Is a Mythic Card Breaking Gods Unchained?

From the very first pack sale, Gods Unchained offered pack buyers a chance to find an ultra-rare, 1-of-1 Mythic card. These unique cards offer special powers that completely shake up the match, but in a fun way. And from the beginning, the Gods Unchained team claimed that Mythic cards would be banned from playing in tournaments. And yet, so far, that has not been the case.

Mythic cards in Gods Unchained are all unique and extremely rare. Only six Mythic cards exist (with a seventh in the new Mortal Judgement expansion). These cards significantly alter the way the match plays out

The Gods Unchained Weekend Event has been running for some time. Players win prizes based on their standing and number of wins from the first 25 games they play from Friday through Sunday every week. Prizes include card packs and $GODS tokens. Results vary from week to week, but the top player generally has at least 23 wins out of 25, sometimes even winning out on all 25. And most of these players do not have any Mythic cards.

However, one active player, The Chosen Mortal, does. And that card, Citadel of the Gods, is completely unfair and unbalanced when used against an unsuspecting opponent. Now there is a difference here between overpowered and unbalanced. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the Citadel of the Gods is overpowered. After all, it puts both players on the same footing. However, it is unbalanced. Knowing ahead of time that a certain Mythic will affect the match, allows the owning player to specifically tailor their deck to the alternate gameplay and create a huge advantage for themselves. Are the other Mythic cards equally as unbalanced? It’s hard to say. But just looking at their text, we can see they also complete alter the match dynamics.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely if we will ever get any real world experience with the balance status for the other Mythics already created. Tethys is lost to an inactive wallet. Atlas and Prometheus are locked into Whaleshark’s vault as collectibles.And Hyperion seems lost as well.

Note: As I was putting this article together I was informed that CastleBravo, the owner of the sixth Mythic, Temnys, also plays on the weekends, though it looks like he is not especially active other wise. You can see his play history at https://gudecks.com/meta/player-stats?userId=395888

Citadel of the Gods and Weekend Events

So why am I against Citadel of Gods in the weekend event? Well, let’s read the card effects.

At the start of the game, move this card to the top of your deck. Each player summons three legendary champions, equips a champion’s relic, and unlocks all mana locks. Both gods gain protected and ward.

OK. So it sounds fair enough on the surface. Each player jumps to 9 mana and drops three random legendary champions on the board. In fact, since newly played creatures generally can’t do anything, the Citadel actually gives initiative to the other player! However, the issue comes with the sudden jump to 9 mana. 99.99% of the decks played, are not built for that sort of game. Take a look at The Chosen Mortal’s decks. Aside from the Citadel card itself, there is nothing there below 7 mana! Not even the most greedy control deck would dare run with that sort of mana curve!

And, no slight against The Chosen Mortal, but really, he shouldn’t lose a single match unless he plays against a deck built with the Citadel of the Gods in mind. Luckily for the Gods Unchained players, it seems that The Chosen Mortal isn’t always interested in maxing out his weekend wins. His match history shows that he seems to experimenting with a few different Gods and not making many deck tweaks. But, with a little focused deckbuilding and a strong interest in total domination, I believe he could easily run through every weekend undefeated.

So what does that matter? Let’s take a look at his prizes from this past weekend. He only won 23 out of 25, but he also finished first in the ‘Elite Tier’ leaderboard, earning several extra packs. His total haul from the weekend event: 1 Core Rare pack, 2 Core Epics. 5 Core Legendary, 1 Divine Rare, 1 Divine Epic, 6 Divine Legendary, and 7 GODS tokens. Though with 5 Core Legendary packs would have a decent chance of producing a duplicate for fusing and selling, we’ll just make calculations easy and assume all Core packs are worth nothing. That leaves the GODS tokens (~$8 at the moment), and the Divine Order packs ($159.42 retail value). Not too shabby for playing some games on the weekend!

As for those who don’t own Mythics? Too bad it seems. If The Chosen Mortal decides to compete for the top spot on the weekend, you might as well concede that second place is the best you can do.

Closing Thoughts

Technically, I suppose that the weekend event is not officially a tournament. After all, the Gods Unchained team refers to it as the ‘Weekend Ranked Event’. But, nonetheless, this is a sanctioned, official competition with prizes that have actual value. And if the only official ‘tournament’ is the fabled World tournament that was supposed to launch three years ago, then I won’t be holding my breath for that one. Of course, there is always the potential that the team doesn’t have the tools to ban cards from their events, but, they could still make an official declaration on the matter.

This article may seem like an overreaction. After all, The Chosen Mortal has not been dominating every weekend event. But if matched against him in a ranked game and it affected my weekend rewards negatively, I would be a very unhappy player. And while using Mythics in the weekend ‘events’ may not be a serious issue at the moment, it is a loophole that the Gods Unchained team should close. If I owned a Mythic, I would probably be a lot more aggressive about cashing in on the weekend tournaments events!

Phil Hall has been a gaming enthusiast since birth and a crypto enthusiast since 2017. He enjoys new discoveries and sharing those with others via blogging and photography. You can follow him on Twitter or read his other articles on Medium.