Gods Unchained

Gameplay Guide

Gods Unchained is a must-play if you enjoy card games. It is free-to-play; the only thing you need to do to play is to create an account and download the game.

How To Start?

You will be greeted with this page on the game’s website.

To create an account, you can go to the game’s website and click on Play Now For Free. It will prompt you to enter your email, confirm the account with the sent link, and proceed to download the game. The application to run the game is called Immutable. After launching the app, the game will ask you to complete a tutorial that introduces the game’s mechanics. If you have played digital card games before, it will feel similar, and you will pick up on this game very quickly. After completing the tutorial, you will receive three card packs as a reward.

You can select which game mode you want to play from the Arena.

There are three game modes; solo, ranked, and direct challenge. You can choose solo if you want to compete against the computer and test your decks, ranked if you want to earn rewards and battle against other players, and direct challenge if you’d like to invite a specific player for a friendly duel.

Starting Out

You can build decks from your available cards to use in the game. There are two copies of each card except for legendaries, which are unique cards with special effects. You start with 70 starting cards, 140 in total. There are six preset decks for each god, which have distinct playstyles.

The board is divided into two sides, your’s and your opponent’s.

Cards and powers cost mana to use, and the mana cost is represented at the upper-left of a card. 

Each round, you gain a mana crystal, from round one to five. After reaching five mana at round five, you gain a mana crystal for every two rounds. This increases to every three rounds for eight and nine mana. The remaining mana is shown at the bottom-right of the arena. Besides the remaining mana, there’s Bag of Tricks, which are usable items that can refresh your one used mana crystal for a round. However, it won’t extend the upper limit of the mana pool. You can see your hand, your god, and god power in the middle. Each god starts with 30 health points, and the main objective is to deplete the opponent gods’ health points by damaging them. The left side has the remaining cards for both the players, while the right side shows burned and used cards that have gone to the void. In the middle of the board, to the left of the void cards, there is an arrow-shaped turn indicator that can be used to end your turn when pressed. To the right of the void card pools, there is the sanctum which features cards that are shared with you and your opponent. You can take cards from the sanctum by spending favor. Favor is indicated beside your bag of tricks, and it is gained by dealing damage to your opponent’s god or eliminating the creatures on the board. There are also certain cards that give favor.

At the start of a battle, you have to choose a god power, and there is a mulligan phase where you choose which cards to keep for their starting hand. Any cards above four mana should be sent back since you want lower mana cards to play for the first few rounds to preserve tempo. Each hand can hold a maximum of nine cards. To summon creatures, you can drag and drop the card onto the board. Powers and spells can be used and cast by holding and dragging the mouse to your desired target. There can only be six creatures per side on the board at any given time. Every creature's damage points, rarity, and health points can be seen at the bottom of the card. Under the cards’ names, there are abilities and effects which can differ greatly from card to card. When you hover over a card with your mouse, explanations for these abilities and effects will be shown.

A Selection of Gods

Creating a deck requires you to choose a god.

Six gods all fall into three primary playstyles; Control (Light and Nature), Aggro (Death and War), or Combo (Deception and Magic).

These playstyles are not set in stone however, for example, Nature is most commonly played as an aggro deck since it has cards that buff creatures and are lower in cost. Light can be described as a paladin and a priest combined together, which buffs and heals units. Nature is a druid which summons creatures and heals them. Death is a necromancer that can resurrect creatures from the void. War is an aggressive god that buffs abilities to damage enemies. Deception can lay traps and can steal cards from the opponents. Magic can cast spells to directly damage enemies and affect the board.

Each god has three different god powers that you choose at the start of the round. These three powers all correspond to the gods’ playstyles. Generally, each option can either buff or debuff a creature, summon a creature, or deal damage directly to characters. Light heals a creature, Nature summons a confused creature, Death deals damage to creatures to heal, War damages the opponent God, Deception draws cards, and Magic gains mana.

Cards Explained

Your collection of cards can be filtered by various metrics.

Cards can be grouped by their types such as creatures or spells, their gods, their sets, their qualities, or rarities. You can get cards from different sets such as; Genesis set, which feature the original launch set of cards, Core set that is the ongoing standard set of cards, Welcome set, which is the starter cards that are given to every player when they sign up for the game and expansion sets like Trial of the Gods or the Divine Order. Cards have different rarities; Common (gray), Rare (blue), Epic (purple), Legendary (orange), and Mythic (red). 

Rarities are indicated by the colors of the crystals next to card names.

Card mechanics have distinct names and effects. There are also relics which are weapons that grant your god the ability to attack or a certain effect.

You can gain levels by playing the game modes and get prizes in the form of Packs, Flux, or Stars. 

Packs contain cards, and they are gained from leveling up through ranked matches. Stars are used to buy cards from the Star Store, where there is a selection of 4 cards to buy. The Star Store has a common core card that rotates daily, a welcome set card that changes every two days, a rare core card that rotates weekly, and a shadow welcome set card that changes every two weeks. If you are a new player, buying welcome set cards provides no gameplay benefit since you already have those cards, you should focus on buying core cards from the Star Store. Cards bought from the Star Store are off-chain like the starter set. On the other hand, Flux allows the forging of an NFT meteorite card using two identical plain cards. Flux is mainly gained through the Gauntlet of the Gods, a mechanic where you can win three ranked games in order with every god. GODS tokens can be used in staking, crafting, and in governance. Currently, you can acquire GODS in events that are held for a certain amount of time, or you can buy GODS. GODS token is needed in combination with Flux when crafting new NFT cards.

Deck Building, Gameplay Tactics, and Recommendations

You can create a deck with any 30 cards you want.

When building a deck, there are two main factors you should consider. The curve of a deck and the win condition of a deck. The curve is a concept where you should have a play available on every round of the battle. You need to balance out your 30 cards so that you can have something to do on one, two, and three mana onwards. Creature-based decks need to maintain tempo, which is the term used for the player who has the momentum and the ability to dictate the state of the board. It is maintained by having a creature to play every round while eliminating the threats the opponents’ have. Win conditions determine the type of deck you are playing. Aggro decks aim to be aggressive as possible at dealing damage to the opponents while dominating the board with creatures in the early game, midrange decks aim to control the board early game and go aggressive with medium costing creatures before the late game, Control decks try to survive the until the late game with removals and obstacles where bigger creatures and spells can be played to attain victory.

You can earn packs by playing ranked on weekends.

Your main goal should be expanding your card collection. This allows you to create more decks with various playstyles, which can feel like you are playing a completely different game. 

The cost of a deck should be your main concern since some decks can feature rarer and more expensive cards. Generally speaking, aggro decks that feature little creatures that can swarm and overwhelm the board by maintaining tempo early are cheaper, while control decks that aim to survive early game until seven or eight mana cards can be played to dictate the board and dissect every card your opponent plays are more expensive to create. Newer players can look into playing free-to-play aggro decks, which can be used to grasp the game's mechanics and have a better understanding of the core gameplay. I used Nature and Light starter decks that served me well until a certain rank where I was battling against veteran players who had put time and money into the game. Nature has buffing cards, while Light has healing cards that help maintain board control early with low mana cost creatures. You can snowball into the late game if you are lucky enough.

Gods Unchained is a great game to play and earn. It allows new players a pleasant start by giving a welcome set of cards and establishing a ground where players can experiment and see if they enjoy the game or not. As long as you keep playing and trying out newer decks, you should be earning slowly but steadily while being entertained. Thank you for reading!