1. Introduction

1a. Welcome to the Nation Blue

So you wanna learn about Coolmas? Fantastic! The deck presents a lot of persuasive reasons to pick it up: affordability, competitive viability, and most importantly of all: the Idols. You might have surfed through the CP02 meta results, and were surprised that one anime series that you watched in the 2010s dominated the top cut of a MASSIVE Shadowverse Evolve Grand Prix in Japan. It isn’t any accident. The Japanese love their Idolm@ster, and Cygames happened to provide their most popular characters with a powerful, consistent, and cheap combination of cards to take an Aggro strategy to the top level of SVE.

Cygames developed two games under this branch of the Idolm@ster franchise. The first, The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls (2011), was effectively a reskin of Cygames’ Rage of Bahamut mobage and reached the end of its lifespan in 2023. This contract put Cygames on the map as a game developer and led to the release of the second game: The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage (2015).

This guide will aim to provide an overview of the available card pool, deckbuilding choices, and overall ideal playstyle. 9 characters have 2 cards due to being starter deck exclusive legendaries in addition to having a main set version. The starter deck versions will be distinguished using [brackets], while their mainset counterparts will have none such distinction. Additionally, I’ve tried to label as many cards with their corresponding voice actress. Im@s CG is one of the franchises that gave many voice actors their big break! Hopefully you’ll see somebody you recognize.

2. Deck List

This is the traditional deck list that most people will have easy access to. As over half the deck is starter deck exclusives, it will be affordable but mandatory to pick it up in order to play this strategy.

Cool Idolmaster

CP02

Leader

See price breakdown

3. Deck Theory

3a. M@gic Items and Lesson

With a deck using the iM@S CG universe construction rules, you will begin each game with 5 M@gic item tokens in your EX area. These are used for “Lesson” effects. Like Uma Musume’s “Racing”, these are the defining gimmick of this collaboration set. However, you’ll find it less oppressive than how carrots ruined your life last year. Each token will heal 1 defense and draw you a card for 4-cost. Yeah maybe just as a last resort you’ll actually play hard these.

Some iM@s CG cards will include “Lesson” to banish M@gic items from your EX area as an additional cost to activate effects.
For this additional cost that usually only iM@s decks can afford, their individual effects are generally above average payoffs. Though initially underwhelming, remember that they come on top of other effects. As a result, many iM@s cards with the backing of free M@gic items can feel a little unfair.
Important to keep in mind, “Lesson” as a mechanic has no inherent limit on the amount of usage per turn. Read every card to be sure.

3b. Deck Core

Coolmas is a straightforward “Aggro” deck; the game plan centers around fielding cheap bodies to push an early advantage and then use combo pieces to cheat storms out of your deck when your opponent is at their most spent and vulnerable. Let’s begin with the typical centerpieces of Coolmas: Fumika and [Nao].

Nao Kamiya [Over the Rainbow] (CV: Matsui Eriko) reads similarly to other board spam gambling cards, notably Courtly Dance and Heroic Entry, however it necessitates you fill your deck with Cool traited followers to consistently reveal a combination of synergistic follower(s) that are valid.
Fumika Sagisawa (CV: M.A.O.)on the other hand, gets to tutor out 2 generic followers of your choice, though if you choose Idolm@ster followers, she’ll get to ping followers for 4 total. This all seems well and good, but what will you actually be bringing out with these two? Well, allow me to introduce you to Nao’s partners in crime and fellow Triad Primus unit members: [Shibuya Rin] and [Hojo Karen].
With [Nao Kamiya]/Fumika digging through your deck, Rin Shibuya [Triad Primus] (CV: Fukuhara Ayaka) is easily able to trigger her effect as long as [Nao Kamiya] hits a 1-cost cool follower or you already had a follower on board. As [Nao Kamiya]/Fumika build your board, Rin often represents a minimum of 6 storm damage.
- Remember that Rin Shibuya [Triad Primus]’s fanfare effect counts ONLY Cool followers, but DOES COUNT herself
- At worst, you can play Rin Shibuya [Triad Primus] on turn 3 to storm face for 3 damage
- If she survives, you can continue to train her with the Lesson effect, increasing her attack over multiple turns if she sticks.
Though strong, these cards necessitate deck building around them. Fumika needs 1- and 3-cost followers, [Nao Kamiya] needs you to hit a critical mass of cool and especially 1-cost followers if you want to combo with [Rin]. Generally speaking though, [Nao] is still a powerful card even if you hit anyone else. That being said, let's get into the nitty gritty of the deck: the 1-drops…

3c. The First Turn

We want all of our 1-drops to be Cool traited. Most of our buff type and power cards in the mid/late game can only select Cool traited Cinderella Girls. That being said, we don't have very many choices anyways.

Kako Takafuji (CV: Morishita Rana) is serviceable, essentially Goblin with some burn on her evolution with a total cost of 6 mana to access. Her Evolution will be run at 0-1 just like Goblin.
[Karen Hojo] (CV: Fuchigami Mai) will implode on your 2nd end phase if she isn’t followed up by additional Cool-traited followers but will deal some hefty chip damage every turn if left unanswered.
- She’ll be your best target off of Fumika, dealing an additional point of damage compared to her contemporaries and being able to activate Lesson to buff a board if you happen to come into the possession of a large amount of play points.
Finally, we have Honoka Ayase to reach a critical mass of 1-drops. Her statline is a little subpar, but all in all not bad for the slot.
- Her effect to give Rush to another iM@s follower DOES COME UP. Often you can choose to field Honoka off of [Nao] and Fumika and provide them with legs. A very powerful effect if used in tandem with slower followers.
Arisu Tachibana is only worth running when including a special package, this guide will expand on additional packages further in.

To be frank in SVE, if you have a 2 attack stat line for a 1-drop, you’re completely viable, regardless of how minor the additional benefit or synergies. Ambling Wraith, Ninja Trainee, Ironwrought Defender, Andromeda, Actress Feria… hell people are still playing Goblin alongside those previously mentioned in aggro decks just because they’re extra copies of a similar statline.

3d. Pushing an advantage

As we ascend the Playpoint Curve to 2-cost we find cards that set you up for a quick and decisive victory if your 1-cost Cool follower sticks. Cards in a similar function from other classes include Luminous Knight, Armor of the Stars, and Badb Catha.

Yukimi Sajo (CV: Nakazawa Mina) is blessed to be a 2-cost follower that evolves for 1. This statline allows you to win the first two turns against other aggro decks for FREE. One of the best cards in your deck to play on curve or to combo with another low cost follower during the midgame, to deal additional chip damage to face or to remove a high-value reserved threat such as Elf Archer or Agnes Tachyon. You likely won’t be using her Lesson unless you’ve got nothing else in hand to play or it gives you a positive trade. Best to use going 2nd.
Chizuru Matsuoka is the other 2-cost. An ideal play on turn 2 going first, able to buff the attack of any Cool follower that manages to stick on Fanfare and Last Words. At the 3-defense statline, she’s going to stick for at least a turn or two, giving you ample time to develop the board with additional Cool traited followers. Generally speaking, be cautious of Angelic Snipe and Surefire Bullet when your opponent has spare play points. As long as you’re able to put targets on board, Chizuru gains value at any stage of the game.

A few other 2-cost followers need to be mentioned here:

Kamiya Nao from the main set is vanilla with an above average statline if played on curve, but her effect to ping for 2 with 3 followers allows for an unbroken board to spiral out of control, just like the two above. Additionally, her cost allows for a subpar Kamiya Nao [Over The Rainbow], to still bring out 2 2-cost followers while addressing an opponent's damaged follower.
- A [Nao] that reveals a Yasuha may also search Nao on the subsequent fanfare to do something similar.
Miho Kohinata is an anti-aggro evolution tool similar to Phantom Blade Wielder, able to clear the board with ease. She serves a more defensive role when compared to Yukimi Sajo, but isn’t Cool traited so she is a less common pick.

3e. Midgame Removal

Both of these 3-playpoint followers serve similar roles but carry different conditionals.

Yumi Aiba (CV: Kimura Juri) is able to spin a follower to the bottom of the deck and has a fanfare that might come up in another deck. Most notably, she is not a Cool-traited follower for other effects such as [Karen], Nao Kamiya [Over the Rainbow], Rin Shibuya [Triad Primus], or Chizuru.
Kanade Hayami (CV: Iida Yuko) on the other hand has no fanfare on her base card, but can be a bit more flexible in usage (albeit at the cost of two of your M@gic items). Kanade can be found off of Nao Kamiya [Over the Rainbow], but both can theoretically be a target for Fumika. Pick your poison.

3f. Midgame Engine

Yasuha Okazaki is a proactive board builder. An amazing card to play on turn 4 on board going 1st and going 2nd. Your typical targets are Chizuru and Yukimi for those scenarios respectively. If you were to evolve Yukimi and target your Yasuha, you'd get the delicious board of a 3/3 and a 5/4 both able to rush in on turn 4. In the Chizuru scenario, a 2/3 and a 5/4. She’s a tough target to remove while reserved, Curse Crafter being the exception, and will often get to swing face.
- If the conditions allow, Yasuha may also choose to tutor Kamiya Nao from the main set to deal 2 damage if you have a total of 3 iM@s CG followers. This typically occurs if Yasuha is found off of Kamiya Nao [Over the Rainbow].
Layla (CV: Ichinose Kana) serves a much more passive role. In costing effectively 5 play points, she will set up your future turns for victory at the cost of your tempo in the present.
- Your options are endless with her but may include: Rin Shibuya, Mio Honda , Yumi Aiba, Yui Ootsuki, Fumika Sagisawa, Kamiya Nao [Over the Rainbow].
- Rin Shibuya + Mio Honda are able to deal 5+3 damage together on turn 6. Combos are gone over in section 4b.
If you had to choose: Yasuha performs better across the board and is much simpler to use, but feel free to add in a couple of Layla’s for the if you have more Passion Trait followers in your deck

3g. The Honored ones

A few honorable mentions that may or may not make it onto your lists

“Drown in the Darkness!”

Ranko Kanzaki (CV: Maaya Uchida) is a more defensive card. Her Lesson and Fanfare effects allow for you to slow the game down when you deem it necessary and her Evolve gives you a choice of any future play from the top 4 of your deck: Nao, Fumika, or maybe even some special sauce you’ve cooked… Like many of her statline, she is vulnerable to Surefire Bullet.
Make sure that when you play Ranko, you can clear a spot in your EX area before you evolve. Usually this is via her own Lesson effect.
Since she competes with Layla in deckbuilding, I encourage you to pick the chunni demon lord idol if you’re into what she… offers.

“D-shift to EX area? Take 12, play Shift for 0? End phase? Start turn?”

Keep cooking, you will go far.
This card actually has the issue where your EX area is sometimes full from 5 M@gic items so you won’t be able to add any cards to your EX area. Coolmas doesn’t have any great Lesson effects that cost 0 play points to deal away with this conflict.
In Aggro, Ichinose Shiki (CV: Aihara Kotomi) will inevitably draw comparisons to [Nao Kamiya], Ranko, and Fumika. Comparatively, she comes with some removal at the cost of hand size and another gambling effect at an equal cost to Fumika. You could theoretically hit any of your 4+ cost cards, but you’re paying life to do so. Due to this deck having very little healing you could be putting yourself in the range of a decent amount of sudden finishers.

To explain why we won’t run Hisakawa Hayate’s Sparkling☆Days (CV: Nagae Rika) spell, we can use the lack of Bellringer Angel in other aggro decks as a reference. As a 1-cost that draws you into other cards, why not simply run more 1-cost followers? Every turn 1 that you could play Sparkling☆Days or Bellringer Angel, you 100% want to play a Goblin statline in its place instead.
Consider this if you’re playing a much slower Im@s build or already have 9 1-costs and want to keep finding plays as you draw into this card.

Oh let’s break it down!

Seira Mizuki is included in Starter Deck Cool as a slow storm finisher with built in removal on her evolve.
A Seira on turn 5 is 4 storm damage, if you’ve got the playpoints on later turns, 5 damage.
Compared to the other plays on 5/6/7, namely Nao, New Generations, Layla, or Fumika, her overall damage is lower and costs more play points. However, her impact is consistent and worth consideration.
The Evolve Deck for Coolmas is very loose and she won’t step on anyone’s toes as a 1/2-of if you do include her.

3h. Additional Packages

The packages in this section fall outside of the typical Cool trait synergies, but can still provide high value effects that we are interested in to secure games or push a high roll.

New Generations

This package consisting of the 3 main characters of the Cinderella Girls anime revolves around the search function of Uzuki Shimamura ( CV: Ohashi Ayaka) [and Layla] to cheat out her unit members for cheap.
As Uzuki is played with 3 play points and uses an additional point to evolve, the typical play early is to look for Mio Honda (CV: Hara Sayuri) and storm for 2 damage or to look for Rin Shibuya [Triad Primus] (CV: Ayaka Fuyuhara) to deal 3.
- Uzuki’s base card fanfare will Lesson (1) to clear a space in EX area.
On later turns, you may also opt to search Rin Shibuya in order to deal 5 to a follower for an additional 2 play points.
Rin Shibuya is not worth playing as a vanilla 4/4 in most cases, keep her in hand until you can find some value by comboing with Mio. Rin + Mio will deal 8 damage if unobstructed on turn 6. It's likely you’ll include 2 in your deck at most, as she can be searched off of Layla and Uzuki and will brick your hand otherwise.
Be aware that Mio and Uzuki are NOT Cool traited, they might interfere with your Coolmas synergies if you decide to run them. Personally, I find this package’s pros to far outweigh the cons.
“You are Listening to R@dio Happy !”

Yui Ohtsuki (CV: Yamashita Nanami) at first reading is somewhere between Curse Crafter and Merlin. Dealing 4 on fanfare like the future Hall of Famer and evolving to play a spell at 3 play points or less for free like Merlin. Unlike Shiki, Yui will clear a spot in your EX area for her on evolve effect to put something there.
I personally don’t recommend running any of the iM@s spells without Yui, but let’s get into the spell targets.

These are the best targets in the iM@s universe, every other spell/amulet is strictly worse to grab off of Yui.

If you were to search any of these from Yui, make it Mika Jougasaki’s spell: Center Street (CV: Yoshimura Haruka). As Yui is Passion traited, she will allow you to gain a draw card while dealing 5 to a follower… just like Witchbolt. The Merlin clone allegations will never cease. This is typically run at 1 with Yui.
Natsuki Kimura’s spell, “My Life, My Sounds,” (CV: Yasuno Kiyono) is for those occasional humongous 6+ Def followers that might threaten a kill on your leader or are blocking your established board from killing. I don’t recommend running this spell.
- Do note that you can activate sanguine even if you aren’t playing Abysscraft.
Chieri Ogata’s spell, “Angelic Maid,” (CV: Oozora Naomi) is if you want to build a really big Yui or there aren’t followers on your opponent’s board. You can also play Angelic Maid early on turns 2/3/4 on your early followers to bolster your board and heal your leader. I’d only recommend including multiple copies if you’re playing Yui.

You Got Lost in the Forest

This “package” (more like an entire warehouse) heavily influenced by the combo potential of Forest, abuses Anastasia via the search effect of Layla or Arisu to add combo pieces such as Yuzu Kitami, Brand New Beat, or Goddess by the Sunlit Sea. This familiar strategy involves flooding the board with cheap followers and cards, buffing them to a point where your opponent cannot deal with them, mostly due to the cost reduction and play point regeneration effects present.

Due to the size of the package, many early cards and finishers in the traditional build have to be cut. Typically dropping cards like Yukimi, Chizuru, and Fumika, shifting the overall deck’s playstyle towards midrange combo.
Hisakawa Hayate’s Sparkling☆Days spell may also be included
You will likely see parts of the package played in Forest in the near future.
A deep dive of this package is beyond the scope of this guide and deserves more than just a short paragraph and some bullet points. Forgive me Orz.
Anastasia is voiced by Uesaka Sumire, the same as Agnes Tachyon from our last collaboration set and will likely be just as expensive on the high end. What a strange coincidence.

4. Playstyle

4a. Starting the Showdown

We aim to go 2nd in this build. The evolution point is extremely valuable to speed up our Yukimi and Uzuki Shimamura turns. The mulligan for Coolmas is quite simple: Aim for an ideal hand which includes any combination of cards which you can drop on turns 1/2/3. Feel free to throw back any hand that includes 2+ cards that cost 4+. No need to worry about what your opponent is on, focus on the best plays you can make.

The small difference in 1st vs. 2nd is that you want to see Yukimi and Uzuki going 2nd while you want to see Chizuru and [Rin] going 1st. You’ll win probably 75% of your games if you open Turn 1 Goblin into Turn 2 Yukimi/Chizuru, but don’t fret if you don’t.

4b. MS Paint Combos

An additional play point can be used to activate Rin’s Lesson for an additional 1 damage.
This combo is RNG dependent

Make sure you have targets still in your deck before you play Fumika.
An additional play point can be used to activate Rin’s Lesson for an additional 1 damage.
On turn 10, you can use [Karen]’s Lesson for additional reach.

Only if you decide to run Layla
2 turn commitment

Uzuki + Rin will cost 6pp or 5pp + 1 ep. This results in Rin dealing 5 to an enemy follower
Uzuki + [Rin] will cost 5p or 4pp + 1 ep. [Rin] can storm face for 3 and bring another follower along for the ride if her fanfare condition is fufilled
Uzuki + Mio will cost 4pp or 3pp + 1 ep. Mio can storm face for 2 and will gain 1 defense on strike.

5. Afterword

I hope I was able to impart some of my Passion and joy for this series onto you. About myself, I have no truly impressive accolades in SVE except Top Cutting at BSF Ontario and winning a 36-person case tournament during Omens Eternal piloting Uma Musume. Bless Cygames for giving us a perfect mix of character elements with card game mechanics in this nearly perfect collaboration set. They are also responsible for giving high-rarity collectors the biggest aneurysm with the 6/12 signed variants on the U/SP cards, kusa.

My personal favorites (tantou) are Miyamoto Frederica and to a lesser extent, Hayami Kanade. Shame that Frederica kinda sucks in SVE lol. My iM@s CG accolades just include a couple of titles where I grinded out a couple thousand song plays during a week long event period. I also was able to attend a live concert in Tokyo in 2023 to see my favorites, yippie! If you wanna follow this retired iM@s CG producer on X/Twitter/ Discord, feel free to message me to talk about your favorite time you missed a FULL COMBO or an obvious lethal in SVE.

If you want a sample of some of the great music we got to enjoy over the years from prolific composers including IOSYS , Inotac , or AJURIKA , I’d recommend checking out these few songs , no bias . They actually put Hoshimachi Suisei in this game if you’re a hololive fan, and this game is also the source of the funny pink hair girl .

Being a fan of iM@S CG for around a decade now, seeing this set finally printed in SVE’s English brought with it a wave of complex emotions. This series carried me through high school and my undergraduate studies and I’ve spent who knows how much on the mobile games, merchandise, and concerts combined. With the content reduction of the mobile game, the sun is finally setting on an IP that is by far the most important step in the development of Cygames as a studio. As the clock strikes midnight and the magic begins to fade, iM@s CG reaches its 12th anniversary. We can conclude this era and begin a brand new shining future going into the future and beyond. Thank you Cygames, Cinderella Girls, and you for reading this guide.

iM@s Saikyou

Framework's Cool Idolmaster Guide for Idol Enjoyers