Monster Tier List

--This is my first Steam guide--

A simple guide to various monster classes in Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia. This information is absolutely subjective but I thought a tier guide might help some of the newer players. Feel free to comment and I might come back and add more.

Most teams will want to have at least a tank and a healer then fill in the rest with some damage.

Last note, if you get a monster with a blue star on the picture that's a mana miracle! It will be slightly off in color and have better stats (It's a shiny).

Tanks

S Rank -

Giant Snake - Great versatility, SS on the water, incredible breath attack. Gets 5 movement speed on evolution. (Rune cost - 80/95/110) | Best land type - Water

Dragons - Great tanks, breath attacks, a little slow consider giving a movement item if you have any spares. (Rune cost - 75/100/125) | Best land type - Plains

A Rank -

Mandrake - Not as pure "tanky" but great utility with the status effects. Movement starts at a 3, gets to a 4... (Rune cost 70/90/110) | Best land type - Forest

Golem - OG style pure tank and a heavy hitter. (Also 4 Movement so a bit slow)
(Runepower cost 45/55/75) | Best land type - Mountains

B Rank -

Gigas - A lot of people don't seem to like the Gigas evolution line as much, poor stat growth.
(Runepower cost 50/65/80) | Best land type - Mountains

Damage

S Rank -

Demons - Starts off a bit slow in my opinion, always a bit fragile but great damage dealers. Good size MP, and meteor doom.
Runepower cost - 85/100/120 | Best land type - Sky

Lizardman - The lizard boys can be a bit underrated at first, but once you get to the final evolution they get to act twice every turn.
Runepower cost - 40/55/90 | Best land type - Marsh

Ghoul - These guys are the ones in this game that start off a bit weak but end up as a top tier. Lichs get life steal, the ability to rez monsters that can then immediately act, flight with a huge movement range, and a little bit of ranged via venom.
Runepower cost - 15/30/70 | Best land type - Plains/Sky (changes upon final evolution to Sky)

A Rank -

Angel - Start a little slow, but end up with holy word, AOE healing, and good ranged magic.
Runepower cost - 85/100/120 | Best land type - Sky

Centaur - Honestly, I havent used Centaurs as much as a probably should. They are great to fill out a team with a bit of range DPS from what I hear from the community.
Runepower cost - 35/50 | Best land type - Forest

High Dog - The doggos start off a bit slow, but Fenrir is a strong unit in the end. The ability to move in get a hit off and then move out of the way is great! (Obviously not as good the Lizards who literally get to act twice).
Runepower cost - 35/50/70 | Best land type - Plains

B Rank -

Roc - The birds can debatably be in the A rank to me overall, because of the healing potential. You get a choice between Phoenix and Simurgh. Phoenix is the better choice, you get AOE heals, better stats, and Flame all at the cost of 1 movement. Some people even use the Phoenix as a dodge tank.
Runepower cost - 60/85 | Best land type - Sky

Wyvern - These flyers play similar to our hit and run doggos. Pretty strong, decent evasion and the ability to hit and run but only at the Bahamut evolution. (I could put them in B or C for me, they are just okay)
Runepower cost - 60/80/110 | Best land type - Sky

C Rank -

Elemental - Flimsy magic dealers, then can move and then use their ranged attacks which is their only positive to me. For the cost they are not bad, but overall I avoid them.
Runepower cost - 30/45 | Best land type - Sky

Mermaids - Mermaids are less than mediocre on land, that being said if its a map with tons of water they can be phenomenal. Trying to drag one of these around on every map though? Painful, decent if you need some defense on a water heavy map.
Runepower cost - 25/55 | Best land type - Water

Goblins - Squishy, weak damage, can be useful for paralysis but that's about it in my opinion.
Runepower cost - 30/45 | Best land type - Forest

Healers/Support/Utility

S Rank -

Unicorn - Your options here are Pegasus and Nightmare. Nightmare gets better stats, the same healing abilities (just no Halo) and weakness & magic down at the cost of flying. The only plus for the Pegasus is that it flys. While useful, no better. Nightmare = S, Pegasus = A.
Runepower cost - 40/55 | Best land type - Plains (Flying for Pegasus)

Angel - Angels are listed in both DPS and this category because they do some of both. At top evolution Seraphs get AOE heal, holy word and divine ray. They're great healers, just a bit pricy.
Runepower cost - 85/100/120 | Best land type - Sky

A Rank -

Imp - I had a hard time figuring out where to place our little Imp/Gremlin friend. Obviously his DPS is not great, he's squishy however React can be a game changer. If you have a heavy hitter and an enemy rune knight moves right next to him. Hit them with react you get to use TWO moves without moving or 1 with a move & one without. I have smoked so many Rune Knight early in a fight because of react. Thunder, Slient, and protect are also decent spells.
Runepower cost - 20/40 | Best land type - Sky

C Rank -

Mermaid - They have some great spells, but after their MP is gone they useless. Hard to drag around on most maps without water.
Runepower cost - 25/55 | Best land type - Water

[AH-1 Cobra]

For Dragons you spread the units out into lines in a chevron formation, and bait the enemy into it, with dragons and other tankier units up front, and you can stack breaths from multiple angles from every dragon. Also, you can use meteor doom in this situation as well. But you need to use a weaker unit as bait to pull them farther in, otherwise the enemy will just target the flanks, you want the flanks to be the toughest units you got, and the 3 pieces in the middle to be the softer units.

[Jenek]

I have to agree ion that mandrake argument. They're really, really good.

The OP said that ghouls are S-Tier, but I think the Goblin Knight on the last tier is WAY better than the Lich.

[Jenek]

@abaoabao2010 For the Lizard King argument; no? They're overrated, but they really are powerful things. They can even tank some damage with shield blocks. Maybe you don't equip your monsters? Lizard Kings shine better with equipment that increases shield block. There's also a fairly lot amount of axe weapons that it can use.

I had 2 lizard kings on my country leader and these things actually own the battlefield through commander-sniping.

For the last battle though? Yeah good luck. Centaurs are way better in the last battle.

[abaoabao2010]

Other mistakes that keeps me up at night:

Elemental is so OP that massing them for cheap wins is considered cheese.

Nightmare is a double edge sword. It pushes enemies back with its counterattack, leaving it open to getting hit again since the spot next to it is vacated. The weaken is good if you use it often, but otherwise it's literally worse than the base t1 unicorn.

Mandrake is at least as good as dragon. Slightly less stats and lower cost, but its attacks and counterattacks can outright deny an enemy turns+counterattacks. A worthy tradeoff for a breath attack if you ask me.

Mermaid is a cheap source of magic attack. Frost hits for decent damage, cost low MP, bypass def, and never miss. Mermaid also levels up stupidly fast. Not amazing, but useful early on when your only other magic attack is the super expensive demon.

[abaoabao2010]

Lich is overrated. Again, it is a win-more unit. Against a even level enemy team, they are pretty trash for their cost until something died and the Lich gets to revive it.

Lich has very low survivability for a frontline unit, and, being a flyer, takes extra damage from archers. Its damage is pretty low too.

Their lifesteal gimmick and hp regen doesn't really matter much, as your units either gets focus fired down in very few turns, or they don't get hit at all and don't need the regen/lifesteal. Even then the lifesteal is pretty negligible, weaker than even grappler's punch if not for it being used as a counterattack. The only way to gain non-negligible value out of this is against numerous low leveled monsters.

Their main value comes from necro rebirth, which admittedly could be beyond OP in the right circumstances, but most of the times half the battle would have passed before you kill something worth reviving. Or god forbid, losing a unit yourself.

[abaoabao2010]

Lizards are overrated. They are a win-more unit, but against a close to level enemy team, they suck. Sure they have 2 actions, but their mediocre stats makes that less useful than you'd think.

You hit twice, you take 2 counter attacks, and against most other highest evolution melee units that's a net loss for the lizard since its each counter attack most likely will hit harder than your lizard.

Against mages/archers or whatever squishy non-frontline units, the assassin archetypes (bahamut/fenrir) have way better damage and crit, a LOT more movement, and double movement. They don't do quite double the damage of a lizard to outdamage 2 hits from a lizard, but they can back away after an attack to safety, whereas a lizard would lose the second attack, or stay inside enemy formation.

The only time lizards actually are better is against low level enemies, since all you care about then is to kill things faster, with no care to survivability for all but the squishiest of mages.

[The Rainmaker]

youre underrating Gigas quite a bit, ragnarock is incredibly broken in terms of damage and its not hard to hit 1k hp on them. Plus a lot of their tier 3 gear gives enough accuracy to not be an issue.

on the flipside while lizardmen are solid, its hard to get their evo item so they are just ok.

[Zachary]

PS: and see what a strategic masterpiece it is! Dudes with their spam x would get bodybagged. :)

[Zachary]

If you're playing normally, Lizardmen are probably the best early unit (maybe the best t1 nonsupport.) They are cheap, they can tank because of block, and their dmg is OK.

t2 is tough, but it's prob one of the 'can only be t2' units. I also dislike elementals (but you can cheez, sure.) High Cent can eat your whole back line without limits and isn't gonna get one shot. Seems like they are the hard counter to ele/demon/angel. Nightmare for support. People might say grem for +1 act.

t3 is also tough. Dragons are mediocre until ancient, Baham is amazingly strong because most units can't hit it (one of the pluses of elementals is 100% hit rate, if they didn't have that, they would be trash!) and double movement. Same w/ Fen, except Baham can fly.

If they added pvp and disabled +1 act skills, I think people would see the game a lot differently.

[SirLootalot]

The nightmares also have a knock back on hit if the field behind the enemy is free... can be great to move enemy units out of the way sometimes :P

Great guide by the way :)