The Culdcept BEGINS best cards are decided by ability text, not by AT and HP. Flame Lord, Dagon, Dark Master and Beelzebub lead the list because each combines Scroll Critical Hit with a Boost that buffs its own element, and Abyssal Monarch, Onyx and Bundle Gear take the Extra slots with effects that break a match on their own.

Culdcept BEGINS Card Tier List: How to Rank a Card

In this game a card's ability text decides far more matches than its AT and HP, so a tier list has to be built around what a card does rather than its numbers. Three questions decide a card's tier:

  1. Does it change the shape of a match, or only the result of one battle?
  2. Does it keep working after the first turn it is played?
  3. Does it need a specific board state to be worth anything?

Culdcept BEGINS Best Cards: The Top Tier

  • Flame Lord (Fire, 120+ G, 70/70), Dagon (Water, 120+ G, 60/80), Dark Master (Earth, 120+ G, 60/80) and Beelzebub (Air, 120+ G, 70/70) each combine Scroll Critical Hit with a Boost that buffs their own element's Creatures — HP+10 for Flame Lord and Dagon, AT+10 for Dark Master and Beelzebub — at the cost of losing 100 magic when the battle ends. They are the strongest finishers available.
  • Colossus (110 G, 70/70) hits for 70 but Attacks Last and never recovers its lap bonus, so it wins the battle and loses the tempo race.
  • Abyssal Monarch (Extra, 80+ G, 50/50) deals 50 damage with Forbidden Art, destroys the opponent's equipped weapon or tool at the start of the battle, and takes Land Effects from any element — offence, anti-equipment and defence in one card.
  • Onyx (Extra, 100 G, 40/40) Neutralizes Scroll Attacks, Critical Hits any Creature with 40 or more MHP, and takes Land Effects from any element.
  • Bundle Gear (Extra, 250 G, 70/70) is Anti-Spell and Neutralizes Scroll Attacks, so it shuts down the whole Spell half of the opposition.
  • Migoal Blessing (Extra) gives AT+20 and HP+20 with a Critical Hit against Water and Earth and a Neutralizes Attacks against Fire and Air, at the cost of destroying a random card from your hand.

Second Tier: Stat Monsters With an Extra Clause

  • Samurai (50 G, 50/30) has Instant Death against base AT 40 or over at a 70% chance.
  • Vodyanoi (60+ G, 40/40) combines Attacks First with an 80% Instant Death.
  • Juggernaut (70+ G, 30/60) Critical Hits base AT 40 or over, has Instant Death against Defensive Creatures, and does not recover from the lap bonus.
  • T'ao T'ieh (50+ G, 40/40) grows by 20 in base AT, HP and MHP every time it wins a battle.
  • Basilisk (50+ G, 30/40) has a 40% Instant Death and drops the level of the territory it fights over by one.

Third Tier: Scaling and Utility Cards

  • Pale Globster (50+ G) scales its AT and HP with the territory level and cannot be altered by spells.
  • Garuda scales with the number of Air Creatures in play, Coati with the number of Earth Creatures in play, and Shambling Vine with your number of Earth territories.
  • Doom Reaper grows with the number of Creatures destroyed and returns 100 magic when it invades.
  • Support Creatures such as Son Ascetic, Odradek, Sage and Sakuya buff the Creature they support, and a Support Creature can use creature cards from your hand as items.

The rule that follows from all of this: build a Book by reading card text rather than sorting by stat columns, and in each fight take a moment to check what the defending Creature does before you commit an Item to it.

Best Cards by Element

Read the Defending Creature Before You Commit

Tiers tell you what to bring, not what to attack. The card in front of you decides the fight, so how to capture territory covers how to judge an invasion before you spend an Item on it.