Hello mortals! We have a very exciting update for you this week. A bunch of Genesis buffs! Only one nerf! Our main focus this week has been fixing the Genesis cycle of cards known as “Avatars” and to introduce more cards for players to build decks around.
We’re hyped to see what the player base comes up with and we have provided some specific reasoning for each buff below. Grab a coffee and get comfortable, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover!
For anyone new to Gods Unchained, The Genesis Set is a limited edition set of 380 cards for the early adopters and fans of Gods Unchained.
They will never be reprinted and contain cards which cannot be obtained otherwise.
Avatars
We thought some of the coolest cards in Genesis were the Avatars for each god, however they weren’t really hitting what we wanted as far as playability and flavour.
As such we’ve changed all of the Avatars and would like to present them for your viewing pleasure:
For full reasoning behind each Avatar change, continue reading!
Death
- Avatar of Death changed from a 9 mana 0/12 with Get attack +1 for each point of damage any god takes. Afterlife: Return this creature to the board to a 6 mana 6/6 with “Get attack +1 for each point of damage your god takes. Afterlife: Deal 6 damage to a random enemy creature.”
Unfortunately the Avatar of Death was simply too expensive to play and wasn’t ending games as often as you would expect from a 9 mana creature. Similarly the effect of never leaving the board is something we’re finding players don’t enjoy (*looking at you Enduring Lemure*).
We’ve decided to rework the Avatar to reward players who are brave enough to bring themselves closer to death and we’ve given it a much more playable, and evil, statline.
It might also go nicely with…
- The Harvester changed from “Deadly. Leech. Whenever The Harvester destroys a creature, heal your god for 3. Roar: Destroy all other friendly creatures.” to “Whenever a creature dies, deal 2 damage to both gods. When your god takes damage heal your god for 2. When your god is healed give The Harvester +1/+1”
The Harvester was a very underwhelming & under-powered card for its mana cost due to the self destruction effect. We considered simply removing that effect but found the card was still too weak.
As such we’ve completely redesigned The Harvester to truly harvest enemies by creating an effect we’re really excited about.
- Dread Queen Persephone changed from “At the start of your turn, obliterate the highest cost card in hand. Summon a random creature with the highest mana cost from your void.” to “At the start of your turn a random creature in your hand with the lowest mana cost goes to the void. Summon a random highest mana cost creature from your void.”
Dread Queen Persephone has had an enormous buff here by allowing you to potentially cheat some huge creatures into play. We’re confident that this effect won’t be game-breakingly good as you have several conditions to meet to get an enormous payoff (such as getting a 9 mana card into play while you’re on 6 mana).
Those conditions are: Dread Queen needs to survive a turn, you need to have drawn your 9 mana card, and you need to have played your entire hand except the 9 mana card. We’re very excited to see what decks get built around Dread Queen Persephone and we hope that it we can keep this cool condition in place.
Deception
- Avatar of Deception changed from a 6 mana 3/3 with “Hidden. Pick one: +2/+2 on each enemy spell or relic played, or +2/+2 on each enemy creature played” to a 4 mana 4/4 with “Hidden. Whenever you draw a card, shuffle a copy of it into your opponent's deck”
The Avatar of Deception has received a total rework. We found the old text to be extremely confusing to players and also somewhat under-powered. Our new version has a very solid statline on its own in that it is a 4/4 with hidden.
We’re excited to see the decks players come up with to use the new text of the Avatar to really disrupt their opponents strategies.
- Labyrinth Minotaur changed from a 3/5 with “Hidden for 1 turn. Pick one: At the start of your next turn, gain attack +3, or gain +2 health and frontline” to a 5/7 with “Pick one: Attack target enemy creature, or gain hidden for 1 turn.”
Labyrinth Minotaur was extremely awkward to use as its most played scenario would be a hidden creature that you wanted to have frontline. These are two conflicting keywords as you want your frontline to be blocking enemies.
We’ve redesigned this card to be a very dynamic option for Deception players and to try to capture the feeling of being hunted by a Minotaur in the Labyrinth.
Light
- Avatar of Light changed from "Frontline. Roar: Fully heal all other friendly creatures." to “Frontline. Protected. Roar: Fully heal all other friendly creatures.”
We’re really happy with where Avatar of Light is at right now so it received one of the smallest changes of all the Avatars.
By adding protected we feel that we’ve increased the playability of the card as frontline tends to combo nicely with protected (as evidenced by Helian Elite for example).
- Golden Harpe changed from 2 durability and “At the end of your turn, lose 1 durability and all Olympians you control gain +1/+1 for every three Olympians in your void.” 3 durability and “At the end of your turn, lose 1 durability and summon a 1/1 Injured Soldier with frontline, then heal all friendly creatures for 1.”
Golden Harpe suffered some issues where it had some extreme overlapping design with Serene Blade and often ended up being simply a worse version of it.
We wanted to maintain the Olympian Synergy and we also want to push healing further into Light so we’ve redesigned this card to match those desires. It is worth noting Injured Soldiers do have the Olympian tribe and that this card works really well with one that also received a buff in the neutral changes below!
Magic
- Avatar of Magic changed from a 9 mana 5/9 with “Protected. Ward. Spell Boost +1. Whenever you cast a spell, add a copy of Beam to your hand that costs 1 mana” to a 9 mana 9/9 with “Protected. Ward. Spell boost +2. Whenever you cast a spell, add a copy of Beam to your hand that costs 1 mana.”
The Avatar of Magic is an extremely expensive card that has to stay around for a turn before it makes an impact (unless you hold a bag all the way until 9 mana!).
We love the effect it has but due to how many turns it takes to get to 9 mana we wanted to make it a little bit stronger by increasing its attack and spell boost to ensure that if it isn’t dealt with, you’ll be feeling it immediately.
- Shadow Scryer changed from a 1/2 with “At the start of your turn, foresee 1.” to a 1/1 with “Protected. Ward. At the start of your turn, foresee 1.”
Shadow Scryer is a really interesting card that effectively lets you control the top of your deck when it's on the board. Unfortunately this means it suffers the symptom of getting killed too easily, too early.
We’ve given it ward and protected to try and help it stick around in the early game so you have time to establish frontline creatures in front of it.
- Engaged Enchanter changed from a 1/4 to a 2/3.
Nature
- Avatar of Nature changed from a 7 mana 4/6 to a 5 mana 5/5.
The Avatar of Nature was borderline unplayable due to its lack of impact on the board when it came down. We’re finding anything 7 mana and over needs to be extremely strong when it hits the board and the Nature Avatar wasn’t reaching that criteria.
This is quite a huge buff and we will be closely following the performance of the Avatar.
War
- Avatar of War changed from an 8 mana 4/8 with “Heal your god for damage Avatar of War deals to creatures. Roar: If there are 18 or more creatures in all voids, equip a 5/2 Sentient Flameblade.” to an 8 mana 8/8 with “'Leech. Roar: Roar: Equip 5/2 Sentient Flameblades with godblitz and leech.”
The Avatar of War was close to what we wanted for an 8 mana card however it had some unusual conditions that made the relic not equip sometimes. This was quite frustrating for players and made it not worth including in a deck.
We’ve also cleaned up the first condition to simply be leech and we’ve given the Avatar 4 more attack so it hits the board even harder when played.
- Roadside Outfitter changed from 5 mana to 4 mana.
Unfortunately Roadside Outfitter was coming down too late to have a large enough impact when buffing your hand. This is mainly because the creatures it wants to buff are already on the board at 5 mana.
As such we’re testing this out at 4 mana and keeping an eye on whether or not this is an adequate buff.
- Master Tactician changed from a 1/1 to a 2/2.
Master Tactician wasn’t seeing the impact we wanted it to have so we’re testing it at a 2/2 statline. This is also directly aimed as a buff to the Viking tribe which we think is really close to being a fantastic deck.
Neutral
- Odysseus, Tried Victor has been changed from 6 mana to 5 mana.
We found Odysseus to be a little too slow for his effect. Given that his effect is highly synergistic with either healing or Olympians, quite a lot of setup is needed to get full value out of him. As such we thought it appropriate to bring down his cost.
- The Sky Reaver has been changed from “Whenever your god attacks, draw a card.” to “Whenever an Aether attacks, draw a card.”
The Sky Reaver was a 'build around' card that we liked, however it was too niche and didn’t fit well into our neutral philosophy.
As such we’ve changed it to be a great payoff for Aether cards. It’s important to note here that you also draw a card when The Sky Reaver itself attacks, as it is also an Aether.
- Enduring Lemure has been changed from a 1/1 with “Afterlife: Deal 1 damage to a random friendly character. At the end of the turn summon an Enduring Lemure” to a 2/2 with “At the end of the turn move this card from the void to your hand.”
Enduring Lemure has been causing problems by being infinitely on the board. This has lead to a large number of balance issues over time, more recently with reanimate.
We’re testing out a new concept by letting Enduring Lemure always stick around, but this time it's in your hand.
- That Which Aches has been changed from a 7 mana 3/7 with “When you play a card, summon a 3/1 Aching Disciple with "Afterlife: Shuffle this creature into your deck." to 6 mana 3/6 with “When you play a card, summon a 3/1 Aching Disciple with "Roar: draw a card. Afterlife: Shuffle this creature into your deck."”
That Which Aches, similarly to a lot of these cards, suffered from being too expensive for something that doesn’t impact the board when you play it. We’ve reduced its mana from 7 to 6, which is actually quite a large reduction given our mana system.
At the same time we’ve also added a condition to the Aching Disciples that makes them draw a card when played so you never feel bad about drawing one as you get to cycle it.
As always, thanks for reading and please head to our Reddit & Discord to provide feedback on the balance notes!
- Petrify
