Harmony Journal Day 1
The Curse of the Black Sun is upon us. But with it came a long awaited Harmony buff. As an enthusiastic ST player, I jumped onto the chance to try out this archetype once more. My deck looks as follows:
(image from: https://www.playgwent.com/en/decks/a95dea67c7fd6d1e5a4708c413fd025c) The match history is as follows:
(The last one was also a W, Source: playgwent.com - match history)
Small Guide: The biggest advantage I’ve noticed in this deck is how easy it is to pilot. You only have a limited amount of control cards in your deck, everything else is Harmony or triggers Harmony. What I usually like to do is: R1 - Play Fauve -> Waters of Brokilon and then Percival. That is usually enough to make a strong enough base for R1. I often just jam out my other harmony cards and hope my opponent can’t outpoint/outcontrol me. Winning R1 usually isn’t too difficult with this strategy. R2 - I like to either dry pass or use this round to get rid of duplicates from my hand so I bleed my opponent a bit. Depending on what I think is more viable in the match. R3 - I pray to have the scenario on my hand, insta-trigger it with Leader to get some real tempo going. Then I just proceed as I do in R1, first all Harmony units, then unique categories. Of course, the last card I like to drop is Dusk-aspect Guardian.
Individual Cards: Chameleon is really nice for triggering Harmony constantly. Even twice (or thrice!) per turn. You just have to be careful and read its infused tag so you don’t brick your categories in hand. Heatwave is just a nice card to have when we’ll get overrun with Scenarios this season. It also helps with getting rid of stuff like Cahir, Brouver, Kelly, etc. Cards that can really wreck your deck. Serpent Trap can also do the trick for the latter cards if your opponent plays them first. Teleportation is great for moments when you have a lot of duplicate units in your deck so that you don’t brick your mulligan. You lose some points, but get a guaranteed Harmony trigger most of the time, as well as a potential Armor reset for your Dwarf.
Strengths:
Consistency is surprisingly not a problem. Call of the Forest helps a lot with getting specific units, like Guardian or Percival. The Scenario I’ve also never had a problem drawing. I think you don’t have a need to run more tutors, because your cards are mostly there to trigger Harmony, for which only their unique category is relevant.
It is hard to contain this deck with damage alone. Even against Pirates I have managed to pull through and keep most of my cards, while also buffing others. You counteract a lot of damage control simply by triggering Harmony.
The control cards in this deck are usually unexpected and serve as a nice surprise tool to counter cards that could break your entire strategy. Often enough, your opponent simply won’t expect so much removal from a Harmony deck, especially in the form of banishment and a trap.
Simplicity is also a feature of this deck. You usually don’t have to think hard about your opponent’s interactions, since you’re playing very solitaire-esque. You grow and hope you outpoint your opponent. Therefore the ball is in your rival’s court and you need to be contained.
Weaknesses:
You get easily outpointed by greedier decks, such as Fleder spam. It is hard to defend against these, since you usually need to remove more than just one card. Additionally, limited removal options lead to problematic situations such as an untouched Cahir, which loses you the game.
A lack of purification makes defenders as well as locks and poisons incredibly lethal against this deck. If your opponent is playing such control, you are in for a hard time.
Yrden
All in all, Harmony is an amusing revival of a fun archetype. Yes, it is very much a solitaire deck, but you can spice it up with some interactivity. Complete changelog here