Competitive Pure Harpies 2025

Ok... It's been a while. This is the list that I have settled on after a bit of thinking. I haven't updated this deck in a while as I've been building and playing other decks, and getting more into other archetypes. Decided to come back to this to make something somewhat coherent for the current format. 

This deck is probably as competitive as its gonna get (which isn't very much) until Harpies get a new wave of support (fingers crossed). I've made some big changes compared to the previous list, and I have some thoughts to get through:

The Biggest Change: Swallow's Cowrie over Small World.

Swallow's Cowrie in my opinion is a much better version of Small World for winged beasts specifically, and especially for Harpies. For Small World to work, you need to have a monster in hand, and a monster in deck to banish to grab Channeler 99% of the time. It's a -1, and almost always puts you in a spot where you are playing with a 4 card hand which feels kinda bad, and while Swallow's Cowrie does essentially the same thing, but instead of banishing 2, it puts a card in the GY. This is huge, because not only does it fuel Feather Rest, if you tribute Harpist, you get your card back EOT (makes me want to play 2-3 kinda). Also if you are playing Phalanx Pike it can pump whatever Harpie it is equipped to. Phalanx Pike however I did cut. I may come back to it, but it's unlikely.

In addition, Swallow's Cowrie is a quick play, so if you have it in hand after you normal Channeler, and your opponent attempts to veiler, ash, or imperm it, you can tribute it in response to the hand trap letting channeler resolve and adding a card like Oracle or Queen to your hand to keep playing.

Main Engine Monsters and Spells:

Still playing 3 Channeler, Perfumer, and Pet Dragon. They're the most important cards for the engine to work. Channeler is the only real starter for the deck unfortunately. I hope they print more starters. The deck desparately needs them. Plus a couple more Extra deck monsters TBH. Playing 3 of the other Harpies at 1 apiece. Queen, Oracle, and Harpist. I also cut down on some of the spells/traps. Hysteric Party feels bad. There is nothing to search it or set it from the deck, so its too slow, although its effect is pretty nice. Hunting Ground is at 1 now for space and consistency. Would be nice if there was a way to recycle some of the Harpie Spells outside of Egotist. 

I also went back to Unexpected Dai and Normal Harpie Lady. Partially because of the Link Spider/Accesscode line, if you open Normal Harpie + Egotist or something similar where you end up with 2 Normal Harpie in play. If you wanted to though you could cut Dai and play Harpie Lady 1 or Cyber Harpie Lady. Then I would maybe play something other than the Accesscode line, like maybe I:P, Wynn, Avramax, Unicorn or some XZY's. Entirely up to you.

Cutting Trap Trick, and Non-Engine Changes:

I cut trap trick because it just felt bad to play with in this deck. It's too slow and is completely dead if you are going second. Because of this, I put Evenly Matched into the side deck. I also bumped all the non-engine cards up to 3 and put Ash Blossom in the main deck because its one of the best hand traps for the current format. With all these changes we get to play 13 non-engine/hand traps, plus Feather Duster if you want to count it. Which is very good considering the deck we are using. Forbidden Droplet is still manditory. It lets you fetch Feather Storm, which is still insane. Imperm is still amazing, and Called By is basically manditory because Channeler is super vulnerable to hand traps. For this reason you could even play Crossout if you made the space for it, but I opted not to.

Side Deck Changes:

Don't need any backrow hate in the side deck still, there is already pleanty of free backrow breakers in the main deck. Playing Lancea because Maliss exists. Nib, Droll, and Mourner are self explanatory. So is Evenly Matched. You could almost play whatever side deck you want. It all depends on what people play at locals really. Cards like Chaos Hunter, Dimensional Barrier, Solemn Strike are really good. I can't afford any of the Mulcharmy cards and refuse to buy any until it gets reprinted into the ground.

Extra Deck Changes:

Cut Zerofyne and Lightning Chidori, I didn't like Zerofyne all that much, and I never really summoned it. Chidori I like, but it was a bit too situational. I decided to put in an Accesscode package with Crystal Heart, Heatsoul, and 2 Link Spider (courtesy of Dark Armed Duelist), which takes up quite a bit of space, but it makes up for the lack of OTK potential Harpies have. Because of this I unfortunately had to cut a Harpie Conductor, but you only really need 1 anyway.

I still play 2 Cyber Slash, the second one comes up a lot. Dracossack is mandatory, provides link fodder for either the Accesscode line, or an S:P line or Conductor. Still playing AA-ZEUS and TY-PHON. They're great. I still like playing Big Eye as well, but you could play another rank 7 over it, or even another rank 4, or an I:P to make an interrupt into S:P.

If you managed to read all of that, I appreciate you for taking the time. I love the game of YuGiOh, even when the formats get a little rough sometimes. I really hope Konami does the same thing for Harpies as they did for Blue-Eyes. Same goes for all the other nostalgia archetypes. They're the reason I got back into the game, and still play now.