We live in surreal times, a man spending near 3 hours ranking his virtual animal sticker collection, and me listening to his mad ramblings having never played the game.
In a month time: "Listen, Pig is A tier animal, Shrimp Scampi meta is making a come back, you just get an early dragon and go "Him him me him me" suddenly all your pets are 50/50"
followed your wisdom to a T after this video. all tempo early units. random beefy with garlic in front, two crabs with meat behind, tier 2 rabbit and monkey behind that. just bought lots of cupcakes and misc food to buff the blowfish. went 10 and 0. GOAT tier list
Only thing I'd change is I'd put dog into tier S. I think it's just the most consistent 10 win carry in the game because you get it so early and there is so much synergy out there for it. You can even just throw a crab behind it at any time and you have 2 beefy units, and you can chain crabs as long as the higher attack crab is closer to the front. The early game focus in this list is really good. Still, on turn 3 or turn 4 I'm looking for a dog over anything else. I think he was undervaluing it in this list given the dog is basically the ideal unit for his strategy of making one unit a huge stat stick consistently.
Can we get a comment on the recent appearance of the daisy-chain crab build? Aka: a 50 health unit at the front, with 4 lvl 1 crabs all with meat on them that get 50 health from the front unit then give it to the crab behind them? It's a "look upon me, and despair" build.
I replied just now but lost this somehow so typing again - Hadn't really noticed this build or thought of it so I've just done a little test. 7 wins twice but I'm not convinced, there are some potential anomalies which make it unreliable to play IMHO. That last run, with a board of L2 Shark+melon, L2 Monkey+melon, L1 crab 9 atk+meat, L1 crab 10 atk+meat, L3 fish + melon (it was at something like 40/42 on that last round), wiped where I'd have won the round, because the 2nd crab got the buff from the 1st crab, before the fish buffed it... so a 9/9 rather than a 9/42. Better units at the back could have saved that round, or 4 crabs, but then there's the potential for the buff order problem, which could have given me worse units than I had. In my first run, with 3 crabs, of all the turns I had all three out, the third one only got the 1st units health once!! I don't pay as much attention to the ability order as I should, but it seems to do badly against sniping builds? On one round in that first run, all three crabs were sniped before the first unit had buffed them.
y'all, the crab chain works, you just have to organize crabs from the front in order of highest damage. just got an easy 10win with 3 crabs feeding each other
I legit got an immediate 10 win one loss after watching. Focused one large swan with a crab behind it, monkey buffing the swan, and dodo buffing the crab. The level 3 hippo in the 4th slot barely even mattered. The front load meta is actually insane, thank you egg for the knowledge. Edit: TWO IN A ROW BABY
This is the moneyball sequel we’ve all been waiting for. When they look at a cricket at the back they think “that’s gonna turn some losses into draws” when I look at a cricket, I see a fundamental failure in understanding how wins are made. You don’t want to be buying long term scaling. You want to be buying wins right now. Stats on a unit you’re probably not going to keep don’t matter. Money-Me, starring Ryan Letourneau
Seems unlikely since he now firmly believes he's "solved" SAP and always plays the same units, and constantly insults anyone in chat who dares defend a unit he doesn't like.
One of the utilities of the squirrel is that if you buy it to end your turn... you can freeze 2 food and ensure that those 2 show up next turn's shop... useful mid - late game to try and roll 2 chocolates (for example)
@@elijahagustino3605 I don't think its good, but its not equivalent to 3 rerolls. When fishing for chocolate, rerolling is way worse since you freeze the first chocolate when you get it
Agree with most of the ratings, except for Skunk in F. In pay to win meta, it's such a good counter against butterfly comps. Every time I level it up to at least lvl 2, it's mostly GG 10Wins in the current meta for me. At the very least a B-tier.
There's so many counters to butterfly tho I can agree skunk is slightly better than F tier it's just not that viable unless you get 10 straight wins , after round 10 a skunk is not as viable as alot of the other units .
I STRONGLY disagree with the Skunk placement. That thing is an absolute Monster. All you need is to get it to level 2 and you will almost always break through Melon armored Enemy Carries in a single hit. It works pretty much in every Lineup and it can even make great use of a tiger. Getting it to lvl 3 is a waste though, because you will almost always break enemy carries with 1 hit after a 66% health reduction. It has great Synergy with different units (All scaling units, Rhino, Hippo, Leopard etc.) and requires almost no gold investement, while completely shutting down one (or two) enemy carries. Its only weakness would be heavy summon lineups, but barely anybody plays those nowadays ... The Skunk is definitely a game changing Unit that can win you the game.
They changed the health system such that the early game losses are less impactful. This boosts the value of the duck because it guarantees a stronger mid-game. I've worked with a guaranteed loss with 3 ducks and completely sold all 3 ducks in a round to buy 4 new animals and it pops off insanely for the mid-game. Wouldn't say it is an A-tier but definitely an investment that you could gamble for now.
Pig is great for dragon procs and for mid-game pets like the dog and the shrimp (both of which I respect). It's not something you want to run, and it's not great early, but I think it ranks higher than D.
This is a recurring Ryab problem. He looks at everything from 1 side, then swaps, and reevaluates everything from his new viewpoint, forgetting everything. THe last Tierlist was heavy on the mid/late game combos. Now he just looks at the first time a unit shows up and nothing else.
@@Garmanddarksun I know, but it's kind of hard to evaluate fairly late game units when you dont draw a single match... The 10 lives patch made early losses far less punishing but early wins are still more valuable imo
I would have to disagree, it's just so niche that it can't be higher than D. Yeah, it has uses, but you never want to be using it when it's initially available, it needs you to be building around certain other things and others do what it does but better. It's not the worst pet, but definitely D.
Did you.. not hear what he said about it? It isn't THE BEST UNIT IN THE GAME, it is just reaaaal damn good when you get it. Which is round 1. Where you either win or lose by 1 health
When you consider the context the units first appear in, I don't even think it's that crazy. Specific units early game have way more impact on final result
Something to note about the leopard and animals like it, they can kill the butterfly before it gains stats! Can be huge for the later levels when everyone and their mother has a butterfly or two.
@@demetriustrismegistus4367 Fake news. Tell me what other tire 3 direct damage unit can cause a 50 50 to be taken out by a 1 1 or a 50 50 with melon armor to be taken out by a 21 1?
So much pog in this no-gameplay video, it's insane. Tierlists are cool, sure. Absolutely dunking on everyone who disagreed with him? Based. Getting carried away with dunking on people and having to apologize to a dev? Hilarious. Richard Hammer banter? Tremendous, now I'm probably going to try Dog + Llama too. Quick meal break? Looked delicious. Time management? Exquisite. How do you do it NL? My gourd overfloweth once again.
If Nl's going to do another sap animal tier list we can hope for it, otherwise unlikely since it would take like less than 5 minutes... Imo items/food can too easily be divided in unusable garbage and necessary at some stage tiers
This tier list is much better than the last speedrun tier list. I would pretty much agree with everything. That duck placement though...you piece... Recently got my first flawless with the new intel and plays. Big thanks, NL!
So let's break down Chipmunk being the single worst animal in the game, because I think it is downright fascinating just how bad it is. - It's a tier 4 so you're seeing it kinda late - You need an open space to buy an animal, so you have to have something you want rid of, kind of a tough ask when you're seeing tier 4s - You get a shop of like 7 food for the three gold spent buying the chipmunk. You are seeing one additional food compared to if you had just spent that gold rerolling - This also means you're sacrificing seeing 12-15 infinitely better animals depending on where you are in the game, which you would have seen if you had just been rerolling - Most of the food in this game, statistically, is either equipment which you only need one of per unit, or randomly distributed +1s or +2s. You will see a random amount of these, so that's basically two layers of RNG you're working with. - If you see the food you want, you still need to go -3 gold to actually purchase the food, per food you want by the way, so it is incredibly unlikely you will get any more value than even just one reroll - All of this and it doesn't even have the decency to be anything stronger than a 2/2 - Compare and contrast Cow, which is only one tier higher, and it gives you the guarantee of two milks for free, giving you all the food synergy without the ridiculous goddamn chipmunk payment plan, and on top of that honestly both those milks are above average as far as food goes in this game because you can distribute them with intent - In the case of Cow, it only costs 5 gold to purchase Cow, get value, distribute milk, sell cow, and buy a replacement, so half your turn to give +4/+4 to whatever you want and pick up like a Scorpion or something - In order to do the same with Chipmunk, you have to spend 3 gold on Chipmunk, 6 gold on pears, one gold on a reroll, sell the chipmunk to get one back, then three gold to buy a new animal. That means it costs a total of 12 gold to emulate even a fraction of the Cow's power, so you'd need to sell a level 2 or have some combination of swans for it to be even theoretically possible to not end turn with a shitty 2/2. Chipmunk is pioneering F-tier IMO, it's seriously that bad. Here's hoping we can see some justice because the emoji is cute and deserves better representation.
I average 7/8 wins a run and regularly buy chipmunk. It doesn't always hit but i value canned food and chocolate very highly, especially with a cat. Plus it can search for melon armor late game
First he disrespected turtle, now it's the skunk. A percentage based start trigger that bypasses armor AND can be doubled by tiger? You can knock 2 units to 1 HP at the start of battle but it's bad? I don't buy it.
@@symawi312 I just completed a 10 win with a level 2.66 skunk and I honestly didn't want to win because I wanted it to get to lvl3. I literally rolled the last 6 coins, didn't get the last skunk and still won the last round lol
@@symawi312 I try and try to get a big skunk. I've never even gotten one to lvl 2. Right now all my 10 wins come from racing to 10 instead of making strongest possible teams, so maybe that's part of it.
Argument for Skunk: In the extreme late game, skunk has an important niche, which is giving your 50/50 unit a better trade against theirs. Ideally theirs and yours will have melon armor at this point, the skunk allows your 50/50 to one-shot theirs, and live with 20 hp remaining. I've never used a skunk like this, but I have lost to teams that run this. Alternatively, the team running the skunk can have a 50/something rooster, that way they're guaranteed to kill your next 2 units for the price of rooster + skunk. It's likely your second unit will also be incredibly strong, so you're not missing out by playing the skunk, but your opponent is missing out for losing their first 2 units.
A more relavent effect of a skunk is that it kill's a crab comp since all the crab will copy the 1 hp or what ever low hp their front liner end up with.
If you can get three ducks in the first two rounds, you can go into round three with some insane unit stats that'll carry you through the mid game. I got to 10 wins once largely off of a blowfish i got upgrading then selling a Lv2 Duck. Duck are basically all or nothing though
I had one run where I got the chicken on tier 4 via combine and ran with it. It isn't S tier, maybe not A tier either, but it is good. Between it and cans I had my shop animals at like +30/+30. If a shop animal has more buff stats on it than your existing animal the merged unit takes the higher stats. In a way the chicken is a time delay dragon with the upside of making it easier to replace core members of the team. That said, it is hot garbage if you get it late.
I've had the pleasure to use chicken and dragon on the same squad with 3 wins, and I pounded 7 wins on 1 life. While it's definitely situational, the chicken can be super strong
Chicken is phenomenal but you have to release your attachment to your squad, in 2-3 turns your shop out scales your board. If you can get animals with any decent text (esp scorpion) you will win handily
Dude, he's savage on the Eagle, but I just got my second win with a lvl 3 Eagle, which summoned a lvl 3 Octopus _every time._ A 12/14 Eagle summons a 20/24 Octopus that slaps the whole enemy team on summon, I almost didn't need the rest of the team lol.
@@inumitovd7900 that's because if you can win early this game can be won 9 times out of 10 with good stats and items on any unit . You will lose every once in a while to op teams . But if you draw a few/ lose a few times in the beginning and know your going pass round 10 that's when you want to build good teams .
The point of the duck is you don’t run it! You buy duck, roll(once or twice) sell duck, buy out the shop on turn two. It is a 2 cost (+1/1)*2 or 3, no other early turn two/three utility is that good. There is an observational bias against the duck because the duck does work on sell so you don’t see it in the builds that use it right.
Something to note about the dragon is that it allows you to spend coin on stat ups rather than constant rerolls for duplicate animals. By the time you're using the dragon you are usually pot committed on the team comp
I dont know how to feel about seeing dragon next to snail lmao. Snail is definitely a must take after a loss, but considering the odds of getting one at the right time it feels like a waste of shop space most of the time. Still I'd place in B tier, so it's not like I dont respect it
Here's my thoughts on croc. Most of the time it ends up killing two backline units bc of its high attack. Good until you get something better like a turkey or something
I love how he trashes duck because whenever it's on an opponent squad he beats it, but when on turn 3 people have squads with insane stats, he's like "how is that possible" (Edit: 1:45:24 lmao). Of course you beat them when they're on the board, they have on-sell effects. From my experience, using 1 duck isn't very helpful, 2 is quite good, and 3 or more is insane, and your turn 3 units become run-defining. I ran a build while I was listening to the start of this (f2p vs only f2p) and I got 3 ducks turn 1, one more and ant + honey on turn 2 to try to tie (I didn't). 2 losses down, a fifth duck in the shop, 10 gold. I sell a duck, freeze a unit, buy a duck. Now I have 8 gold, 4 ducks to sell makes 12, so I have four rolls. I end up finding dog + dodo + dodo, so my squad turn 3 after buffs is 2/1 ant + honey in the front, then starting from the back it's a 5/7 dodo that makes the next dodo a 10/7 which makes a dog (got 2 health triggers, admittedly lucky) a 16/8. This squad can beat a good turn 5 squad. Just using regular flex-slot (buy/sell) scaling, I was able to go 10-2-0 -- the two losses were the first two rounds. You're right in that the early game health and wins are important, because that's the way you play. But it's not the only way to play, sometimes you can use your early health as a resource to leverage an advantage that will win you games. Sometimes the build falls off and you don't find a good pivot, and you get 5-9 wins, but with 4 or more ducks in the first 2 turns, I've never gone less than 5 wins. I don't think it's your fault not to realize that though, I think it speaks volumes on the game that it's so simple, yet we can play so differently that a D-tier unit for you is S-tier for me, and we can both be winning players. Idk if you can see your stats in the game, but pre-patch I got a 5x 10-win streak f2p once, using early ducks for I think 3 of them, and I never abandon runs. Take from this what you will
Things that can go wrong with the duck: - You don't get good tier 2 units on your sell round - NL brought up a powerful counter against duck buffed squads, meat 🍖 costs only 2 and you don't have to risk your early lives to get one. - Pivoting to tier 3,4,5, and 6, especially if scenario 1 happened to you. Dogs and Dodos are a mist with duck builds since they either auto scale or apply buffs relative to their stats. But what is an elephant or a spider do after tier 2? Not much Averaging it out, I think it can still be B tier? But yeah, when ranking units, you also gotta count what can go wrong and if there are alternatives where there is less that can go wrong.
@@verbfrombonsai8852 Meat doesn't counter early buffs because you're hitting 3 units. You won't have the health to support more than one attack against units buffed with 3+ ducks. Remember what I said about the round when I sold ducks; I had 4 ducks and 10 gold and only had to find 3 decent units, so I was able to roll 5 times if necessary. It's certainly possible to find nothing in 5 rolls, but by that reasoning, shop luck can tank any strategy. It doesn't just have to be dodo and dog. Shrimp will be a 5/4 or higher, and will give health to your other strong units along the way; best paired with a dog or another shrimp. Otter or fish are smaller to start by a couple of stats, but you're happy to spend 3 gold for +1/+1 on a unit that's already massive that early, and it'll scale the rest of your squad for later. What's an elephant (or rat) gonna do? It's gonna rear up your squad with a 6/8 or higher; that's reasonable for several turns. Some synergies can work out when you hold it too; I've run it with camel and pufferfish, it's ok. Anyway, much like the rest of the game, you still have to be able to play from ahead, but the point is that you're ahead. I could agree to B-tier, since you hate to see only one or two early, then none ever again. But if you let it, it'll define your early game and set you ahead. So really it's B tier because it can either be S or D depending on shop luck. Just like how you can roll 6 times without seeing a tier 1 in the shop with a dragon, or pick up food-buff creatures, then only see pills; that's the game.
@@barrymccaucner9316 Dude, it only takes 1 turn at most to catch up to ducks. You only need to buff up 7 more hp on one unit to effectively trade with 3 ducked up units. After that, you have a 4v2. Dogs can do that easily. Otters and beavers can help you get there. Ants can do that. Fishes can do that. Levelling your units does that. Of course it isn't a guarantee. You can have shitty luck and lose 1 turn to a 4 squad marty. But at the very least, you still have three health to catch up. After literally one turn, you can immediately equalize. In the grand scheme of things, 3 ducks give you a 9 stat advantage at the cost of two lives. Other early game strats can do the same for less than that.
@@barrymccaucner9316 I used to run ducks. It just isn't consistent. If you need three of them and two of your lives to pop, it doesn't deserve s-tier. I love the occasional buff dogs and crabs and dodos that I will pair with roosters later, but just playing for wins is easier and allows for more unlucky shit (that you didn't impose on yourself)
I don't know how but I ended up getting a sloth while listening to this and playing the game. Even got the sloth up to level 2 but game ended at 5 wins.
After this tier list came out I couldn't get more than 4 wins LUL Theres always a 30/30 by turn 7 and my two 20/20 units just get fucked shit is crazy competitive
The big thing with the crocodile is it doesn't win you runs but it ruin dreams when it counters your comp. So it's like a d tier to run but potential s tier when run against you. It really does shine in arena though.
Now I know I learned all I know from this guy, but I got my first 10 win today by injecting triple duck in my vein, hitting Dodo, Dog, and some other thing on turn 3, and just steam rolling.
Okay, instantly subbed. I just got into Super Auto Pets (cuz it's super fun) and I love how NL is willing to roast his stream with brain smarts. I don't agree with everything he's done, but he has legit reasoning and anecdotal data as to why each pet is where it is. You god****ed Legend @Northernlion. Fan for life.
My man's putting the skunk at D tier which counters the crab tank meta that he made. That thing gave me like 8 10 bangers last night and I got another 3 during my lunch time because of it.
My perspective as an only P2W player (for now): Swan and Dog to A tier, they are easily the best tier 2 minions and I often have them to the end of the game. Swan is so underrated, having the extra gold is massive for scaling anything. Sometimes its worth to just hard roll for them on turns 3-4 and not pick up much else. I'd put Eagle to low to mid B tier, its amazing to get as a triple when you hit level 4, it has great stats, great deathrattle and most importantly, its an amazing pill target. It's not good as a permanent unit, but its probably the best unit to get as a triple on lvl 4 apart from Cow. I'd swap Ladybug and Pig's placements. 1-3 is underwhelming and early game food commitment on the Ladybug is bait like 95% of the time. Pig IMO could be at tier B even, Beaver is bit better, but Pig is still very solid to get on turn 1-2 as a temporary unit when you aren't getting pairs for Ant/Fish/Beetle etc. and then selling the Pig most often on turn 3. Pig also has some other decent uses (scaling a lvl2-3 Dog, scaling Buffalo and Dragon builds. For me I'd lower both Puppy and Bison to mid-top B. Puppy is really good if you get it on turn 3 with tripling, its good when you get it on turn 4 tripling and if you pick it up on turn 5 early you can still make it work sometimes. But the 2 gold cost is pretty huge, you really need to commit hard to get it to lvl 2 fast. For me I just feel like I usually have a regular Dog up by the time I see Puppy and tier 3 already has so many other good minions (Turtle, Chick, Caterpillar are very good, Owl and double Bunny are solid sometimes too) that I find it hard to pick, especially if I have a decent Dog already at level 2 or one copy off. Bison is obviously good if you have a lvl3 already when you triple into it, but I almost never have lvl 3s at that point unless I've seen an insane amount of Swans/Dogs, because I almost never commit to levelling Tier 1 units to lvl3, I almost always end up selling them at lvl1-2 and I find that most of the time levelling up Tier 1 beyond lvl 2 is bait. It's still solid pick-up when you hit lvl 4, but you REALLY need to get it to tier 2 fast for it to scale. I'd raise Buffalo to top B tier, its the best tier4 unit to get as a triple on turn 5-6 and I find it much easier to scale comapred to Bison. Worm is way too high for me, its good sometimes, but its really slow to scale and requires lots of resources. I'd put Worm to somewhere in C tier. Scorpion is good in the end, but not S tier IMO. It's a solid flex for when your at 9wins or 1hp and afraid of dying. I'd put it to mid-bottom A tier. I find both Octopus and Mammoth meh, but at least Mammoth is solid pill target, so I'd put Mammoth above Octopus, who I find to be way too slow most of the time and the stat increase from levelling is quite underwhelming. Peacock I'd put somewhere in D, its not the worst thing ever, but IMO it really sucks, not worth it to commit resources into at all. I'd move Seal into lower C tier (sometimes viable), Rhino to top-mid C (Good effect, but really hard to scale, you get it so late), Dragon and Chick a little closer to top A tier and Poodle lower in B tier (feels really clunky often and usually never end up keeping it for long as its replaced by Dragon/Dino or just sold to make space). Also I agree with Goat in D tier because its so hard to use most of the time (I'd still raise it closer to mid-top), but it can be VERY RARELY good, one of my absolute favorite builds I've had is Goat+Swan+Dragon+Buffalo. Starting turns with 12-13 gold and after that I had lvl 2-3 Goat and lvl 1-2 Dragon. It was so much fun when Tier 1 units cost only 1 gold or even 0 gold with Pig :D In general I just think I have a very different playing style compared to NL. Like I almost never go for early game foods like Honey, Garlic etc. I'll stay on P2W deck for now, but I'll probably soon swap to F2P deck, so maybe things will change then. Love this game, hope it stays alive and gets some solid updates to keep it pogging.
People really under estimate the power of Chicken, the fact its can be a Can with a buy me sell me meta and then you just hold a Rooster or something to have a build with 4 units that are 20/20+
bee at the back makes sense. a 1/1 bee isn't going to do anything against big animals. it's better for something to take the hit and hopefully kill something to at least give you a chance in those spots than to go for 1 measly damage
I started playing SAP because of NL and thanks to the wise master's teachings got my first ten piece today after 3 hours in the game. Loving it so far, where other autobattlers didn't really appeal to me. This feels more like solitaire or something.
The gorilla in C tier is criminal. As far as I can tell, it's the best possible 50/50 unit due to coconut armor level 1-3. I can't think of anything stronger at that point in the game.
Ladybug is a sleeper hit. You are so right about the armor, and the best thing about ladybug is it gets its buff every time you buy food and you can buy food for any animal. Paired with caterpillar its brilliant, and you can get it and level it before caterpillar drops. Worst case its just a stated lvl 1 animal that has a relevant ability in the late game.
chat bullied him into giving parrot a lower rating than it deserves. With tiger being fixed so it no longer works out of battle, parrot is now the best unit in the game when it's paired with rabbits, cats, monkey or dragon (all of which are A or B tier units)
Thanks for this Tierlist, Master NL. I'm super new to SAP, like 5 days in, and after my own first attempts I got to 6-7 wins mostly. Me too relied too much on horses and crickets with honey. I just had my first run after watching your tier list and well, I won all 10 for the first time with 2 loses. Level 2 Monkey -> Cat -> Tiger - > Level 3 Garlic Kangaroo -> turtle-meloned Level 3 50/50 Fish
After watching this I won three in a row just now, and this is my second day playing. My only gripe is that I win too early and don't get to see my team in final form!
my 2¢ on Dodo; the one nice thing with dodo is that you can buff dodo and if you pivot away from the animal the dodo is buffing you still retain the Dodo's buff for the new animal. it does take more work than its probably worth, but that said if the right build comes up its effective. I'd say its low B instead of high C, but thats probably just splitting hairs.
Your conversation about the Camel/Kangaroo/Peacock/etc. archetype has me thinking - you could argue there's a rock-paper-scissors type meta rn There's the hurt trigger build you mentioned, which is beat pretty handily by high stats (dodo, caterpillar, anything heavily scaled/upgraded, or builds that juice like one huge hippo up front). The high stat build is beat by a cracked white weenie spawn build utilizing turkey, fly, rooster etc. And the hurt trigger build can beat weenies because they generally scale better. Very interesting
I hate to burst your bubble but a high stats build also beats a spawn spam build in my experience. Garlic armor just negates most of the damage the spawns do besides bus
It’s not a 100-0 matchup, like yeah garlic is the best defense against a weenie. But I think a weenie that really rolls up with turkeys and tigers or even sheep can smash a fat guy then continue
Wow great tier list see you with another one in like 3 weeks edit: my man really disrespects the duck, winning against ducks isnt an argument to why they're garbage because if you see a duck they're using ducks wrong by default.
Its pretty easy to draw first round with 1, even 2 ducks with an ant though. You can take a draw round 1, go hard duck round 2 and then you're sitting on a jacked round 3 to midgame.
He honestly makes a great point. He is playing for consistency and there is enough decent units to ignore duck every time. Duck near guarantees that you transition with 2 loses. And even still, round 3 has a lot of people selling their duck teams for huge teams and you still end up losing anyway. As a fellow duck enjoyer, duck has a lot of problems. Sometimes you run into nothing but your own kind and they had 1 more duck than you and you get 0 wins. A big and VERY common problem with duck; Ox. Ox has SO much power early on it can actually wipe out 2 units that were duck buffed. Kangaroos as well, but not to the same extent. Not to mention Duck Strat like every other teams' mentality relies on scaling; you will lose the power lead eventually and you have too many units you cling to. Sometimes after your cash in you end up buying apples or rerolling for a unit you can actually take to the end game. Dog often requires too much space for duck teams. You can't stack econ with swan as effectively for the same reason. Snail loses A LOT of it's value and offers other teams a better "duck buff" to catch up to you. But sure none of that really guarantees you lose. Duck teams do set you up for a strong team that can sometimes carry you to transitioning to a 10 win team. But there is still variance and the argument is that the HP you keep early tends to be more effective than sacrificing it for early scaling. Beaver better than Duck though? You're right, the man has TOO much disrespect for duck. Shrimp is obviously the worst tier 1 unit in the game, but right in front of that is Beaver for sure.
@@heck3933 I understand, but buying/selling ducks or holding 2 ducks from round 2 to 3 to get +6/+6 across 3 units which you can roll once to get tier 2 units. Even if you get 1 loss through it, the buffs gained can get you rolling into midgame. Im not asking for duck to A, but a lil more respect like low B high C would be respectable.
mathematically having a cricket at the back is definitely good. consider a scenario where you don’t have the cricket in the back: the 1/1 doesn’t end up killing something, and the enemy creature it hit would’ve been killed by your next unit anyway (which isn’t an uncommon occurrence) and you end up drawing. if you had had the cricket at the back instead, you would theoretically win because the 1/1 actually would have a chance to be impactful, instead of somewhere in the middle where it has no impact. the bottom line is there’s lots of scenarios where the back is better (such as when the 1/1 doesn’t have an effect in the middle) but no real reason why the middle is better.
I... Don't know what I'm doing here. I've never even heard about this game. I'm at the gym listening to this guy talk about bison with garlic armor with crabs behind them and I can't stop... What does this all mean?
The placement of Giraffe confuses me when he kept hammering that early scaling is so good (which I agree with). Giraffe is the earliest scaling unit you can get in free-to-play. There's also the issue of wide vs deep scaling, and yeah deep is better, but still, wide scaling is better than no scaling at all...
Its just not enough scaling to matter. 1 apple every turn is not getting you not enough stats. If you get an early tier two its about as good as monke but not really because the stats aren't focused..
I'm going to defend the leopard and point out that you *don't* waste your buffs on it. Leopard is what you roll if you picked up a dodo early (since dodo is tier 2) and then it just owns 1-3 units before the game even begins. Sure, its rank got tanked with the dodo nerf, but it's not *that* bad as long as you always pair it
@@18skeltor horse based summoning build gets rocked by anyone rolling dolphin, (usually) croc, rhino, or hippo. Horse is just bait and if you want to keep falling for it go ahead i'll be taking my 10 wins
i fell asleep to this video and had a dream where i was trying to order food from in cafe while being followed around by NL who was telling me his opinions about various animals
I think Dolphin is still low key underrated. Can’t it knock out a Scorpion, maybe a Snake, or a Fly/Turkey in the early rounds before they spawn or boost anything?
Rather go Croc and have the better chance to rip up fly turkey builds. I've gotten away with a few ten wins that shouldn't have been by running a anti-meta leveled up croc tiger build with like decent stat fodder up front
@@JT-yl9yt The dolphin is definitely a mid game slot filler. Probably should be low B tier, but is very efficient when things don’t all have melon/garlic yet.
In theory; If you buy & sell a duck, and buy the two remaining pets, it's like you got a "free" 2/2, with the advantage that the stats are on top of pets that might want to keep. The problem is that picking it turn 1 is a guarantee to lose because its stats are abysmal, and selling it puts you 1 coin short of buying another pet. So you NEED to keep it for turn 1. It's also worse than the beaver and the otter because they're easier to manipulate and hit the pets you want. The duck being limited to the shop is very situational. Very unlikely you'll get good targets alongside the duck on the shop, but it might happen, I guess... Worth keeping an eye on it
@@ryanvanaman9585 yeah i thought so too so i booted the game and god damn not only is it called squirrel, the animals are listed alphabetically in the achievements screen so eggy has no excuse
I was skeptical of Bison being so high, but I already have two 10 wins using it in a build since watching this. Think Aligator deserves just a bit more (Low C vs D based on how he placed similar units), but NLs style for this game definitely works. Two or Three big units is all you need for most of the game. Don't need to scale to infinity if you win games early.
I think one thing people have to remember with this when he comments on things like the leopard, shark, etc. when your running a front heavy build to get 1 and possibly 2 units close to 50/50 you are betting on winning before you come across some really scary squads in the deeper rounds like round 20. If you are going that deep round wise your evaluation of some units would probably be different. Overall this is a pretty solid list. I do think the seal, croc, and duck are under rated. If you can get 3-4 ducks and only one lose by round 3 that gives you a guarantee + 2/2 if not 3/3 on 4 units (because you would be hopefully leveling up a unit to unlock a tier 3). That easily beats out whatever units you could possibly make by that point regardless of what they are. Croc can really mess up that turkey/fly game and with that being rated so high the counter should be respected equally. Seal is amazing with cow and even better with cat. If you had a level 2 seal with a cat a pear will hit you for +4/4 and then two other animals get +2/2. That scaling is crazy good. Had close to three wins in a row with a seal and cat in team.
We live in surreal times, a man spending near 3 hours ranking his virtual animal sticker collection, and me listening to his mad ramblings having never played the game.
The games free you know
And the game is on the phone.
You all have phones, don't you?
its free on steam homie give it a shot
you should try it, it's so addictive
the free pack is actually more fun than the paid pack imo, there's more viable strategies
I feel like this tier list should be labeled:
S - Squeeze Me
A - Juice Me
B - Buy Me
C - Sell Me
D - I sleep
D - You piece?
C - roll me
Me you me you me you
@@DGTLCLANGAMING no they need to make a new tier called f - you piece
You piece
In a month time: "Listen, Pig is A tier animal, Shrimp Scampi meta is making a come back, you just get an early dragon and go "Him him me him me" suddenly all your pets are 50/50"
Just wait until Armadillo gets released.
Just wait till the armed human appears
@@anilzoc Just wait until the one armed bandit appears
He did just play a lvl 3 scampi for the sticker so it kinda counts?
Just wait till you can roll the 1/1 stairs and ravioli on me
In a thousand years, once all these animals vanish off the face of the Earth, this tier list will be the new Bible.
Underrated comment
with the ant ruling over them all
Do androids dream of SAP?
@@brandonbyrnes6302 Ant remains S tier.
And on the 5th day northernlion made the A tier ducks
3:31 Ant (S)
4:13 A Hatching Chick (A)
5:12 Badger (C)
6:23 Bat (A)
7:39 Beaver (B)
8:21 Beetle (B)
10:39 Bison (A)
11:59 Blowfish (C)
13:20 Bluebird (C)
15:20 Buffalo (B)
17:16 Camel (C)
20:13 Caterpillar (A)
22:21 Cat (A)
26:16 Chicken (D)
27:17 Squirrel (D)
29:00 Cow (S)
31:15 Crab (A)
33:43 Cricket (C)
40:00 Crocodile (D)
42:42 Deer (B)
44:23 Dodo (C)
48:32 Dog (B)
50:36 Dolphin (C)
52:07 Dragon (A)
53:27 Dromedary (C)
54:52 Duck (Dogshit)
1:00:09 Eagle (C)
1:03:11 Elephant (C)
1:05:34 Fish (A)
1:08:11 Flamingo (C)
1:09:20 Fly (A)
1:11:33 Giraffe (C)
1:13:28 Goat (D)
1:16:30 Gorilla (C)
1:18:21 Hedgehog (D)
1:19:39 Hippo (A)
1:21:05 Horse (D)
1:25:00 Kangaroo (B)
1:26:36 Ladybug (C)
1:28:10 Leopard (D)
1:30:45 Llama (D)
1:33:48 Lobster (D)
1:35:14 Mammoth (D)
1:37:45 Microbe (B)
1:39:21 Monkey (A)
1:41:38 Mosquito (B)
1:43:55 Octopus (C)
1:45:40 Otter (B)
1:48:12 Owl (B)
1:50:03 Ox (B)
1:51:20 Parrot (D)
1:53:17 Peacock (C)
1:56:24 Penguin (C)
1:57:25 Pig (D)
2:01:10 Poodle (B)
2:02:37 Puppy (A)
2:03:20 Rabbit (B)
2:05:10 Chicken Karaage (S)
2:06:30 Rat (C)
2:08:05 Rhino (B)
2:09:00 Rooster (A)
2:11:09 Sauropod (D)
2:12:10 Scorpion (S)
2:14:13 Seal (D)
2:15:19 Shark (B)
2:16:02 Sheep (B)
2:16:53 Shrimp (C)
2:18:21 Skunk (D)
2:20:23 Snail (A)
2:21:43 Snake (S)
2:23:11 Spider (C)
2:24:25 Swan (B)
2:25:24 T-Rex (S)
2:27:56 Tabby Cat (D)
2:28:25 Tiger (S)
2:29:51 Tropical Fish (C)
2:30:35 Turkey (A)
2:31:19 Turtle (A/S)
2:32:49 Whale (B)
2:33:32 Worm (A)
Legend!
Thank you for doing god's work
You sweet summer child, bless you
Not that it matters but amoeba is called microbe so it fits the alphabetical order
@@andersonsmith8625 edited. Now the only one out of order is Squirrel 🙏
The fact that NL edited out his bathroom break, just goes to show how much effort he put into this SAP tier list.
editing??????????????????????????
Wait did he pause the recording or did he edit it out? Cause both are very different levels of effort. Where's the time stamp I have to know!
This.
@@chezblob3628 1:02:30
Holy brsh...
NL went from talking like a layman in the first video to speaking like a theoretical physicist in this one.
Underrated comment 👏
What SAP does to a nigga.
@@thealphas1 Yeah black people don't watch twitch streamers you are right...
@@thealphas1 Weird comment my dude
@Krichnu fr that is a weird comment bro, you gotta explain
Strategic upload to induce maximum chaos in the meta right after getting Ludwig addicted to SAP
"If youve got two great units you can fill the rest with scorpions" thats me on a friday night baby
Confused and pleased to be reading this
I love running a scorpion monkey, feeding it till it gets to 21 attack so it can 1 shot melon users.
I only run it with auto-scalers tho like bison.
@@verbfrombonsai8852 That's genius
2 hours 40 minutes of tier list content sending pogs straight to my frontal cortex!
followed your wisdom to a T after this video. all tempo early units. random beefy with garlic in front, two crabs with meat behind, tier 2 rabbit and monkey behind that. just bought lots of cupcakes and misc food to buff the blowfish. went 10 and 0. GOAT tier list
Only thing I'd change is I'd put dog into tier S. I think it's just the most consistent 10 win carry in the game because you get it so early and there is so much synergy out there for it. You can even just throw a crab behind it at any time and you have 2 beefy units, and you can chain crabs as long as the higher attack crab is closer to the front. The early game focus in this list is really good. Still, on turn 3 or turn 4 I'm looking for a dog over anything else. I think he was undervaluing it in this list given the dog is basically the ideal unit for his strategy of making one unit a huge stat stick consistently.
@@Matt-ov1qp Now that everyone seems to understand the crab is basically backwards original dodo, I think Crab may be getting a nerf eventually.
"Health is the most important stat in the game"
"Skunk is one of the worst units in the game"
*visible confusion*
It's wild at the time he didn't respect the tier 3 skunk with a steak at your front line.
This is definitely the part of the video that aged the worst
@@octopusexperiment1931 that and rabbit
5.56 error y error reporter was created 7rrr7r6r 5.56 6rr55trrr76r5r
30 year old argues with himself for nearly 3 hours.
Audience can't get enough.
Imagine falling asleep to this with your iPad on your chest, only psychos would do that
Can we get a comment on the recent appearance of the daisy-chain crab build? Aka: a 50 health unit at the front, with 4 lvl 1 crabs all with meat on them that get 50 health from the front unit then give it to the crab behind them?
It's a "look upon me, and despair" build.
I replied just now but lost this somehow so typing again - Hadn't really noticed this build or thought of it so I've just done a little test. 7 wins twice but I'm not convinced, there are some potential anomalies which make it unreliable to play IMHO. That last run, with a board of L2 Shark+melon, L2 Monkey+melon, L1 crab 9 atk+meat, L1 crab 10 atk+meat, L3 fish + melon (it was at something like 40/42 on that last round), wiped where I'd have won the round, because the 2nd crab got the buff from the 1st crab, before the fish buffed it... so a 9/9 rather than a 9/42. Better units at the back could have saved that round, or 4 crabs, but then there's the potential for the buff order problem, which could have given me worse units than I had.
In my first run, with 3 crabs, of all the turns I had all three out, the third one only got the 1st units health once!! I don't pay as much attention to the ability order as I should, but it seems to do badly against sniping builds? On one round in that first run, all three crabs were sniped before the first unit had buffed them.
this doesn't work because abilities proc left to right?
Abilities proc randomly for some reason, same reason why dodo cheetah doesn't always work
y'all, the crab chain works, you just have to organize crabs from the front in order of highest damage. just got an easy 10win with 3 crabs feeding each other
@@josephmalaj5349 Is the ability order based off of damage?
I legit got an immediate 10 win one loss after watching. Focused one large swan with a crab behind it, monkey buffing the swan, and dodo buffing the crab. The level 3 hippo in the 4th slot barely even mattered. The front load meta is actually insane, thank you egg for the knowledge. Edit: TWO IN A ROW BABY
I'm loving the front load meta. Skunk is FEASTING right now making crabs copy a 1 health pet.
@@KoopaKrump pain
This is the moneyball sequel we’ve all been waiting for.
When they look at a cricket at the back they think “that’s gonna turn some losses into draws” when I look at a cricket, I see a fundamental failure in understanding how wins are made.
You don’t want to be buying long term scaling. You want to be buying wins right now. Stats on a unit you’re probably not going to keep don’t matter.
Money-Me, starring Ryan Letourneau
S tier comment
The new 10 heart update definitely seems to favor racing to wins instead of building synergy.
The part about the cat “It’s part or the engine instead of the wheels” just made me sub😂😂
something tells me that in another month this is gonna be completely different again.
Thats what it takes to be the GOAT of SAP.
Seems unlikely since he now firmly believes he's "solved" SAP and always plays the same units, and constantly insults anyone in chat who dares defend a unit he doesn't like.
@@timsimon8665 tbf he gets consistent wins
@@timsimon8665 tell me you got yelled by NL without telling me you got yelled by NL
@@timsimon8665 Well yeah but he did that in duck meta, man’s just very confident
One of the utilities of the squirrel is that if you buy it to end your turn... you can freeze 2 food and ensure that those 2 show up next turn's shop... useful mid - late game to try and roll 2 chocolates (for example)
@@elijahagustino3605 you would sell it next turn tho
@@SerialBull so you get three rerolls and save 1 gold. Nice
@@elijahagustino3605 I don't think its good, but its not equivalent to 3 rerolls. When fishing for chocolate, rerolling is way worse since you freeze the first chocolate when you get it
Thanks for the free win.
Agree with most of the ratings, except for Skunk in F. In pay to win meta, it's such a good counter against butterfly comps. Every time I level it up to at least lvl 2, it's mostly GG 10Wins in the current meta for me. At the very least a B-tier.
There's so many counters to butterfly tho I can agree skunk is slightly better than F tier it's just not that viable unless you get 10 straight wins , after round 10 a skunk is not as viable as alot of the other units .
I love NL's comments section because you always know what your getting when you go into it
This is actually a really good list. I personally think mammoth is C tier and Rooster S but i agree with you on almost everything.
I STRONGLY disagree with the Skunk placement. That thing is an absolute Monster.
All you need is to get it to level 2 and you will almost always break through Melon armored Enemy Carries in a single hit. It works pretty much in every Lineup and it can even make great use of a tiger. Getting it to lvl 3 is a waste though, because you will almost always break enemy carries with 1 hit after a 66% health reduction.
It has great Synergy with different units (All scaling units, Rhino, Hippo, Leopard etc.) and requires almost no gold investement, while completely shutting down one (or two) enemy carries. Its only weakness would be heavy summon lineups, but barely anybody plays those nowadays ...
The Skunk is definitely a game changing Unit that can win you the game.
Thanks for the tip! That sounds reasonable. Gonna try it out when I get the chance
Skunk also hard counters caterpillar, which can be pretty clutch
in recent streams he is pro skunk now
Three months later NL is taking it almost every time 😂😂
They changed the health system such that the early game losses are less impactful. This boosts the value of the duck because it guarantees a stronger mid-game. I've worked with a guaranteed loss with 3 ducks and completely sold all 3 ducks in a round to buy 4 new animals and it pops off insanely for the mid-game.
Wouldn't say it is an A-tier but definitely an investment that you could gamble for now.
2:33:02 Such a misplay to place the whale in front of the sheep. Needed the whale behind the sheep to eat it.
Let's ACTUALLY go
Where? Dude I already signed up, cleared my schedule and waxed my dome.
hear me out, new unit : bear. Auto win against the eggshell hat 80% of the time, 20% it faints.
Pig is great for dragon procs and for mid-game pets like the dog and the shrimp (both of which I respect). It's not something you want to run, and it's not great early, but I think it ranks higher than D.
Also it is a piggy bank! You save the extra money for later when it has more value.
Agreed. You don't want to see it early but it's use later in certain builds drags it out of D imo.
This is a recurring Ryab problem. He looks at everything from 1 side, then swaps, and reevaluates everything from his new viewpoint, forgetting everything. THe last Tierlist was heavy on the mid/late game combos. Now he just looks at the first time a unit shows up and nothing else.
@@Garmanddarksun I know, but it's kind of hard to evaluate fairly late game units when you dont draw a single match... The 10 lives patch made early losses far less punishing but early wins are still more valuable imo
I would have to disagree, it's just so niche that it can't be higher than D. Yeah, it has uses, but you never want to be using it when it's initially available, it needs you to be building around certain other things and others do what it does but better. It's not the worst pet, but definitely D.
See you guys later next month for the next tier list
The Ant as the best unit in the game is so funny, dude.
Did you.. not hear what he said about it? It isn't THE BEST UNIT IN THE GAME, it is just reaaaal damn good when you get it. Which is round 1. Where you either win or lose by 1 health
@@UnknownRayDar I know. I watched the video. I don't think it's not based. It's just still hilarious to me.
When you consider the context the units first appear in, I don't even think it's that crazy. Specific units early game have way more impact on final result
@@fleiftorben Ah, that makes sense. My bad
If Ant were a base 2/2 it'd probably kick all the other animals off NL's S tier
Something to note about the leopard and animals like it, they can kill the butterfly before it gains stats! Can be huge for the later levels when everyone and their mother has a butterfly or two.
Skunk will cause a 50 50 with melon armor to loose against any unit with 50 attack and it hard counters butterfly builds. One day you will respect it.
yeah but so can a mosquito lmao. Any animal with direct damage does that
@@demetriustrismegistus4367 Fake news. Tell me what other tire 3 direct damage unit can cause a 50 50 to be taken out by a 1 1 or a 50 50 with melon armor to be taken out by a 21 1?
@Tathar i can make any unit work. I literally just base my decisions on what achievements I need right now.
@@theburnedman3209 tbh skunk is just hella rare for me. I dunno bout other people. I even forget it's in the game.
@@measlesplease1266 You will remember it forever when the skunk uprising destroys everything crab meta stands for.
So much pog in this no-gameplay video, it's insane. Tierlists are cool, sure. Absolutely dunking on everyone who disagreed with him? Based. Getting carried away with dunking on people and having to apologize to a dev? Hilarious. Richard Hammer banter? Tremendous, now I'm probably going to try Dog + Llama too. Quick meal break? Looked delicious. Time management? Exquisite.
How do you do it NL? My gourd overfloweth once again.
you gotta do a tier list of all the consumable items, there's only like 12 of them i think but it would still be cool
If Nl's going to do another sap animal tier list we can hope for it, otherwise unlikely since it would take like less than 5 minutes... Imo items/food can too easily be divided in unusable garbage and necessary at some stage tiers
He could say what they pair good with
This tier list is much better than the last speedrun tier list. I would pretty much agree with everything. That duck placement though...you piece...
Recently got my first flawless with the new intel and plays. Big thanks, NL!
So let's break down Chipmunk being the single worst animal in the game, because I think it is downright fascinating just how bad it is.
- It's a tier 4 so you're seeing it kinda late
- You need an open space to buy an animal, so you have to have something you want rid of, kind of a tough ask when you're seeing tier 4s
- You get a shop of like 7 food for the three gold spent buying the chipmunk. You are seeing one additional food compared to if you had just spent that gold rerolling
- This also means you're sacrificing seeing 12-15 infinitely better animals depending on where you are in the game, which you would have seen if you had just been rerolling
- Most of the food in this game, statistically, is either equipment which you only need one of per unit, or randomly distributed +1s or +2s. You will see a random amount of these, so that's basically two layers of RNG you're working with.
- If you see the food you want, you still need to go -3 gold to actually purchase the food, per food you want by the way, so it is incredibly unlikely you will get any more value than even just one reroll
- All of this and it doesn't even have the decency to be anything stronger than a 2/2
- Compare and contrast Cow, which is only one tier higher, and it gives you the guarantee of two milks for free, giving you all the food synergy without the ridiculous goddamn chipmunk payment plan, and on top of that honestly both those milks are above average as far as food goes in this game because you can distribute them with intent
- In the case of Cow, it only costs 5 gold to purchase Cow, get value, distribute milk, sell cow, and buy a replacement, so half your turn to give +4/+4 to whatever you want and pick up like a Scorpion or something
- In order to do the same with Chipmunk, you have to spend 3 gold on Chipmunk, 6 gold on pears, one gold on a reroll, sell the chipmunk to get one back, then three gold to buy a new animal. That means it costs a total of 12 gold to emulate even a fraction of the Cow's power, so you'd need to sell a level 2 or have some combination of swans for it to be even theoretically possible to not end turn with a shitty 2/2.
Chipmunk is pioneering F-tier IMO, it's seriously that bad. Here's hoping we can see some justice because the emoji is cute and deserves better representation.
I average 7/8 wins a run and regularly buy chipmunk. It doesn't always hit but i value canned food and chocolate very highly, especially with a cat. Plus it can search for melon armor late game
@@ivanbird372 Wow I can't believe you just admitted to giving gold and wins away for free live on the internet. You're so generous! :P
@@C_Kiri Just had 3 10 wins yesterday ;) its better than you think but ill try playing without it to see if it changes anything
Chipmunk? My man Kiri playing on Animal Pack 2 in 2021
I am just gonna predict something. Crab meta is going to grow and snipe meta is the hard counter. Just lost a beautiful crab squad against crocs.
First he disrespected turtle, now it's the skunk. A percentage based start trigger that bypasses armor AND can be doubled by tiger? You can knock 2 units to 1 HP at the start of battle but it's bad? I don't buy it.
He's still dissing on the Duck despite proof from people like Richard Hammer that it enables 10 win games. It's all scrambled from this gourd.
I have NEVER seen anyone get to lvl 3 skunk in all my time of playing I think it's just very hard to get too cause it feels very rare
Tiger with skunk was so good in my one run. Literally ate high stated units for breakfast
@@symawi312 I just completed a 10 win with a level 2.66 skunk and I honestly didn't want to win because I wanted it to get to lvl3. I literally rolled the last 6 coins, didn't get the last skunk and still won the last round lol
@@symawi312 I try and try to get a big skunk. I've never even gotten one to lvl 2. Right now all my 10 wins come from racing to 10 instead of making strongest possible teams, so maybe that's part of it.
Argument for Skunk: In the extreme late game, skunk has an important niche, which is giving your 50/50 unit a better trade against theirs. Ideally theirs and yours will have melon armor at this point, the skunk allows your 50/50 to one-shot theirs, and live with 20 hp remaining.
I've never used a skunk like this, but I have lost to teams that run this. Alternatively, the team running the skunk can have a 50/something rooster, that way they're guaranteed to kill your next 2 units for the price of rooster + skunk. It's likely your second unit will also be incredibly strong, so you're not missing out by playing the skunk, but your opponent is missing out for losing their first 2 units.
A more relavent effect of a skunk is that it kill's a crab comp since all the crab will copy the 1 hp or what ever low hp their front liner end up with.
Good tier list. But an early duck can do gangbusters in the first few rounds. It definitely falls off heavily after round 2 though.
If you can get three ducks in the first two rounds, you can go into round three with some insane unit stats that'll carry you through the mid game. I got to 10 wins once largely off of a blowfish i got upgrading then selling a Lv2 Duck.
Duck are basically all or nothing though
Ran 5 ducks with a peacock and a camel. Shit WAS gangbusters. 10 win Marty.
ducks are risk reward play
duck is more risk than is worth for my money
@@Dedjkeorrn42 the trick with ducks is to not go all in, but to have 2 ducks on turn 3 is something else.
I had one run where I got the chicken on tier 4 via combine and ran with it. It isn't S tier, maybe not A tier either, but it is good. Between it and cans I had my shop animals at like +30/+30. If a shop animal has more buff stats on it than your existing animal the merged unit takes the higher stats. In a way the chicken is a time delay dragon with the upside of making it easier to replace core members of the team. That said, it is hot garbage if you get it late.
Crabs are so common now because of you. Crabs are so freaking strong
Honestly the Chicken is underrated by everyone. I've got 3. 10 wins with that magical creature in some of my first ever P2W runs.
I've had the pleasure to use chicken and dragon on the same squad with 3 wins, and I pounded 7 wins on 1 life. While it's definitely situational, the chicken can be super strong
Chicken is also the most fun unit to play
Chicken is phenomenal but you have to release your attachment to your squad, in 2-3 turns your shop out scales your board. If you can get animals with any decent text (esp scorpion) you will win handily
I came for the dynamite banter and found a well constructed tier list. Sign me up, every time!
Props to Kate
Dude, he's savage on the Eagle, but I just got my second win with a lvl 3 Eagle, which summoned a lvl 3 Octopus _every time._
A 12/14 Eagle summons a 20/24 Octopus that slaps the whole enemy team on summon, I almost didn't need the rest of the team lol.
I been saying duck is trash since the jump. Saccing early losses to scale tier 1 units is brain-dead
I do it if the shop is garbage and I keep getting trash. Good for gettinh peacock or caml off the groud even with 1 or 2.
You can freeze a duck turn one or two, but not to keep on your squad
Tbf nl loves scaling tier 1 units
@@ninjacell2999 scaling tier 1s gives a big advantage until mid game
@@inumitovd7900 that's because if you can win early this game can be won 9 times out of 10 with good stats and items on any unit . You will lose every once in a while to op teams . But if you draw a few/ lose a few times in the beginning and know your going pass round 10 that's when you want to build good teams .
The point of the duck is you don’t run it! You buy duck, roll(once or twice) sell duck, buy out the shop on turn two. It is a 2 cost (+1/1)*2 or 3, no other early turn two/three utility is that good. There is an observational bias against the duck because the duck does work on sell so you don’t see it in the builds that use it right.
This is pretty much what I always do with a duck.
Something to note about the dragon is that it allows you to spend coin on stat ups rather than constant rerolls for duplicate animals. By the time you're using the dragon you are usually pot committed on the team comp
I dont know how to feel about seeing dragon next to snail lmao. Snail is definitely a must take after a loss, but considering the odds of getting one at the right time it feels like a waste of shop space most of the time. Still I'd place in B tier, so it's not like I dont respect it
Last time I was this early, egg was still playing XCOM
Here's my thoughts on croc. Most of the time it ends up killing two backline units bc of its high attack. Good until you get something better like a turkey or something
Croc taking out mostly round end buffers isnt that valuable though
I love how he trashes duck because whenever it's on an opponent squad he beats it, but when on turn 3 people have squads with insane stats, he's like "how is that possible" (Edit: 1:45:24 lmao). Of course you beat them when they're on the board, they have on-sell effects.
From my experience, using 1 duck isn't very helpful, 2 is quite good, and 3 or more is insane, and your turn 3 units become run-defining. I ran a build while I was listening to the start of this (f2p vs only f2p) and I got 3 ducks turn 1, one more and ant + honey on turn 2 to try to tie (I didn't). 2 losses down, a fifth duck in the shop, 10 gold. I sell a duck, freeze a unit, buy a duck. Now I have 8 gold, 4 ducks to sell makes 12, so I have four rolls. I end up finding dog + dodo + dodo, so my squad turn 3 after buffs is 2/1 ant + honey in the front, then starting from the back it's a 5/7 dodo that makes the next dodo a 10/7 which makes a dog (got 2 health triggers, admittedly lucky) a 16/8. This squad can beat a good turn 5 squad. Just using regular flex-slot (buy/sell) scaling, I was able to go 10-2-0 -- the two losses were the first two rounds.
You're right in that the early game health and wins are important, because that's the way you play. But it's not the only way to play, sometimes you can use your early health as a resource to leverage an advantage that will win you games. Sometimes the build falls off and you don't find a good pivot, and you get 5-9 wins, but with 4 or more ducks in the first 2 turns, I've never gone less than 5 wins. I don't think it's your fault not to realize that though, I think it speaks volumes on the game that it's so simple, yet we can play so differently that a D-tier unit for you is S-tier for me, and we can both be winning players. Idk if you can see your stats in the game, but pre-patch I got a 5x 10-win streak f2p once, using early ducks for I think 3 of them, and I never abandon runs. Take from this what you will
Its not good
Things that can go wrong with the duck:
- You don't get good tier 2 units on your sell round
- NL brought up a powerful counter against duck buffed squads, meat 🍖 costs only 2 and you don't have to risk your early lives to get one.
- Pivoting to tier 3,4,5, and 6, especially if scenario 1 happened to you. Dogs and Dodos are a mist with duck builds since they either auto scale or apply buffs relative to their stats. But what is an elephant or a spider do after tier 2? Not much
Averaging it out, I think it can still be B tier? But yeah, when ranking units, you also gotta count what can go wrong and if there are alternatives where there is less that can go wrong.
@@verbfrombonsai8852 Meat doesn't counter early buffs because you're hitting 3 units. You won't have the health to support more than one attack against units buffed with 3+ ducks.
Remember what I said about the round when I sold ducks; I had 4 ducks and 10 gold and only had to find 3 decent units, so I was able to roll 5 times if necessary. It's certainly possible to find nothing in 5 rolls, but by that reasoning, shop luck can tank any strategy. It doesn't just have to be dodo and dog. Shrimp will be a 5/4 or higher, and will give health to your other strong units along the way; best paired with a dog or another shrimp. Otter or fish are smaller to start by a couple of stats, but you're happy to spend 3 gold for +1/+1 on a unit that's already massive that early, and it'll scale the rest of your squad for later. What's an elephant (or rat) gonna do? It's gonna rear up your squad with a 6/8 or higher; that's reasonable for several turns. Some synergies can work out when you hold it too; I've run it with camel and pufferfish, it's ok. Anyway, much like the rest of the game, you still have to be able to play from ahead, but the point is that you're ahead.
I could agree to B-tier, since you hate to see only one or two early, then none ever again. But if you let it, it'll define your early game and set you ahead. So really it's B tier because it can either be S or D depending on shop luck. Just like how you can roll 6 times without seeing a tier 1 in the shop with a dragon, or pick up food-buff creatures, then only see pills; that's the game.
@@barrymccaucner9316 Dude, it only takes 1 turn at most to catch up to ducks.
You only need to buff up 7 more hp on one unit to effectively trade with 3 ducked up units. After that, you have a 4v2. Dogs can do that easily. Otters and beavers can help you get there. Ants can do that. Fishes can do that. Levelling your units does that.
Of course it isn't a guarantee. You can have shitty luck and lose 1 turn to a 4 squad marty. But at the very least, you still have three health to catch up. After literally one turn, you can immediately equalize. In the grand scheme of things, 3 ducks give you a 9 stat advantage at the cost of two lives.
Other early game strats can do the same for less than that.
@@barrymccaucner9316 I used to run ducks. It just isn't consistent. If you need three of them and two of your lives to pop, it doesn't deserve s-tier.
I love the occasional buff dogs and crabs and dodos that I will pair with roosters later, but just playing for wins is easier and allows for more unlucky shit (that you didn't impose on yourself)
They should change the squirrel so that it makes the 2 food items in the shop free when you buy it
It would be a big boost, but I think it'd end up being too similar to cow
I don't know how but I ended up getting a sloth while listening to this and playing the game. Even got the sloth up to level 2 but game ended at 5 wins.
Choosing to watch NL's 2 1/2 hour SAP tier list while studying for a language science midterm is the best way I can imagine spending my Sunday night
After this tier list came out I couldn't get more than 4 wins LUL Theres always a 30/30 by turn 7 and my two 20/20 units just get fucked shit is crazy competitive
The big thing with the crocodile is it doesn't win you runs but it ruin dreams when it counters your comp. So it's like a d tier to run but potential s tier when run against you. It really does shine in arena though.
Crocodile is GOAT to slot in at the end of your turn. Or you can be a fiend and be the guy running leveled gators and dolphins with tiger support.
Skunk absolutely destroys the F2P meta I promise you.
Now I know I learned all I know from this guy, but I got my first 10 win today by injecting triple duck in my vein, hitting Dodo, Dog, and some other thing on turn 3, and just steam rolling.
Another absolutely BANGER tier list coming from NL. I don’t even play SAP, but I watched every minute of this.
Dodo is still legit with rooster but that’s about the extent from my experience
Agreed
Minus points for not making a whole separate "Unknowable" tier for the lobster alone
Okay, instantly subbed. I just got into Super Auto Pets (cuz it's super fun) and I love how NL is willing to roast his stream with brain smarts. I don't agree with everything he's done, but he has legit reasoning and anecdotal data as to why each pet is where it is. You god****ed Legend @Northernlion. Fan for life.
I heard there was this insane streamer that listens to this every night when he sleeps on his iPad
I made a 30/30 scorpion once. was able to kill 4 units on 10th win
Fish is SAP's Chillwind Yeti
My man's putting the skunk at D tier which counters the crab tank meta that he made. That thing gave me like 8 10 bangers last night and I got another 3 during my lunch time because of it.
Fish and beetle are essentially the same, yet they are in different tiers…
He thought that beetle had lower stats then it actually does do that's on him lol. I'd say it is still a bit below fish tho
Fish definitely is better with its level up bonus early game, but beetle can be useful.
@@kade6427 yeah but NL doesn't really rate its effect, just the stats
@@ninjacell2999 I understand that, but thank you though.
My perspective as an only P2W player (for now): Swan and Dog to A tier, they are easily the best tier 2 minions and I often have them to the end of the game. Swan is so underrated, having the extra gold is massive for scaling anything. Sometimes its worth to just hard roll for them on turns 3-4 and not pick up much else.
I'd put Eagle to low to mid B tier, its amazing to get as a triple when you hit level 4, it has great stats, great deathrattle and most importantly, its an amazing pill target. It's not good as a permanent unit, but its probably the best unit to get as a triple on lvl 4 apart from Cow.
I'd swap Ladybug and Pig's placements. 1-3 is underwhelming and early game food commitment on the Ladybug is bait like 95% of the time. Pig IMO could be at tier B even, Beaver is bit better, but Pig is still very solid to get on turn 1-2 as a temporary unit when you aren't getting pairs for Ant/Fish/Beetle etc. and then selling the Pig most often on turn 3. Pig also has some other decent uses (scaling a lvl2-3 Dog, scaling Buffalo and Dragon builds.
For me I'd lower both Puppy and Bison to mid-top B. Puppy is really good if you get it on turn 3 with tripling, its good when you get it on turn 4 tripling and if you pick it up on turn 5 early you can still make it work sometimes. But the 2 gold cost is pretty huge, you really need to commit hard to get it to lvl 2 fast. For me I just feel like I usually have a regular Dog up by the time I see Puppy and tier 3 already has so many other good minions (Turtle, Chick, Caterpillar are very good, Owl and double Bunny are solid sometimes too) that I find it hard to pick, especially if I have a decent Dog already at level 2 or one copy off. Bison is obviously good if you have a lvl3 already when you triple into it, but I almost never have lvl 3s at that point unless I've seen an insane amount of Swans/Dogs, because I almost never commit to levelling Tier 1 units to lvl3, I almost always end up selling them at lvl1-2 and I find that most of the time levelling up Tier 1 beyond lvl 2 is bait. It's still solid pick-up when you hit lvl 4, but you REALLY need to get it to tier 2 fast for it to scale.
I'd raise Buffalo to top B tier, its the best tier4 unit to get as a triple on turn 5-6 and I find it much easier to scale comapred to Bison. Worm is way too high for me, its good sometimes, but its really slow to scale and requires lots of resources. I'd put Worm to somewhere in C tier.
Scorpion is good in the end, but not S tier IMO. It's a solid flex for when your at 9wins or 1hp and afraid of dying. I'd put it to mid-bottom A tier.
I find both Octopus and Mammoth meh, but at least Mammoth is solid pill target, so I'd put Mammoth above Octopus, who I find to be way too slow most of the time and the stat increase from levelling is quite underwhelming.
Peacock I'd put somewhere in D, its not the worst thing ever, but IMO it really sucks, not worth it to commit resources into at all.
I'd move Seal into lower C tier (sometimes viable), Rhino to top-mid C (Good effect, but really hard to scale, you get it so late), Dragon and Chick a little closer to top A tier and Poodle lower in B tier (feels really clunky often and usually never end up keeping it for long as its replaced by Dragon/Dino or just sold to make space).
Also I agree with Goat in D tier because its so hard to use most of the time (I'd still raise it closer to mid-top), but it can be VERY RARELY good, one of my absolute favorite builds I've had is Goat+Swan+Dragon+Buffalo. Starting turns with 12-13 gold and after that I had lvl 2-3 Goat and lvl 1-2 Dragon. It was so much fun when Tier 1 units cost only 1 gold or even 0 gold with Pig :D
In general I just think I have a very different playing style compared to NL. Like I almost never go for early game foods like Honey, Garlic etc. I'll stay on P2W deck for now, but I'll probably soon swap to F2P deck, so maybe things will change then.
Love this game, hope it stays alive and gets some solid updates to keep it pogging.
Right now in the ten heart era, F2P seems to favor racing to wins instead of building deep synergy. I think NL is correct on that part.
People really under estimate the power of Chicken, the fact its can be a Can with a buy me sell me meta and then you just hold a Rooster or something to have a build with 4 units that are 20/20+
bee at the back makes sense. a 1/1 bee isn't going to do anything against big animals. it's better for something to take the hit and hopefully kill something to at least give you a chance in those spots than to go for 1 measly damage
He's completely right. Of the games I have one, it's usually with a massive tier 1 unit and a garlic crab.
I started playing SAP because of NL and thanks to the wise master's teachings got my first ten piece today after 3 hours in the game. Loving it so far, where other autobattlers didn't really appeal to me. This feels more like solitaire or something.
The gorilla in C tier is criminal. As far as I can tell, it's the best possible 50/50 unit due to coconut armor level 1-3. I can't think of anything stronger at that point in the game.
What if the enemy team has a 50/50 up front? Then gorilla has no upside
@@greasysteve3411 yeah but other unit does either, so it still has an upside
Ladybug is a sleeper hit. You are so right about the armor, and the best thing about ladybug is it gets its buff every time you buy food and you can buy food for any animal. Paired with caterpillar its brilliant, and you can get it and level it before caterpillar drops. Worst case its just a stated lvl 1 animal that has a relevant ability in the late game.
chat bullied him into giving parrot a lower rating than it deserves. With tiger being fixed so it no longer works out of battle, parrot is now the best unit in the game when it's paired with rabbits, cats, monkey or dragon (all of which are A or B tier units)
Parrot works with dragon?!
Why is my boy sloth not in a tier list? He believes in you, brings you a good luck. A solid S tier in my book, honestly.
Thanks for this Tierlist, Master NL. I'm super new to SAP, like 5 days in, and after my own first attempts I got to 6-7 wins mostly. Me too relied too much on horses and crickets with honey. I just had my first run after watching your tier list and well, I won all 10 for the first time with 2 loses.
Level 2 Monkey -> Cat -> Tiger - > Level 3 Garlic Kangaroo -> turtle-meloned Level 3 50/50 Fish
After watching this I won three in a row just now, and this is my second day playing. My only gripe is that I win too early and don't get to see my team in final form!
my 2¢ on Dodo; the one nice thing with dodo is that you can buff dodo and if you pivot away from the animal the dodo is buffing you still retain the Dodo's buff for the new animal. it does take more work than its probably worth, but that said if the right build comes up its effective. I'd say its low B instead of high C, but thats probably just splitting hairs.
Your conversation about the Camel/Kangaroo/Peacock/etc. archetype has me thinking - you could argue there's a rock-paper-scissors type meta rn
There's the hurt trigger build you mentioned, which is beat pretty handily by high stats (dodo, caterpillar, anything heavily scaled/upgraded, or builds that juice like one huge hippo up front). The high stat build is beat by a cracked white weenie spawn build utilizing turkey, fly, rooster etc. And the hurt trigger build can beat weenies because they generally scale better. Very interesting
I hate to burst your bubble but a high stats build also beats a spawn spam build in my experience. Garlic armor just negates most of the damage the spawns do besides bus
It’s not a 100-0 matchup, like yeah garlic is the best defense against a weenie. But I think a weenie that really rolls up with turkeys and tigers or even sheep can smash a fat guy then continue
Wow great tier list see you with another one in like 3 weeks
edit: my man really disrespects the duck, winning against ducks isnt an argument to why they're garbage because if you see a duck they're using ducks wrong by default.
but they are trash
the argument is that winning early is more important than risking it on a duck build
Its pretty easy to draw first round with 1, even 2 ducks with an ant though. You can take a draw round 1, go hard duck round 2 and then you're sitting on a jacked round 3 to midgame.
He honestly makes a great point. He is playing for consistency and there is enough decent units to ignore duck every time. Duck near guarantees that you transition with 2 loses. And even still, round 3 has a lot of people selling their duck teams for huge teams and you still end up losing anyway. As a fellow duck enjoyer, duck has a lot of problems.
Sometimes you run into nothing but your own kind and they had 1 more duck than you and you get 0 wins. A big and VERY common problem with duck; Ox. Ox has SO much power early on it can actually wipe out 2 units that were duck buffed. Kangaroos as well, but not to the same extent. Not to mention Duck Strat like every other teams' mentality relies on scaling; you will lose the power lead eventually and you have too many units you cling to. Sometimes after your cash in you end up buying apples or rerolling for a unit you can actually take to the end game. Dog often requires too much space for duck teams. You can't stack econ with swan as effectively for the same reason. Snail loses A LOT of it's value and offers other teams a better "duck buff" to catch up to you.
But sure none of that really guarantees you lose.
Duck teams do set you up for a strong team that can sometimes carry you to transitioning to a 10 win team. But there is still variance and the argument is that the HP you keep early tends to be more effective than sacrificing it for early scaling.
Beaver better than Duck though? You're right, the man has TOO much disrespect for duck. Shrimp is obviously the worst tier 1 unit in the game, but right in front of that is Beaver for sure.
@@heck3933 I understand, but buying/selling ducks or holding 2 ducks from round 2 to 3 to get +6/+6 across 3 units which you can roll once to get tier 2 units. Even if you get 1 loss through it, the buffs gained can get you rolling into midgame. Im not asking for duck to A, but a lil more respect like low B high C would be respectable.
mathematically having a cricket at the back is definitely good. consider a scenario where you don’t have the cricket in the back: the 1/1 doesn’t end up killing something, and the enemy creature it hit would’ve been killed by your next unit anyway (which isn’t an uncommon occurrence) and you end up drawing. if you had had the cricket at the back instead, you would theoretically win because the 1/1 actually would have a chance to be impactful, instead of somewhere in the middle where it has no impact. the bottom line is there’s lots of scenarios where the back is better (such as when the 1/1 doesn’t have an effect in the middle) but no real reason why the middle is better.
I... Don't know what I'm doing here. I've never even heard about this game. I'm at the gym listening to this guy talk about bison with garlic armor with crabs behind them and I can't stop... What does this all mean?
56:40 i understood that reference
*smiles in Rogers*
The placement of Giraffe confuses me when he kept hammering that early scaling is so good (which I agree with). Giraffe is the earliest scaling unit you can get in free-to-play. There's also the issue of wide vs deep scaling, and yeah deep is better, but still, wide scaling is better than no scaling at all...
Its just not enough scaling to matter. 1 apple every turn is not getting you not enough stats. If you get an early tier two its about as good as monke but not really because the stats aren't focused..
jerma was so bored by this he FELL ASLEEP. You gonna take that NL?
I'm going to defend the leopard and point out that you *don't* waste your buffs on it. Leopard is what you roll if you picked up a dodo early (since dodo is tier 2) and then it just owns 1-3 units before the game even begins. Sure, its rank got tanked with the dodo nerf, but it's not *that* bad as long as you always pair it
The Scorpion justification about your hippo...killed me
27:00 that's funny the video I watched just before this one was about a build making the shop pets 50-50 using a few chickens
I'm in the horse part, begging for a buff. Literally just make it 1/2 so it doesn't get totally invalidated
everybody does horse builds tho
@@18skeltor yeah and they lose early. Horse build is soooo last year sweetie 💅
@@snowfree6602 Lmaooo wish that were true. Just take out the horse for the turkey mid game
@@18skeltor horse based summoning build gets rocked by anyone rolling dolphin, (usually) croc, rhino, or hippo. Horse is just bait and if you want to keep falling for it go ahead i'll be taking my 10 wins
@@symawi312 I never take horse because I think it's pretty trash turn 1 and the summon builds are boring
i fell asleep to this video and had a dream where i was trying to order food from in cafe while being followed around by NL who was telling me his opinions about various animals
I think Dolphin is still low key underrated. Can’t it knock out a Scorpion, maybe a Snake, or a Fly/Turkey in the early rounds before they spawn or boost anything?
Rather go Croc and have the better chance to rip up fly turkey builds. I've gotten away with a few ten wins that shouldn't have been by running a anti-meta leveled up croc tiger build with like decent stat fodder up front
It can also kill a crab before it steals HP in the mid game
Yeah but if your opponent has canned few times the snipe isn't doing anything.
@@JT-yl9yt The dolphin is definitely a mid game slot filler. Probably should be low B tier, but is very efficient when things don’t all have melon/garlic yet.
In theory; If you buy & sell a duck, and buy the two remaining pets, it's like you got a "free" 2/2, with the advantage that the stats are on top of pets that might want to keep.
The problem is that picking it turn 1 is a guarantee to lose because its stats are abysmal, and selling it puts you 1 coin short of buying another pet. So you NEED to keep it for turn 1.
It's also worse than the beaver and the otter because they're easier to manipulate and hit the pets you want. The duck being limited to the shop is very situational. Very unlikely you'll get good targets alongside the duck on the shop, but it might happen, I guess... Worth keeping an eye on it
Never played this game before, watched this video and then went on to win 9 games.
The fact that the animals are reviewed alphabetically except for the squirrel is making me unreasonably angry
Cause it’s a chipmunk
@@ryanvanaman9585 yeah i thought so too so i booted the game and god damn not only is it called squirrel, the animals are listed alphabetically in the achievements screen so eggy has no excuse
I was skeptical of Bison being so high, but I already have two 10 wins using it in a build since watching this. Think Aligator deserves just a bit more (Low C vs D based on how he placed similar units), but NLs style for this game definitely works. Two or Three big units is all you need for most of the game. Don't need to scale to infinity if you win games early.
I think one thing people have to remember with this when he comments on things like the leopard, shark, etc. when your running a front heavy build to get 1 and possibly 2 units close to 50/50 you are betting on winning before you come across some really scary squads in the deeper rounds like round 20. If you are going that deep round wise your evaluation of some units would probably be different. Overall this is a pretty solid list.
I do think the seal, croc, and duck are under rated. If you can get 3-4 ducks and only one lose by round 3 that gives you a guarantee + 2/2 if not 3/3 on 4 units (because you would be hopefully leveling up a unit to unlock a tier 3). That easily beats out whatever units you could possibly make by that point regardless of what they are. Croc can really mess up that turkey/fly game and with that being rated so high the counter should be respected equally. Seal is amazing with cow and even better with cat. If you had a level 2 seal with a cat a pear will hit you for +4/4 and then two other animals get +2/2. That scaling is crazy good. Had close to three wins in a row with a seal and cat in team.
This is gonna do numbers when SAP runs wild on twitch
NL's roasts in this are god tier