@Akihito, you might want to fix your formatting, parts of your post turned into code blocks.
Increasing your chances of having a decent mix of spells and followers is part of why guaranteeing you have a follower on the field is a pro. More slots for spells isn't necessarily a pro in this case (I'd say it's neither a pro nor a con) since you're playing cards more slowly and hence drawing fewer cards (you're not playing more spells). You increase the variety of spells in the deck but actually decrease the consistency of drawing any particular spell.
You do typically lose some buffing with Alchemist Clarice since if the Homunculus survives you can't continue buffing an already buffed Homunculus. It is possible though the new Homunculus might have more STA if the old one barely survived, and being a Rookie target does make the new Homunculus easier to buff. You do however always have an unbuffed follower on the field at the start of the turn whereas without Clarice you can potentially end a turn with all of your buffed followers surviving, particularly when buffed followers from a previous turn can help newly buffed follower survive by destroying opposing followers more easily (or if an NPC randomly plays an all-spell field or a field that fails to do any damage, since this thread is primarily about grinding decks).
Not saying Alchemist Clarice is bad (she definitely improves the consistency ofgetting a mix of followers and buffs), but she does hurt your ability to maintain a field. Street Idol Clarice is a somewhat different story since her Homunculi have stats similar to an already buffed follower on early turns. Again though we're in the teritory of making a PvP version of a deck that functions best as a cheap grinding deck (transformations are not cheap and there's a lot else you can make with the materials requires to make ~200 1pt commons). If someone is going to make a transformation to use with a size 1 Passcode deck though then I'll agree that Dress Luthica is also a good option (though she doesn't work well with Rookie's Debut).
No news about the new ep, last I heard it's still only 1 person working on it in their spare time (afaik anyone else is too busy irl).
