Harmony is the eighth card in the FrostSpark Collection, a new promo expansion for The Elder Scrolls Legends. The 2-cost action in the yellow Willpower attribute has Prophecy and gives all enemy creatures -2/-0 until the start of your turn.

Note, how cool the card art is aligned to this effect: When played from hand, it “confuses” or “distracts” all your opponent’s creatures with some green magic spell circling around their heads (I hope for a nice special effect in the game) for a power reduction of 2.

Harmony played from hand

You can use this “confusion” during your turn to trade your creatures favorably into those of your opponent. When trading against a 2-power creature, even a Lethal one, you will not get any damage dealt to your creature. This can be a big deal to keep your creature out of range for Ice Storms, or to leave it undamaged, so that Leaflurker (or other cards removing wounded creatures) doesn’t remove it.

On your opponent’s next turn, the -2/-0 modifier still applies to all creatures that were originally affected. This means two less damage for each of their attacking creatures. Obviously, the value of Harmony increases with more creatures your opponent has on board: with 8 opponent creatures, you can avoid 16 of their total damage, with 2 creatures you can avoid (only) 4 damage.

So it can be neatly played after your opponent plays Tullius’ Conscription, leaving you with 9-10 magicka to hopefully be spending on other things.

Harmony as a Prophecy

The other use of Harmony is from the card being pulled as a Prophecy, after a rune is broken. In this case, Harmony can have almost no effect, i.e. if your opponent has no more creatures to swing with; or it can have a bigger or smaller damage-reducing effect: the earlier you pull Harmony as a Prophecy during multiple swings, the better. On a lucky day, the card might buy you one more turn if your opponent has a lethal board.

Note, the Harmony effect carries only until the beginning of your turn. Thus, you will not be able to trade favourably into your opponent’s cards having a -2/-0.

Quadrant Theory

Opening

Harmony can be a really good disruptive utility in the Opening phase of the game: when played from hand, it will allow you to trade favorably against your opponent’s creatures and significantly reduce the overall damage potential of an Aggro deck that has gone wide. In a meta that was dominated by Aggro Hlaalu or Aggro Token decks, Harmony would have decent disruptive use to slow down these aggro decks.

Push your own Charge

Let’s assume, your deck contains a few of these cheap charge creatures. In this case, Harmony can help you to take out one or two of the “stunned” opponents and this will still leave your Charge creatures on the board. Assume you now had Doomcrag Vampire on the board and your opponent didn’t have hard removal. That would be a nice situation to be in.

Parity

Harmony as a top deck card can help you with making a few favourable trades and slow down your opponent. Played from hand at Parity, the card can be really good against an opponent who relies on lots of creatures as Harmony will slow him down. Against OTK combo decks that deal damage only from one massive swing, Harmony has a smaller effect, but can still buy you another turn.

As a Prophecy, she is potentially saving you some damage at Parity, if your opponent has multiple creatures on board.

Winning

When you are Winning and your opponent is forced to go all-in with his creatures to oppose yours, Harmony may help you as well, to either trade favourably or to keep swinging and getting fewer creatures removed.

However, the card may also have no effect, e.g. if your opponent relies on removal actions, rather than creatures to deal with your winning position. Therefore, it will depend a little bit on the matchup, but certainly the card can have value, and with a cost of 2, it might allow you to remove the Lethal Guard that you would otherwise have to deal with using a larger creature. Harmony is certainly not like an Ancano or Tazkad as a finisher, but can still have good uses when played during the winning phase of the game.

Losing/ Turnaround

As an RNG effect, Harmony can buy you another turn as a Prophecy. The action is more solidly played when you are in a Losing position, when played from hand. The effect of reducing all your opponent’s creatures damage by -2 each, can be a real big thing. Pulling her as a Prophecy when you are loosing and your opponent still has swings left, can also be a disruption to buy you another turn to search for other options to turnaround the game.

The card is versatile and it will be interesting to see it entering the meta. As it has uses in several quadrants, the card might be around for a bit. It can certainly help as a cheap counter against Conscription decks. It will be funny to see it in a Conscription mirror, actually. Meme-ish… 😉 Just today, 70% of all my matchups on the ladder were against Telvanni Conscription decks. But since there are other cards in FrostSpark that can help against Conscription decks, we can be hopeful to finally see a new meta emerge.

Synergies

Harmony, as a disruptive tool can be used offensively and defensively. It provides the ability to slow down your opponent’s attack by reducing the damage dealt, which could be a thing when you are playing against a Dominate aggro matchup that’s gone wide.

Harmony let’s you trade with low-power Lethal creatures

One of the first uses that you will find worth exploring, is playing Harmony when one of your creatures is opposing a Fighters Guild Recruit. Harmony will just reduce his power to zero, allowing you to kill him without losing your own creature. You can also use Harmony to neutralise a Sanctuary Pet, if you have another creature on board, in addition to the one that got shackled by Sanctuary Pet.

Harmony in Dodge-Decks with Guards

Khuul Lawkeeper Hive Defender Lydia Phalanx Exemplar Auroran Sentry Shrine Guardian Oldgate Warden Hackwing Feather Indomitable Ordinator Whiterun Protector Nahagliiv

Harmony can also help decks that are running a lot of high-health Guard creatures and attempt to Dodge the opponent. Not many of these are currently to be seen in the meta, but we should look at the synergy of those cards nonetheless. If you play Harmony in a way that allows your Guard to survive just another turn, it might help you in any phase of the game.

Harmony supporting Creatures with Charge or Battle

Ashlander Zealot Candlehearth Brawler Cliffstrider Battlefield Scrounger Hunter-Killers

Creatures with Charge or Battle can also benefit from Harmony, as they can be used as removal. A few examples of creatures that can survive longer with your Harmony are Cliffstrider, Candhearth Brawler or Battlefield Scrounger (gets good tempo with an item).

Harmony produces better targets for Slay-Creatures

Jiub Morag Tong Aspirant Falkreath Defiler Brotherhood Slayed The Black Dragon

Another interesting potential synergy is with Slay-creatures. Slay-creatures get their value from their slay effect being triggered over and over again. This means, the more often a creature can slay, the greater the value. Assume you can get Jiub to trigger or duplicate a Morag Tong Aspirant on turn 2. Getting more value out of Falkreath Defiler, Brotherhood Sanctuary or The Black Dragon could also be interesting for some decks. You would probably want to support the deck with Cloudrest Illusionist…

Harmony can help remove 4-, 5 or 6-power creatures

Execute Grisley Gourmet Arrow Storm Spiteful Dremora Mecinar’s Will Devour

Your Harmony can also disrupt your opponents 4-power creatures in combination with Execution, Grisley Gourmet, Spiteful Dremora or Arrow Storm. Good targets are 4-power creatures like Garnag, Cornerclub Gambler, Piercing Twilight or Emperor’s Blade. With Mecinar’s Will you can steal your opponent’s 5-power creature to give it charge and in combination with Devour, you can get keywords from 6-power creatures onto one of your dragons (or simply remove them). Hence, Harmony extends the use of some of the Willpower removal cards and makes them playable for a little bit longer into the game.

Harmony and Shearpoint Dragon

With Shearpoint Dragon also played on board, Harmony can even get another -1 on the opponent’s Power values. This synergy might give Monk and Hlaalu some even better trade options. I would almost want a few low-cost charge creatures in my hand to damage things without taking damage myself and drop a Fallnesti Reaver on the same turn. Ah, the meme combo’s are getting at me, here.

Summary

Another versatile card with an interesting new effect that can have uses in several decks. This first look cannot be exhaustive or predict all the possible uses that people will find, but has hopefully given you some interesting insights into the uses and synergies of Harmony. Please feel free to leave a comment below, if you have additional ideas or disagree. I would love to hear your opinion on this or any other card in the FrostSpark Collection.

Only three more cards to go – could the expansion be released directly on the day directly after the last reveal?

Holoir

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