Except it isnt keeping anything in check, not anymore. Tempo decks outpace scorch effects far too easily for it to really matter. The abundance of scorch effects only harms the handful of slower decks still around nowadays pushing you even further into the "hyper-tempo" or "control" builds. Albeit this is more a problem with CDPR giving tempo far, far too much power and ease of use the last few patches.
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The card is undoubtedly a swiss army knife though, and probably the best one in the game. It factors into some part of each monsters archetype (consume-extra strength, swarm-3 tokens 1 bronze, wild hunt/weather control-carryover), and it brings something to the table whether its countered or interacted with or not. The only hard counters, by the way, are a NG silver or Radovid-a leader or a silver-and they only counter one copy. I understand Gigni and BTM wil lose you games sometimes, but I honestly think harpy is one of the cards causing monsters to be everywhere. Gigni is also often a round 3 dead card and BTM is countered (or at least left in Lady Luck's hands) as many factions have 1 str units to disable this card from automatically favoring its user.4RM3D;n9260191 said:
The real problem, and the point I'll disagree on, is that celaeno does not need something else to be powerful. Play it in round 1 and if left alone it nets you 5 points one round and 6 the next. That's an 11 point bronze with 0 interactions... This card is probably the biggest reason grave hag can be hard to deal with. Obviously the thing with grave hag is that in low level play you don't see it coming, so if you have last say and don't have a counter its a large swing. In high end play its just a matter of getting last say and having some kind of counter in your deck (pretty common these days), but with 1 harpy played in round 1 you're likely to have to spend a decently high strength unit to win round 2 if they pass with the harpy carryover on the board, and if multiple harpies are played in round 1 its likely that the opponent will have to spend more than 1 card to win the round or won't be able to insta-pass for advantage were they to win round 1. It just completely enables the grave hag, and doesn't need any interaction to do so.
Now if it is interacted with the card is three tokens for butt/yen swarm, an instant thunderbolt setup, a consume staple, and as already stated is tons of carryover. There are no serious monster decks I've seen lately that don't include three copies of this card. The only "problem" with this card is that it is relatively low tempo initially, but unless hard countered it exchanges carryover for tempo anyways.
I know the "nerf monsters" camp is largely sort of tied between talking about foglets and celaeno's, but for me the answer is clear. Foglets provide a great tool in the kit of swarm/weather gameplay, but they are nowhere near the same kind of utility as celaeno. The card is useful no matter what you do with it (or don't do with it, as just playing it is an 11 overall value bronze),a nd provides value no matter what.
TLDR: The card does a lot with no interaction, and with interaction does almost everything.
a_page06;n9265441 said:
a_page06;n9265441 said:
Well said.
Just for the record I am not disagreeing with you here. Nonetheless, I want to expand on your Swiss army knife analogy (which actually is a pretty good one for the Harpy). Imagine you are walking on the street and you pull out your Swiss army knife, then people aren't really shocked. Now imagine you pull out a FN P90 sub-machine gun (Igni), instead. This will surely cause some distress.
Yeah, Celaeno Harpy is indeed a card that should be changed. However, at the same time, it pains me do suggest it. In the ideal situation, I rather see every faction gets its own Celaeno Harpy. The downside is that it becomes too much of an auto-include. But this can actually be used to the dev's advantage because certain cards will always be auto-included regardless. Now if you could combine those into one, that would leave more room for other cards in the deck, creating more variation.
Scorch Golds.
And persistent, either bring a lot of lock or lose.
The Dimeterium Bomb/Letho combo.
And persistent, either bring a lot of lock or lose.
The Dimeterium Bomb/Letho combo.
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DMaster2;n8995530 said:
I play a non weather northern realms deck at 4100 mmr. Weather is easily countered, but people don't want to have any weather counter measures in their decks because it weakens their deck strength specially against non weather decks. With that being said you gotta way the pros and cons of putting weather counters in your deck. Weather at its current state is healthy for the game and keeps people on their toes. Weather was unhealthy for the game last patch
4RM3D;n9267441 said:
I like auto-includes at the silver level; locks/mages (meta depending of course) are great examples. You're definitely right that it doesn't provide the same shock value, but I don't think that makes it any less powerful. Lots of shock value cards are either silvers/golds (Gigni, scorch), and some require setup or a certain board state (BTM). It just takes such little commitment to get such huge value out of the harpy, and of course once you interact/invest in it the potential grows.
An auto-include bronze for some factions is kind of tricky I think. What's interesting about the harpy (that also makes it so good) is that somehow it fits the very polar-opposite style archetypes of the three monsters factions. The card fits token low-str gameplay, buffs consume's high single unit composition, and fits into an Eredin control/carryover deck. The card might be sort of an auto-include due to just how strong it is though, and given a nerf I honestly think it might see less play in some decks. I am looking forward to seeing it in the new deathwish/trigger thing some of the new cards suggest!
As far as other factions, its just as hard to create this auto-include bronze. Skellige's priestess is probably the only card even slightly comparable. For NG it sure seems tough to find a card that fits reveal, spy, and control archetypes; NG has a lot of these auto-include silvers, but the golds and bronzes are what bring the decks variety. Add in the strange Borkh and Dash decks and it gets harder. Same with ST; a bronze card to auto-include to elf (be it buffing or control) and dwarfs? Seems tough, although most factions have the silvers that are auto-includes, and personally I kind of like it that way.