Gods Unchained - Beginners Guide

As I promised in my breakdown post of God's Unchained, I am now doing Beginners Guide. Here I will try and give new players a leg up when they are starting out. These are things that have picked up across Gods unchained, Hearthstone, and other games. As the key mechanics are universal. These tips should also be fairly universal.

Starting out in Gods Unchained

After you have played the first introduction bouts and completed the missions to go along with them you should have an ok grasp of the game's core mechanisms. That, and unlocked all the base cards.

The first piece of advice I would give you is basically to not use the pre-constructed decks that come with the game. These are basically only good for one thing, and that is teaching you the basics of the game. Instead, I would recommend that you construct new decks for each of the 6 gods. 

Constructing your first deck

You will find the Workshop, the place where you make new and edit the decks you have. In the top menu.

Once in the Workshop, you will be able to see all the decks you currently have. If the deck is ready to be played it will be shown in full color. If there is something missing, it will instead be shown in grey. With a number telling you how many cards the deck currently has out of 30. 30 is the number of cards that each deck consists of.

You can now press the big golden "+ Create s Deck". This will now take you into the God selection part. Here you will be able to pick which of the 6 Gods you want to create a deck for. As I advise you to do this for each of the gods, which one you pick to start with does not really matter.

When you have picked a God you will be taken to the screen where you can see all the cards you currently can pick for creating a deck for that god.

How to know what cards to pick?

When deciding what cards to pick there are a few things you need to take into account. The first one is that both players will start the game with at least one "Bag of Tricks". This is the thing that will give you one extra mana for one round only. What this does is it allows you to essentially skip most of the 1 and 2 mana cost cards.

This is important because in other similar games you usually want to have what is known as a "good mana curve". Meaning that you want to have a few cards that cost 1 mana, a few that cost 2 mana, and so on. This is to increase your odds that you will be able to play a card each turn with as optimal mana cost as possible. A higher mana cost usually means a better and more powerful card.

But because every player is guaranteed this extra 1 mana, this means that you essentially could skip all 1 mana cards. But there are however usually some good 1 mana cards. So I do not recommend you skip this entirely.

And similarly to the cards with a high mana cost, 6 and above. You want very few of these in the deck. This is because most of the games are won before you get to play one of these cards. At least on the lower levels of the game.

Now that we know that we want to pick cards of a different mana cost. But not too many cards with a 1 mana cost of a 6 or more mana cost. Let us look at what makes a good card.

One of the easiest things to look at when it comes to creatures is how many stats points, meaning attack and hitpoints. Does it have? Usually, the easy rule of thumb here is the more the better. Meaning you can add the attack value and the hitpoints together, and divide them by the mana cost. This shows you what you are paying for.

As an example, this card gives you 6 stats for 2 mana, and it has an ability as well. Compared to most other 2 mana cards that only have 5 stats.

As an example, for 1 mana cost cards. Unless the creature has a really good ability I would not pick a creature that has less than 4 stats. And I would lean towards 2 attacks and 2 defenses. That will allow you to trade efficiently in most cases. I would not recommend picking any creature that has only 1 hitpoint. This is because unless they have an ability they tend to die very easily. And a lot of God powers can do 1 point of damage.

There of course is a diminishing return here. A high mana cost card will not give you as many stats per mana as a low-cost card. But the benefit is it is just one card. While you would need more than one low-cost card to get the same number of stats.

What is a good ability?

There is a lot of ability that creatures can have in God's Unchained. I will not go through all of them. But I will give an overview of things that generally are powerful and useful in the game.

Card draw - This is typically very powerful as it will give you more cards. And increase the odds of you finding the best card to deal with your opponent. There are a lot of different abilities that can let you draw an extra card. Roar and Afterlife are probably the most common ones. Roar is when a card comes into play. Afterlife is when it leaves play.

Adding stats - Thes creatures let you add stats to another of your creature. Either permanently or temporarily. This usually means that you can trade up or trade efficiently (explanations of these two terms can be found below).

Frontline - creatures with Frontline are standing in front of your other creatures, as well as you the God. This means your opponent must kill them first before they can attack you or your other creatures. These creatures can be very powerful if you can use them in the right circumstances.

Spawning more creatures - If a creature has the ability to spawn more creatures you need to take these into account when calculating the efficiency of the card. Also, AoE or Area of Effect ability or spells is not all that common in Gods Unchained. Meaning that having several creatures can easily become overwhelming for your opponent. And there are also abilities that can let you do this. But Roar or Afterlife is the most common one.

Of course, there are other very powerful abilities in the game. But these are good once to be on the lookout for. I will most likely do an in-depth post about abilities in the game. Breaking down their strengths and weaknesses.

Finalizing your deck

You should now be able to construct a much better deck than the pre-constructed ones that are in the game. And in a future post, I will try and cover more things you can think about when constructing your deck. But to start off, this should be able to get you going.

And to summarize, Do not pick too many 1 cost cards. And I would also try and keep the number of 2-cost cards fairly low. Most of your cards should be cards that cost 3-5 mana. And 2-4 cards that cost 6 or more. 

As an example, this is my War deck that I am currently using. It consists of, from left to right, 5, 4, 7, 4, 7, 1, and 2 cards. And it has been working for me most of the time. 

Weapons

Weapons are very diverse in Gods Unchained. And what I mean by that is all of them are not for attacking with. Some of them can have powerful abilities. But these types of weapons are usually cards you will come across later in the game. I will instead focus on weapons in general and what are good things to know.

When you play a weapon it will allow your god to carry out an attack. In the beginning, I would recommend that you focus on killing your opponent's creatures. And you should not be very afraid of losing some of your hitpoints when doing this. As they are a resource to be used just like most things in the game. 

Being able to kill, or setting up efficient trades, with your weapon is a very good practice to learn. This will allow you to keep your creatures alive longer. Allowing them to pose a much bigger threat.

In general, if I have two targets to choose from, a weapon and a creature I would always try and make it so both enemies are killed and my creature lives. If at all possible of course. Even if I take a few points of extra damage. 

Trading and the basics behind it

This term refers to one player "trading" their creatures for their opponents. Meaning they kill each other. Above I referred to "trading up" and "trade efficiently". This is the place where you will understand what I meant by those terms. 

As you now know what basic trading is. When your creature kills an opponent's creature and dies at the same time. Trading up refers to when your creature used in the trading cost less mana than the creature it killed. This is usually very good if it can be done.

Trading efficiency is what I refer to happens when you are able to kill an opponent and stay alive with your creature. This means it has traded efficiently. And still, have a percent on the board. From here it can either trade again the next turn or attack the opponent directly. This is usually the benefit of more expensive cards. They have lots of hitpoints, meaning it takes multiple smaller creatures attacking them before they die. That or your opponent has to expend resources in other ways.

But why would you trade you might ask? The reason for it is that if you do not, it can give your opponent the opportunity to make a trade efficiently. Means your creature is killed while they still have there's. And that is a huge problem to have to come back from.

I hope that you will find this Beginners Guide to God's Unchained useful. And if you have any questions feel free to ask away and I will try and answer them as best as I can. And if you think the post is missing something, please let me know that too. It might very well show up in a future post. the same goes if you find any errors. 

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Picture provided by: Screenshots from Gods Unchained and Gods Unchained Media