Not All Animals Are Equal

[John_Cutter]

Big fan of the manta ray (2 small mountain one water cube)
You can complete it fairly easily and then it pairs well with the penguin (two separate water and mountain cube in middle), and you can also transform the two mountain cubes to buildings after as another option (which is the peacock) or make the mountain bigger and complete the monkey one (double mountain cube with two water).

I don't like the dragonfly spirit token as much as some of the others but if I do go for that then I'm always looking for the manta ray since the water tokens will normally be split

[angrypuppy]

I haven't been playing Harmonies for very long, just the last week or so, but I've played > 60 games (mostly 2-3 player) and frankly the Butterfly seems incredibly OP. I always get 25-35 points from it. Of course it's easier to do that if you get 0 for yellows during scoring, but you can even get 10 there if you're lucky, and STILL get massive Butterfly points. Of course some of the other animals are just bonuses on stuff you'd do anyway for lots of points (like tall trees/mountains) so just looking at the bonus points out of context doesn't tell us everything, but yeah. I think it really matters what number of players you have though, and what other players are going for... if I see another player going for a color I need I often pick the other card just because I don't need them taking all my colors! I do try not to go hard on a single color (or constructions that need a lot of a single color) in a 2P game because by bad luck, sometimes that color just never comes out.

[tbhp]

Stork is better than cat

That's an interesting discussion. I would say that cat has a higher potential, because it literally gives you more points per building (4 versus 3 for stork). So the "perfect" cat game would be superior to the "perfect" stork game. But things are not so simple in reality, because cat comes with the limitation that your reds can't touch each other (if you want to fully benefit from its bonus points), which leaves you with only 4 useful colors that you can place around it, and it's not always simple to design a board where every one of your building will have enough of those around. So cat often requires you to waste maybe a tile or two in order to validate all your buildings, whereas stork buildings tend to work out pretty naturally.

One area where cat is superior is flexibility. You don't feel forced to plan for a specific number of buildings, because its bonus points work incrementally, so it doesn't really matter if you end up having three or four buildings, or even just two, in all those cases you could manage to make it work if you have a good board. With stork however, since it works two by two, if you plan a board that works with four buildings, but in the end only manage to build three, then it won't be very profitable and you'll probably be at a points deficit compared to a good opponent.

The last aspect I want to discuss is how "cramped" those spirits will make your board. I would say that in this regard they are about equal. Both cards, in their own way, tend to make things a bit awkward and hard to navigate. Of course, it's still very possible to design well thought out boards with them, but it's not the easiest and most natural, compared to say butterfly where you can often just play mindlessly and still have a great board.

So, overall, I'd give my vote to cat, for the higher points potential, but in reality which one is the better card is going to be very situational, as are most things in this game.

[loungelizard24]

The koala does have some synergies. It’s a fairly good alternative if the wild pigs don’t show up, but the hedgehog does. Also I have found it’s quite useful with the bears, and the black panthers. Especially if the Balteur eagles and Lammas don’t show up.

Sure I’d agree the koala has some mediocre synergy with certain animals, but hey not all animals can be perfectly synergetic, I’m looking at you penguins and stingrays. And obviously certain others also.

Now that said, I’ve heard the gecko isn’t very synergetic, unless your playing with the lion, because one of the best ways to finishing the gecko is to put 3 yellow plains together in the corner. And that scores the lion another 10, especially if your working on the lion and bees on the other side of the map assuming they also show up. But then talking about bees, if your not playing with the lion, then the only animal the bees really have synergy with are arctic foxes.

Now talking about spirits, there are definitely some that have synergies with the animals, and some that are also mediocre, and some that have multiple synergies.

The owl for instance has several synergies, the otters, the rabbits, the bats, crocodiles and even some mediocre synergies like frogs and bears, but then say you get the own, but none of the top 5 are available, but the bears are, then you get the bears done with 3 two sized mountains, then all of a sudden that opens up a whole bunch of new synergies like Lammas, Japanese macaques, baltuer eagles, And if none of those animals show up, that I mentioned, and you have the owl, well even the koala is quite tempting especially since you get lots of points with your owl if you grass or 2 sized trees. See what I did, it all comes back to the koala. Koala not the best, but not necessarily the worst.

Oh and I’m at over 300 plays now.

[tbhp]

I've had games where I had the perfect combo of koala/panther/llama, but still lost those games because ultimately those combinations are based on cards that are just not very good in terms of animal points and terrain points. The mentioned combo is 65 points in 16 tiles, which is decent but not good enough to beat a good opponent, and it doesn't leave much possibilities for expansion. You might get lucky and get the eagle or the hedgehog, but that's relying on luck too much.

Some combos are just not very rewarding in points, despite looking nice and smart. In order to have the best winrate you kind of have to accept that some cards and combinations are just better than others.

If you think the koala is not the worst animal, then you'd have to give an example of an even worse animal, but I don't see what that could be. Sure, the koala can fit nicely into some boards, but it's never going to be the card you rely on for points. Have you ever seen someone pick koala as their first pick? Even if there were cards in the deck you could see synergies with, there would probably be better options.

[Pigeon Plays]

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.