I never thought I would start this challenge to be honest, as I was just excited to get better, wins packs, and upgrade my deck when I first found this game. That’s reflected in my Nature deck where I would just keep re-investing my earned GODS into it. But after playing with it for a few weeks I realized I wanted to play with other Gods as well, and I kept seeing posts on Reddit about how this game was Pay to Win, blah blah blah, and that Nature was the only good budget deck, etc etc. That’s when I decided to challenge myself to get at least a Legendary Pack on the weekends with every God, using even more budget decks than my Nature one. The goal for a Legendary Pack (which was 17 wins before the restructure, and now it’s 15) was kinda arbitrary, and to “compete” in Mythic I think 12-13 wins is a good mark to aim for.
Technically completing this F2P gauntlet took me 13 weeks, and there have been quite a few changes with the game since I started. Lots of Divine Order and Core card changes, Weekend reward re-structure, matchmaking changes, etc. The Meta has changed a bunch too, but I was never really choosing which God to play next according to the Meta, it was just which cards I had opened and/or which one I felt like playing. This also shows that you don’t always have to play the Meta to win; I got my highest wins with Magic during the Sage of Renewal meta, completed my Death challenge during the OP Leyhoard Magic meta, and just finished the gauntlet with Deception during this Light meta. Choosing solid cards to build a good deck and learning how to play well is all you need.
While I never put any money into the game yet to achieve this gauntlet and thus am F2P, it doesn’t mean that you can just download the game and make the decks I used right away. Like almost every other game where you can pay to get ahead in resources, the F2P player instead grinds to obtain those same resources, which means it takes time to be able to get to this level. Grind for packs and GODS and use those resources to obtain better cards. You can use my decks as templates and start substituting in cards as you obtain them. Also, there are many cards in this game and there are many variations that can work. My decks are by no means the only variation that can compete in Mythic, it’s just the cards I had and what I thought would work best, and I’m not a professional player. I will give some deck building tips in a later section though.
You can see the posts for each time I’ve achieved 15+ wins for each of the Gods here: Nature , War, Magic, Death, and Light, and Deception.
One of the things that changed in the game throughout this journey was the Core Refresh (and some Divine Order balancing) which means some decks may need to be updated. The 3 decks I played the Refresh were Nature, War, and Magic, but the latter did not gain much for me to switch any cards out. Time-Bomb is actually pretty good for Control and Metamorphosis might be nice but it was tough finding a spot for them in my deck. They should be used in a non-Structure control deck though.
For Nature, the nerf to Finnian means it’s not as good as it was before, though still nice, but not worth it for a budget deck. Valewarden is amazing after the buff so it took over the Moose’s spot as it got nerfed. Nature actually has a lot of viable budget options so you can see a variety of budget decks played, although it doesn’t seem like it’s as good as before, probably because the other Gods got better.
Aggro War definitely got some good new cards and I’ve tossed them in there and took out some of the top end to make it even more aggro.
My Light deck was made after the Core Refresh but one substitution that really made sense was changing Penitence to Excommunicate.
Here is the list of the updated/unchanged decks and their current costs:
Nature 0.0190 ETH $57
War 0.0081 ETH $24
Light 0.0214 ETH $65
Magic 0.0127 ETH $38
Death 0.0150 ETH $45
Deception 0.0119 ETH $36
Overall Matchups:
Overall Wins: 213
Overall Winrate: 65%
Average Wins Per Week: 16.4
Most Wins: 20, with Magic
Least Wins: 13, with War and Magic
Most Weekends Until 15+ Wins: 3, with Magic and Light
Least Weekends Until 15+ Wins: 1, with Death and Deception
Decks with Relic Removal: 1, Deception (in this Light Meta Counterfeit will most likely win you the game if you steal their opening relic)
Most Used Neutral: Guild Enforcer (Death, Magic, War, Deception)
Most Used Welcome Neutral: Vanguard Axewoman (Death, War, Light)
Most Expensive Deck Used: Nature 0.0249 ETH $75, Max 20 Wins
Least Expensive Deck Used: War 0.0081 ETH $24, Max 16 Wins
Average Cost Per Deck Used: $47
Total Expansion Packs Won in USD: $398 (based solely on cost to buy the packs)
Average Expansion Packs Won in USD per Week: $30
Best Cards Opened From Weekend Packs: Diamond Miraculous Familiar, Gold Parthene Proscenium (both worth ~$100+)
The following are opinions based on the decks that I played:
Most RNG: Nature
Least RNG: Death and Light
Fastest Games: War
Slowest Games: Magic
Most Difficult Gameplay: Light
Least Difficult Gameplay: Death
Most Options for Deck Upgrades/Substitutes: Nature
Least Options for Deck Upgrades/Substitutes: Death
-Knowing the cards of every God is one of the best ways to get better at the game; I’m not telling you to study the cards haha but as you play more and see what other people are using, you will learn organically. Knowing the cards will help you figure out what to play around during a game and what to use for deck building
-In terms of deck building, you should know about the vanilla test; that is, the amount of stats a creature should have for its mana cost for it to be considered good or not. There is already a post on the Gods Unchained blog about it so check it out. Another thing that can make a card good is if it does something on the turn that it’s played: this can be in the form of a Roar or Blitz or buff or other ability; that is what makes the archers in the Light deck so good even though their stats are under the vanilla test
-Know how the Sanctum works and master it. This is a very important part of the game and often decides the winner. There’s a great guide here by @kephler which you should definitely read and bookmark to reference the Sanctum cards
-Understand the other game mechanics as well, such as the End of Turn order for effects and the Mulligan. Here are two great videos from @copperpitch that goes over them and more: video1 and video2
-Use the tools; there’s lots of websites out there that makes the shopping and selling cards much easier for you. https://tokentrove.com/ is great, but other tools I use are https://gustats.eu/cards_price and https://cardsunchained.com/
Now that I’m done my F2P gauntlet, I want to keep going with challenges as it keeps the game fresh and exciting for me. Going one step further from the F2P challenge, I’m going to see how well I can do with just Welcome and Core cards for each God. Since we’re in between expansions I think it’ll be a good time to do so; plus, the Core Refresh gave a decent boost to these decks. However, I won’t be aiming for 15+ wins this time, and I’m not even sure if I can get 10+ wins with these haha. It’ll be interesting to see which God has the best WelCore set; this is my prediction: Light > War = Nature > Magic > Deception > Death. What do you think??