Friday Stride: Dragon Masquerade, Harri

For every new mechanic, some of the existing clans will inevitably have to wait longer for cards using it. The wait for the first G era support has been especially long when a lot of clans didn't get anything during season 4, and thus have even fewer options to keep up. Of the five clans not to gain their stride support before the Girs Crisis arc of the anime, three did get set support in season 4 (though not a great deal in two cases), whilst Nubatama has only ever had one full wave of support and has one of the smallest card pools in the game - before the upcoming Techincal Booster Touken Ranbu has more cards. That just leaves one clan, and because I format my titles with the name of the card you'll be able to tell I'm talking about Pale Moon, who did at least get into two boosters in season 3. So, let's examine the latest performer in this circus, Dragon Masquerade, Harri.

You're a wizard Harri no, that's too obvious.

Harri is a future form of Pale Moon's strider grade 3, who naturally is also called Harri. Like his base form, this Harri utilises Pale Moon's new Magia keyword, which marks out skills which call units from the soul for a turn, before sending them back at the end of the turn. In comparison to permanent calls from the soul, Magia skills tend to either have a lower cost or give the called unit a power boost, and reduces vulnerability to control skills at the cost of having to keep using Magia skills to maintain a field. Harri is the big finisher of the Magia deck, doing quite a bit.

His skill is costly - you need to already be at GB3 before he attacks, and then counter blast 2 and move one of your rear-guards to the soul. In exchange, he can call three units out from the soul for the turn, then if you have five or more rear-guards (which at the present means five) you move two of your opponent's rear-guards into the soul. Whilst they get to choose which two units, this gives some degree of control to a deck which generally operates more aggressively, especially against decks which don't actively utilise their soul.

The key function of the effect, however, is to call out further rear-guards to generate more attacks. Since he can call over resting units, he generates five attacks in addition to what other units can set up. This does come with the downside of replacing a unit with a temporary one, but if you call over other Magia units then you've not lost any permanent cards (there's still a cost - units you retire aren't available for later calls from the soul). Likewise, if you use a unit called from a Magia skill for his cost, you don't lose a card in using his effects. 

Three units gives you enough to generate an entire column and another attacker. The first obvious play is to not boost one of your rear-guards when it attacks, to leave the booster standing for later. Darkside Princess is especially nice here, since she can make herself 14k to attack the vanguard before diving into the soul - right where she needs to be for Harri to bring her back out. Alternatively, if you use the booster, Flying Peryton can replace it for free, or good old Purple Trapezist can be called to the back and swap out the resting attacker for a standing unit.

There's one more issue, however, and that's the GB3. Needing two other G units face-up to use the skill means either he has to wait for your third stride or you have to flip over another G unit on your first stride. The go-to for this is Snow Element, Blizza for it's usability by every deck, but G era Pale Moon decks need their counter-blasts, and with access to Jester Demonic Dragon, Lunatec Dragon who can be used on the first stride for free this becomes the better option. Whilst you don't get Lunatec's critical, you get a 2k power boost for anything you call from the soul, which can fix columns or allow units to without boosters to force more guard.

Harri is big, and perhaps slightly too big. He does a lot whilst not needing multiple copies, but for that he's slow to activate and costly, and whilst the deck does have potential it has a few issues at the moment, and the other functional Pale Moon builds can't use Lunatech to make Harri faster, and generally have better things to do with the counterblasts.