Alteil Hatsune Miku: Voice Priestess

Yesterday marked the launch of a new set of EX cards for Alteil, the Hatsune Miku or vocal diva cards. Just like  Solar Kingdom, Mercenary Nation, Wizard Kingdom, Shrine Knights, Duchy of Crest, Monsters, etc.. this card group relies on the synergy of having diva cards in play. And with so many ways to play multi-colored spheres, you might expect a lot of players using cards like Galdirea or Stronghold of Chaos in order to boost their sphere levels.

But out of all the cards introduced, Voice Priestess immediately caught my attention. Let's analyze her skills and stats.

Her Auto Skill, Sing Harmony, causes all friendly Divas to start singing. Singing is a necessary condition for most Diva skills and actions to take place. This also helps Voice Priestess to be able to use her start skill on the next turn. But I bet Keyboard blade singer will be played immediately after Voice Priestess so that her Start skill immediately takes effect as soon as she is on the field.

For me, her value is in her start skill, allowing her to heal all friendly Refess units with 15 HP and give them an additional ATK of 5 which stacks every turn. It's like a mini HK Lap prior to being nerfed. But you can use her with Solar Kingdom, Shrine Knights, Knights, and more likely, TGC. You can even use her in a big refess deck, or Eternal Morning, or Verlaat Eskatia variants that seem to be getting popular these days.

Her HP of 35 is better than Safira's for a level 2 unit. An attack of 25 is decent but is really not expected of a healer that will usually end up in row 7-8-9. And her range of 1 makes it even worse. But again, consider the start skill and how it allowed HK Lap to dominate before. And out of all the things that was nerfed about HK Lap, why was her healing taken away instead of the attack boost.

Now consider TGC with Gilensa and Raste, and now, Voice Priestess. Raste will boost Voice Priestess's HP levels and she becomes an additional target instead of simply focusing on killing off Gilensa and Raste.

So if I had the gran, the first set I would complete would be the Refess Divas. And I believe that even if the Divas popularity dies down, Voice Priestess will become a staple in competitive Refess decks.

Alteil: Pre-built Starter Shrine Knights

Yesterday marked the end of the 500 gran promo for the Pre-built Refess Shrine Knights starter. Refess players have had a difficult time winning since the nerf of key cards EX Holy Knight Lapierre and White Sage Kaldrao. Perhaps the only formidable Refess deck in the Folrart Arena are Big Refess and Star Dragon decks, and often times, it is not a pure Refess deck, but a combination of Refess and Falkow.

For 500 gran, the Refess Shrine Knights pack is a steal, considering that it gives you a full set (3 copies) of Elaice, the HK Lapierre / Grebados equivalent of Shrine Knights. It also has a copy of General's Orders, one of the better Refess grim cards that comes with Alteil Set 9. Combine these cards with Safira and Princess Aliria and the set-up becomes pretty decent.

But despite this upgrade, Folrart Arena remains a place where Gowen = Falkow > Lawtia > Refess. Perhaps Refess had its glory days back in earlier sets when Eternal Morning or HK Lap decks were king. Sometimes you're on top, other times you are at the bottom. And Refess will probably remain at the bottom for several more sets to come unless card designers give Refess a card that is on par with the likes of Bringer, Urgant, Winston, or Mirelia.

Refess' strength was defense, and with plenty of cards that can penetrate that, from Winston, to Orcs, to Francis, and cards with attack boosting attributes, defense is rarely a factor. Refess cards should have a new attribute which prevents damage totally, as long as certain conditions are met. This skill should be different from the attack prevention attribute since plenty of cards like Urgant or Bringer can still deal damage without attacking. The designers could create a skill which prevents any form of damage during the turn to a particular card, again, as long as certain conditions are met.

Another skill that I think would benefit Refess is the increase of cards with skills like Heavy Shield, which prevents the card from being a target of grims. And finally, skills like that of Giant Gorilla's revival of other cards of the same type should actually be a Refess trait rather than a Gowen card trait.

Will these skills make Refess OP? Perhaps. But if Refess were to become king in Alteil once more, drastic times need drastic measures.

huitat.exe

Today, I encountered the huitat.exe and huitatx.exe files on my USB drive. AVG identified these files as Worm/VB.13.AR. Luckily, the steps I outlined in this article were still able to help me retrieve my files from the USB.

Some people recommend that after being able to retrieve the important files from the USB drive, you should format it then copy an autorun.inf file on the drive. This way, it will be difficult for thumb drive viruses to infect it. Panda USB Vaccine does the same thing for you automatically, every time you insert a thumb drive it has not identified yet. And I think it is also the reason why I couldn't remove an autorun.inf file from my thumb drive despite using ATTRIB -r -s -h. I'm guessing that as long as the Panda program is running in the background, it will prevent the deletion or change of attributes of the autorun.inf file in your USB drive.

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