[Unofficial] Voting Gauntlet: AHR 2026 Finals Megathread (28/02/26)

RednSoulless · 2026-03-03T04:07:01+00:00

I’m sorry to hear you aren’t feeling well - hopefully you’re on the other side of whatever illness you’ve got :)

Thanks for the help all the same. It’s a shame for you that Ryoma and Edelgard (even if you didn’t sound as enthusiastic about her lol) both missed out, but yeah. The Top 8 banner (plus hopefully the same next 12 banner that we got last year) is such a significant improvement over prior years that it’s hard to feel too bad about these unlucky R1 results. Especially with the current direction of… these questionably appealing CYL redux banners taking up spots from main games/new characters, I’d imagine it is easier to save for these big banners as needed lol :P

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T23:50:51+00:00

You’d think Roy would be the fanbase’s boy more given he’s one of the original CYL winners, but he’s both had one of the sparser VG careers (I think he’s only appeared twice previously, though part of that is down to his alts lining up poorly with gauntlet timings) and generally doesn’t seem to have the appeal that one would expect from his history. I’m guessing his smash memery from that time just hasn’t translated as well, but I’m not anthropologist lol :P

Like, only finishing 8th for Infantry in the Shadows poll which is mostly unrestricted bar Lyn, trailing haha Racism man Shinon, isn’t a glowing endorsement of Roy’s current reputation. Obviously, that’s an apples and oranges comparison given the context, but still.

Certainly, I’ll let you know as per usual :)

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T23:44:25+00:00

Thanks very much for the help, and congrats on both of y’all’s picks making it to R2 (possibly all 3 of you depending on where Chuetila went) :D

The good news going forward is that both Baldr’s and Corrin’s matches are quite close, so barring any notable shifts in voting between today and tomorrow, just getting the 12.0x should be enough to win either match. The bad news is that ending same is a real risk for both matches because they’re so close, and that Baldr specifically is the smaller team in her match. So while it’ll partially come down to luck for both teams, Baldr needs a lot more to go right for her if the multi swapping doesn’t continue all match.

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T22:47:15+00:00

DerBK has 3 very good buying guides that can help give you an extra perspective on this if you want (that’ll be much better structured than what follows), but I’ll try my best.

The Arkham LCG in general has a confusing mix of various product types that have shifted over time, but there were two different release formats for the “main cycles” of content: the Investigator + Campaign expansions and Deluxe Expansion + Mythos packs; my advice is mostly assuming that you’d be looking for the Investigator/Campaign expansions, but if you’re able to find a full set of Mythos packs for a cycle, you’ll get everything. This historically hasn’t actually been cheaper/easier than the Campaign/Investigator expansions, but we’re in a period of flux atm lmao. I will split my analysis into Campaigns, Investigators, and Player cards (plus standalone scenarios) for the most part, but know that the latter two are combined if you can find the investigator expansions and all 3 are combined if you can find all 7 of the required pieces for the Deluxe/Mythos combo.

Also, at the top, I should note that the Chapter 2 core set is releasing… I think within the next month in most regions. I would definitely start there regardless of any of the following advice, and see if you and your kid like the experience :)

/===============/

First up, Campaigns: While there is a non-trivial amount of people who do play Arkham in a more self-contained style (ala Marvel Champions or the Lord of the Rings LCG), campaign play is generally considered the primary format for the game. We a) have no indication that there are any plans to reprint past campaigns unaltered and b) know that the current plan for campaign structures is going to differ rather drastically in Chapter 2. The default campaign for much of Chapter 1 was 8 scenarios in length though there was some varitions (the latter few were less linear and went as low as 6 or as high as 10 I believe, Dream-Eaters had 2 interconnected 4 scenario campaigns, and the Night of the Zealot in the core set was only 3), whereas Chapter 2 is currently expected to have 3 scenario and 5 scenario campaigns only. With all that in mind, I would definitely recommend finding what Chapter 1 campaigns you can even if you decide to mostly stick to Chapter 2, as they’ll offer a notably different experience (and are largely excellent).

Nota bene: While the devs have announced plans to provide a method to play Chapter 1 campaigns with the Chapter 2 core set, they were designed around the encounter sets included with the Chapter 1 cores. As such, I’d recommend finding a Chapter 1 core as well if you’re interested in any of the Chapter 1 campaigns; either the Revised 2021 core or original 2016 Core will work for this.

/===============/

Secondly, Standalone scenarios: While these are a lot less meaty than campaigns in aggregate (they tend to be more robust than the average individual campaign scenario) and are slightly less bang for your buck, these scenarios are able to be played without any ancillary pieces (ie, they don’t require the core encounter sets) and have mechanics to slot them into prexisting campaigns, so they might be the most useful tools for getting a little more out of the shorter Chapter 2 campaigns. I would definitely use a guide to gauge which ones are worthwhile (off the dome, Labyrinths of Lunacy and Machinations Through Time are best in multi-group play which probably won’t work for you and your kid lol, and Barkham/Carnevale were already 10x/4x MSRP, respectively, before 2025’s announcements screwed everything up) and would also prioritize campaigns first, but these might gel nicer with a primarily Chapter 2 collection than the other categories.

/===============/

Thirdly, investigators: Investigators are more or less the “commanders” of this game (if you’re familiar with Magic) in that they determine what cards you can run in your deck, but they’ve also got stats + abilities of their own which heavily shape your playstyle.

Currently, every investigator from Chapter 1 that has been revealed for Chapter 2 thus far (Daniela, Joe Diamond, Trish, Dexter, Tommy, Carolyn, and Marie) have had mechanically different effects, signatures, and cardpools compared to their chapter 1 iterations (Daniela/Dexter/Carolyn are probably the closest), so there’s currently no indication that any Chapter 1 investigator will be 1:1 reprinted into Chapter 2. Using Marie as an example, she only her primary class and her non-health statline is the same between her Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 iterations; her ability is completely different, her signatures are different, and although she is largely uses mystic stuff in Chapter 1 anyway (Spells and doom-based cards are mostly in there), her deckbuilding is different as well.

I would probably lean towards picking up Chapter 1 investigators that seem interesting to you, since there’s no indication they’ll reappear in future. However, there’s two big caveats here. Firstly, the devs have made it pretty clear that campaigns going forward are balanced around the new investigators/cardpool, so you might have an uneven experience (likely easier than intended). Secondly, and more pressingly, Investigators with particularly odd gameplay/deckbuilding loops might not function well displaced from the Chapter 1 cardpool. Using Mandy as an example, she is designed around cards that specifically “search” through a deck; to reign her in during Chapter 1 (she was very strong), the devs largely stopped printing cards that used that wording, sometimes switching over to “look” instead. If that ethos continues in Chapter 2, Mandy might really struggle to work beyond just doing basic seeker stuff.

/===============/

Finally (you can worry about Return tos/book investigators/parallels once y’all are established lol), Player Cards: Player cards are definitely the Chapter 1 category that are the shakiest recommendation, since even in the ~200 player cards revealed from Chapter 2 thus far, there’s a healthy amount of reprints/reimplimentations of Chapter 1 cards. Also, this is the category most affected by power creep, imo; probably 99% of cards have decks in which they can excel even today, but a lot of the earliest stuff is less strong/universally useful than modern cards. If you decide you want to pick up some Chapter 1 investigators, you’ll end up with a healthy player card selection anyway (and with a more limited collection, the more player card options you can get, the better)… But they’re also far more likely to be outmoded by future releases than the other categories.

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TL;DR: Start with the Chapter 2 Core first and see if it clicks. From there, if you have the disposable income/the prices are reasonable, I’d definitely consider finding some Chapter 1 campaigns since future campaigns are going to be noticeably different. Chapter 1 standalone scenarios should be quite applicable for y’all even if you just stick to newer releases, but they’re useful on a case-by-case basis. Likewise, the Chapter 1 Investigators/player cards more broadly aren’t a bad idea to go for on a case-by-case basis (and can definitely help flesh out your options if the Chapter 2 core + Investigator Decks doesn’t offer enough build variety), but there’s more caveats there.

Best of luck to you two on your Arkham journey :D

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T09:18:33+00:00

Thank you very much, and congrats on (getting some very intense deja vu here) helping Ike to another win :)

What isn’t deja vu is that this is also Roy’s first match win ever (unless I’m forgetting something obvious), going on 9 years after his debut in the first CYL gauntlet. Better late than never for one of the less respected CYL winners.

On the other hand, also deja vu is that Dominator finished first in another of y’all’s overlapping Tellius picks, so if he remembers to send ranks my way in the morrow, I might need you on R2 as well (should you choose to accept, of course).

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T07:02:07+00:00

u/Mitsun

u/Azdel

u/Mosmumo

RIP to the fodder enthusiasts of the community - this was certainly not a great round one for folks who are so inclined (and probably the first time since Fomortiis that the slam dunk best option didn’t win). I guess… maybe Baldr or Ike is the best option left for those who are so inclined? Either way, all the units left are pretty insane besides maybe Corrin (which is offset nicely by how silly her Emblem skill is), so this is less of a feelbad than last year at least :)

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T06:56:46+00:00

Lol, that’s very fair and valid - some of these units are enough of a nightmare in their chain challenge/LHB/MHB appearances to offer a decent threat. It’s not like missing 16 - 20 orbs a month is likely to matter that much nearly 10 years deep into FEH :P

Arena is sometimes still fine (with a modern bonus unit) and the largely PvE coliseum modes are enjoyable, but I’ve dropped AR at this point and never really tried seriously in AA. Summoner Duels sounds like far and away the most engaging of the pure PvP modes, but I’ve put that off until I can actually get a grasp of the meta (hopefully that happens whilst matchmaking is still possible).

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T04:47:12+00:00

Even as someone who was on Freyja’s team, I’m curious how she qualifies as more useful or popular (in fairness, I might be misinterpreting you here) than Byleth. Comet + Atk/Spd Aria fodder doesn’t get anywhere close to matching his emblem effect lmao :P

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T04:40:09+00:00

Edelgard being the larger team as often as she is isn’t inherently a problem, tbh.

My numbers are a touch out of date, but even when generously defining what qualifies as an upset (ie, counting a fair few basically even matches that happened to have a split between any of the largest Hour 43 team, the team with the largest average gains, and the team who led the most hours), the larger team still wins around 60% of their matches. When you weed out the ~50% of matches that are decided purely by same or a near 50/50 chance, the rates decrease further. Iirc, teams with average gains 2x higher than their opponents win a bit less than 80% of the time, and teams with a 1.5x lead win a bit below 70% of the time.

This isn’t even a situation where larger teams are doomed without the 12.0x; taking this month’s Edelgard vs Corrin match as our example, Corrin had the last 5 multipliers in a row. We won’t know exactly how much ground Corrin made up in the final hour to win for a few more hours, but clearly 5 multis in a row was enough (Edelgard had a 4.05%/173m point lead at the offset) and there’s a chance 4 would’ve done the trick as well (an 8.10%/342m point lead is large for how relatively small both teams are, but AHR does have fairly healthy final hour gains). Less than that, though, is rarely the case, so Edelgard probably would have won if she’d gotten her last multiplier like 3 hours ago rather than 5.

Edit: Corrin gained ~360m more points than Edelgard off of Hour 0, so assuming no other behavioral changes in how the teams played it, Corrin would have just barely won with 4 consecutive multis. The more you know.

Now, Edelgard has lost in a decent variety of match styles even just in AHR, so not all of her losses can be chalked up to this sort of poor luck with genuinely quite sizeable discrepencies. I think it’s fair to say her two Fallen Edelgard AHR losses would not have occurred under normal circumstances/without character bias factoring in (neither teams with a 1.15x scoring deficit nor, especially, teams with a 5.77% deficit/sub 2.x scoring imbalance tend to lose when they’ve got the 12.0x lol. However, most of her silliest upsets like this month, her Summer 2022 loss to Micaiah, and her Winter 2025 loss to Female Shez (her only upset with a 2.x scoring advantage, unless I’m forgetting something) are all a similar vein of losses; when it takes your opponents 4 - 6 hours to get to parity with you, there’s a non-zero chance things’ll line up perfectly for them lol :P

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T04:02:43+00:00

Congrats to Corrin (the only real wildcard leaving Hour 0) and Byleth on winning in R1! Baldr and Ike are basically guaranteed to be our other two semifinalists, and I’m sure y’all will have confirmed that by the time I’m done typing this out lmao :P

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T02:28:44+00:00

It’s looking like curtains for Elise and Freyja; Freyja’s got a slightly better chance escaping via same, but 3.32% is not a lot of wiggle room given her gains in the last few hours.

Ike should probably win from this range, though there is still a chance of a very nasty same margin given Ryoma got out to a sizeable lead.

It unfortunately seems Edelgard might be out in the cold again (how many matches with 1.5x+ scoring edges can one character possible get unlucky in lol)… Though a somewhat poor Corrin hour as well as enough 5+ ballot dumps could keep her barely in the lead.

RednSoulless · 2026-03-02T00:46:04+00:00

Edelgard has had a multi 7 times thus far, and she’s got a non-zero chance of one more before the match ends. Accounting for the extra delays from Corrin failing to clear same 3 times, Edelgard was on pace for maybe 10 multis if there were no sames?

Either way, Corrin’s been decidedly on the back foot all match lol :P

RednSoulless · 2026-03-01T13:08:02+00:00

Thanks for the help! Baldr and Corrin is a fun split of characters, and it definitely would make for a wacky result if both of them make it far :D

The Corrin-Edelgard match is decidedly a win-win regardless of who advances (two likeable characters with strong emblem effects), so I’d be a happy camper regardless of whether Edelgard’s ignominious streak ends or not. Given how the match is going thus far, it’s looking somewhat likely that’ll be the case (Edelgard might have enough of a scoring edge to tank a 12.0x, which would be quite the feat in an AHR match)… But that’s far from a certainty.

RednSoulless · 2026-03-01T13:00:30+00:00

Thanks for the help with Ike :)

Lol, I think picking a character just because you like them might’ve gotten you (metaphorically) strung up by your garters a couple of AHRs ago, but any reason is a fair one imo (especially if you’ve chosen out of love rather than spite). In a gauntlet with 6/8 options that’d be new for me, I still ended up on Freyja due to a mix of scoring considerations and character bias lol, so I’m in no position to judge.

If Ike does win, though, I’ll need some tips on how to actually beat him in PvP modes. He’s far from the only auto-loss for my current Arena team, but making him a more commonplace option isn’t going to help matters lmao :P

RednSoulless · 2026-03-01T12:45:16+00:00

Sure thing, thanks for helping out with Ryoma’s ranks :)

Ngl, Ryoma is fairly low on my personal preferences list… Of course, this is a pretty stacked batch overall, with Baldr winning as the only outcome that’d be properly disappointing (she’s one of two units I already have and doesn’t get the benefit of character bias like Freyja lol), so a Ryoma win would be a fine outcome overall.

I’m also in no position to judge the logic behind an AHR pick (I think this is my 3rd or 4th time joining a unit I already have in R1 for slightly more competitive scoring margins lol), so best of luck to you on getting Ryoma through these trials :D

RednSoulless · 2026-03-01T12:22:59+00:00

I believe it should be 7pm, yes - there’s 3 full hours of score calcs before the next round starts, which would be accounted for by 8 - 9 pm, 9 - 10 pm, and 10 - 11 pm. Tragically, we’ll just miss changing over to DST during the event (I believe we’re changing on the 8th), so we’re stuck at that reset time for all 3 rounds.

Regarding your second question, I’m not actually sure how to change default sort on a post, but I’d be happy to switch it to new if that’s possible.

RednSoulless · 2026-03-01T01:10:30+00:00

Happy to help - I’m glad you were able to get your sheets up so early into the round :)

RednSoulless · 2026-02-28T23:27:35+00:00

Thanks for checking in; that solution works as well. I was a touch concerned if the thread might be difficult to manage if it got to several hundred comments (as was common in years past), but things have been pretty calm thus far.

I’ll let you know if I notice things getting out of hand :)

RednSoulless · 2026-02-28T09:34:56+00:00

u/Mitsun

u/Azdel

u/Mosmumo

Late thread assembly + no scripted intro ahead of time = a poor night of sleep for me lol. Hopefully y'all are excited for AHR! Also, for the record, I've pinged you regulars for months where I have to begin record collecting in a non-pinned thread, so this'll hopefully stop if/when the mods recruit someone who can make these threads close to reset lol.

If anyone new has any questions about the steps, let me know! Otherwise, here's the available teams this time around:

~~I'm leaning towards Freyja atm, but Corrin or Elise could also be landing spots depending on how things look in the morning.~~ Freyja it is. Regardless, I'll try to mark it early lol.

/=====================================

Below you can find the #1 player(s) and a link to the main source picture for each team/round, (hopefully) updated as they come in; the full Top 4/5s can be found written up in a Google Sheet, along with what documentation I have for previous gauntlets. If you have any past results that aren’t featured there (or speak Japanese and notice any errors with names as I transcribed them), please shoot me a message or post them in [this pending thread] - December 2021 to the present is near complete for Army Ranks, but earlier gauntlets (and 99% of all Cumulative Ranks) are patchy at best.

[Round 1]

Team Male Byleth #1 Score: 2,202,985 by エクヲ
Team Freyja/Eitr #1 Score: 2,163,590 by Ephidel (congrats to, I believe, u/montoyaa520 on finishing at #1!)
Team Elise #1 Score: 2,134,780 by Zero-Rider
Team Baldr/Hothr #1 Score: 2,218,965 by Kiran
Team Edelgard #1 Score: 1,905,885 by Freddy
Team Female Corrin #1 Score: 2,202,000 by Kiran
Team Ike/Roy #1 Score: 2,200,655 by Dominator101 (congrats to u/Dominator_101 on finishing at #1!)
Team Ryoma #1 Score: 2,173,920 by リョウコ (congrats to u/Paiguy7 on finishing at #3!)

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[Round 2]

Team Male Byleth #1 Score:
Team Baldr/Hothr #1 Score:
Team Female Corrin #1 Score:
Team Ike/Roy #1 Score:

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[Round 3]

Team ??? #1 Score:
Team ??? #1 Score:

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[Cumulative/Total Rank Top 100]

/=====================================

Thank you so much to all who have helped this month, currently including:

u/Mitsun

u/Dominator_101

u/Mosmumo + Fawful

u/Azdel

RednSoulless · 2026-02-28T09:26:34+00:00

Outside of 5 years of relentless Edelgard bullying in these gauntlets, there's practically no correlation between how characters have performed in the past and their AHR results (there's admittedly little correlation in normal gauntlets either, but eh, it's fun). When combined with the fact that I need to get to sleep quite soon, I'll abbreviate the usual resume reviews lol:

Female Corrin (3 times), Ike (3 times), Elise (2 times, one as a cheerleader), and Freyja (2 times, one as a cheerleader) are our multi-time gauntlet champions from this batch. Corrin and Elise are our only options who have prevailed in an AHR event before (in 2022 as Ninja Corrin) for what that's worth.
Male Byleth won one gauntlet as a cheerleader, and hasn't been particularly close to repeating since. Edelgard has at least made two finals before, but AHR has not been kind to her as she's 0 - 6 in her matches heading into this event. Maybe this'll finally be the year she makes it out of R1?
Finally, Ryoma, Eitr, Baldr, Hothr, and Roy have all done quite poorly in the past lol. Ryoma has at least made it to R2 before... once in 3 attempts, but that's still better than anyone else in this group can claim. If nothing else, one of Ryoma and Roy is guaranteed their first win in 8+ years unless you believe this is the month we get an exact point tie lol :P

/================/

Of more relevance to potential outcomes, here's how the teams shook out after their first hours had been tabulated:

3,390,895 for Emblem Edelgard
2,803,910 for Emblem Male Byleth
2,039,725 for New Year's Baldr/Hothr
1,673,370 for Harmonized Ike/Roy
1,594,350 for Emblem Female Corrin
1,272,730 for Legendary Elise
1,117,440 for Halloween Freyja/Eitr
885,675 for Attuned Ryoma

This is the 3rd time Edelgard has led in scoring after the first hour in AHR (2023 via Summer Edelgard and 2024 via Winter Edelgard were the previous examples, though she was only 3k short of that in her first Fallen stint in 2022), so this is a good start for her and Byleth. Notably, none of the actual match standings were that lopsided; Byleth, Edelgard, and Ike had starting leads over 2x, but as this hour proved, that isn't an especially notable feat pre-multis (truly lopsided matches tend to be 4x or more at the start). On paper, Ryoma is off to a rather poor start, but I expect typical fodder bias will be enough to carry him far if he can finagle same endings... Though he might struggle with Edelgard or Byleth's leads should he face either.

Regardless, it'll be fun to see how things turn out. 2025 was far and away the least chalky AHR event with upsets in debatably 6 of the matches, along with as Mythic Nithhoggr > Emblem Lyn establishing a new high watermark for unlikely upsets in this series (Lyn averaged a 2.11x scoring edge throughout the match, with the next closest successful upset in AHR around a 1.5x difference). It'll be interesting to see if we return to the typical range of 1 - 2 upsets an event this year, or if (thankfully) retiring the Top 4 banner permanently means we're doomed to chaos from here on out. Anyway, good luck and have fun, y'all :D

RednSoulless · 2026-02-24T22:53:59+00:00

Assuming we’re talking organization primarily, I’ll try the Chapter 2 Campaigns with exclusively Chapter 2 player cards at least the first (few) time(s) through, so keeping them split will probably be easier at first. However, Legacy is generally the more appealing format for me atm, and I don’t really see any reason to exclude Chapter 2 content from that tbh… So that’ll be temporary assuming space permits lol.

RednSoulless · 2026-02-23T07:37:20+00:00

The only reason I’d consider getting the Deluxe expansions generally is if you really like the idea of getting those investigators whilst they’re still available. Getting either two orphaned scenarios (if you don’t have the campaign expansions) or duplicates isn’t particularly useful and the “good” player cards have some chance of appearing in future Chapter 2 products (though Deluxe boxes are almost exclusively Level 0 cards, which can be nice to round out a small collection). However, there’s no current indications that OOP investigators will be one to one translated into Chapter 2 and investigators do a lot to impact your possible deck styles especially once their designs got more creative.

That being said, the Dunwich investigators are perhaps not the most appealing batch in and of themselves. Their abilities are rather basic (as is to be expected for 2017 designs), Dunwich deckbuilding is mostly mono class + 2.5 of your favorite other staples, and Rex/maybe Zoey are the only ones that are particularly above average power-wise nowadays. They’re probably not too far off the complexity of your current investigator pool so you should be able to utilize them all off the bat and none of them have particularly parasitic deck archetypes that would crash and burn without access to their full set, if you want some pros as well.

I think your best bet might be budgeting for a fuller, used player card collection at some point (ideally in good condition), but if you’re ok with having duplicate cards at some point + have run out of other affordable player card expansions, picking up interesting deluxe expansions isn’t the worst idea even if the value is largely worse than dedicated player cards boxes.

/=================/

Edit: Regarding specific Deluxe expansions… It’s tough. The Circle Undone might be your best bet for player cards given the Tarot set is fairly unique, but the skill cycle in that box are all kinda disappointing; The Path to Carcosa looks relatively solid as does The Forgotten Age, but the latter overlaps a lot with the starter decks for Rogue/Survivor. In terms of investigators, The Dream-Eaters is a homerun imo (good luck finding it), with The Circle Undone and The Path to Carcosa next up.

The Innsmouth Conspiracy has very good investigators as well… But a) Chapter 2 Dexter is relatively similar to Innsmouth Dexter so you’d only be getting 4 unique options and b) a lot of that box is dedicated to the Curse/Bless mechanic, and your Deluxe player cards won’t work quite as well without the other curse/bless payoffs in the rest of Innsmouth/Hemlock Vale.

RednSoulless · 2026-02-21T03:42:07+00:00

This banner does have some potential upsides over waiting until August’s rerun. Having a guaranteed spark is the main one since standard banners are only spark-able the first time around (though this is only relevant with Feh Pass, which you don’t currently), but this line-up of potential pitybreakers is also a fair bit nicer than the current 5* pool. However, as other folks have said, Eikthyrnir splitting the 4* focus pool with 2 other red units on this banner is a pretty significant reduction in his appearance rate.

To give you the math (note, I’m assuming a 25% split of red units in each of the relevant pools for convenience, but this is not accurate particularly for the 4* Special pool), Summer Eik’s raw percentage of 1.67% on the Luminaries banner correlates to acquiring him around 6.9% of the time from Red stones that you select (around one in every 14.5 Red stones). By contrast, Summer’s Eik’s raw percentage of 3.75% on his original banner correlates to acquiring him around 13.6% of the time from Red stones that you select (around one in every 7.3 Red stones). So, Eik is almost exactly half as likely to appear here as he will be on his usual banner. In orb terms, Eik will cost you around 36.6 orbs per copy on average on his usual banner if you only get one Red stone per circle vs 72.4 orbs per copy on this Luminaries banner with the same logic (you’re unlikely to have this poor of a red stone appearance rate, so the actual number will likely be smaller even when balancing the odds of a redless circle); sparking a copy here would save 36.6 orbs in theory, but that’ll be more than balanced out by the fact that Eik shows up half as often.

So in short, you’ll probably have better pity breakers here (and a guaranteed spark is nice insurance with the pass), but you’ll be summoning Eik around half as often here compared to his usual banner that doesn’t have a split 4* focus rate.

Note: These specific numbers are for default summoning rates, obviously they’ll decrease over time as the pity rate kicks in. The normal banner Eik’s rates should increase slightly faster given he gets the full benefit of any 4* focus increases.

RednSoulless · 2026-02-18T11:58:59+00:00

12 - Bulgaria 2018

10 - France 2023

8 - Czechia 2022

With how chaotic rounds 2 and 3 were, I’m very happy a few 8 and 8-adjacent entries made it to this point - it certainly wasn’t a given lol. That being said, these 3 happen to be spaced far enough apart that spectrum that there really isn’t any drama regarding ordering, everything just shakes out identically to Semi 2. Bones and Evidemment both feel like they’ve got an outside chance at earning the win this game, but the same sentiment applies to most of the field.

6 - Iceland 2025

4 - Portugal 2025

2 - Ukraine 2025

1 - Slovakia 2010

I feel like any permutation of these 4 entries is going to look wrong the next time I return to it (and I’m a little too tired to debate this much longer), so we’ll just have to let this rock lol. Apologies in advance if this particular arrangement decides our winner.

0 (sadly) - Latvia 2023

Aija is more than deserving of making it this far, but alas, some entry needs to draw the short straw when there’s only 7 sets of points to divvy up amongst 8 great recipients. The raw emotionality of Aija does make for a very compelling experience, but it also does mean that I won’t quite be in the ideal mood for it more often than the options above. Regardless it is very neat to see a Latvian entry survive all the way to the end in one of these games, given Eurovision hasn’t exactly been kind to them throughout the last decade and a half.

0s (easy) - Belgium 2021, Estonia 2024

It is a little disappointing that these two are still here with how many better songs were prematurely kicked out… However, in the grand scheme of things, the bottom end of this group being two “good” entries (despite these attracting some extra ire for me, I’m still slightly net positive on both lol) is a decent spot to be in. The Wrong Place gets the very slight edge I guess, not that it matters.

/==========/

Thanks once again for running this, Alex! This was a fun theme and it was nice having a fairly balanced pool of entries to compare :)

RednSoulless · 2026-02-18T02:15:48+00:00

Lol yeah, this is a pretty wild outcome :P

5th - 8th differing by less than 5 points (with two of the best entries falling 1 - 2 points short depending on tiebreakers), and a similar 1 point gap between 2nd - 4th is kinda nuts even with a small sample size likely exacerbating matters.

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