I recently got into the whole crypto world and NFTs, and I’ve been playing games for a very very long time. Naturally I started seeking activities where these two interests combined, and after reading about Axie Infinity, I decided to scour the web for a blockchain-based game that I would enjoy. As a Hearthstone player for 7+ years, Gods Unchained stood out from the competition. I downloaded it, played around with it for a couple of weeks to make sure I’d enjoy it (this was before Thanksgiving and I had a couple of trips planned, so not much time to play), then dove head-first and tried to figure out how I could get my hands on those sweet free expansion packs from the weekend events.
Note: ETH, USD, and card values are from the time of writing
I told myself that I’m going to try to stay F2P to see how far I can get, before throwing some money into this game. For the first week I was playing a magic deck that I made out of Welcome and Core cards I got for free, as in the lower ranks I felt Magic had a different playstyle (control) and it was pretty effective against the creature/zoo-based decks that everyone was playing at that level. Oh, that and one of my first legendaries was a Frey, Archmage of Selene.
Somehow I was able to scrap together 12 wins starting at Midnight Shadow, which was enough for 1 expansion pack. I also noticed that I was facing decks and cards and things I’ve never seen before… Pyramid Warden? Underbrush Boars? Cool trinkets and boards? At this point I have gotten some GODs from my fooling around here and there, and also Immutable X just started taking GODs for cards instead of just ETH. I told myself I’m going to build up to these magic decks I found on GUDecks.com that looked interesting, and I liked that it had some Genesis cards as I believed they will go up in value due to their limited supply. My first purchase was a Shadow Scryer, then a Monolith of Storms and Demetrios with the GODs that I had. However, I know that to build up to that Magic deck I would’ve had to make a lot more purchases, which would take at least a month or two with the weekly Blessing of the Gods. I wanted to be competitive on the weekends to get more expansion packs, so I got involved on Discord and Reddit, looking for more budget decks and everybody pointed to Big Beast Nature. That is also where I found out about de-rankers and why I saw all these new things on the weekend.
As luck would have it, the one expansion pack that I got from the weekend prior contained a Sudden Bloom, Brazen Moose, and a Moonbeam. That really pushed me to try to build a Big Beast Nature deck, and luckily I still had some GODs left over to throw into some good but decently-priced Divine Order (DO) Nature cards: Low Hanging Fruit, 2x Falling Stars, 2x Giant Pangolin, another Brazen Moose, and 2x Celestial Stags. This is the deck, which is valued at 0.0163 ETH (~ $50).
With this deck, I was able to procure 19 wins in Weekend Ranked, again starting in Midnight Shadow. I was so happy! I maxed out my rewards (at this rank the max was 17 wins). But I was worried from all the de-rankers I faced that moving up would reduce my rewards down to zero expansion packs. However, I must keep going and hopefully with another week of GODs I can improve my deck as well.
Looking at some card rankings on GUDecks (and also some of my mirror matches) made me realize that Finnian, the Fruitbearer was one of the better cards for Nature, and lo-and-behold, it was JUST within my GODs price range (13.24 GODs at the time). So begins the optimize phase, and I made the following deck changes:
❌Wild Hog ✔️Marsh Walker – Since Finnian needed someone to frenzy, I figured another broccoli would be better than a confused pig
❌Charging Oryx ✔️Finnian – During my games I felt like I had too many high mana cost cards, and they would cramp up my hand as dead cards earlier on in the game. That’s why I made room for the Fruitbearer with the Oryx
The deck is now worth 0.0313 ETH (~$95 USD), so Finnian basically doubled it haha. Now I was in Ethereal Diamond, so my 17 win weekend result didn’t max my rewards, but I felt good because that’s the max I got the week before anyways. Moving on up!
At this point I was deciding on if I should still slowly build up my Magic deck, or go all-in for this Nature one. The good results helped keep me with Nature, but Mythic is the real test. One thing that I was trying to do in the beginning was to buy out-of-print cards that I value more than Core and DO, so I was looking for upgrades that I could buy with my weekly GODs allotment. That’s when I decided to throw more Jaguars at my opponents (I also drive one! Haha):
❌Bladefly ✔️Jaguar Staff – Wanted to keep my mana curve similar, so I took the 4 mana creature out. I didn’t really like that they were all confused, and I felt it was very similar to Falling Star anyways
❌Moonbeam ✔️Rabid Bear – I had lots of spells already, so since I removed a creature I wanted to put one back in
❌Oliphaunt Mount ✔️Charging Oryx – After playing with it some more, I decided Oliphaunt was more of a win-more card; Oryx could actually help me clear a frontline and has immediate presence even without a board, and sometimes even close out games!
❌Wild Hog ✔️Vanguard Axewoman – Confuse is not great in the first couple of turns, especially if you are trying to proc frenzy for Finnian. Axewoman with blitz can also help snipe down some important targets if your confused animals did not want to behave
Now the deck is worth 0.0344 ETH (~$105 USD). This was my first week in Mythic so I was a little nervous. During the week I was doing fine, but we all know the weekend is where the big guns come out. It wasn’t a very good start, I think I went 2-6 or something, but in the end I was able to come out with 15 wins. Not enough for any extra Mythic bonus packs but I was gaining confidence. I had quite a few misplays and I know I can improve.
Continuing my drive to procure more out-of-print cards, I decided to buy a Revenant Lynx. It was within the budget of my weekly GODs, and seems decently strong. I also considered Ornery Goat as well, but I prefer Genesis cards.
❌Rabid Bear ✔️Revenant Lynx – a 3-drop replacement, not as much health but a neat 2-mana cheat to establish tempo
At this point, the deck is worth 0.0462 ETH (~$140). This time, I was able to do better than I thought! I started with an awesome streak, something like 10-1. Then I matched with a Board Wipe Death which broke the streak haha. But in the end, I was able to finish with 20 wins! No, I don’t think it’s the Lynx that made such a big difference. I definitely analyzed my turns much better this time around. But at the end of the day, all the random elements come into play as well: who you match with, what cards you draw/mulligan, and especially with Nature, how well your confused animals and random spells behave.
It was a great result, but I’m thinking of building a Magic deck like I initially started. It’ll be nice for my creatures and spells to hit the things I want for once! However, the Big Beast Nature deck is very powerful for the cost. I’m a little torn between upgrading it or switching over. In terms of upgrades, there are some very popular Nature cards that are used in top decks. However, each one costs more than my whole deck. That’s 2-3 months of GODs for one card (that is if GODs income stays around the same after the Blessing event):
Chiron 0.058 ETH ($175) – Great early game card, and the fact that it has relic removal is a sweet bonus. Might even allow me to switch Svart Basilisk to something else, although the latter does help with sleep, just a little
Underbrush Boar 0.0555 ETH ($165) – Pseudo Blitz is good for taking out high value targets or just gaining board advantage, but would I replace the Heavy Skeletons with them or Black Jaguars??
Avatar of Nature 0.14 ETH ($420) – Good sustain, can provide a lot of value if left alone, but it’s so expensive! Moose is fine for now haha
Selena, Champion of Nature 0.059 ETH ($177) – I’m not as sold on this one, but it’s pretty sticky and can help board state and induce bad trades
This is my very first post on Hive so I hope you enjoyed it, please let me know if you have any feedback or questions!