[details=Summary]Lum Bamfoo the Gambling Panda is an interesting character. He is good for players that like to press their luck and take chances but he is also good for calculating card counters that like to stack the odds as much as possible in their favor.
Lum’s innate, Roll the Dice, is a longer one. Essentially if Lum deals damage with an attack (even block damage) he can chose to flip the top card of his deck into the discard. Depending on the rank of the flipped card Lum gets different effects. Most of them good but flipping a Joker is bad (not only does Lum lose the Joker but he takes 1 damage).
The most common result to get is 4-10 which gives Lum a choice. Either he can KD his opponent or he can return all played face cards to his hand. If Lum played any face cards and he gets this result he should usually return the face cards to his hand. The reason for this is Lum’s face cards are really good and getting free damage is also really good. Lum needs to build up a hand so the more cards he has in hand the better. Finally, KD isn’t that strong for Lum as it is for some other characters. There will be times where taking the KD is better though or it might just be Lum’s only choice if he attacked with normals or aces and got this result.
The second most common result is J,Q,K. Flipping a face card kind of hurts because Lum’s face cards are really important to him. However, when he does flip a face card it slows down the opponent by 4 for the next combat. This means Lum’s fastest normal (speed 3.4) will usually beat all the opponent’s attacks. So while Lum loses a face card for the flip it turns a lot of his cards into great options for a turn.
Lum wants to build a hand. He does this by playing blocks and recurring attacks (they recur thanks to his innate). Lum’s throws are very inefficient. They eat up a lot of cards to do any medium damage. Luckily, for Lum, he beats almost every other character in the game at going block/block with them. Some of Lum’s face cards can also recur when they are blocked and one of those face cards is quite fast. So Lum can play a safe game of block/fast recurring attack in order to get the cards he needs.
One of the reason he needs to build up so many cards is to make his throws scary. But, the main reason is to power his signature ability: Poker Flourish
Poker Flourish is another text heavy ability. When first playing Lum the part that should be focused on is just getting 4-of-a-kind. The reason for this is because it is generally the most useful hand that can be made and it is also one of the more reliable hands to make.
Poker Flourish says: Make a poker hand with the top 2 cards of you discard pile and up to 3 cards from your hand. Then discard this card to get the effect.
For this overview the 4-of-a-kind effect will be the one focused on. The 4-of-a-kind effect says: Discard an ace for Blackjack effect. The Blackjack effect is the ability on Lum’s ace. Essentially it lets Lum play Blackjack with his deck. Lum can keep hitting (drawing a card off the top of the deck) until he either busts (goes over 21) or choses to stop. If Lum doesn’t bust he deals damage equal to the value of cards to the opponent. If he hits exactly 21 he deals the opponent 21 damage AND gets to put all the revealed cards into his hand (Joker has a value of 21). If he busts then all cards are discarded with no effect.
Poker Flourish is a very powerful ability. If the game goes long it is not unreasonable to see Lum do 40 damage with Poker Flourish alone.
The most reliable way to get 4-of-a-kind in hand is by powering up for aces. One of the reasons Lum needs to build up a hand is to get at those aces. Once Lum has built up a hand and he can power up to get four aces in hand he can go about doing lots of out of combat damage.
Just having the aces in hand won’t be enough he needs to have 1-2 of them on top of the discard and 3-2 in hand. Luckily Lum has lots of ways to get aces in the discard.
Important Side Note: Lum’s T throw, Extra Juice, is Lum’s strongest throw. It deals more base damage than any other and each pump does 4 instead of 3 making Extra Juice cap out at 22 damage. The throw is slow and it is on Lum’s signature ability card so it really should only be used in mu where the opponent can counter the ability. There are some edge cases where it is a good option such as when used as a dodge follow up when it would kill. Or on turns where the opponent is slowed down and it becomes a fast throw (it should still be used extremely cautiously in this situation).
Notes on Blackjack: getting 21 is actually quite rare because Lum will usually have all his aces out of deck making it difficult to hit 21. If Lum is at 12 or more hitting is risky because any face card will make him bust. Paying attention to the discard pile is very helpful in figuring out the odds.
The ways that Lum can get aces into the discard are numerous. He can play the dodge side of ace and that will get one ace in the discard no matter what. He can attack with his AA attack, Great Pandamonium to get two aces into the discard. Both of these options lose to the opponents blocks (dodge doesn’t lose in the traditional sense) so Lum could play a throw to beat these options. Lum’s throws are can’t combo but pumpable moves. They can be pumped with any three cards, including aces. So if Lum wins with a throw he can pump it with an ace to get the ace in the discard. One important thing to note is that when playing online the card played last will go to the top of the discard (so if Lum played throw and then pumped first with a 3 then a K then finally an A the A would be on top of the discard). The throw can be riskier because it doesn’t guarantee that an ace will get in the discard.
Another way to get aces in the discard is by powering up for aces with aces. If Lum has 4 aces in hand he can power up two of them in the power up phase to get one of them back which would leave one on top of the discard and three in hand.
Lum’s ace has powerful sides to it outside of using them for Poker Flourish. If the dodge side beats an attack or Joker Lum gets to play Blackjack (in the same manner as described in the Poker Flourish section). This is powerful because it is unjokerable and Lum can get in a bunch of damage while only using one card from hand. The Great Pandamonium side is an AA attack that can be pumped with up to two additional aces at 12 damage each. It is a strong 0.8 speed but it will use up two aces in hand making it more difficult to get them back to set up later Poker Flourish turns.
It is often better to save aces for when Lum can use Poker Flourish after aces are sent to the discard. This allows him to get the most out of his cards.
Now let’s get into Lum’s normal attacks and throws.
Lum has no normal attack on his 2 so while his normals are speed x.4 he still ends up being a bit slower then average with his normal attacks. The upside to his normal attacks is that they go all the way up to 8. This means he can put together some really powerful straights. Lum getting these straights is fantastic because not only do they give him good damage they get him his vital aces. Because of the speed of Lum’s normals starting a combo with them can be risky. Fortunately for Lum he has a great face card for starting combos (more on that later).
As mentioned before Lum’s throws are inefficient. They do low damage for lots of cards. For example the card pictured above would do 15 damage at max for four cards. That is pretty sad. The upside to this is that it is speed 6.4 which will out speed a ton of other throws and will more often than not be the fastest normal throw in the mu. The 6 throw is actually pretty important to Lum. Because of his preferred options of playing block/attack the opponent might play throws and/or blocks/dodge to stop Lum from building up a large hand. Lum can take care of these options with his own 6 throw. Lum has no 7 throw though. So he will not outspeed the opponent too much on throws even if his x.4 speed throws are above average.
Lum’s face cards are powerful and are a big part of his game.
Coin Toss is an amazing card. It is speed 1.4 and it only takes up 1 cp. This means that Lum can start combos at a fast speed and then combo into high damaging slow normals.
For example:
J678 is 25 damage and Lum will get an ace from the straight
J8J8 for 24 damage
JQ+ is 20 and Lum will have good odds to get all these cards back thanks to his innate
JK+++ while it is a rare combo at 34 damage getting JK+/JK++ is still 18/26 damage and Lum has good chances to get all these cards back.
Thanks to Lum’s innate he can use Coin Toss to put some solid pressure on the opponent. Even if this card is blocked it has good odds of returning to his hand. If it returns to hand Lum can continue to put on the pressure with it. He can play a very successful mix up of block/J. J to beat throws and block to beat everything else.
Whenever face cards are involved in a combo and Lum gets a 4-10 from Roll the Dice he should almost always chose to get his face cards back.
Rolling Panda is important to Lum because it is his fastest attack. He will need it to deal with attacks between 0.6 and 1.2. Lum’s AA attack can be too costly for taking care of sub 1.0 speed attacks. However, Rolling Panda can be great in this role.
It does great damage for its speed if Lum has two of them. Again, Lum has good chances for Q to return to hand if it deals damage.
Something very important to realize is that Rolling Panda deals no block damage. So unlike J, if it is blocked it will go straight to the discard.
Polar Cartwheel gives Lum a ton of damage he can put into combos. Since Lum will be blocking a fair amount it gives him greater chances to drawing into multiple Ks. And with Lum’s innate he doesn’t have to wait around to use his one or two Ks in hand to try and save them up for a big combo. He can keep putting them into combos to get efficient damage. He just has to cross his fingers that his innate pulls through.
Polar Cartwheel is pretty slow for a face card. At speed 3.0 it loses to a lot of attacks. It is generally better to save it for putting into combos that have been started by Coin Toss.
Polar Cartwheel is also one of Lum’s best dodge follow ups. He can get 14 damage with two Ks in hand off the dodge and the innate can possibly return the Ks to hand.
Lum has one final ability that hasn’t been mentioned yet. That ability is Jackpot. When discarded for the effect Jackpot draws Lum a card. The opponent then reveals a random card from their hand. If that card is an ace they take 7 damage and Lum draws another card. If it’s a Joker, Lum takes 2 damage.
So this ability has a couple of uses. It can be played whenever Lum wants to cycle more cards to try and draw face cards or Ts or anything else he might need. He can also wait for the opponent to power up for a bunch of aces and try and make the most of the ability by making the opponent reveal an ace.
Jackpot can also be useful to try and get hand information if the opponent has a really small hand.
There you have Lum Bamfoo. If you want to play a defensive character with a very strong attack/block game that builds up to unleash lots of out of combat damage and you don’t mind the weak throws or lack of really fast attacks then Lum may be for you. [/details]