By Angelina Hu.
There are two types of Ensemble Stars players: the ones who are broke, and the ones who made a dozen spreadsheets for the game.
Welcome, producers and aspiring producers alike, to the insane ramblings of a fan who has only played Enstars for one month and has somehow already polished up a multi-page Google Spreadsheet detailing everything in the game. Anyway, it should be common knowledge for us that Enstars is actually very, very consistent in its event and card rotation. Much more consistent than similar games like Bandori and Project Sekai, and by a long shot. As such, this makes predicting upcoming 5* cards very easy, which is a breath of fresh air for experienced gacha enthusiasts.
Enstars fans who fear the arrival of their top idol’s cards– do not fear! I will be sharing my own methods of rotation analysis and the theories I have concocted to aid in your journey to bringing your idols home. As a disclaimer, this is mere speculation based on my own interpretation of the data at hand, and Happy Elements can decide to pull the rug out from under us and mess up their patterns anytime they want. Do not manhunt me if my predictions turn out wrong. Your favorite’s going to get 5*s in turn anyway, so it’s not the end of the world; it’s only a matter of time. Regardless, let’s jump into the sea of spreadsheets!
Part 1: The Unit Event Cards
Quick review of terms: unit events refer to events featuring only one unit, one 5* of a member from that unit, and a new song release. Touring events refer to events featuring two units, two 5*s total with one each per unit, and no song release. The current event rotation is close to ending, with each unit getting exactly one unit event and one touring event.
Since the game’s release, only three units have yet to receive a unit event: Akatsuki, Knights, and Switch. In the next few months, proceeding into spring, they will be receiving their first unit event, and with it, a 5* for one member in each unit.
A graphic made by yours truly using official art of the three units. It was fun. You’re welcome.
This is where things get interesting. It’s important to maintain a non-stagnant rotation in all gacha games like this; chronologically, Akatsuki got their touring event first, followed by Knights and Switch in a shared event, so it would be bad for this order to stay the same in the unit event lineup. As such, it’s more likely for Knights or Switch to be the unit event directly after Mika and Kohaku’s touring event, followed by Akatsuki, and then rounded out by whichever unit of the first pair did not get their turn.
In order to even begin to predict the unit card distribution, we must first review the Enstars 5* rotation. This game’s rotation has been extremely consistent so far, which is great for theorizing. As of right now, it’s clear that the game is slowly making its way through giving each character exactly one scout 5* and one event 5*. The exceptions are the unit leaders, who all received an additional scout 5* each at the server launch. Therefore, the leaders are being pushed to three 5*s while everyone else climbs to two. Alternatively, you could say that the server launch 5*s don’t count in the rotation, but I do just for the sake of remembering, “Oh yeah, those cards exist.”
Anyway, here’s a basic chart for this, organized by unit. In each unit, the leader is the first character listed. The number of 5*s a character has is listed to the left of their name, and the number of event 5*s and scout 5*s the character has is on the right. If a character has “ft” written to the left of their name, that means they have already gotten a feature scout 5*. More on that later.
Don’t worry about all of the unit names; you don’t need to know them all. It doesn’t matter here. Also, Subaru has “1 special” 5*, which is the free 5* you get from completing the Start:Dash missions.
Take a look at the three units highlighted red. These are the ones who will all be getting their unit event soon. Of course, predicting the event 5* is not leadless guesswork; Enstars has a nice pattern running between the touring and unit events for the characters.
Remember how it was mentioned earlier that unit and touring events are the two major event types, and each unit is receiving one of each in the current event rotation? Well, there’s a little pattern hidden in their lineups: for every unit so far, the character who received a 5* in the unit event has received a 3* in the touring event. The only exceptions are the two-character units like 2wink, who get the 5* and 4*s swapped around instead.
Above: Eden is a unit of four members. Ibara received the 5* and Hiyori the 3* in the touring event, but as you can see, the rarities for the characters were swapped around in the unit event.
Below: 2wink is a unit of two members, the Aoi twins. In touring events, each unit must have a 5* and 4* in the event while the third/fourth/etc members are “left over” to fill 3* slots. There are no leftovers in a two-member unit, and thus, Hinata and Yuta make a 5*-4* swap between their events instead of Eden’s 5*-3* swap.
Making fairly reasonable predictions as to who the 5* for each of the final unit events will be is a piece of cake with this. Let’s start with Knights and Switch, since they shared their touring event together. Here’s the card lineup. The unit each character belongs to is marked underneath the card.
Tsumugi (Switch) and Leo (Knights) got the touring event 5*s, and are absolutely out of the question for unit event 5*s as a result.
Switch is very straightforward; Natsume, the unit leader, got the 3* in this event. He’s practically guaranteed to get the unit event 5*, especially since an event featuring him would simply make more sense than one featuring Sora, who got the 4* above. Enstars has a history of neglecting Sora, after all; the poor kid doesn’t even have a backstory even after being in the game for four and a half years and is on par in 5* number with Tsumugi, who’s notorious for being perpetually locked in the No 5*s For You Jail, as fans once said. Let us Switch producers pray for a Sora backstory event in the future, although throwing such a heavy story in as the first unit event is unreasonable.
On the other hand, there are a handful of options for Knights. Tsukasa, Ritsu, and Arashi all got 3*s, so the unit event 5* is one of them. There is evidence to suggest equal chances for the former two; Tsukasa is the leader of the unit, but not all unit event 5*s have been the leader so far. Ritsu has been due for an event 5* for ten whole months, but his character does not fit the quota for being the main attraction of Knights’s first unit event. Unfortunately, (and much to the disappointment of all, I reckon) Arashi has pretty much nothing in her favor to make her the event 5* this time around. She isn’t in a difficult position in the story, unlike Tsukasa, who’s struggling with his new position as the leader of Knights, a role that Leo passed onto him. She also doesn’t have time ticking down over her head, unlike Ritsu. However, as with all predictions, we can now only wait and see.
We can now move onto Akatsuki.
Akatsuki’s three members; Keito, Kuro, and Souma. Keito got the touring 5*.
Souma received the 3* in the touring event, and is now most likely to take the unit event 5* slot. Not too much else can be said here; units with only three characters leave little room for speculation.
In conclusion, I believe that the upcoming event 5*s will include Natsume, Souma, and either Tsukasa or Ritsu. Have fun with that.
Part 2: Literal Gacha Hell
Yup, it’s time for everyone’s favorite gacha hellscape. Remember how there were two ways to get 5*s? This is the other way, and of course we’ve got to get our facts straight on this one as well.
For review, there are two types of gachas, or scouts, as the game calls them: feature scouts and event scouts. New feature scouts run from the 10th to the 25th and the 25th to the 10th; basically, there are two per month, and there is always a feature scout running. The aptly named event scouts are more correlated with the events. They run from the start of an event all the way to the start of the next one, at which point a brand new event scout immediately replaces it. The gacha rotation is never stagnant, that’s for sure.
As our 5* Rotation already stated, all of the leaders are on their way to three 5*s (one event, two scout) and everyone else is on their way to two 5*s (one event, one scout). Thus, until the new rotation begins, all of the leaders with only one scout 5* and all of the non-leaders with no scout 5* must receive one, either through an event scout or feature scout.
The following characters fall into this category: Rei, Kaoru, Yuta, Hiyori, and Niki. Technically, Subaru also falls into the category of having no scout 5*s, but since he has that 5* from the missions, he cannot get his scout 5* until the rotation resets.
Thus, Rei, Kaoru, Yuta, Hiyori, and Niki will all be receiving their scout 5*s soon; whether that may be through feature scouts or event scouts is more uncertain. In about a month and a half, in mid-March (landing perfectly on the one-year anniversary of the game), the scout 5* rotation will reset. Of course, the event 5* rotation won’t align with it, but that’s unavoidable.
One of Natsume’s old 5*s. He’s a fortune-teller, so I’m hoping he’ll bless the predictions. Plus, his unit’s event is soon, and his birthday is February 4th.
With that, we come to the end of our theorizing. Natsume, Souma, and KnightsP, I hope you have more than 1,200 dia ready to grind the event. Producers scouting for the characters listed in Part 2, have fun with the RNG. Best of luck to you all, and may rainbow lights bless your every pull!
