Best Ancient Cards in Cookie Run: Braverse, Ranked

Most keywords in Cookie Run: Braverse are flavor with a stat line attached. Ancient is the one that actually pays you for buying in. There are five Ancient Heroes - Hollyberry, Golden Cheese, Pure Vanilla, White Lily, and Dark Cacao - and across the game's sets each one has been printed multiple times, in multiple colors, at the top of the rarity ladder. More importantly, a whole crop of their newer printings reads some version of "if there is another Ancient Cookie in your battle area, do something nasty." That single line is what turns a pile of legendary five-drops into a tribe.

So this isn't a five-card list - it's a ranking of the Ancient Heroes as build-around pieces, judged on their best printings. Costs, HP, and skill text below are quoted off the official card database. The {R}/{Y}/{G}/{B}/{P} symbols are each color's resource, {N} is any color, and a "Mix" cost means you can pay it with any colors. New to the game? Start with the five colors explained, then come back.

What the Ancient keyword actually does

Here's the part that trips people up: the Ancient keyword does nothing by itself. There is no rules text printed on the game that says "Ancient Cookies get +1 HP." Instead, Ancient is a type tag that specific cards check for. The payoff lives on the cards, not the keyword.

The cleanest example is the recent batch of printings from A Game of Truth and Deceit (BS9). Look at the text pattern they share: each one says some variant of "if there is another Ancient Cookie in your battle area, [strong effect]." Hollyberry gets +2 attack. Pure Vanilla untaps a support card. Golden Cheese heals. Dark Cacao strips a card off an opponent's HP. White Lily bounces an opposing LV.1 Cookie to the bottom of the deck. Individually those are fine. Stacked two or three Ancients deep on a board, they compound into a value engine no single-color deck can replicate.

That's the whole pitch. An Ancient deck is a multi-Ancient board where every Hero you land switches on the others. The catch - and it's a real one - is that the strongest Ancients each demand their own color's resource, so an "all five Ancients" deck is a five-color dream that the mana base actively punishes. The realistic builds pair two or three Ancients in adjacent colors. We'll get to that.

How we ranked these

Three axes, same discipline as our overall card ranking: raw effect impact (what the best printing does on the board, read off the official text), how well it both gives and takes from the Ancient synergy (the best Ancients are payoffs and enablers), and how easy it is to actually cast and keep alive. A Hero that demands four single-color resources and dies to a stiff breeze ranks below one that costs Mix and protects itself. As always, this is our evaluation - Devsisters publishes no official tier list, and none of these are banned.

1. Dark Cacao Cookie (Purple)

Dark Cacao is the Ancient that wins games on his own, before the synergy even shows up. The BS3-100 printing (Purple, Ultra Rare, 5 HP, costs four {P}) carries Judgment of Resolution: for {P}{P}, select up to 2 of your opponent's Cookies and place a card off the top of each one's HP into the trash. That's repeatable double-removal stapled to a 5-HP body, and his Solemn Judgment attack deals 3 then strips another HP card off a third target. One card threatens three of your opponent's Cookies a turn. In a game where most Cookies live and die by their remaining HP, that's the most warping effect any single Ancient brings.

His Mix-cost BS9-097 printing (Purple, Super Rare, 4 HP) is the one built for the tribe: for {N} and a discard, if another Ancient is out, it strips an HP card off an opponent's Cookie, and his Twilight Strike attack deals 3 plus an extra point if your opponent's trash is 20+. Slightly softer body, far easier to cast, and it scales with the graveyard a Purple deck naturally fills. Whichever printing you run, Dark Cacao is removal first and a Hero second, which is exactly why he's number one.

2. Pure Vanilla Cookie (Blue)

Pure Vanilla is the engine of the most consistent Ancient decks because everything he does is card flow, and card flow is what holds a slow multi-Hero board together. The BS3-088 printing (Blue, Ultra Rare, 4 HP) has Healing Radiance: for {B}, draw up to 3 cards, then put one back on top - a hard dig that finds your next Hero or your removal on demand. His I Will Not Falter! attack deals 4 and buffs a Cookie +1 HP.

Then there's the showpiece, BS9-088 (Blue, Ultra Rare, Awaken). It's an EXTRA Awaken Cookie: if a Cookie was placed from your battle area onto the bottom of your deck this turn, you can Awaken him, and on play he reveals the top card - if it's a {B} LV.2 Cookie, he gains +2 HP and draws. His Love & Peace attack hits for 4 and buffs a Cookie. The BS11 Mix-cost reprint (BS9's sibling in The Dark Enchantress War, BS11-070) leans fully tribal: discard an Ancient to draw 2, then his attack bounces a small Cookie back to a deck. Across every printing, Pure Vanilla is the reason Blue Ancient decks never run out of gas. He keeps the synergy fed.

3. Golden Cheese Cookie (Yellow)

Golden Cheese is the inevitability Hero - the one who refuses to stay dead. Her BS3-025 printing (Yellow, Ultra Rare, 3 HP) carries Golden Monarch's Resurrection: once per game, if she's in your break area, play her back into the battle area with 1 HP. Her Authority of the Absolute attack hits for 4 off a hefty four-{Y} cost. The body is fragile at 3 HP, but a Hero you get to play twice is a Hero that drains your opponent's removal twice.

The tribe-payoff printing is BS9-024 (Yellow, Super Rare, 5 HP, Mix cost): if she's at 4 HP or less and another Ancient is out, she gains +1 HP every turn, quietly outlasting damage, and her God of Riches attack deals 3 while recycling an HP card back to your hand. There's also a brutal EXTRA printing, BS8-027, whose Wings of Immortality attack deals 3 and then hits every opposing Cookie for 1 - a board-wide ping that ends grindy games. Recursion plus self-healing plus a board sweep across her printings; she's the Yellow deck's reason to grind the long game.

4. Hollyberry Cookie (Red)

Hollyberry is the wall the rest of the tribe hides behind. Her classic BS3-017 printing (Red, Ultra Rare, 5 HP) has Hollyberry Shield: any damage of 3 or more she receives is reduced to 2. A 5-HP body that can't be three-shot is obnoxious for aggro to crack, and her Sound the Charge! attack deals 3 and pumps another of your Cookies +1.

But the printing built for the tribe is BS9-017 (Red, Super Rare, 5 HP, Mix cost). Her Passion's Protection skill, for {N}, gives her +2 attack if another Ancient is out - and her Shield of the Kingdom attack does the real work: it deals 2, then until your opponent's next turn, any time one of YOUR Ancient Cookies would take 3+ damage, that damage is reduced to 2. That's a board-wide damage cap for your whole Ancient lineup, off one attack. There's also a fragile SSR (BS11-017) whose attack cost drops when she's low. Hollyberry doesn't push the most damage, but she's why an Ancient board survives long enough for Dark Cacao and Golden Cheese to take over.

5. White Lily Cookie (Green and Pure)

White Lily is the strangest of the five because she's printed in two completely different colors with two completely different jobs. The Green BS3-055 printing (Ultra Rare, 5 HP) is a value-and-sustain piece: Lily Restoration puts a {G} support card on top of her HP to heal her, and her Blossoming Power of Nature attack deals 4 and, if she's at 5+ HP, rests an opposing support card. A big, self-repairing body that taxes the opponent's board.

Her tribe-payoff printing is the Blue BS9-078 (Super Rare, 5 HP, Mix cost): for {N}, if another Ancient is out, bounce an opposing LV.1 Cookie to the bottom of their deck - clean tempo removal that doesn't even cost a card - and her Lily Bud attack draws 2 if your hand is thin. Then there's the wild one: BS11-090 (Pure, Secret Ultra Rare, 6 HP), the biggest Ancient body in the game, who can faint herself to cheat out Avatar of Destiny from the Extra Deck and buff it +3 HP. That's a combo enabler, not a tribe piece - we covered it in the Dark Enchantress War set review. She ranks fifth only because her best effects pull in three directions; pick the printing that matches your deck.

The best Mix-cost Ancients: the Game of Truth and Deceit printings

If you only remember one thing from this guide: the A Game of Truth and Deceit (BS9) Super Rares are the printings that make an Ancient deck real. Here's why, side by side.

Two things jump out. First, they're all Mix cost, which is the single most important detail in this whole guide - Mix means you can pay with any colors, so two or three of these can coexist without forcing a clean single-color mana base. Second, the BS9 White Lily and Pure Vanilla are printed in different colors than their BS3 versions (Blue and Green respectively), which quietly widens which color pairs can run them. The BS9 cycle is the closest the game has come to printing "the Ancient tribe deck" as a single product.

How to actually build an Ancient deck

The five-color "all Ancients" board is a meme - the mana base can't support five single-color Heroes reliably. The realistic builds pick a two- or three-color core off the Mix-cost BS9 cycle:

• Purple/Blue control is the strongest pairing. Dark Cacao (BS9-097) supplies repeatable removal, Pure Vanilla (BS9-088/065) supplies the card flow, and the deck grinds the opponent out. This is the Ancient build to beat.
• Red/Yellow resilience leans on Hollyberry's board-wide damage cap (BS9-017) plus Golden Cheese's recursion and self-heal. It's the deck that simply refuses to die, then wins late.
• Green/Blue value runs the BS9 Pure Vanilla (Green) and White Lily (Blue) for support-engine ramp and tempo bounce - slower, but it buries midrange decks in card advantage.

Whatever core you pick, prioritize the Mix-cost printings, run a removal Ancient (Dark Cacao) and a card-flow Ancient (Pure Vanilla) as your spine, and treat Hollyberry as the glue that keeps the board alive. For the broader picture of how these slot into the game's archetypes, see our deck archetypes guide.

The honest read on Ancient: it's a build-around tribe, not a splash. One Ancient on the board is a good legendary Cookie. Two adjacent-color Ancients on the board is an engine. The whole skill is getting to two without wrecking your mana base - which is why the Mix-cost BS9 cycle changed everything.

Quick Action Checklist

• Dark Cacao (BS3-100) is the best Ancient. Repeatable double-removal on a 5-HP body, before synergy even matters.
• Pure Vanilla is the engine. Across printings he's pure card flow - the reason multi-Ancient boards don't run out of gas.
• Chase the Mix-cost BS9 cycle. A Game of Truth and Deceit printings all cost Mix and pay off "if another Ancient is out" - they're what makes the deck real.
• Hollyberry is the glue. Her BS9-017 attack caps damage to your whole Ancient board at 2 - that's how the engine survives to take over.
• Golden Cheese is inevitability. Recursion, self-heal, and a board-wide ping across her printings; she wins the long game.
• Don't try to play all five colors. Pick a two-color core - Purple/Blue control is the strongest - and build the mana base around Mix-cost Heroes.
• The keyword does nothing alone. Ancient is a tag the cards check for. Stack the Heroes that reward it, or it's just five expensive legendaries.