The good news: I’ve been testing a Harpy deck.  The bad news: I am typing this pretty late at night. @_@

 

Stats                : Harpies’ Hunting Ground is a Field Spell.  This means it won’t eat up a S/T slot.  Hurray.  The only other way to do this effect would be a residual effect like Final Countdown, and given that you are sometimes going to want to nuke this due to the effect, that would be bad.

 

Effect(s)            : Okay, here’s what will make my earlier comment make a little more sense.  Harpies’ Hunting Ground has one two effects.  The first is that t boosts the ATK and DEF of all Winged-Beasts by 200.  On its own, that would be pretty lame.  Fortunately, there is a second effect: whenever a Harpy Lady or Harpie Lady Sisters is Normal or Special Summoned, I presume the controller of the this Field Spell gets to nuke a Spell or Trap card that is in play.  If it is the controller of Harpy Lady or Harpie Lady Sisters, it’s only going to matter in mirror matches.  In Traditional, this card’s effect isn’t so great: you still have Harpie's Feather Duster to annihilate the all opponent’s Spell and Trap cards that are in play.  Also, even with the new Harpy Ladies that were released, it still wouldn’t be worth it there.  In Modified though, with the lack of “fast” S/T removal, it’s pretty nice.  So an “average” effect plus a nice effect yields a good Field Spell.

 

Uses and

Combinations  : This is meant only for a Harpies deck.  From my tests, you should only run about two, and then include a third Field Spell that fits your theme (I recommend Rising Air Current).  Why?  Well, once you have all your Harpies in play, the +200/200 benefit isn’t going to do that much for you.  So once you have them all out, you drop Rising Air Current and now even a lone Harpy can be a solid beatstick (if it’s specifically tomorrow’s card, then she’d be able to take down even Berserk Gorilla, but we’ll talk about that more tomorrow).  Also, you may be forced to destroy this card yourself, since the effect will make you target it if no other S/T cards are in play.  You also might want to nuke it since, as stated, it’s of limited use the later in the game you go, and you might be forced to nuke something more important.  You definitely don’t want to nail your own Call of the Haunted or Pre-Mature Burial. 

 

Ratings

 

Traditional       : 2/5-It would help a Harpies deck, but I don’t think such a deck would be that great in this format.

 

Advanced        : 3.75/5-That’s specifically for a Harpies deck: it’s pretty important, though some variants might be able to do without it.  In my tests, it has decent rate of backfiring.  Since Harpies tend to excel at swarming, a Rising Air Current can sometimes be a better friend.  In a Winged-Beast deck that didn’t use Harpies, it’d probably be a 2/5.  Anywhere else, and it’d be a 1/5-near completely useless.

 

Limited            : 3/5-Out of three packs of RDS, I got two of these and two different new Harpy Ladies.  Too bad it wasn’t a limited event.  Anyway, there are a decent amount of Winged Beasts in the set to benefit from it, and it can even end up countering someone who drafted a lot of Harpies: do they nuke it, or their own S/Ts?  Not a hard call for the most part, but it can give you a psychological advantage.

 

Summary

If you are using Harpies, definitely run one or two.  Just remember it’s mostly for early game, where the stat boost and S/T destruction will come in handy.  Late game, it won’t do a whole lot for you.