Today we received a new balance patch in the Gods Unchained and the changes are targeting God Powers this time. War God Power, Enrage that was one of the worst got a slight buff, Nature's Flourish got readjusted since it never saw too much play after the while it was in the most overpowered state and of course Deception God Power, Memory Charm finally got nerfed after Deception has been on top of the ladder for last 2 weeks with no real counters, basically beating everybody.
So let's see what are those changes and how will they affect the ladder:
Deception, Memory Charm Changes:
Memory Charm changed from "Give a creature +2 strength. At the end of your turn, it goes to sleep." to "Target creatures goes to sleep at the start of your opponents turn. Give it +1 strength, or +2 strength if it is an enemy creature."
GU teams reasoning behind this change is that the God Power was too flexible, allowing low strength high-value creatures to trade better, while also acting as a pseudo removal. Also, changing the timing of when creatures are going to sleep is to prevent "repeatedly trigger certain demonic related sleep effects", most of you will know what they mean, but for newer players, it is referring to Demogorgons ability to deal 3 damage at the end of each turn to a creature that is asleep.
I totally agree with their reasoning, Memory Charm always felt like doing too much on its own and that is a problem, especially for something you can you on every turn and doesn't cost you card advantage or anything really, besides 2 mana of course.
Friendly creatures getting only +1 strength will definitely lower the win-ratio of this God Power not that much because its weaker but because decks will need to be adjusted properly, with less greedy decks and bigger creatures to be able to fight for control over the board.
Cheat God Power will now become a much better choice for Atlantean and Aggro decklists but we'll have to see how Memory Charm will perform before we know if it will still stay the best God Power in Deception.
War, Enrage Changes:
Enrage changed from "Give a creature +2/+2 and burn +2. If it is an enemy creature, give it an additional burn +2." to "Give a creature +2/+2 and burn +1. If it is an enemy creature, give it an additional burn +3".
In a really long time, this God Power has been one of the worst ones in the game. This is a slight change so it isn't likely that we will see it rising anywhere near the top anytime soon but any buff can help. Basically the only thing that changed is that friendly creatures that are Enraged will be getting only +1 burn instead of 2, for enemy creatures, there is no change.
Cards that come to mind that could somehow benefit from this change:
Of course, every card here has in common that they do something after taking/surviving damage, which synergizes well with +1 burn
The worst examples are Tyr and Mountain Greatwyrm but not too far fetched. Tyr can trade on the first turn that is summoned and the next turn after enrage and a second trade he already has 22 strength which needs to get removed or straight up wins the game. Greatwyrm has the same function even tho it can't attack the same turn it was played. On the second turn after enrage and a single trade will result in 24 strength!
Dragon Tooth Warrior is an interesting one. By using the Enrage it can get multiplied pretty easily. The base value wouldn't be too much as you would get a 5/4 with burn and a 5/2 but the interesting part is that duplicates will also have Burn on them so they will continue to make new ones if they have enough Health of course. I can't say I see this working in the actual deck but it has some potential that is worth to explore, also it goes really well with Redfume Serum.
Tamed Mammoth is pretty good since it doesn't have to have Burn itself so pumping its strength won't be a problem.
Nether Nanny is really good with burn as it will give extra 1/1 tokens every time, probably the most reasonable inclusion in Enrage focused decks.
Nature, Flourish Changes:
Flourish changed from 3 mana, "Give three different random friendly creatures +1 strength." to 2 mana, "Give two different random friendly creatures +1 strength until the end of the turn."
Flourish has been in a pretty weak state for quite some time and got something to with that time when it was so oppressively strong and it seems that the GU team is a bit too careful with their effort to bring back the God Power to at least somewhat competitive level.
Even though this new version doesn't give a permanent buff to creatures, going down from 3 mana to 2 makes a huge difference in terms of its potential use case. Buff being only for 1 turn makes it more or less just a trading steroid for +2 damage. Is this going to be enough? I really don't think so, even if this turns out to be better God Power than before, it is really not likely that Nature players will have this one in mind rather than any other God Power while deckbuilding.
This type of God Power is proven to be really a pain in the ass to balance precisely and on top of that, it's pretty uninteresting one aswell. I would much rather see them experiment with something completely different. Maybe something like a 1 mana God Power that gives +1 Regen to a creature, or removing/giving Confused to creatures, plenty of things that could be more interesting than just buffing +1 strength to creatures.
The balance patch for this week was actually pretty small but since it was focused only on God Powers it might have bigger implications on the game than changing a bunch of cards. Was the nerf to Memory Charm enough? Is Enrage now... good? Should they try more on improving Flourish or change it completely? I'm really curious what you guys think!
Useful tools for Gods Unchained statistics, meta, deckbuilding, leaderboards, etc. :
https://unchainedstats.com/
https://gudecks.com/
Markets:
https://gu.cards/
https://tokentrove.io/GodsUnchainedCards
https://opensea.io/assets/gods-unchained
Thank you for reading!
,z3ll