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In light of Cookie Monster's separate threads asking basically the same thing for different defenses, I thought it'd be interesting to make a tier list. We can update it every year. I'll post the initial one, and if people want change I can edit it. If you have anything that I'm missing, please let me know and I'll try to fit it in, but only if they're realistically there. A "King of Israel" defense would absolutely fail (Pre-RoA.2) because they have no central brigade or enhancements, etc.

Keep these rules in mind:

1. The tier list is designed to place the most efficient defenses/offenses at the top. This means that being able to hold out for the longest time possible for the least number of card investments or being able to rescue 5 souls as quickly as possible with the minimum amount of card investment. Deck slots are the biggest factor. The less slots, the better if two competing offenses/defenses have the same amount of power.

2. Neutral card slots must be considered. This means that when we consider Z temple priests for example, we take into account that all Z temple decks would run the temple + 2-4 temple artifacts or that disciples will almost always run some sort of anti-capture artifacts. The less neutral slots the better, ideally there being none.

3. The more versatile, the better. The ability to use multiple veins of battlewinners (shuffle, discard, set aside, etc) is desired.

4. Defenses shall not be considered to help offenses, and offenses shall not be considered to help defenses. That means Zeb/WS is not the best offense in the game (and shall not be considered for tiering due to the difficulties in doing so. Similarly for defenseless).

5. The tier list is comprised to determine the strength in the T1 2-P format in a tournament setting. This means that 100+ variants are not an argument for success (looking at you Job), unless proof of success has been shown.

6. In order to move the tier list, one must provide valid arguments to support claims in line with the above rules. If someone (even Gabe of similar Nats Champs and highly respected players like Pol) simply says "Disciples should be A", it shall not be done until legitimate reasons are presented (bonus points for comparisons with offences that would be displaced by any change in tier positioning).

Offense
A Tier
Samuel (Red/Purple)
TGT
Samuel (Teal/Green/Gold)
Genesis
Gardenciples
Disciples

B Tier
Prophets (Silver/Green)
Mono Red
Judges

C Tier
Royalty
Silver

Defense
A Tier
Egyptian
Pharisee
Babylonian
Standalone

B Tier
Pale Green (Assyrian, primarily)
Israelite Kings
Canaanite
Philistine

C Tier
Heretics
Saducees
Other unique ideas (they're probably bad ones)

If you are playing a good brown defense you will be incorporating kings of Judah and persians. I have not scene anybody play straight kings of Judah or persians. Also the good phillies are standalones. Phillies by them selves should be tier c (maybe until Goliath comes out), maybe B. props for putting together a list.

What about the different gametypes?

A Tier
Pharisees - Agreed
Standalones - Agreed
Black Philistines - Probably when Goliath comes out
Orange Banding and Friends - Idk what this means. How is it different from Standalones?

B Tier
Orange Brigade - Agreed
Magicians and Friends - Should be 3rd tier at most.
Brown Brigade - 1st tier for sure
Herods - 1st tier

C Tier
Romans - 2nd tier at least
Babylonians - Agreed
Kings of Judah - That's Brown
Egyptians - 4th Tier

D Tier
Syrians - Agreed
Heretics - 3rd tier
Assyrians - Agreed
Sadducees - Agreed

This is for T1 obviously.

Doing standard tiers, if someone decides it offends them I'll edit it. Keep in mind though that I'm not the first person to make these up, and these are the standards for any kind of list like this. This is all imo, naturally.

Edit:

Also guys, please keep in mind that the concept of tiers is based entirely around what the best theme is if played to their full potential. It's actually very hard to create a tier list for this sort of thing because of all the variables that go into it.

Best Tier:
Magicians and Brown
Philistines

Great Tier:
Magicians and Orange
Standalone

Good Tier:
Pharisees
Kings of Judah/Persians
Herods

Average Tier:
Romans
Egyptians
Babylonians

Bad Tier:
Egyptians
Heretics

Sure Not Good Tier:
Syrians
Assyrians
Sadducees

A slightly modified but still heavily biased tier list is up. Once we settle on which tiers each should be in, we can rank them within their tiers. Standalones took a big hit. Orange/Black moved way up because I love Orange/Black. Eventually, I'll post a tier list for Good as well.

This list is genuine and accurate.

meta knight, snake, diddy kong. that is all.

I'll give you the defenseless not being included, but honestly the less defense in a deck the better. So full defenses actually hurt you more than they help, that's why standalones should be in the A Tier.

p.s. It's better to go heavy defense or heavy offense. Balanced decks ( which I like ) are a disadvantage to the player that uses them.

I'll make my own tier list for offense/tonight and post it. Before we argue over any of this. I'd also like to present some rules:

1. The tier list is designed to place the most efficient defences/offences at the top. This means that being able to hold out for the longest time possible for the least number of card investments or being able to rescue 5 souls as quickly as possible with the minimum amount of card investment. Deck slots are the biggest factor. The less slots, the better if two competing offences/defences have the same amount of power.

2. Neutral card slots must be considered. This means that when we consider Z temple priests for example, we take into account that all Z temple decks would run the temple + 2-4 temple artifacts or that disciples will almost always run some sort of anti-capture artifacts. The less neutral slots the better, ideally there being none.

3. The more versatile, the better. The ability to use multiple veins of battlewinners (shuffle, discard, set aside, etc) is desired.

4. Defenses shall not be considered to help offenses, and offenses shall not be considered to help defenses. That means Zeb/WS is not the best offense in the game (and shall not be considered for tiering due to the difficulties in doing so. Similarly for defenceless).

5. The tier list is comprised to determine the strength in the T1 2-P format in a tournament setting. This means that 100+ variants are not an argument for success (looking at you Job), unless proof of success has been shown.

6. In order to move the tier list, one must provide valid arguments to support claims in line with the above rules. If someone (even Gabe of similar Nats Champs and highly respected players like Pol) simply says "Disciples should be A", it shall not be done until legitimate reasons are presented (bonus points for comparisons with offences that would be displaced by any change in tier positioning).


I based this rules on my experience after years (yes, years) of debating tiers for the Fire Emblem series of games. If you have any problems with them or anything to add, let me know, but otherwise, I think we should follow these concepts.

...What does that have to do with anything?

This isn't necessarily for deck building. If it was, I would do offense/defense pairings as a tier list.

Well when you build offenses that can't be stopped like his, you're basically just tossing in ECs and EEs to make the deck count go up to 50 cards to make it a legal deck.