Subterranean Animism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi_B3FXij2g

Kurodani Yamame is one of the rare characters that uses token mechanics. Because tokens are a symptom of complexity and state tracking, we’d kept tokens in reserve for most of the game’s history. Yamame’s spreading Disease was a very strong case for them though, and here we are. Yamame has control over the diseases, with her spell card allowing her to destroy or create them as she pleases. If anyone complains that it’s unrealistic that you can’t have more than one disease, you can houserule with our blessing that they alone can have multiple diseases.

Mizuhashi Parsee is jealous of all your sweet artifacts. This green-eyed monster is here to blow up everyone playing with the Market deck. 

Hoshiguma Yuugi is all about consent. She gives her consent for you to hit her, and she gets to hit you back. Fair right? Mechanically, Yuugi converts Grazes into a reaction version of Homing Shot. She can even do it multiple times! With “Hell’s Wheel of Pain” she can refill her health through pure hotbloodedness. No matter the outcome an oni has no regrets!

Komeiji Satori peeks at your hand and uses your spell card against you! Back in Danmaku!! Alpha, her hand peeking was unlimited and players would make games drag by constantly looking at other players’ hands. We were forced to nerf it, and gave her a 25% graze chance to compensate. 

Kaenbyou Rin would like you to recycle! This hellcat collects corpses for power, gaining main deck cards and spell cards for her efforts. Her spell card can’t be activated until someone is defeated, so to help her out she’s got an extra life. She must have lost three or four already in that horrible bus accident.

Reiuji “Okuu” Utsuho gets some changes in Big Box that need explaining if you’re a bird brain like me. In Danmaku!! 1.0, Utsuho had one play mode: blow herself up on the Heroine. “But Moogs, she was good at it. Isn’t that enough?” You are correct, but then Lunatic Extra came out and introduced exchanging. 

Utsuho's old Ability allowed her to discard any 2 cards to activate Nuclear Excursion, which was great, but the average point value of the main deck was high enough that you could usually get a lunatic card instead. We all know the gatcha pull is irresistible, so Utsuho’s Ability began to gather dust. In Big Box, we wanted to give Okuu some play variability, but she was quite popular as she was. Players loved being a danger birb and blowing up themselves on the Heroine. Any changes needed to keep this MAD play style. 

One of the things we had tried to do since the base game’s release is increase synergy between each character’s Ability and Spell Card. This became especially important for characters like Okuu and Cirno who had powerful Spell Cards but relatively weak Abilities. Other players actually got more value out of capturing her Spell Card than she could. So we split her triple attack Spell Card between the Spell Card itself and her Ability. 

The modified spell, now named Explosion Sign “Mega Flare”, isn’t as strong if you don’t use Okuu’s special invocation. This lets Okuu use her spell at full power, while everyone else gets the reduced power version. It also gives her a safer, don’t-blow-yourself-up spell card if she needs it. We didn’t like how this made her more vulnerable to cancels though, so she’s now too hot to handle and punishes those who dare to cancel her cards.

So what do you think? We’ve given Okuu more options besides being a living bomb and a lot more card interaction. She really goes off if she gets a Demon Book, and almost hard counters Revenge Shot and Reflect Shot. Now that she can bide her time, Okuu can even pull off the Extra Boss role!

Komeiji Koishi is the same as ever with a slight wording update. Pairing with Satori, this satori copies your heart (Ability) instead of your Spell Card. Have you ever noticed that the three dots in Komeiji look like 👁️👁️👁️?