Alfonse (New Year) -Unit Analysis and some builds-

Now I will analyse the man who opens the gate of this new year 2020, Alfonse: Askran Duo, he with her sister Sharena, represent the new Duo Unit,. Duo units are a type of units that can use an extra "special ability" that can be used once per map in every gamemode (Except tap battle, of course), also duo units with a "pair up" are not allowed to use their duo skill during combat so keep that in mind in gamemodes like Allegiance Battles. He is a blue tome infantry unit. First I will show his stats and talk about his abilities and uses in different gamemodes. His stats at level 40 as 5* (unmerged and unflowored) are the following ones:

 41HP/38Atk/17Spd/35Def/30Res 

(He has superboon at Atk and Def, what is quite nice, 

he reaches 44 Atk if +Atk and 39 Def if +Def)

He has a prf named: Imbued Koma (non-inheritable).

14 Mt

-Accelerates Special trigger (cooldown count-1). At start of combat, if Special is ready, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+5 during combat and foe cannot make a follow-up attack.

His Duo Skill: Grants Special cooldown count-2 to unit and infantry allies within 3 rows and 3 columns centered on unit.

He has a prf special named: Open the future (non-inheritable).
-Boosts damage by 50% of unit's Def. Restores HP = 25% of damage dealt. (Cooldown 3)

He has the following skills:

A Skill: Close Counter (inheritable). Unit can counterattack regardless of foe's range.

B Skill: Special Spiral (inheritable). If Special triggers before or during combat, grants Special cooldown count-2 after combat.

C Skill: Def/Res Oath (inheritable). At start of turn, if unit is adjacent to an ally, grants Def/Res+5 for 1 turn.

Since he is an infantry tome unit, he can be considered like the best blue tome unit in the game becouse of being infantry, he has acces to cooldown special reduction by the use of Infantry Pulse from other allies, this makes him a better option than Ophelia in IP teams for AR-D, I am not calling Ophelia bad since Ophelia can still work in no-IP teams like double Yune lift reduction map or any mixed map with 2 other tome users at least. So he does incredible well in AR-D since his weapon prevents follow-up attack and gives extra +5 invisible buffs to Alfonse during combat while his special is activated makes him hard to tank and hard to engage, and by using a Seliph and an Alfonse your AR-D team can be hard or impossible to galeforce. I will now post an example of how could he be build for an IP AR-D team. (The unit used as example will be a nautral unit, unmerged and unflowored.)

Recomended build:

The fodder will not hard to get or obtain since you only need any rally, if you are going to use him in a Rally Trap team (non-plus rallies are easy to obtain), ignis can be obtained by foddering a 4* Gharnef, Robin (F), Cormag, Travant (Is not recommendable to fodder any of the four units I mentioned before since they are GHB units and you only get a limited number of copies), Thea, Henry (og), Boey or Leon. Vantage can be obtained by foddering a 4* Travant (Not recommendable again since he is a GHB unit), Reinhardt(og) or Lon'qu. In this build I like to use Vantage since Bolt Towers are a very common build for AR-O teams, and a max level bolt tower can deal 30 damage at turn 3 leaving an unmerged Alfonse at 11 HP making him invulnerable to a ranged unit trying to hit and run or vantage your team. I know that some AR-O compositions (Not a lot) run aversa in their team so Atk/Def Oath may be terrible for him in that perticular case so is up to you using other c skill or other seals if you want, it depend mostly in the team structure.

Now for AR-O I will show two different build and 2 different team compositions.

Galeforce Team becouse yes we can:

(Use as c skill or sacred seal anything you want as I said it all depends on the team composition and what your team needs, this build is mainly dofused on support the units with galeforse so it is much easier for them to activate it thanks to his duo skill)
It is a good option to use him in AR-O with 2 Mythic units (Depends if you want the max score or you have mythics for indicated season or you dont want to run mythics in your team, but for AR tier 21+ is recommended to use 2 or 1 mythic at least.), a unit that can use galeforce (It is normally preferable to be a unit with slaying weapon or fast enough to double), Alfonse and the bonus unit has to be one of the Askr trio. Sharena and Anna are decent galeforce users but OG Alfonse main problem is that he is slow, thanks to Alfonse: Askran Duo this is not a problem.

Recomnended builds for Askr trio for the galeforce team:

(The units posted will be unblassed so they will not recieve any

 stats from the mythics heroes that you will use in your team)

Alfonse just wanted to do something usefull for once build:

 Anna wants to be fast af boy build:

Sharena? More like Sharena. Get it? build:

 

Examples for AR-O teams for Astra:

Examples for AR-O teams for Astra:

If you have any other builds or team compositions in mind please let me know by leaving a comment bellow.

Arena

 Because Alfonse is a Duo unit he is also granted a special pasive for Arena.
If unit is 5★ and level 40 and unit's stats total less than 185, treats unit's stats as 185 in modes like Arena. (Higher-scoring opponents will appear. Stat total calculation excludes any values added by merges and skills. Meaning that even if he is a low bst unit compared to a melee armor unit he can score high thanks to his passive that let him score like a 185 bst unit. Now the thing about it is that this Alfonse is a 5★ locked unit and seasonal so it is difficult for a normal player or a f2p to +10 him unless you have saved like 2.5k orbs or around it. So I will compare him to +10 f2p armors to see how difference of score there is. (Both units will have skills that cost the same amount of SP.)
 In arena he (Unmerged) scores way less than a max. invested +10 Effie or Gwendolyn, needing 8 merges to score the same as a +Effie or Gwendolyn.

 If you are able to +10 him you will score 8 points more than Effie or Gwendolyn.

 He scores very well if you are able to get the merges but the thing is if you think it is worth enough or you really like Alfonse.
For Arena Assault he is very usable (like most of the feh units for this gamemode), if you just run basekit you will probably be fine.