Introduction: the shine meta
The changes introduced in August last year to the Daily Play & Earn (DP&E) formula have had a lasting ripple effect on the way some players approach deck-building and how much they spend on shiny cards, particularly Gold and Diamond ones.
For reference, here are the 2 relevant blog posts with details on these changes:
https://portal.godsunchained.com/blog/definitive-dpe-restructure-2024
https://portal.godsunchained.com/blog/dpe-restructuring-breakdown
The shift in the $GODS reward distribution toward decks with a lot of Diamond cards - compared to the previous formula - created an appealing opportunity for players: with a short ROI of just a few months, buying or forging cheap Diamond cards to build a deck that remains competitive in ranks Solar Gold and above became a worthwhile proposition.
This triggered a market rush, causing the prices of some cards to rise appreciably. We also saw a noticeable tightening of the ratio between card prices and forging requirements. where before high Quality cards were being sold at a substantial discount compared to the expected forging cost from Meteorite.
Whether this change is good or bad for the game in the long run I think is up for debate, but the reality is that a fair amount of players are making deck choices based on how many cards they can cheaply forge up to Diamond, to maximize their DP&E results. And this happens even if at the expense of removing better, but more expensive cards, thereby hurting the deck competitiveness.
These results speak for themselves, take a look for example at one of many DP&E results the player Gorboth regularly shares on Discord:
So in this post, I will be analyzing one deck that is suitable for this purpose: cheap to shine, but still effective! I'll be making more of these posts for other decks, as a service to the community. I'm happy to take requests!
A Guild Deception deck
This post by @watikey included a deck suggestion that intrigued me. Guild Deception became a somewhat meta archetype since the Mortal Judgement set introduced cards like Blade Borrower and other Strength-stealing cards, with support from TotG Frumentarii Instigator and a solid group of Core cards.
While discussing this topic with a few other players on Discord, I learned a bit more about the history of this archetype. The Core Set Refresh brought in a few of the important cards and together with Divine Order it was already possible to put together a competitive deck. According to @villibesti (who also helped popularize this archetype in his Twitch streams), TBHansson had multiple Top 10s with Guild Deception before MJ came out. Another player that helped bring attention to this deck by consistently achieving excellent results was XikoPeriko.
Tides of Fate brought in other important staples like Crooked Quartermaster and Second-Rate First Mate, with many variations being tested in the wild. In February 2024 the archetype got a bump in popularity, and I suspect this talented new player bravemanrun contributed to that, by joining the game and reaching Mythic with ease on a $7 deck:
This was in February. During this period, this deck was being recommended to anyone wanting to start playing without spending a lot of money on a good deck. And to bring the point across better, here is @arturdent77 bringing a similar deck from zero to Mythic in March: @arturdent77/f2p-mobiledesktop-experience-for-new-players-part-3-the-last-day-15-check-in
With the current meta, more recent cards like Capture Hearts or Path of Deception have also become popular, particularly to deal with That Which Feeds Us, but also as a way to remove other problematic cards from the board or the opponent's Void.
Over time, I've tested various versions of this deck, typically leaning toward more control-oriented lists. So, I was kind of impressed when I came across a list with a more aggro bent boasting such impressive win rates.
This Guild Deception deck works as a toolbox with answers for a variety of situations. It also includes some card generation via Tooth Fae. The basic idea is to control the board with Strength reduction, Umber Arrow, and the Crooked Quartermaster, while building a board and buffing Whisper Baron if possible. It is not a super aggressive list, but it's not control, either.
https://gudecks.com/decks/92077
GU_1_2_CCZCCZCCmCDDCDDCFVCFVIAoKDPKDPMBfMBfCEwCEwIClIClMBgMBgNBcNBeNBeCEQCEQCFTCFTKCZKCZGBnGBnKDL
| Card Quality | WelCore | Total cards |
|---|---|---|
| Legendaries | 0 | 0 |
| Epics | 2 | 2 |
| Rares | 7 | 13 |
| Commons | 4 | 15 |
| Totals | 13 | 30 |
Shining cost estimates
The estimates are based on floor Meteorite prices, wich is usually the most cost-effective. It will be very slow to forge them all up to Diamond. So these prices can be somewhat under-estimated.
The criterion for using a Diamond card is based on the median value of a Diamond Core card. I am including any Diamond card up to around $15.
You can find the spreadsheet with the calculations here.
This deck with 11 Meteorite cards and 19 Diamond cards would cost around $200. So how long would it take someone to recover their investment?
ROI estimate
Here I provide two estimates, playing in Ranked mode. One is for a player in Solar Gold, which I consider to be the minimum for a worthwhile DP&E performance. The other is for a player in Mythic. Both assume an overall 50% win rate.
If you use this as a template for your own calculations, you should manually calculate the current 'Fragments per $GODS' ratio by looking at your most recent earning results and dividing the amount of Fragments you received by the amount of corresponding $GODS.
There are also other points you should consider that affect the actual earnings:
The number of people playing per day.
Meta shifts that may make the deck more or less competitive.
If you manage to play in Formats with a shiny deck, you'll earn considerably more with the same number of Diamond cards.
The daily value is likely to be an overestimate, as we're seeing a pattern of a slow increase of the fragments per $GODS ratio, as players slowly improve the shine of their decks.
The time to ROI is heavily affected by the price of $GODS
If you happen to have the Shadow cards in your collection to raise the minimum quality level to Shadow, this will result in an appreciable boost in earnings.
With $GODS at 12 cents,
In Solar Gold, earning an average of $1.8 per day, you'll reach ROI in 193 / 1.8 = 107 days ~ 3.5 months.
In Mythic, earning an average of $2.44 per day, you'll reach ROI in 193 / 2.44 = 79 days ~ under 3 months.
I hope you found this post useful. I do accept requests for other decks! 😄
Thanks for reading!
