Intro
There are 12 different tribes that creatures can fall into or neutral, which doesn’t have text at the bottom. The tribes are Aether, Amazon, Anubian, Dragon, Guild, Mystic, Nether, Olympian, Structure, Viking, and Wild. This matters because some cards benefit a specific tribe, like Penthesilian Warrior buffs your strongest other Amazon, so with a critical mass of tribe synergy cards, you can build a strong tribal deck.
Main Tribes for Each God
Each God has two main supported tribes based on the Core Set Refresh and the 2 most populated tribes for each god.
- Death - Nether & Anubian
- Deception - Guild & Nether
- Light - Mystic & Olympian
- Magic - Mystic & Aether
- Nature - Wild & Amazon
- War - Viking & Olympian
This can be seen by the two tribes almost all the creatures fall into for each God, e.g. every new core creature for Deception was Guild or Nether. Tomb Craver is the only creature that doesn’t have a tribe from the new core creatures, why isn’t it an Anubian, IDK probably dev oversight. Also, supported tribes are shown through cards that synergize with a tribe like Scream in the Night that draws another creature if you draw a Nether.
A tribe being supported is mainly be based on cards that provide buffs or gain effects from tribal members e.g. Netherswarm Lord buffs Nethers or based on the set having many members of a tribe like Divine Order having 13 Vikings. Although having many tribe members doesn’t always mean it’s well supported. Light has 15 Aethers but no good Light-specific Aether payoff, whereas Magic has 14 Aethers and a lot of those Aethers have good effects where you need to run Aethers.
Some gods have minor support for a few small tribes. Such as Magic is the god for structure and Atlantean, Magic got a couple of structure support cards from Divine Order and is the god for Atlanteans now that Phase-Touch Golem is Magic-specific. Light has a few Anubian support cards from Genesis, and a few Anubian creatures from Divine Order. I’m not sure if the devs have any plans on making Anubian Light a competitive deck although.
For Divine Order, the majority of creatures for each god were: Death-Nethers (Zombies), Deception-Guild, Light-Mystics (I’m not too sure), Magic-Structures, Nature-Wild, War-Vikings. It looks like the new expansion is going to fill out the other main tribe that Divine Order didn’t cover for some gods: Death-Anubians, Light-Olympians, Nature-Amazons, War-Olympians, but no spoiled Nether Deception, or Aether Magic yet.
Tribe Membership
The tribes have a general theme that ties them together. Aethers are some kind of mana being, some take a nebulous form, and others take a humanoid form. Structures are buildings or objects simple enough. Mystics are magical humans and humanoids. A bunch of Genesis creatures don't have tribes since it wasn't a big priority back then from what I've heard.
Some tribes are more open about what creatures belong in it. Wild seems to be anything that’s beast-like or a plant, and Guild is any human or humanoid that works for the Guild.
A few tribe typings can be a little strange. Tamed Mammoth is a Viking because the Vikings tamed it, I guess, and Ravenous Chimera is related to Olympians through mythology.
The tribes have a wide difference in tribe membership. Nethers are the biggest tribe at 88 members, while Dragon is the smallest with 15 members. Although some tribes are large they are split amongst gods making deck-building more difficult. For instance, Vikings are overwhelmingly in war with 43 out of 52 belonging to war, while Mystics are split between Magic and Light.
| Tribe | Count |
|---|---|
| Neutral | 478 |
| Nether | 88 |
| Mystic | 77 |
| Olympian | 72 |
| Wild | 71 |
| Guild | 71 |
| Anubian | 55 |
| Viking | 52 |
| Aether | 49 |
| Amazon | 47 |
| Atlantean | 44 |
| Structure | 34 |
| Dragon | 15 |
Membership in each tribe Post-CSR, Pre-Mortal Judgement
Guess the Tribe
The devs seem to want to put a lot of creatures into tribes with almost all the new core creatures belonging to a tribe, and a ton of old core creatures gained a tribe with the Core Set Refresh. But a lot of Divine Order creatures don’t have tribes so I’m not sure what their plan is. For comparison, every creature in Magic the Gathering has a tribe, whereas not every minion in Hearthstone has a tribe. Most of the spoiled Mortal Judgement creatures have a tribe, but some don’t. For a lot of creatures, you could argue they look like they fit in a tribe when they aren’t actually in it. It’s hard to say what should be in a tribe or not since it’s so inconsistent.
What creatures belong in what tribe is usually easy to figure out, but some aren’t so easy.
Can you guess what tribes these 10 light creatures belong to? Some are in the neutral tribe, aka have no tribe.
Building Tribes
The main reason to build a tribal deck is to make use of the strong tribal support cards. For example, Guild Deception, which I talk about in this article, runs a ton of Guild creatures to make the best use of Desert Mercenary and Frumentarii Instigator, two very strong reasons to focus on running Guild creatures.
Amazons are another tribal deck, probably the best-supported tribal deck at the moment. They like to get buffed by other Amazons, go wide, then finish with a big push.
When you are to build a tribal deck, first look for the big tribal payoffs, then add in the strong tribe members, after putting in good spells, and finish with other cards to round out the deck. As an example of tribal deck building, you can read my Aether Burn Magic deck article which you can read here. I started looking for reasons to run Aethers. Dimension Looper is a creature with a very strong burst damage roar if you’re holding an Aether, so you want to run a lot of Aether creatures to keep the effect active. One Aether is Aether Herald which has a roar that deals face damage if you’re holding an Aether. With Dimension Looper and Aether Herald being both good sources of face damage you start to know what the deck wants to do and you can start filling out the deck. You have an aggA lot of Aethers to keep the roars active, burst damage spells that can act as removal or face damage, and other cards to fill in what you’re missing like card draw or ward.