What WAS the problem with harmony?

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Well i've started to play gwent a few months ago, and almost everytime i see someone complaying about SK and NG, always another person say it's like "the old harmony".

So, since i dindt play when the "old harmony" ruled the game, i am curious about what was the problem.

I ve tryed to look in this site - https://gwent.one/en/cards/ -, where there is all the cards of gwent,, includind the old ones, but i didt realyze the change.

So, iff a poor soul can kill my curiosity, what was the problem with "old harmony"? There is a video with someone playing it?
 
...so you were easily able to create points quickly.


The first match ends at 18:48
At 33:42 Jaggerous says: "Just play Harmony in 2-0, that's how you do it."
 
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The only actual "problem" with Harmony was the play of double Waters of Brokilon via MEcho in Round 3, which put 4 4-point engines on the board in one turn, which was very hard to deal with. Aside from that, Harmony mechanic's power was slightly weaker than Thrive and either on par or slightly stronger than Assimilate and Intimidate. Of course, as we all know, instead of fixing the actual problem, the devs made Harmony work on the same row only, which killed the archtype and effectively removed Harmony from play entirely.
 
The only actual "problem" with Harmony was the play of double Waters of Brokilon via MEcho in Round 3, which put 4 4-point engines on the board in one turn, which was very hard to deal with. Aside from that, Harmony mechanic's power was slightly weaker than Thrive and either on par or slightly stronger than Assimilate and Intimidate. Of course, as we all know, instead of fixing the actual problem, the devs made Harmony work on the same row only, which killed the archtype and effectively removed Harmony from play entirely.
You explained it very well & now the devs will remove the entire Mystic Echo/Every leader ability from every faction that plays 2 cards in one turn from the game next month I guess.
 
The only actual "problem" with Harmony was the play of double Waters of Brokilon via MEcho in Round 3, which put 4 4-point engines on the board in one turn, which was very hard to deal with. Aside from that, Harmony mechanic's power was slightly weaker than Thrive and either on par or slightly stronger than Assimilate and Intimidate. Of course, as we all know, instead of fixing the actual problem, the devs made Harmony work on the same row only, which killed the archtype and effectively removed Harmony from play entirely.
Well it's definitely not entirely removed from play as many cards that have the tag are still used, however the full Harmony deck doesn't work well anymore. Just removing some Harmony tags or making Double Waters impossible would have been enough of a nerf, maybe both if only one of them isn't sufficient.
 
now the devs will remove the entire Mystic Echo/Every leader ability from every faction that plays 2 cards in one turn from the game next month I guess.
Random tangent. Can't seem to find that announcement anywhere. Got a link so I can read up or watch it? Thanks!
 
I think it is strange how the condition to trigger harmony on one hand takes into account both rows when looking for unique units but then when you gotta actually play that unique unit the condition is now row locked.
 
Personally feel they should undo the Harmony nerf.

I tried both the tier 1 Harmony Deck/Mystic Echo/Waters and Soldier Ball a few seasons back. Harmony was a very well balanced deck in that you almost couldn't draw a bad hand. As many have said, the interaction that was the most obvious choice for the nerf was double waters, not harmony.
Due to the balance of the deck though, it was quite a fun day to play with and against, as it took some thought/card management to pilot.

Personally I found Soldiers Ball to be the more boring to play with and against. As it was pretty much autopilot.
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Well it's definitely not entirely removed from play as many cards that have the tag are still used, however the full Harmony deck doesn't work well anymore. Just removing some Harmony tags or making Double Waters impossible would have been enough of a nerf, maybe both if only one of them isn't sufficient.
It's almost like they didn't want anything challenging the dominance of the new Master Mirror cards.
Look through the meta lists, and every deck except one needs a hearty inclusion of Master Mirror Cards.

The one deck that survived the expansion: Passiflora.

The cynic in me says every decision that is being made by CDPR is the one that is most profitable. Like I'm sure it's no coincidence that the leader ability they chose to boost was SY Hidden Cache (what?!). Got to keep people buying those Syndicate card packs...

Maybe it's my misunderstanding of the term "expansion," I assumed that would mean it would expand the number of viable cards, not just overwrite all the previous decks.

Therefore I am completely in favour of old Harmony/Double Mystic Echo being back in play

Even though it was a powerful deck, I actually enjoyed playing against it, as it always felt like if you drew well/played well, you still had a chance to win even with a meme deck. That is definitely not the case in the current meta.
 
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You could slam points every turn and even your crappiest card could play for like 8-9 points deeper in the round. You could deploy engines while making controlly plays (infamous Dryad Ranger that's now trash). It had much stuff that needed immediate removal (harmony was so spoiled that it often included Pavko - the ST 1-2/turn 5 for 8 row locked dmg engine - when almost no meta decks included such a card).

The only actual "problem" with Harmony was the play of double Waters of Brokilon via MEcho in Round 3, which put 4 4-point engines on the board in one turn, which was very hard to deal with.

1) That did not change. So logically, it can be argued that was not the problem.

2) You can't deploy 4 Fledglings in 1 turn. Unless with Portal.

Personally feel they should undo the Harmony nerf.

Absolutely. It was a great, interesting deck. Power creep in MM would have killed or balanced it anyway, I think. And the new ST cards are mostly dryads (and some humans) so not so good for a harmony focused deck. So no fear of making a broken harmony-symbiosis deck. Plus symbiosis is specials focused so can't have many unit tags.
 
You could slam points every turn and even your crappiest card could play for like 8-9 points deeper in the round. You could deploy engines while making controlly plays (infamous Dryad Ranger that's now trash). It had much stuff that needed immediate removal (harmony was so spoiled that it often included Pavko - the ST 1-2/turn 5 for 8 row locked dmg engine - when almost no meta decks included such a card).



1) That did not change. So logically, it can be argued that was not the problem.

2) You can't deploy 4 Fledglings in 1 turn. Unless with Portal.



Absolutely. It was a great, interesting deck. Power creep in MM would have killed or balanced it anyway, I think. And the new ST cards are mostly dryads (and some humans) so not so good for a harmony focused deck. So no fear of making a broken harmony-symbiosis deck. Plus symbiosis is specials focused so can't have many unit tags.

You tutor waters for 2 then ME it for 2 more. Very easy to play 4 without portal. Of course you could also just have WOB in your hand and then replay with ME.
 

You can still use Waters of Brokilon with Mystic Echo. Nothing changed it that respect. What changed is row locking harmony. In theory you can still get 4 Fledglings and boost them with 5 different tags in R3.

You tutor waters for 2 then ME it for 2 more. Very easy to play 4 without portal. Of course you could also just have WOB in your hand and then replay with ME.

Of course. I had a brain blackout when I wrote that. I remembered that in R3 you opened with Waters and then you waited till turn 2 to replay it. Because there was no reason to actually deploy all 4 in one turn.
 
You can still use Waters of Brokilon with Mystic Echo. Nothing changed it that respect. What changed is row locking harmony. In theory you can still get 4 Fledglings and boost them with 5 different tags in R3.

Sure, but how does that "logically" prove that Double Waters wasn't the problem...? That's like... idk, removing the Warrior tag from every SK card except Tuirsech Skirmisher or whatever other 4p garbage card and then saying, "See? I told you Vabjorn to Blood Eagle wasn't the problem!" It makes no sense. What it actually proves is that CDPR just wanted to kill Harmony, not fix it. To prove MEcho Waters was, in fact, the problem all you had to do was play (or at least look at numbers of) Harmony without MEcho.
 
Imo the only problem with harmony was Dryad Ranger - definitely too strong card. Everything else was ok. Defenders mechanics are broken at all but it refers to all defenders, not only to SC defender or harmony so I don't discuss it here.
 
To be honest, harmony was pretty one-dimensional in terms of playstyle.

Having said that I don't believe it was too strong - especially when compared with the current state of the game.

As others have said, the only big problem was Mystic Echo + WoB. Just as Mystic Echo has caused problems for NJ dwarves. With any other leader - even Call of Harmony - I believe Harmony was not a problem. If Mystic Echo was changed (as it will be soon), I believe previous harmony would be perfectly fine.

However, come to think of it I'm not sure I want previous harmony to come back because of the fairly monotonous playstyle mentioned above. At least Symbiosis is somewhat interesting, even if rng token spawning being an issue with row limits at the moment.

I'd love to see Call of Harmony changed into something to support the Harmony archetype and maybe again rework what it does completely - again along the theme of different species coming together as one.
 
I really dont know about that Mystic Echo into Waters. On the best of days it played for 18. Some ppl used a dragon or a machine (the dwarven sth for 5p) so it could possibly reach a ceiling of 20. More only if the opponent removed a tag to be played again. Most often it was like 12-16. It's a good average value but nothing broken. And it was always conditional on hitting a series of cards in a round of a specific length. Moreover, these are raw points. Mystic Echo into Waters never gives you any situational advantage.

In comparison, Overwhelming Hunger into Dettlaff and Nightwraith is always 18 (excluding Dettlaff and Wraith native values). It can easily go higher if you save a tall unit from poison instead of proccing Nightwraith or proc a better deathwish.

Uprising or Second Wind, I don't even wanna count the ceiling and list situations where they gain advantage.

And so on.

So I don't think ME into WoB was broken in the vacuum. It was overpowered in a combo with harmony mechanics and the combo of 1) decent control with 2) amazing point slams and 3) good engine overload tactics. If a deck has all three it will likely be op.
 
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