I’ve been seeing a lot of people running Bujins, Pure Geargias, Dragon Ruler variants, Dual-Axis Fire Fists and other decks. It had me wondering why there aren’t a lot of people running Harpies.

I hear a lot of people say it’s inconsistent, loses to itself, doesn’t get free summons and many other things which i don’t think is all true. I think Harpies Pre-PRIO can be a good deck to run since this is still another back row format. They have enough speed to end the duel quickly before your opponent sets up and controls the game if they keep searching out things from their decks. There’s 2 ways of running this deck like you can go with the Harpie’s Pet Dragon route to have access to Rank 7 monsters such as Mecha Phantom Beast Dracossack, Number 11: Big Eye and Number 74: Master of Blades or using the Rank 4 build with no Harpie’s Pet Dragon but with Summoner Monk. You can pitch a Hysteric Sign or any other spell to special summon a Harpie Dancer to get that going if you have Harpie’s Hunting Groud in play, any other Harpie monster or even a Blackwing – Zephryos the Elite to make a Rank 4 XYZ monster depending on the situation. You could always bring Zephryos back from the graveyard to the field by returning cards like a face-up Fiendish Chain, Hysteric Party, Hysteric Sign, Mistake, Harpie’s Hunting Ground and others, then either activate them again or just set them again. It’s really neat what things you can do with Summoner Monk.

What makes Harpies good and a contender for the beginning of the format?

Well they have 4, if not 5 key cards to the deck: Harpie’s Hunting Ground, Hysteric Sign, Hysteric Party, Harpie Channeler and Lightning Chidori.

YCS Las Vegas is this weekend and with Mermails, Bujins, Pure Geargias, Fire Fists taking most of the Top 32 of YCS Mexico this past weekend i really think this deck is a sleeper for this event. Why? Well lets see:

Pure Geargia and Fire Fists are your easiest match ups because they both set a lot of traps to where your Hunting Ground will put in a lot of work to clear those out. Fire Fists don’t really have a huge come back play outside of their solo Coach Soldier Wolfbark or Rekindling so staring down a Hysteric Party is pretty scary especially after you’ve lost your back row from Hunting Ground. With Gears at least you have the Geargiagear and Armor combo to try to Exciton or 101 to make an attempt to come back but even then you should win the duel by then with the amount of speed this deck has. Side cards like Black Horn of Heaven and Trap Stun come in handy against these decks because they help push your Harpie spam and get rid of their XYZ monsters they’re forced to make with their monsters. Lightning Chidori also puts in work against both decks back siding back set spell, trap and monster cards. Sending back a Geargiarmor can be pretty sick. Also you can always bring out a Number 74: Master of Blades to put pressure on them if you run the build with Harpie’s Pet Dragon since cards like Bear, 101, Dimensional Prison, Diamond Dire Wolf, etc target and he can not only negate those effects but also destroy 1 card on the field (Your opponents cards or like your own Sign too). With him having 2700 attack it’s pretty hard for them to get over that.

Mermails is probably the tougher match up for this deck because their set back rows are ones that can be chained which is not something you wanna pop a lot but they’ll strive to get their Mermail Abysspike, add Genex Undine then later summon that to dump Tidal and add Controller to hand. They go for their Leo, the Keeper of the Sacred Tree play which can be a pain to get rid of as well as Mermail Abyssgaios. Luckily enough you have cards like Dark Hole to get rid of both monsters, Ice Beast Zerofyne and Evilswarm Exciton to get rid of the Leo, Book of Moon and Icarus Attack to get rid of the Gaios. Though you run Reckless Greed, you have Hysteric Sign to search your 3 main cards for your combo play and Elegant Egotist which you can use as well. Also remember you have Mistake in the side which pretty much cripples the deck along with Soul Drain and Abyss Dweller. Maxx “C” also puts them in an awkward spot when they are trying to make a play or push.

Deck list I’ve been testing:

This is something i’d take to YCS Las Vegas or at any Regional event. There isn’t much you can side against this deck outside of spell or trap destruction but even so hitting a set Hysteric Sign or Reckless Greed really sucks. True they can hit your HHG, freshly activated Sign or Party if they preserve them. Anyways, i hope this article helps give players some insight on considering this deck before we get PRIO.