Strategy

The [[Harbinger]] is broadly considered probably the weakest precon Avatar from Gothic. Discounts on mana aren't particularly impactful in a game where card draw is scarce enough that double-spelling in the later game is rare. There are two ways to take advantage of the discount. You can use the portals to summon ultra-low-cost (probably voidwalk) minions like [[Hauntless Head]], thereby maximizing the relative value of the discount by removing 50% or 100% of a minion's casting cost to flood the board early and run down an aggro plan. This works basically fine, but aggro decks broadly want to stay low to the ground and then the [[Harbinger]] is sitting back drawing and casting one card a turn instead of increasing card velocity or escalating to more powerful threats, which isn't a scenario I love to find myself in. There's no spell draw on the [[Harbinger]], and if I'm expecting to trade topdecks I want to go in swinging. So, I opted for the second approach to leveraging the discount: blasting nasty fatties onto the board a turn early, because opening the sky to drop a [[The Doom of Dilmun]] on your opponent's face is awesome. Mana rocks can help get you there faster, but the odds of drawing one early aren't outstanding. Random positioning is difficult to plan around, even if the odds of rolling at least one 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, or 9 out of 20 (and thus landing at least one portal near the enemy Avatar's home site) or a 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, or 19 (and thus having a strong defensive portal) are frankly pretty good with three tries.

Brief Aside: Math about Harbinger Portals

Suppose the "good" offensive portal spots are on or adjacent to the enemy home site and thus place a potential voidwalk attacker at most one step away. Suppose additionally that the "good" defensive sites are on or adjacent to our home site and thus place a potential voidwalk blocker at most one step away. Now, let's call spaces that are nearby but not adjacent "okay" (though, notably, sometimes they can be preferable- I'd frankly usually prefer a portal on 7 or 9 than 2 or 4, but the exact relative positions doesn't change the relative counts of "okay" and "good" portal locations). This means that, of the twenty spaces on the 5x4 board, there are eight "good" places for a portal and four "okay" positions, leaving only the outer columns' eight squares as relatively ineffective. So, our odds of getting a "good" or "okay" portal are at least 12 out of 20, or 60%, per roll. To whiff three times would take rolling in the 40% the first time, then rolling 7 out of 19, then rolling 6 out of 18 for (8/20)*(7/19)*(6/18) or about a 4.91% chance. A 95.09% chance of having a good or okay portal is pretty solid. Even if we're only interested in the odds of a good or okay offensive portal, and plan to rely on defensive sites (which our atlas is packed full of) to survive, three whiffs in a row is (14/20)*(13/19)*(12/18) or about a 32% chance, so we have a 68% shot at a portal nearby the enemy home site. If we're only interested in "good" hits, the chances are about 80.1% to have a portal strictly adjacent to our home or the enemy home site, and 50.1% to have one specifically adjacent to the enemy home site. To convince yourself the odds are worse than a coin flip, you'd need to only consider a portal ON your home or the enemy home to be acceptable and that's still a 28.4% or chance of success at either home site or a 4.375% chance at any one specific site but it's weird to build a plan around dropping something on exactly one space on the board. What are you planning for that number to be make-or-break to you. Please tell me.

The plan is to drop some air and fire evil out of the sky and murder the opponent while turtling up behind some very strong defensive sites like [[Bottomless Pit]], [[The Void]], [[Wuthering Heights]], and so forth. Ultimately, the hope is to stall aggro out long enough to beat them on card quality and end the game fast enough to get in under control, which makes this exactly a midrange deck. We care about running high-quality cards over super efficient cards, and while the [[Harbinger]] discount does make some of the curve-toppers a little more accessible we don't generally want to find ourselves going extremely long just because we don't have anything in the way of persistent value engines. Game-ending options include [[Whirling Blades]] on an [[Infernal Legion]], [[Warp Spasm]]ing a [[The Doom of Dilmun]], all kinds of nasty splashy nonsense.

Strengths

The discount from a portal lets you drop a scary threat early!
Enough voidwalk to attack from surprising locations!
Gambling means sometimes you win!
[[Sturmgeist]]s! Five [[Daperyll Vampires]]! [[Wuthering Heights]] enemy threats into [[The Void]]!
Getting someone on door is extremely straightforward!

Weaknesses

Portals telegraph where minions are coming from ahead of time, making the locations less surprising!
Gambling means sometimes you lose!
What do you mean my opponents can fly an airborne minion safely over my [[Bottomless Pit]]!
Sometimes you need an evil minion and your hand is full of voidwalk guys. Sometimes you need a voidwalk minion and your hand is full of evil guys. Variance!
Big expensive threats die to cheap removal!

Card Packages

Surviving The Early Game (up to about turn four)

Hurrying It Up

[[Amethyst Core]] speeds you up a turn and is effectively free the turn it comes down.
[[Dark Tower]] / [[Gothic Tower]] / [[Lone Tower]] / [[Beacon]] all do basically the same thing, and that thing is whirlwind slam a scary dude early.

Stalling For Time: Spells

[[Sphere of Animosity]] can keep a [[Bladedancer]] or a [[Battlemage]] off of you. There are not very many other options for restricting the movement of an offensive Avatar. "Cannot heal or be defended" is also incredibly impactful for getting someone to door and then landing a death blow.
[[The Black Plague]] kills weak minions. We play strong minions. Mostly.
[[Grim Reaper]] is a phenomenal blocker, and an outstanding target for [[Whirling Blades]].
[[Earl of the Ivory Tower]] is 3 mana for 3 power, can cast (almost) anything in the deck, and being immune to Ordinary things makes him surprisingly sticky.
[[Sturmgeist]] can shut down decks that care about casting from minion spellcasters on its own.
[[Gibbous Nightgaunts]] are really solid early blockers and sticking one on turn two can buy some serious time.
[[Jack the Ripper]] silencing a mortal before killing them and then coming with stealth is pretty good, but not every deck runs mortals worth removing.
[[Screamer]] is very versatile, useful for either tapping down a blocker or scaring a threat into a [[Bottomless Pit]] or even just a space away to buy a turn.
[[Daperyll Vampire]] represents a ton of healing with a move-and-strike, and a four-power airborne minion is good to begin with.
[[Hounds of Ondaros]] are four-power, airborne, and can safely exist anywhere in the Realm to block from. And they counter stealth in nine spaces at a time.
[[Legion of Gall]] is five airborne power and sneaks a peek at the opponent's collection to banish thirty percent of it of your choosing. Suspect a [[Toolbox]]ed [[Zap!]]? It's possible to make sure it won't happen!
[[Renatus Trueblood]] is two more [[Daperyll Vampire]]s.
[[Feast for Crows]] can save you a lot of trouble by doing [[Grim Reaper]] stuff to remove any spell. [[Toolbox]] is a pretty safe generic bet.

Stalling For Time: Sites

[[Bottomless Pit]] is a classic.
[[Edge of the World]] can force an opponent to not play a site somewhere and thus force movement between a defensive site or void. It's niche, but when it's good it's extremely cool.
[[Great Wall]] is another [[Perilous Bridge]] except we can walk through it.
[[Mountain Pass]] you can still fly a minion up there, you can still summon a minion up there, and even if you can't keep it populated your opponent will have a rough time stacking guys on it to attack from it.
[[Perilous Bridge]] can literally buy you three turns off from being attacked.
[[Sea of Ash]] kills everything in places we don't put anything.
[[The Manor at Daperyll Hill]] can heal you while it kills stuff or damages things that [[Vesper Swarm]] or another minion can come finish off. Healing for 3 ain't nothing.
[[The Void]] does [[Bottomless Pit]] stuff but banishes instead of killing. Outstanding site to hide your avatar on.
[[Wuthering Heights]] can scooch an enemy minion into a kill site or onto the awkward side of a [[Perilous Bridge]]. It can also scooch one of our threats into a good spot to attack out of.

Dominating The Mid-Game (around turn four to around turn seven)

Threats

[[Phase Assassin]] is cheap and can come down early but two mana for three stealthed power just for casting it from a portal in the void is an incredible rate for slipping three undefendable damage in.
[[Bane of Aventis]] is a stupid card. Ridiculous. Totally unreasonable blowout against anybody running even incidental wards. The control lasts after the wards break. This minion is a completely backbreaking mass [[Mesmerism]] against a Savior. It's even on-rate at four mana for four power, and out of a portal it's above rate.
[[Nosferatu]] is sticky and spooky even if a little overcosted at 6 mana for 4 power. 5 for 4 airborne from a portal is pretty worthwhile though, especially considering how hard it is to make it die.
[[Thundering Giant]] is highly mobile and taps down blockers!
[[Draconian Bonekite]] is huge, and terrifying, and above rate through a portal, and makes more guys, and can finish someone on door.
[[Nightmare]] being able to shove everything on a site into the void or a [[Bottomless Pit]] or [[The Void]]
[[The Doom of Dilmun]] does not need to eat, or breethe, or sleep. It can survive a [[Warp Spasm]] to swing for twelve over and over. Move-and-strike stuff goes nuts with it.

Spells That Help Make Damage Happen

[[Desecrate]] strikes, then banishes a site and turns it into something that buffs the Evil minion that just struck the site. For two mana.
[[Whirling Blades]] is a door finisher, solid removal, big healing with a [[Daperyll Vampire]], very solid stuff. The deck only has one minion with less than three power, and even that one is pretty awesome with this.
[[Seven-League Boots]] doesn't directly cause damage but that is a ton of movement that couples incredibly with a [[Warp Spasm]] or a [[Phase Assassin]] to get stealth and an attack in the same turn or reposition your [[Infernal Legion]] or get your Avatar out of danger or something even weirder and more creative. Movement is very good.

Making Up For Shortcomings

What if we roll crummy portals?

[[Summoning Sphere]] can open a path to summoning terrors where the dice have denied us.
[[Eclipse]] is more limited because it only enables summoning Evil, but it also buffs power and most of our biggest threats are Evil to begin with.
[[Mephistopheles]] is a kind of last-ditch option but playing Evil for free to any adjacent site can be worth giving up the ability to play sites once we have enough.
[[Falling Star]] is a portal on a time delay that damages stuff and cheats mana.

What if I need to cast an ordinary spell to handle some weird nonsense?

I don't like what [[Toolbox]] does in the game, does to the game, or does to the process of deckbuilding and I sincerely hope more [[Bureau of Occult Control]] and [[Legion of Gall]] effects get printed but until that happens there simply isn't a more versatile generic answer in the game.

Ok but is there a way to draw SOME cards?

[[The Pallid Bust]] isn't exactly card draw but being able to get something like [[The Grim Reaper]]'s ability on [[The Doom of Dilmun]] sounds ridiculously stupid and fun.
[[Merlin]] potentially represents a lot of card advantage by drawing a card to cast it, and even just getting visibility into what's atop the spellbook isn't bad.
[[Browse]] looks pretty deep and replaces itself.
[[Dream-Quest]] lets you go get whatever.
[[Black Mass]] rips a few off the top sometimes if you can draw it.
There's a [[Gift of the Raven]] in the collection if you really need to [[Toolbox]] up an extra card I guess?

The Atlas

We already talked about defensive sites and the towers and the beacons so here's the other ones

[[Baba Yaga's Hut]] can reposition a defensive site we had to play out of position, can scoot our [[Harbinger]] around the back row, can move a blocker into position, and can move us out of our own [[Sphere of Animosity]]. It plays better than it reads, in my experience.
[[City of Glass]] is another [[Lone Tower]] effect but it's persistent for as long as we can keep the site from taking damage.
[[Cloud City]] can move your avatar out of danger, move minions into position, or carry a dangerous enemy minion away.
[[Defiler Spire]] is basically just a way to sneak in damage for enemies playing Evil minions or for letting ours stay on their sites. It's risky, in that it can hurt us too, but we have a decent amount of healing available and portals/voidwalk mean we don't have to cast most things to our own sites.
[[Fields of Phyxis]] can turn off a [[Thin Ice]] or something.
[[Mirror Realm]] is incredibly generically good. If a site is good enough to run, it's good enough to run twice. If an opponent's site is good enough for THEM to run it, it's good enough for us to copy.
[[Observatory]] for card selection could make the difference between getting a threat out next turn or getting a threat out in three turns.
[[Orpheus' Crossing]] is enormously risky BUT it basically draws you a card so who can say if it's good or not. I can say. It hasn't instantly lost me a game to a [[Zap!]]. Yet.

The Collection

[[Desecrated Ground]] makes it so that [[Desecrate]] can banish sites and play this from the collection. Worth having.
[[Zap!]] It's boring but it makes drawing a toolbox say "you win" if you have three mana, one affinity, and a targetable enemy Avatar on death's door.
[[Disenchant]] targets a location instead of the auras or artifacts it destroys, so that's pretty useful. The "two steps away" requirement isn't a big deal if you're casting off a [[Toolbox]] anyway.
[[Displace]] can move one of our auras in case we had it close to, but not exactly, where we need it. Handy if we need to step through our own [[Sphere of Animosity]] for some reason, or if a [[Rift Valley]] moves an enemy [[Bladedancer]] out of it. Hypothetically. Just in case something like that could lose a game. Definitely not as a reaction to that happening.
[[Gift of the Raven]] can get your life total out of the danger zone in a pinch and replaces the toolbox you crack to cast it. Pretty narrow, frankly, but it means toolboxes can help outlive an aggro deck.
[[Teleport]] can put any ally on top of any site. Need your Avatar out of danger? Check. Need a minion to get from a portal to on top of the enemy Avatar? Check. Also other things!
[[Grapple Shot]] is another move-and-strike effect but the projectile component makes this one kind of weird. It's [[Grapple Shot]]. It does [[Grapple Shot]] stuff.
[[Murder of Crows]] breaks wards, clears skeleton (and foot soldier, and frog) tokens, and then it draws you a second copy of [[Murder of Crows]] in case there's more coming later.

Mulligans

Air is more important than fire at every step of the game. You probably don't want to keep more than one fire site in your opening hand. If you rolled usable portals, trying to mulligan deep to dig for the [[Summoning Sphere]] or [[Eclipse]] isn't as important, and you might even ship them back. It's more important to keep some stuff that's castable in the earlier game than the curve-toppers at the start of the game.

Changes

2024-04-22: deemphasized voidwalk at the top end of the curve in favor of minions I find more exciting or impactful. Cut some ramp artifacts because I'm not convinced Mixes are particularly important in a single-element deck and because [[Ether Core]] relies on the kinds of minions I'm deemphasizing. Swapped some sites.
Cuts:
[[Ether Core]]
[[Lord of the Void]]
[[The Ninth Legion]]
[[Ultimate Horror]]
[[All-Terrain Vestments]]
[[Mix Aer]]
[[Ophanim]]
[[Vril Revenant]]
[[Vesper Swarm]]
[[Astral Alcazar]]
[[Den of Evil]]
[[Edge of the World]]
[[Ghost Town]]
Additions:
[[Browse]]
[[Draconian Bonekite]]
[[Dream-Quest]]
[[Feast for Crows]]
[[Jack the Ripper]]
[[Merlin]]
[[Nosferatu]]
[[The Black Plague]]
[[The Pallid Bust]]
[[Earl of the Ivory Towers]]
[[Falling Star]]
[[Thundering Giant]]
[[Baba Yaga's Hut]]
[[City of Glass]]
[[Cloud City]]
[[Sea of Ash]]
[[Observatory]]
[[Fields of Phyxis]]
Overhaul (in progress 2026-04-15): dropping Fire entirely after a profoundly frustrating couple of games illustrating plainly that the previous build could completely fail to play a game if the wrong combination of threats and sites is drawn. This removes some play patterns I enjoy very much (that [[Hellstar]] From The Sky move is a truly special experience, as is [[Warp Spasm]] on a [[The Doom of Dilmun]]) but the risk of playing complete non-games is unbearable in a deck I'm building because it's fun to play an Avatar I like enough to have gotten the dust promo. Now with minor formatting fixes!
Revision 2026-04-10: updated primer to more usable format.

Updates Under Consideration

A few of these cards are listed on the basis that they could be good with other cards also listed as under consideration. This is bad practice for debating what to swap into a deck which functions okay. It's better to move in one card that's useful for what the deck is already doing; swapping in a multi-card package is more about changing what the deck is doing. I'm in the process of overhauling this list from an air-fire deck to mono air, and I'm not sure yet what the "right" balance of magic and minion or evil and voidwalk is going to shake out to be. Do I want a heavy spellcaster focus? That incentivizes magic that cares about caster position- does air take good advantage of that? Do I need to make even more swaps for that to be good? At what point am I just building two different decks and failing to choose one to play?

[[Den of Evil]] is good enough to maybe merit being a four-of. Need to see how the deck feels before deciding; the minion pool isn't 100% Evil and this being a [[Spire]] without an Evil minion off it might not feel awesome.
[[Merlin's Tower]] probably isn't great without a bunch more magic in the deck, but there's a bunch more magic I'm considering adding to the deck.
[[Standing Stones]] is only really under consideration in combination with [[Pith Imp]].
[[Blink]] cantrips and moves something. Very good. No idea what I cut to make room for it, but I'd be a fool not to consider it.
[[Cast into Exile]] can get a [[Mesmerism]]'d threat back into our spellbook, or get an expensive enemy threat off the board, or shuffle an enemy spellbook after they [[Kelp Cavern]] or [[Return to Nature]] or something.
[[Men of Leng]] is probably never better than when they can show up adjacent to an enemy Avatar for one mana. Discarding a card at random makes it harder for an opponent to be opportunistic about what they put in the cemetery.
[[Occult Ritual]] can get pretty solid if we're stacking up spellcasters to make use of [[Dream-Quest]] or piling guys on [[Standing Stones]] or something.
[[Pith Imp]] being able to cast cards it steals is so cool and I'm very potentially willing to throw out the possibility that this deck could be good to do it.
[[Wiccan Tools]] lets [[Pith Imp]] ignore threshold and draws a card.
[[De Vermis Mysteriis]] also lets casts ignore threshold, and that's pretty sick on top of the cost reduction for anything that costs 6 or more.
[[Flanking Maneuver]] can cross region boundaries, cantrips, and is a lot of movement for the cost.
[[Grapple Shot]] is good enough to maindeck instead of just keeping behind a [[Toolbox]], but I dunno what to cut for it.
[[Headless Haunt]] being effectively two mana for four power at the cost of randomized position seems pretty tasty.
[[Vanishment]] makes it so that none of our minions' next attacks can be defended, cantrips, AND protects minions that might be under threat from a nearby attack.
[[Witching Hour]] gives extra power and airborne to a large portion of our minion pool. Even better if we run more spellcasters, but the bulk of the minions that aren't Evil are Spirits already.
[[Grandmaster Wizard]] is a big chunk of card advantage, but dies trivially and we don't really have a way to reuse em. Solid if spellcasters matter.

Portals!

@Anathema