemo

The Modern Magus Magazine

How’s it hanging, y’all. Looks like we got our yearly pseudo-chapter event, and as is totally-not tradition, it comes with a double SSR gacha. 100% less easy to roll Servants, double the salt!

So put on pause for a moment both your spreadsheets and mega brain math to figure out how you can most efficiently clear each Battleship map right until you run into an immortal grey whale...thing, and instead join me in trying to figure out why Vincent Van Gogh is a girl.

Van Gogh

Introduction

Okay, so it’s actually not Vincent Van Gogh. Maybe. She’s got a case of having most of her profile event-locked, so it’s likely important to the story. Running theory is that she’s one of Van Gogh’s female relatives. Regardless, the resemblance is uncanny.

Oh, and the freaky-ass crazy Madoka Magica ascension arts? I love that shit. Shame I didn’t get her.

Servant Data

Foreigner

QQQAB (Assassin)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

4

5

-

Attribute	Earth
Alignment	Chaotic Evil

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

April Fool's

Max HP 15,000

HP Rank

Max ATK 11,220

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,734	Base HP	2,200
Max Atk	11,220	Max HP	15,000
Grail Atk	12,282	Grail HP	16,433

Entity of the Outer Realm A

Gain 2 Critical Stars per turn.
Increase your Debuff Resist by 10%.

Insanity C

Increase your Buster Card effectiveness by 6%.

Item Construction B-

Increase your Debuff Chance Rate by 7.5%.

Divinity B+

Apply Damage Plus for yourself (Total Card Damage +185).

Curse of the Sunflower A

Curse cannot cause your HP to fall below 1.

Overview

Starting off with her base stats, Van Gogh-chan fills in a new kind of stat spread for the Foreigner class. Oh boy, it’s filling out now. I can actually begin to judge new Foreigners based on every Servant in the spectrum. At any rate, Van Gogh-chan fills the more bulky end of the spectrum, possessing more attack than Voyager, but sitting below everyone else offensively. She has a colossal 15k base HP stat for where she lacks in attack, and frankly, with her role, that’s a good thing for once. Since she’s a Foreigner support Foreigner, after all.

Wait what?

Forget that, passives. As is typical for her class, she has Entity of the Outer Realm, providing her with a small chunk of star generation, as well as extra debuff resistance. Then add in Insanity for a small boost to her sole Buster card...then Item Construction so her debuffs become more consistent...lord this is a lot of passives.

Divinity B+ is not suspicious for her character origins in the least, but it is a small boost to her card damage, as well as a plethora of new weaknesses. And finally, Sunflower’s Curse means that Van Gogh-chan can’t die to Curse. Not immune to Curse. Not a reduction in Curse damage. She just can’t die to the Curse damage tick. In most cases you’d consider this utterly useless, but it’s actually so her kit isn’t painfully annoying. More on this soon.

NP Generation

Card Hits	4	3	4	5	-
Per Hit	0.76%	0.76%	0.76%	0.76%	0.76%

	NP per Hit (%)						0.76%
	NP when Attacked (%)						3%

	Star Absorption	147
	Star Generation per Hit	14.9%

Now with all the prior info out of the way, I can say this.

Van Gogh-chan’s card set is weird as hell. BAQQQ on an SSR to begin with feels like finding a tsuchinoko - the last time we had a BAQQQ SSR was Enkidu. Enkidu. Nearly four years ago. And neither him or Van Gogh-chan are true BAQQQ Servants, since they don’t have Quick NPs.

So throwing out my mourning of a possible Quick spam anti-Arts meta god to save us from the age of oppression where I can no longer use my Atalanta for farming because everyone and their mother has set Casturia as their Caster support, let’s actually talk about her generation stats.

With a base NP gain of 0.76% and a sole 3-hits Arts card, Van Gogh-chan’s Arts NP gain stats at a respectable 2.28, slightly above average for a single-Arts deck, but still good overall. This is, however, supplemented by her three Quicks with four hits, clocking in for 3.04 NP gain. When your Quick NP gain breaches the number three, they’re generally pretty good, so Van Gogh-chan is pretty set for NP gain off her regular cards.

While less important, her Buster and Extra also have hitcounts of 4 and 5 respectively, which produce solid NP gauge with her base NP gain.

On the stargen side of things, Van Gogh-chan is spectacular. Triple Quick deck is already good for such things, but 4-hit Quicks are easily the breaking point for good stargen, on top of her solid Buster and Extra hitcounts alike. It’s worth bearing in mind she lacks the base star generation or Presence Concealment of Assassins, so don’t expect as many regular card stars from her as some Assassins. But frankly speaking, her star-producing passive more than compensates for that, so who cares.

Adding in Van Gogh-chan’s Foreigner star weight, and she really can charge her gauge well. So no worries on being difficult to get to her NP.

Servant Skills

Guts

Void Space Art B+

Apply Guts to self (1 time, 5 turns).
Apply Curse to self (100 dmg/turn, 10 turns). [Demerit]
Apply Curse to self (100 dmg/turn, 10 turns). [Demerit]
Apply Curse to self (100 dmg/turn, 10 turns). [Demerit]
Increase own NP Gauge for every curse stack.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Revives with HP	1000	1200	1400	1600	1800	2000	2200	2400	2600	3000
NP +	5%	5.5%	6%	6.5%	7%	7.5%	8%	8.5%	9%	10%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

...And now comes the hard part. Van Gogh-chan’s kit is both freaky, and so self-entwined it can become annoying to properly explain one-at-a-time. But hell, I’ll try.

Imaginary Number Art is usually what I’d call your typical Guts skill, but that’s a lie. The Guts doesn’t matter at all. This is a 60% gauge charger in disguise. Upon using it, Van Gogh-chan applies 3 stacks of a 100 hp, 10 turn Curse debuff to herself (see why she has that Passive, now?), then charges her NP gauge by 10% for each stack of Curse she has at max skill level.

Now, you’re probably thinking that’s only 30% gauge, and you’re right. But Van Gogh-chan can get another three Curse stacks from the rest of her kit, so it’s actually 60% in practice.

You’re also probably waiting for me, like with prior Servants (*cough* Maou Nobu *cough) to lambast on a Servant for slowly killing themselves with DoTs just to use their kit. After all, each of those Curse stacks is 1k damage over 10 turns. Even if it can’t kill, that’s still real damage.
...but no, I’m not going to. Wait for the full kit. Also worth pointing out this skill is 8 turns base cooldown, typical for 50%+ gauge chargers, but not for 5-turn Guts, meaning Van Gogh-chan has a very reliable safety net in her Guts, with only 1 turn of downtime at skill level 10.

Shield Down

Het Gele Huis A+

(150% Chance) Decrease DEF for all enemies (3 turns).
Decrease Quick Resist for all enemies by 20% (3 turns).
Apply Evade to all allies (1 time, 3 turns).
Restore HP for all allies each turn (300 HP, 5 turns).
Apply Curse to all allies (100 dmg/turn, 10 turns). [Demerit]

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
DEF -	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Next up is...oh lord this has a lot of effects. The Yellow House apparently comes packed with the kitchen sink, too.

Let’s cover this in two sides, the enemy debuffs and the player buffs. On the enemy side, this is a 3-turn double offensive steroid, plastering all foes with a 20% defense debuff and 20% Quick resist down debuff. It’s worth noting the defense debuff has the Waver treatment of a 150% application rate, meaning pretty much no passive debuff resistance can stop it from landing. This provides a neat 44% damage boost to Quick card damage for a full wave. I’m not naming anyone, but well, if there’s a space probe shota hanging around they’d like it.

On the team buff side, everyone gets a 1-time Evade (has Summer Kiara started a trend? Yeesh), 300 hp regen for 5 turns and a 100 hp Curse for 10 turns! Yay! Wait...Curse isn’t a good thing...right?

Well, kind of. Even if that Curse debuff stays on your allies (which, hint, it won’t), the Regen buff more than counteracts it, since 300x5 = 1500, more than the 1000 hp you lose from the Curse over 10 turns. Regardless, both effects aren’t too significant, and will typically just cancel each-other out. The team Evasion buff, however, is exceptionally handy, as team hard defensive options may no longer be as scarce, but are still in high demand.

And all that on a cooldown of 8 turns at base. Where was this generosity for Abbie or Vanilla Kiara? Yeesh. I don’t see them with 60% gauge chargers or team Evasion.

Dmg Up

Soul of the Water Channels EX

Increase ATK for an ally (3 turns).
Increase Critical Star Gather Rate for an ally (3 turns).
Apply effect to self: Remove one Curse stack when using Quick Cards to attack.
Apply effect (3 turns): If Curse Removal succeeds, increase own ATK by 10% (3 turns).
Absorb all Curse status effects from all enemies and allies except for own. [Demerit]

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
ATK +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
Star Gather +	300%	330%	360%	390%	420%	450%	480%	510%	540%	600%
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

And lastly I can explain all my backtalk with the Curse effects. Beacon Soul is a targeted offensive buff, providing a strong 30% attack buff and 600% star focus to the targeted ally for 3 turns, but more importantly provides some unique effects to Van Gogh-chan herself.

Firstly, she applies an effect where she loses 1 Curse debuff whenever she uses a Quick card. This buff never expires, though I presume it can be buff cleansed. That immediately fixes part of the Curse problem, but wait, there’s more! Secondly, she applies a 3-turn buff to herself that gives her a 10% attack buff for 3 turns whenever she removes a Curse debuff using her Quick cards. Now you have a neat incentive to actually remove the Curses! And finally, the icing on the cake, Van Gogh-chan absorbs all Curse debuffs from both allies and enemies then places them on herself.

That’s why I say her gauge charger is a 60% gauge charger. She gains 3 stacks from using the skill, gains 1 from using Yellow House, then absorbs the other 2 placed on her allies with Beacon Soul.

It’s also noteworthy that DW actually think things through - Van Gogh-chan gets 3 Quick cards every 3 turns. Her skill set comes back roughly every 6 turns. She gains 600 hp/turn worth of Curse every skill cycle, but loses half of it from her Quicks for 300/turn over 10 turns. But she also heals for 300 every turn for 5 turns. If you use her kit fully, Van Gogh-chan actually never loses HP from her Curse effects, or at least for the first 10 turns or so. Over time the number of Curses she builds up will slightly out-pace her healing without card shuffle shenanigans.

The other thing worth noting about this skill is you can steal Curse off of enemies with it. There’s both advantages and disadvantages to that. On one hand, steal 3 enemies worth of curse and that’s an extra 30% gauge charge on her first skill. But on the other hand, Curses like Waver’s are a nasty 1k damage per tick for 6 turns, and you REALLY don’t want her to be eating 18k’s damage worth of Curse for too long. It’s a double-edged sword at the very least.

Noble Phantasm

De Sterrennacht EX

Inflicts Terror status on all enemies (3 turns)
(60% Chance to Stun for 1 turn every turn, the debuff dispels once the enemy is stunned.)
Increase Critical Strength for all allies (3 turns).
Further increase Critical Strength for all [Entity of the Outer Realm] allies (3 turns).
Gain 10 Critical Stars per turn for self (3 turns).

<Overcharge>

Increase ATK for all allies (3 turns).

Show Info/Video

De Sterrennacht

Starry Night

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	EX	Anti-Personnel

Effect	Inflicts Terror status on all enemies (3 turns) (60% Chance to Stun for 1 turn every turn, the debuff dispels once the enemy is stunned.) Increase Critical Strength for all allies (3 turns). Further increase Critical Strength for all [Entity of the Outer Realm] allies (3 turns). Gain 10 Critical Stars per turn for self (3 turns).

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Stun Chance	60%	60%	60%	60%	60%
Crit Damage +	50%	75%	87.5%	93.8%	100%
Add. Crit Dmg +	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Star Regen +	10	10	10	10	10

Overcharge Effect	Increase ATK for all allies (3 turns).

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Atk +	30%	35%	40%	45%	50%

So, you’ve positively showered Van Gogh-chan in Curses for a colossal gauge charge, what do you get out of it? A pretty painting. Okay, De Sterrennacht is a very good painting, but artist Servants kind of kill your expectations.

This NP is frankly kind of crazy, and not just in the insanity sense. While it’s non-damaging, it has a plethora of support effects. Firstly, it applies Terror, the otherworld-entity staple, to every enemy for 3 turns, providing a 60% chance of them being Stunned each turn while they have the effect, before disappearing. I’ve covered this in other MMM’s, but Terror with a 3-turn duration has a 93.6% chance to Stun the target at any time, before factoring debuff resistance in. So most of the time, this thing is going to Stun its targets. And Stun is very good, needless to say.

Next, the entire team gets a Crit damage buff scaling with NP level. 50% critical damage up for the team over 3 turns is good, but the cherry on the cake is that you also get an additional 100% critical damage up buff for any Servant with the Entity of the Outer Realm trait. Which includes every Foreigner (meaning, Van Gogh-chan herself), Summer Okita, and Summer BB.

...man, that’s a hell of a godsend for Summer Okita. I’ll just sit in my corner with my NP5 Summer Okita mourning the fact I don’t have her crit support god to aid her.

But keeping on track, that’s an insane critical damage buff for Van Gogh-chan herself and any Foreigner you pair with her. But you may ask, where are those stars coming from?

Van Gogh-chan herself, of course. 10 stars a turn for 3 turns. Boom. On top of her great stargen, passive star gain, and the fact she can NP pretty often, you’re going to get those stars you need.

And last, but far from least, you get a team attack buff for 3 turns scaling with overcharge, 30% being the baseline.

This NP, while slightly unconventional, is just your tried and true support NP. It has a defensive provision (Terror), it provides conventional damage boosts (critical damage up and attack up), then it also provides a situation damage boost (entity trait critical damage up) and some utility (stargen). What I really like about this NP is it encourages charging Van Gogh-chan’s gauge back up to use it again. That +30% attack, +150% critical damage for herself is an absolutely obscene steroid for crit damage, and basic game mechanics tell us that encouraging crits means you also gain a lot more NP gauge. Which then means more crits and...yeah, I think you get it.

Conclusion

So, while she may be a feikaa, how is Van Gogh-chan as a Servant? On one hand, she’s a masterpiece:

This lady has some great on-demand support. She can provide a solid offensive buff for the team on a group of enemies, she has a strong targeted attack buff and star gather buff to ensure your crit damage dealer is getting all the stars, she has team evasion to block NP’s, provides a small but handy regen heal, and she...uh, can soak up Curse debuffs if we face a gimmick fight with that in the future? It’s there, I guess. That’s a lot of handy perks, and I’m not even throwing her NP in that list.

So now I’ll add the NP to that list. De Sterrennacht is a huge supportive boost for Van Gogh-chan herself and her teammates, protecting the team with Stun, giving a huge boost for critical damage dealers, and just a general offensive boost. Factoring in her own kit, Van Gogh-chan can even just use this as a selfish crit buff and be the main dps herself. It is really versatile and handy, even if you don’t have any other Servants who can benefit from the trait crit buff.

Despite showering herself in Curses, Van Gogh-chan is durable. Her Guts skill is really good, acting as an effective last resort should her team Evade not be enough to block fatal damage, and thanks to her immunity to death via Curse, she can’t bone herself by dying to Curse damage after the Guts revival turn. Add in her high base HP, and you won’t really have much issues with her dying unless you decide to soak in the Curses from a double Waver NP or something dumb. Funny, but dumb.

However, she also may fail to sell more than a couple paintings, then again herself as a Servant:

Being a Foreigner has its drawbacks. While acting as a support it isn’t as significant, Van Gogh-chan works as her own critical damage dealer, and she lacks a “true” class advantage to leverage over other competitors with. When facing off Berserkers, you’ll often find a different critical damage dealer with just enough support to keep them alive will be more effective. Add in her star weight (while somewhat mitigated by her targeted star focus) can steal stars from her chosen support target, she has some issues to work through.

Much like meta-based negatives, I really don’t want to put this here, but she is a “true” support...she has no team gauge chargers. The ancient saying is that gauge chargers are the be-all and end-all of FGO, and while she can handle herself in that regard, no supportive gauge chargers means she’ll have a rough time competing with Skadi or Merlin for critical damage support. Turn 1 NP’s, or just NP’s coming more frequently, are that important. Her support to the Entity-tag Servants may still largely surpass the aforementioned Servants in damage, but it’s still a hurdle.

So, overall, Van Gogh-chan is a weirdo. The yandere personality and freaky art should’ve told you that already, but it reflects in gameplay, too. The Foreigner (+Summer Okita and BB) Support Foreigner is hardly a niche I ever asked for or expected to discuss, but...she’s kind of good at it? She corners three of the most important aspects of being a good support - reliable defensive options, enabling of critical damage dealers, and powerful raw offensive buffs while also being capable as an isolated damage dealer, albeit with limited deployment options due to her class advantage. She may not be able to set up crazy farming comps or be appropriate for every quest, but if you happen to have one of her top supportive options (particularly Summer Okita or Voyager), then she can be a strong slot-in for one of your supports, provided you can live with the loss of targeted gauge chargers. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

Nemo

Introduction

Another inevitable SSR NPC bites the dust...now I’d say we’re a few steps closer to Muramasa, but then Arcade had to go and confirm Proto-Merlin as an actual thing...damn. At any rate, raise your army of shotas and go to sea, we’re going Napoleon on this Imaginary...sea...thing. Woo?

Servant Data

Rider

QAABB (Saber)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

3

4

3

4

3

Attribute	Heaven
Alignment	Chaotic Balanced

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

April Fool's
Blow Frame

Max HP 13,680

HP Rank

Max ATK 11,427

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,766	Base HP	2,006
Max Atk	11,427	Max HP	13,680
Grail Atk	12,509	Grail HP	14,987

Riding A+

Increase your Quick Card effectiveness by 11%.

Divinity A

Apply Damage Plus for yourself (Total Card Damage +200).

Protection of the Sea God B

Increase Arts Card Critical Strength by 10%.
Apply Damage Cut by 500 when field is [near water] or [Imaginary Space].

Overview

In terms of base stats, I have to say Nemo surprises me. I only learned relatively recently that all Servant base stats (including things like star generation and star weight to a degree) are slightly influenced by the Servant’s lore parameters. That being said, it normally makes sense that Riders and Assassins have pretty bad stats, since their lore parameters are typically lower, on top of being handed weaker modifiers to their HP and Attack compared to other classes.

Obviously, Servants like Odysseus, Achilles, Ivan, and Quetz tend to hit above their weight class due to their high parameters, but oddly Nemo is actually kind of strong for his HP-Attack ratio, too. Sitting comfortably with 4th highest HP, tied 5th lowest Attack, Nemo may sound typical for his position, but he actually gets more HP / Attack out of his gap compared to other Riders. His position is still the same, relative speaking, but having more HP than Reines despite tied Attack, and only slightly less Attack than Iskandar in exchange for a neat chunk of HP speaks for itself. Still a more defensive spread, but he gets a good deal out of it.

So far as Passives go, Nemo isn’t too abnormal. His sole Quick card gets a notable 11% boost from his Riding, and Divinity helps out his regular card damage. Nemo is noteworthy for being one of the few Knight classes in the game to NOT have Magic Resistance, which is frankly a bit of a downer. Don’t expect him to randomly shrug off debuffs, at the least.

Last on the passive lineup is Protection of Posiedon, boosting his Arts crit damage by a decent sum, and also providing a very significant passive 500 damage cut when fighting on Water or Imaginary Space battlefields. Very strong in keeping him safe from regular card damage when it applies, but uh, when does it really apply?

Summer events, LB5.1, this event...it’s hard to really say how applicable it is when you could get super-difficult Challenge Quests set by a pond, or an entire Lost Belt in a wet location because you know Nasu isn’t predictable. But well, more on battlefield traits later.

NP Generation

Card Hits	3	4	3	4	3
Per Hit	0.59%	0.59%	0.59%	0.59%	0.59%

	NP per Hit (%)						0.59%
	NP when Attacked (%)						3%

	Star Absorption	204
	Star Generation per Hit	8.9%

For generation stats, Nemo starts off with a pretty neat picture. With 0.59% base NP gain and two 4-hit Arts cards, he has 2.36 Arts NP gain, or “Well, it’s inferior Reines NP gain, but still very good”. Anything over the 2.0 mark on an Arts card is pretty solid, and getting that much base NP gain on two of them bodes well for an Arts-focused Servant. A third card Arts crit from him basically fills half his gauge up, which can be very convenient when gauge chargers aren’t available to set up his NP.

The performance on his other cards isn’t as good, however. With 3 hits on his Quick, Buster, and Extra on top of his base, he really isn’t getting anything noteworthy from them, especially the Extra. 3 hits on an Extra with 0.59% base is nearly the same as Lancelot or Atalanta’s Extra cards, which are hopefully renowned for being poor by now.

Nemo faces similar issues on the stargen front. BBAAQ card set isn’t the worst for stargen when your Quick and Busters are 3 hits, especially with Riding factored in, but he’s not going to turn over anything impressive, especially since his Extra is gimped on the hitcount front.

So he’s good generation-wise if you only focus on his Arts cards. Which, to be fair, matter the most.

Servant Skills

Np Dmg

Voyager of the Storm C++

Increase NP Strength for all allies (1 turn).
Increase ATK for all allies (1 turn).
Further increase ATK for all allies when field is [near water] or [Imaginary Space] (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
NP Damage +	6%	6.6%	7.2%	7.8%	8.4%	9%	9.6%	10.2%	10.8%	12%
ATK +	6%	6.6%	7.2%	7.8%	8.4%	9%	9.6%	10.2%	10.8%	12%
Add. ATK +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

It’s 2020, so we have to revive some ancient classics. Like the Charleston, Art Nouveau, and Voyager of the Storm. Charisma’s ugly cousin is back for vengeance, and this time, Nemo has a hidden weapon to buff it - battlefield trait dependent bonuses.

...wait, that’s not good.

At any rate, this skill is a 1-turn NP steroid for the team (but really just Nemo), providing +12% attack and NP damage, for a total of 25.44% buffage when multiplied together. Then, if you’re an event whale, this skill decides to get things backwards and become a Charisma buff, providing a 3-turn 20% attack buff for the team

So if you have the fortune of being in the ocean or whatever the hell the Sea of Imaginary Numbers is, this skill is pretty good, providing a notable offensive boost to Nemo and his team under typical Charisma metrics. If not...yeah. Pretty bad. This may or may not be a theme for Nemo.

Guts

Indefatigable B+

Apply Guts to self (1 time, 5 turns).
Increase own NP Gauge.
Apply effect: Increase NP Gauge when Guts is activated (1 time, 5 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Revives with HP	2000	2100	2200	2300	2400	2500	2600	2700	2800	3000
NP +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
NP + (Guts)	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
CD	9	9	9	9	9	8	8	8	8	7

Take a good look folks, as you’ll only see it once - a part of Nemo’s kit not dependent on battlefield traits. Blink and it’s gone.

Unbending Persistence is a gauge charger and Guts skill with a fairly cool, if difficult to utilize, effect. Popping it hands Nemo a fairly typical 1-time, 5 turn Guts, and also charges his NP gauge for 30%, good enough to work with the present Arts meta. However, if he gets revived by his Guts, he gets a free 50% gauge charge on top of that. Outside of intentionally sacking Nemo using Chen Gong for memes, there’s not much way to easily leverage this bonus outside of a case-by-case basis, but it is neat for a possible last gasp when Nemo eventually gets wiped in a difficult quest. It even lets you benefit from the most difficult-to-abuse niche mechanic in the game, your own defensive NP gain getting the overkill NP gain multiplier if you’re at 0hp and take damage.

Unfortunately, this skill doesn’t break tradition like Van Gogh-chan’s, and has the standard 9-turn base cooldown for a 5-turn Guts. While that does mean the straight-up gauge charger is sporadic, the fact it’s possibly 80% gauge kind of compensates, I suppose.

Arts Up

Guide for Travel C++

Increase Arts Card effectiveness for all allies (3 turns).
Further increase Arts Card effectiveness for all allies when field is [near water] or [Imaginary Space] (3 turns).
Gain Critical Stars.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Arts +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Add. Arts +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Stars +	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	15
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

Back to the usual, then. Journey’s Guidance is a moderate team Arts buff with an additional star bomb, and the buff value is essentially doubled if you’re in Nemo’s home turf.

Usually, this just means it’s Paracelsus’s team Arts buff but with bonus stars and on a reasonable cooldown, but yet again, if you have that battlefield trait on, it’s a huge team Arts buff.

Since it’s still a 3-turn buff of Nemo’s primary card type that doubles as a crit-enabler and team buff, it’s still a fairly good skill, especially with that 7-turn base cooldown. But man...does EVERYTHING in his kit ABSOLUTELY have to be locked behind the terrain tag?! Water doesn’t grow on trees!

Noble Phantasm

Great Ram, Nautilus A

Increase own NP Strength by 20% when field is [near water] or [Imaginary Space] (1 turn). [Activates first]
Apply Sure Hit to self when field is [near water] or [Imaginary Space] (1 turn). [Activates first]
Deal damage to a single enemy.
Deal 150% supereffective damage against [Super Giant] enemies.

<Overcharge>

Increase own NP Strength (1 turn). [Activates first]

Show Info/Video

Great Ram, Nautilus

I Conquer, With the Nautilus's Great Battering Ram

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	A	Anti-Ocean	3

Effect	Increase own NP Strength by 20% when field is [near water] or [Imaginary Space] (1 turn). [Activates first] Apply Sure Hit to self when field is [near water] or [Imaginary Space] (1 turn). [Activates first] Deal damage to a single enemy. Deal 150% supereffective damage against [Super Giant] enemies.

Level	1	2	3	4	5
NP Damage +	20%	20%	20%	20%	20%
Sure Hit
Damage +	900%	1200%	1350%	1425%	1500%
Add. Attack +	150%	150%	150%	150%	150%

Overcharge Effect	Increase own NP Strength (1 turn). [Activates first]

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
NP Damage +	10%	15%	20%	25%	30%

Okay, so the Nautilus, as you’d imagine, gets benefits from Water terrain. My prior rant aside, I get this. It makes sense. It’s a submarine, after all. It just...has a bitter taste with the theme of Nemo feeling like half a Servant when you’re not submerged in water or...numbers.

Nautilus is a single-target Arts NP with a fairly large assortment of side-effects. Normally, it has a weak 10% NP damage buff for a turn before the damage which scales with Overcharge, and also has a NP effective modifier versus foes with the Super Giant trait. Said trait notably includes targets such as Summer BB, Kingprotea, Giants, Demon Pillars, Trees of Emptiness, and pretty much anything that’s a Mecha. Because Nasu.

That alone is pretty okay for the side-traits of your NP, especially for a single target NP that will actually get plenty of chances to use its full force on said Super Giant trait enemies. Not naming any names, but you’re still cool, Proto Arthur. That one endless giant boars Challenge Quest? You rocked it.

But in Nemo’s favoured terrain, this NP gets an extra boost. An extra 20% NP damage buff on top of the existing one, and Nemo also gains Sure Hit for a turn. Situational, but still handy. Much like a DnD Ranger and their own favoured terrain, I can guarantee you it’s not going to be as useful as you’d hope.

At any rate, let’s talk about the two basics of any NP. Damage and refund.

Although I’ve griped over missing out on potentially larger damage numbers for Nemo’s NP, he’s frankly not in too bad a spot even in a baseline scenario. With all his buffs active for a turn, his NP clocks in at 38.7k damage on a neutral target Ozymandias and Quetzalcoatl for reference to in the region of 39k-39.5k respectively, while Maid Alter, the proverbial queen of Rider single-target, reaches an eclipsing 48.8k. This hardly means his damage output is bad, as Nemo’s kit is much better suited to NP spam in comparison to those three.

And if he’s got his Holy Grail of water terrain, the tables turn. With all of his water-terrain boosts, his NP instead dishes out an absurd 62k base damage. To give you an idea of scale, Scathach’s renowned 1-shot, 1-kill boomstick NP with its Divinity trait boost does 105k base damage. If Nemo also has his Super Giant effective damage, he reaches 93k damage. To even challenge Scathach’s NP damage without a NP interlude, and the handicap of not having the slightly-stronger Quick NP multiplier (roughly a 6.66% boost in damage, for reference) is impressive, even moreso when, once more, he’s much more viable for NP spam.

So, now’s as good a time as any to address the elephant in the room. Or rather, penguin? No wait, Leviathan.

There exists a singular woman in the world of FGO who can save Nemo from the damnation of “lol battlefield traits bad”. That woman is...Mystery Alter Ego Lambda. With her second skill, she can turn the battlefield into the Water trait for 3 turns, with 3 turns of downtime at max skill level.

Does this save Nemo, providing him with a heroic god-support by proxy? Not really.

While Nemo and Lambda (the artist formerly known as Meltryllis) actually make a pretty good combo, Nemo providing the two with a strong damage and NP refund boost, while Lambda making it possible to begin with, ultimately Lambda’s presence doesn’t provide Nemo with more value than just rocking a dedicated Arts support alongside him would. Especially as Lambda’s battlefield trait change requires her to be on the frontline to remain active. You can always run double Casturia to buff up Nemo with one, then battlesuit swap Lambda onto the field and do your thing, but it’s a lot of work for questionably worthwhile payoff.

And not everyone has Lambda to begin with. Even on support lists. So frankly I’d just call the times you can get Nemo’s full power fortunate, and otherwise work with the baseline.

So with that out of the way, NP spam. Can Nemo do it? Heck no. At least, not in the sense you’re likely used to with Orion/Vlad/Hajime/Summer Hokusai and whoever else. With 3 hits on Nemo’s NP, he clocks in at a measly 6% refund with his own buffs active. Once you throw the tried and true double Casturia in the mix, that becomes 18%, still a far cry from pressing the NP button over and over to loop infinitely.

However, Nemo’s Arts card gain is still absurdly good in a scenario with Arts supports. With double Casturia buffs, Nemo getting a second or third position Arts crit in an Arts chain gives over 100% gauge, even when not targeting Casters. Just both of his Arts cards in an Arts chain with the same buffs and no crits will provide a full gauge after the 20% gauge bonus. Needless to say, any combo of NP and one of Nemo’s Arts cards in a chain will get him to full if the Arts card crits.

While it’s not looping in the truest sense, it’s still an incredibly spammable NP, and one that does a respectable sum of damage (at least, for the first one) at the same time. So long as you can abuse that, he’s in a pretty good position as an Arts ST.

Conclusion

So how good is Nemo in practice? On one hand, he’s an unseen destroyer:

Nemo is pretty functional as a straightforward Arts ST in the present meta. He gets enough out of his Arts cards / NP in terms of both damage and refund to demolish Caster and Berserker bosses, has a defensive option to prevent being completely stonewalled by enemy NPs (though Casturia should already have that covered), and he has a neat handful of niches that will give him an elevated position over competitors in the right circumstances.

While it may sound like an abnormal niche, Nemo being an Arts ST who also provides team buff is actually quite handy. More recently DW has leaned toward abnormal faming node compositions (primarily 3/1/1 in terms of number of enemies in each wave), which promotes running 2 dps, 1 support, then battlesuit swapping the AOE dps out for a second support after the first wave. If Nemo acts as your single-target, then he can boost the AOE’s damage with his Arts buff without losing anything. This even works with his aforementioned synergy with Lambda, allowing Nemo to place down his Water terrain-boosted buffs on himself and Lambda for the first turn, then swapping her out for a second Casturia as he handles the single targets.

For when it becomes relevant, such as during this event or Water-oriented Lost Belts, Nemo has a notably strong performance. His damage begins hitting best-in-class kind of levels, he becomes more effective in a support position, and his NP no longer gets stonewalled by Evasion.

However, he’s also sunk to the murky depths:

When Nemo doesn’t have the right terrain to support him, that is, most of the time, he faces stiff competition. Servants like Ryoma, Summer Murasaki, and Mandricardo compete with him in the same class and niche, providing comparable damage numbers, better utility, or simply overwhelmingly better refund and/or damage output. That isn’t to say he’s not more than usable as he is, but if you have access to his competitors, his value is greatly reduced.

Even if Nemo does have support utility worth mentioning, it’s only truly perhaps optimal with Lambda in specific farming maps, as he’s outclassed by competing Arts supports (who aren’t Casturia, of course) like Tamamo, Nero Bride, Paracelsus, and Lanling. It’s something who can do it, but there’s a lot who can do better without the unnecessary submarine frills.

Nemo on the whole has the unfortunate curse of being born a specialist within a Servant archetype that has a lot of good generalists vying for it. Ryoma and Mandricardo both outclass him out of the water, and are very accessible in general. And while Nemo does have a great performance with his battlefield terrain in play, the actual practicality of getting it when you want it is poor, and it leaves the feeling that Nemo has been build as a Servant with two selves - Nemo during Imaginary Scramble and its rerun, and Nemo outside of it. Guess which one you get most of the time when you invest your quartz in him. But hey, he does his job if you both missed Ryoma’s event, and somehow just never got Mandricardo from rolls. Power to you, those people.

Outro

With that out of the way, we just have to keep on sweeping the imaginary...numeric ocean floor for...fish. And sharks. And whales. Well, we already have plenty of whales in FGO, but a few more couldn’t hurt, right?

I feel the need to put this somewhere, but shockingly I can’t write a 5000 word article in a single day, so I wrote Van Gogh-chan’s article before knowing her identity. Though I know it’s in good spirit, I know who she is already, so I don’t need helpful comments on reddit telling me the spoiler I deliberately avoid for those who want to enjoy the event.

But putting that aside, Kanou-san confirmed on this event’s stream that there will be a new story chapter before the end of the year. I’ll likely be MMM’ing with you all when that time comes, but until then...keeping doing your best in NNN. After all, it’s only a single Caesar Cipher shift from my own work here.

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MMM - Naval Ne'er-do-wells Nominates Near-Nude Infantry, Neglecting Nation's NNN (Illusory Scramble Gacha)

The Modern Magus Magazine

Van Gogh

QQQAB (Assassin)

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De Sterrennacht

Nemo

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Great Ram, Nautilus

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