Shiny Colours Premium Set Review

I’m from Canada and we use British English here. The fact that the article builder automatically corrects the word “colour” to “color” partially irritates me. I know that the official spelling of the series uses the American version of the word, but as part of my own personal heritage and national pride, I will continue to use “colour.”

This is not a review of power necessarily. I am reviewing the booster and talking about the series based upon the individual units and sharing my thoughts on new cards and how they interact with the individual units as a whole.

Beginning with Illumination Stars, the unit has got some very nice new tools to bring to the table. As of the full series reveal, there are many specialized pieces for each unit that are only specifically functional in that said unit. Some of the most interesting pieces to me are shown here (also because the block limit is three individual images on PC). Hiori provides an absurd double hand fix on-play if you have two or more of her group members on stage. Meguru is an interesting new Riki profile, a great profile that Illumination Stars has been lacking for sometime. It is combat-based since Meguru needs to be reversed which may be a bit of a hindrance due to opening herself up to opposing interaction, but the pay-off seems very good. Meguru going to clock and milling through your deck is nice for a unit that does play off standby themes. Most importantly, she has an EXPERIENCE ability that lets you swap her out of your level zone during main phase to help you secure your conditions for your level one game and higher. This will make it much easier for Illumination Stars players to make sure they fulfill their colour requirements over using the more traditional level swap options in the unit itself. To be honest, I don’t really have much to say about Mano; I put this card here because it was cute to put all three members together. Mano’s cards have been okay I guess. Her level three here gives the set another cantrip and way to preserve stock advantage, and I can see a synergy between this and the new level three Meguru. However, this Mano is limited to giving advantage only at level three, requires a climax, and there already exists a backrow 3/2 Meguru that can cantrip while giving large power to your board. Mano’s 1/0 Helmet profile with a tacked on Zero Two ability is great, but it competes with 1/0 Meguru which lets you perform a salvage at main phase instead without losing board. Both are great profiles; worst case, just run both.

To be honest, I was partially hoping for a replacement for 1/0 Cigarettes Kogane, and though the set did provide an alternative with 1/0 Yuika, I feel like I’d rather stick personally to Kogane. From practice, I’ve had my own set of problems with 3/2 Kiriko. I feel her costs are far too high with a rather mediocre pay-off. I love L’Antica to bits, but I was hoping for either some cost reduction card or way to increase resource generation for the late game.

L’Antica received an entirely new level one combo with specialized support for 3/2 Kiriko. While not directly shown here, the biggest reveal was a specialized five-card brainstorm (technically six if you include the main phase scry it gives you) in 0/0 Kogane that only works with the new 1/0 Yuika and old 3/2 Kiriko climaxes. While helping with the hand problem, it doesn’t directly address 3/2 Kiriko’s stock costs for her combo, but it is a bit of an incentive to run 3/2 Kiriko. Other L’Antica pieces that caught my eye include the Ruijerd profile for L’Antica (アンティーカ) specifically through 0/0 Kiriko. This card is phenomenal in the deck, helping you secure cards like 2/1 Kiriko in clock to extend and push your advantage. 2/1 Kogane is also an incredible card to consider, a level three killer that also gives the Adachi-style effect to one of your characters at the start of your climax phase.

Noctchill’s upgrades are probably the most direct upgrades to previous unit cards compared to the other units I’d say. What I mean by that is most of the support doesn’t bring anything particularly new to the table. Almost all the cards support older cards that already exist. Take 1/0 Madoka for example. This Madoka directly bonds to the 1/0 Madoka from the first set while giving a cute additional upside to sacrifice itself to perform a Cigarettes ability. 0/0 Hinana is a literal reprint of the TD version of her effect (not throwing shade, all reprints are always welcome for players). I’m jealous of 0/0 Tohru since she is everything I wanted for 3/2 Kiriko. 0/0 Tohru is a climax discard outlet to let you salvage any Noctchill (ノクチル) characters, but on top of this, she can sacrifice herself to spawn old 3/2 Tohru from hand onto field at level 3 or sacrifice herself to grab you the new 2/1 Koito anti-change counter. This is the support I wanted to see for 3/2 Kiriko, explain yourself Bushiroad, why must you hate me? There is a new level 0 Koito combo and a couple more utility pieces. Solid upgrades overall.

Alstroemeria (I’m gonna be honest with you, I actually have virtually no idea how to actually spell this word and had to look it up) is coming up with more consistency pieces. The angelic twins with their blessed big sister have new tools to grab resonating pieces or are getting payoffs for their resonating abilities. 0/0 Amana is incredibly important as a guaranteed way to grab your resonators. 1/1 Chiyuki is a new payoff which is essentially a 1/1 beater with permanent stock kick. She’s basically an upgraded oversized beatstick. However, with the resonator in mind, Chiyuki does reach very immense levels of power, being able to take out even low powered level three profiles (or at least match them). 0/0 Tenka gave the deck a new combo and brainstorm that helps with milling the deck and securing targets for standby that also synergizes with an old 1/0 Amana.

I would say that Alstroemeria’s upgrades are similar to those of Noctchill’s but with a bit more emphasis on pay-off.

The five girl squad is back and ready for more. Houkago Climax Girls is a bit of an oddity. They seem to have a push in design towards running a shot or partial shot build with more shot support. Many of my local friends are enamoured by the five-piece bar Exodia combo led by Kaho, but this gives you a bit more of an incentive to play shot instead. They also printed a new shot combo led by Natsuha to facilitate this. Interestingly enough, Natsuha got a reprint that is actually an older promotional card (1/1 Nichika). This is more bar support I would presume but given specifically to Houkago Climax Girls. Houkago Climax Girls encourages a new style of play (or revitalizes an older one depending on your perspective). They also have some nice new generic tools to better facilitate their game plan.

Asahi returns to terrorize Fuyuko once more. Straylight is back on stage and shining in a new light. So with the newer support introduced for Straylight, it seems that the new upgrades are leaning towards pushing Straylight away from a standby focused deck. Asahi’s brainstorm is a clear indicator of this as she insists upon players to play the old bar climax and the newly printed bar climax that combos with the new Mei finisher on the right. To add to this, Asahi also has built in bar trigger support. There are some more generic tools available to Straylight, even those if you wish to maintain an older standby build such as 1/1 Fuyuko and the Straylight-exclusive Chiyuri profile.

The CoMETiK puppies have arrived. CoMETiK, alongside the other new unit, SHHis, are relatively new arrivals to the Shiny Colours universe. Not appearing in the original booster, the girls received their own supplementary trial deck on the debut of the second booster, Shine More!. As for the support in the premium booster, the girls have received some more consistency tools and some very “CoMETIK”-esque cards like Luca, a unique drop salvage that flips over your level zone and salvages CoMETIK (コメティック) characters. Outside of these very specific cards, there are some more general supportive cards such as Haruki’s level three modular stock shuffler or bouncer. I would also like to note that there is a new 0/0 Hana that bonds to the older 0/0 Haruki brainstorm.

That being said, what is your answer to the 0/0 Hana above? I’d say yes of course. I own this site, I can be as cringe as I want.

Yo, Bushiroad, can we make the names shorter so I can go back to putting two cards underneath the same line text? We have reached the end with the beautiful but clumsy idol, Mikoto, and the ever-cute yet dangerous (at least in her eyes) dinosaur, Nichika. Like CoMETIK, SHHis is a new debut in Shiny Colours. It received its own trial deck in the second booster and some of its own cards, but due to lacking access to another booster, its support was rather limited in comparison to the original units. One key card to mention is the reprint of the old 0/0 Asahi Riki profile that gained a marker on play. It was ran with SHHis since SHHis’ main gimmick is through the use of marker profiles. With the addition of 0/0 Nichika, a flat 1:1 reprint of Asahi, the unit no longer needs to borrow Asahi from Straylight. In addition, Mikoto’s new card above provides an additional combo extender to the already existing SHHis duo finishers. Considering the heavy stock cost of the duo Contrail pairing, this is a very great addition to make sure you meet their requirements (Bushiroad, let’s talk about 3/2 Kiriko sometime, alright?). Nichika also received a new level one combo as an alternative to the old combos. It does combo with bar, so it can work with bar synergies if you wanted to reuse the old 1/1 promotional Nichika support.

We have reached the end of the post. I’m excited for the upcoming Shiny Colours premium booster release at the end of this week. How do you feel about the cards? It seems there’s quite a divide here with both trait-centric cards and generic cards. I can’t wait to empower my Illumination Stars and L’Antica decks (I’m going back to Mamimi). I personally wish they’d let me play 1/0 Mano and 3/2 Meguru together again as long as it’s purely trait-locked to Illumination Stars.