Hello readers, last week I was having some fun with Harpie’s Pet Phantasmal Dragon, but I left out the deck that makes it easiest. Harpies. To start off this week, We’re going to take a look at Kumar Dave’s Harpie decklist.
Monsters: 17
3 Harpie Channeler
3 Harpie Dancer
3 Harpie Lady 1
3 Harpie Queen
2 Summoner Monk
1 Blackwing - Zephyros the Elite
1 Harpie's Pet Dragon
1 Harpie's Pet Baby Dragon
Spells: 9
3 Harpie's Hunting Ground
3 Hysteric Sign
2 Elogent Egotist
1 Dark Hole
Traps: 14
3 Hysteric Party
3 Imperial Iron Wall
2 Icarus Attack
1 Bottomless Trap Hole
1 Compulsory Evacuation Device
1 Solemn Warning
1 Vanity's Emptiness
1 Sixth Sense
1 Mirror Force
I was toying around with a Harpie deck a couple weeks ago, and while it didn’t have Dancer, not much has changed unless you want to run a Divine Wind variant. This deck has a lot of extremely powerful cards. Hysteric Party is extremely close in power level to Return from the Different Dimension, almost always ending the game when it’s activated. Hysteric Sign is an incredible card as well, and can singlehandedly turn mediocre hands into incredible hands by either pitching it to Monk, or popping it with Hunting Ground. Channeler of course, is the heart and soul of this deck, giving easy early game rank 7 access, and easy Lightning Chidori access. Mostly what we’re going to be doing with this list is just to clean it up a little, there are some cards that I don’t think are very good in this deck, and some omissions that I want to address.
First off, Pet Baby Dragon is not a very good card. It’s a fine card when you Hysteric Sign back a bunch of Harpies, but even then, you need to burn a Channeler pitch to summon it from deck, or use a normal summon on it. Unless you’re consistently fielding 4 monsters, I wouldn’t want to run this card. And really, even if you’re consistently fielding 4 monsters, you probably don’t need this.
Zephyros the Elite is an interesting card, but it strikes me as more of a win more card than something genuinely useful. Hysteric Party is the only real useful thing in the deck to bounce, and if you have a faceup Hysteric Party the game should be over already.
Without Divine Wind in the deck, Dancer is more of a filler monster in the same spirit as Flying Kamikari, or Mist Valley Falcon in pre-LCJW builds. I don’t really see a reason to max out Dancer, since it’s really just there to make your monster ratios better. I’m going to cut one of them.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve been cutting Dark Hole from basically every deck I play right now. Between Dracossack and Stardust versus Dragon, World versus Prophecy, and Pandemics versus Evilswarm, the card never feels good to have in your hand, especially in a deck like this that has such easy access to Chidori.
Icarus Attack is a card I don’t like in this deck for a completely different reason. You just don’t end your turn with a Winged Beast on the field often enough for Icarus to be a great card. This, combined with Hunting Ground already handing all the Spell/Trap disruption the deck needs, and you just have an overly redundant, situational, trap.
The cuts in summary: 6
-1 Harpie’s Pet Baby Dragon
-1 Blackwing – Zephyros the Elite
-1 Harpie Dancer
-1 Dark Hole
-2 Icarus Attack
A subtle card that I really liked in this deck that a lot of people are overlooking is Upstart Goblin. At heart, this is a combo deck. You’re trying to assemble Hysteric Party setups, or abuse Hysteric Sign combos to gain an absurd amount of advantage and turn it into a win. Life matters a lot less in this deck than just having the ability to run 37 cards. This deck doesn’t win by backdooring damage in, when you win, you win big.
I also want to add a 2nd Vanity’s Emptiness to the main. An oft overlooked property of Monk is it’s ability to make Master Key Beetle by searching out a 2nd Monk. In fact, with the right hand it’s not too difficult to end turn 1 with a field of Key Beetle + Dracossack with a set Iron Wall or Emptiness. Now, this uses your whole hand…unless you discard Hysteric Sign to Monk.
Book of Moon is an incredible spell in this deck. Opponents are often scared to set their backrow in fear of Proving Ground, making it difficult to get full value out of your Chidori plays. Book however, is both a great disruptive trap, and it enables your Chidori plays to get a little extra value.
And lastly, I want to add a single copy of Mystical Space Typhoon. While yeah, this card is redundant with Hunting Ground, being a quickplay is extremely for this deck. It allows you to play Hysteric Sign on your turn to search an Egotist, then pop it with Typhoon on their turn to claim your 3 searches on their end phase. Being a quickplay also matters for interaction. With the increasing popularity of cards like Raigeki Break and Wind Blast, Hunting Ground just forces their activation on something, where Typhoon can just get rid of them in their end phase. Typhoon is also useful for protecting your Hunting Ground, or blocking an opposing Ravine from coming down and being able to activate. Typhoon is just overall a solid card right now.
Additions in summary:
+3 Upstart Goblin
+1 Vanity’s Emptiness
+1 Book on Moon
+1 Mystical Space Typhoon
Next, we’re going to take a look at Taibei’s Alien Gishki deck:
monsters: 17
1 black luster soldier-envoy of the beginning
3 alien shocktrooper
2 alien ammonite
3 manju of the ten thousand hands
3 sonic bird
2 gishki vision
3 gishki phychelone
spells: 13
1 advenced ritual art
1 gishki photomirror
3 preparation of rites
3 deck lockdown
3 prohibition
2 fire formation-gyokkou
traps: 11
1 solemn warning
2 anti-spell fragrance
2 rivalry of warlords
3 fiendish chain
3 vanity’s emptiness
I appreciate the little things in life, like Cosmic Fortress Gol’Gar looping Fiendish Chains and Vanity’s Emptinesses. I hadn’t thought of using Advanced Ritual Art to load the graveyard for Ammonite though, that’s a really cool idea. So basically what this deck is trying to do, is you summon a manju/sonic bird, and summon a Phychelone with ARA, sending Shocktrooper to the graveyard. You then exceed the Manju/Sonic Bird, along with the Phychelone to make King of Feral Imps to search for Ammonite, allowing you to summon Cosmic Fortress Gol’Gar on the following turn. From there, you get to do all sorts of fun things by bouncing your continuous cards with Gol’Gar.
The first thing that stood out to me was the Black Luster Soldier. While summoning it is certainly possible with extra deck cards, I don’t think he’s the sort of card this deck wants to be playing. Your plan is to lock the game down with Gol’Gar, stick to that plan.
I’m not the biggest fan of the maindecked Rivalry of Warlords. Versus Dragon they’re alright, but they still are able to make all their synchro plays. Versus Prophecy it does literal nothing. It feels like more of a sideboard card for Evilswarm and Constellar more than something you want in the main.
Running the full 3 copies of Prohibition seems unnecessary, you don’t really want to draw multiple copies of the card since you loop it with Gol’Gar, and you have a lot of overlap in the deck with the various hate cards you run. I'm not so sure that I like Deck Lockdown at all in here. Dragons still get to play with it up, and outside of Dragons and Spellbook the card basically does nothing. It's something to consider for the sideboard, but I feel like there are better cards to run in the main.
Your ratios for ritual monsters:ritual spells is a bit awkward. You have 11 ritual monsters, or cards to search for ritual monsters, but only 8 ritual spells. Now, that number bumps up to 11 and 11 if you count Preparation as a card that searches ritual spells, but realistically the only ritual summon that matters is the first one. I’m going to cut one of the Phychelones, since it’s better to have a tutor than a Ritual Monster for the sake of deck thinning.
I feel like we can play higher impact cards than Solemn Warning in a deck like this. We’re trying to prevent our opponent from being able to play cards, Warning is only good if our plan is failing.
The cuts in summary:
-1 Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the Beginning
-2 Rivalry of Warlords
-3 Deck Lockdown
-1 Prohibition
-1 Gishki Phychelone
-1 Solemn Warning
Similar to the previous deck, we aren’t winning by backdooring damage, and we’re trying to assemble a combo. Upstart Goblin is fantastic for a deck like this. I’m adding the full 3 copies in, and dropping the deck count down to 40. This leaves us with 5 more slots for additions.
The first card I want to add is a 1-of Rescue Rabbit. Rabbit is just a more optimal way of setting up the Gol’Gar play, since it only takes a single card to make the King of Feral Imps rather than two. Sure, it makes your Advanced Ritual Arts weaker, but once you setup your Ammonites, you no longer need to summon ritual monsters, your engine did it’s job.
I also want to add in the 2nd copy of Advanced Ritual Art, to help even out those ratios I talked about earlier, there aren’t any more tutors for ritual spells, so we’re stuck just playing a 2nd copy of the spell.
There are a lot of different cards I’m considering for this last slots. The most obvious one is the one I’m going to add though, and that’s Imperial Iron Wall. It just seems like the most solid hate trap to play here. However, some other cards to consider in this slot are Call of the Haunted, to bring back Gol’Gar in case they manage to kill it. Safe Zone, which fills a double role of protecting the Gol’Gar, and also functioning as removal with Gol’Gar’s bounce effect. Kaiser Coliseum, though Blaster being 2800 makes me less fond of this option, and Grave of the Superancient Organism, which should at the very least be in your sideboard. Grave is interesting because not only does it shut down a large portion of the Dragon deck, but versus Spellbook, it blocks World of Prophecy’s effect through Spellbook of Wisdom and Spellbook of Fate, since it prevents the activation. I think I'm going to add 2 Iron Walls, and 1 Call of the Haunted into these last slots.
Additions in summary:
+3 Upstart Goblin
+1 Rescue Rabbit
+1 Advanced Ritual Art
+2 Imperial Iron Wall
+1 Call of the Haunted
Well, that’s all for this week. If you have a deck you’d like either myself or Johnny to doctor, send us a message at https://www.facebook.com/ArgDeckDoctor
Until next time, remember to Play Hard or Go Home!
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