Kantai – Fleet Wife Kashima (R/G) [04/03/2023]

Kashima is love. Kashima is life. The fluffy silver haired sweetheart bides herself by the door to the admiral’s room, waiting for just the opportune time to arrive and bring in her set of calming afternoon tea. At dawn, just as the sun rises with its morning rays glittering unevenly through the blinds, she rests her head upon your arm as she stares at your sleeping face, wondering how she ended up in such a pristine position. As your eyes begin to wake to the staggering golden glow, you are welcomed by a gentle peck on the cheek by your beloved…

The lovely Kashima breaks through the dawn with her 14cm Twin Gun Mounts. Wearing her signature beret and grinning at you with her devilish smile, hiding behind her gentle allure is a deadly finisher. When Kashima finishes off her opponent, she deals additional damage equal to the number of reversed characters on your opponent’s stage. Nothing brings her more joy than celebrating in the blood of her sunken enemies.

As a symbol of eternal love and bond to one another, there’s no better card than the marriage ring shown above. Sending itself to memory to remind you of your mutual devotion to Kashima, this ring will also provide you the promise of victory as long as you two stay by each other’s side. Furthermore, this ring gives a large amount of power to your center stage Fleet Girl (艦娘) (stackable).

For our early combos, both Yura and Prinz are great to ensure we get our cards to hand. Yura provides hand filter and an optional plus that works with any climax with her Amagi-esque ability. Prinz provides a search and also cross-turn power for the following turn. Their climaxes are shown below.

Now that we have a way to generate resources and maintain hand, we must find ways to filter into the cards that we need, namely the wedding ring for our dear future wife. Shimushu is a brainstorm with an on-play filter ability with the top of our deck for both characters and events. Daitou carries a forced draw and discard ability if she is at the top of our clock and we have full field. Yamakaze is a potential way to grab the ring. When she’s played, Yamakaze carries an on-play scry, and when she’s reversed, you may pay her costs to check the top two cards of your deck and add any of the two cards to hand.

It is important that we have extra ways to generate stock for our wedding ring and eventual marriage. Maya and Saratoga are two ways to do so. Maya will activate whenever we use an ACT [起] ability, whether its from a forced ability such as Shimushu’s brainstormer or a backup, and if she does reverse her opponent, you may stock the top card of your deck blinded. Saratoga flies away to stock when your opponent plays a climax; otherwise, she’s a level zero reverser.

To keep the future wifey happy, we must make sure to keep her safe at all costs. Samuel B. Roberts is the perfect ship for the job, readily beating up any threatening meanies while acting as a field counter to dive in front of Kashima to save her.

Hibiki’s anti-heal package is perfect for the deck if you choose to run a healer such as that of Tashkent that heals to stock. Verniy can offer quite a bit of early game advantage as well, especially if spawned from Hibiki cheaply and early enough.

Gangut and her upgraded form are an additional beater to add to the deck. Ganguat may be a little expensive, but she’s great as a cost zero clock reverser that can also pay a more expensive cost to transform to her stronger self while giving you a little bit of memory compression. As for her larger self, she has a cheap encore if everyone is reversed while also being a relatively large beater as long as her memory condition is fufilled. Together, they form a cohesive punishing package and field bully, perfect for maintaining control of the field until Kashima’s appearance.

In terms of backups, necessary for protecting Kashima, these two are carefully selected as attendants for Kashima’s wedding. Zuihou is an anti-change counter that bottom decks a cheated card. Tama is a costless counter, perfect for cheaply maintaining field. One thing to keep in mind is that both counters can activate Maya on the opponent’s kickback, helping you generate even more stock and saving her as well potentially.

The other guests have arrived and are ready to celebrate. Kawakaze allows you to rearrange the top two cards of your deck on-play while also spawning a friend from deck potentially if we have only one attendant or less at our wedding. Jervis is a coinflip profile and a cheap way to potentially retain hand during our opponent’s turn. The classic Akatsuki helps us filter our hand, ideally dumping both Verniy and Gangut Kai if we are playing them into the waiting room and mill through our deck. Tashkent, as mentioned before, works especially well if you are playing the anti-heal package, allowing you to heal and denying your opponent. Lastly, if you are playing Prinz, 3/2 Prinz is potentially a pay-off as a secondary finisher that works well with our level one combo.

As we prepare for our wedding with Kashima, we need to make sure all the festivities are prepared for. Whether it be flowers, gifts, food, and decorations, each part must be made perfect for our wonderful bride. Imagine. She’ll be walking down the runway, clad in a beautiful white. We’ll be paired side by side as we exchange vows. I’d slide her the ring on her finger, and we will fully become one.