Today’s deck is a Harpie deck by Skyscout! Our goal is to make the deck less slow, with emphasis on combos rather than its outdated, slow-paced game plan.

Outlining the Goal of the Deck

What is the deck trying to achieve? This is important in determining ratios and what kinds of cards we play.

Harpies have definitely slowed down since their inception. Their old game plan involved plussing at the end of the turn and making big Rank seven plays. Unfortunately, rank sevens like Mecha Phantom Beast Dracossack and Number 11: Big Eye don’t make a big enough impact anymore.

However, an old rank seven comes to the rescue – Number 42: Galaxy Tomahawk! Swanky name, huh? Galaxy Tomahawk is a generic rank seven that gives you five 2000 ATK tokens in exchange for not being able to do battle damage that turn. This is similar to the capabilities of Scapegoat, but faster since it gives you two more monsters and is usable on your turn.

The card that makes rank sevens happen in this deck is Harpie Channeler. She’s a one card rank seven, and a highly searchable one to boot! The goal of the deck is to make Harpie Channeler into a Galaxy Tomahawk and translate it into a big link board.

Identifying Key Core Cards

What cards are absolutely needed? And in what ratios?

Clearly, we’d like to play 3 Harpie Channeler for our big play. But just having three copies isn’t enough! As our user submitted, we could use Summoner Monk, but it’s susceptible to hand traps and removal more than usual, and uses our normal summon. An answer to this would be Divine Wind of the Mist Valley, a field spell that can dig Channeler straight out of the deck. We can accompany it with three Terraforming and Set Rotation. This is especially key since Divine Wind is Limited, meaning we need a lot of redundancy in getting it to our hand.

This also identifies which Harpies we should play – ones that can bounce back to the hand. Three Harpie Dancer and Harpie Harpist should do the trick. Since we’re playing other Winged-Beast targets, Swallow’s Nest nets us three more copies of Channeler, as well as a way to tag out a Channeler in case it needs to dodge removal.

Since we’re playing three Terraforming anyway and Harpies’ Hunting Ground doesn’t help with a first turn play, Harpie Queen is a bit redundant. We need room for combo pieces and our links give us protection in the case of an extra link anyway, so the traps will also have to go.

Removal and Prevention

Unless your deck has inherent removal, you need a way to clear or prevent scary boards. What removal synergizes well with the deck?

If your deck can support it right now, I’d recommend Kaijus to safely remove link boards and to block Sky Striker spells from going off on your turn. The latter synergizes with Harpies’ Hunting Ground, since you can pop backrow without it going off. If going first, Harpies Feather Storm is a devastating floodgate that prevents any monster effects that activate from resolving.

As a side note, Galaxy Tomahawk’s tokens are very useful to clear boards. In particular, after using Feather Storm, Tomahawk’s 2000 ATK tokens can easily remove an entire board of weenie link monsters.

Extensions and Flex Spots

With the extra spots, we can find ways to amplify the deck, and identify slots where we can change to accommodate the meta.

Harpie’s Feather Storm is an also amazing card for getting your plays through! As long as you can drop a Harpie monster, Feather Storm can be used as a reactionary defense against hand traps and monsters’ effects on board. As usual, hand traps and removal are flex spots if extra linking or Sky Strikers become less of an issue. The core of the deck is rather small, so feel free to experiment! Scapegoat is here just in case you can’t get the combo off. Hand traps can help you survive to next turn to do so. Swallow’s Nest can tag out Harpie Channeler in case the opponent tries to remove it

Extra Deck

With 15 slots, it can be a hassle knowing which cards to use. Which cards are the most efficient for the Extra Deck?

Phew, this is pretty tight! This contains the necessary tools to go for Scapegoat-esque combos with Galaxy Tomahawk. If the Tomahawk play fails, then I tried fitting the combo pieces for Scapegoat, as well. We could include rank fours if we assumed that the main plan had failed. However, I don’t consider building a deck “to lose” is a good deck building practice. Rather, I’d build the deck in the assumption that our first Tomahawk play was successful.

The New List