God Powers have been a core mechanic of Gods Unchained since the beginning. For Season 2 and the launch of Tides of Fate we’re giving each domain a God Power refresh.
We’re also making some changes to Core set cards. These changes are to improve balance and gameplay.
These changes will go live with the launch of Tides of Fate on October 25 at 11am AET.
Tides of Fate Chained God Powers
There are two cards in our upcoming set Tides of Fate that feature chained God Powers:
🔹Xansiddion, Waveruler – Chained God Power: Primal Tide
🔹Alborax, Soaring Flame – Chained God Power: Breathe Fire
When the effects of these cards are activated your God Power changes to the respective chained God Power.
God Powers Refresh
The overall God Powers Refresh includes a mix of name changes, mechanical changes, and mana cost changes to existing God Powers. Some God Powers have rotated out, and some have totally new art or names.
Here are some main reasons for why we’ve made these changes:
🔹Simplification for broad appeal to newcomers, like removing Champion’s names from the powers
🔹We want the focus to be back on the cards, with God Powers defining the domains but not limiting deckbuilding
🔹We found that all of our domains were defined by 1 God Power that was picked over 50% of the time, and decks are often built with God Powers in mind
We’ve also drastically reduced the amount of ‘ping’ god powers, as they had the metagame effect of making 1-health creatures less effective than they should be. Now only Magic has access to an unconditional damaging god power.
God Powers Recap
God Powers are cards you pick when first arriving at the arena right before the match starts. You will be given a choice to pick one of 3 available powers.
Like regular cards, each “God Power” costs mana to cast and may be offensive, defensive, or even summon a unit. Choose any of the options available. You may want to pick one that makes up for a weakness in your deck, or you feel like it will come in handy during the match.
Just be attentive, and don't forget to pick one of the powers. You have a time limit to decide, which can be seen as the blue bar on top of your screen.
All God Powers Per Domain
Light
CHANGED
Radiance
We changed the name of this God Power from Lysander's Mercy to Radiance, and added Argus, the new Champion of Light. It’s simply less of a mouthful to say. And with Lysander now being a god, he probably also shouldn’t be rocking the Domain champion slot - that’s just greedy.
Heal
We simplified the text simplified from “Heal 2 to one of your characters.” to “Heal 2.” There are some occasions where you might want to heal your opponent’s creatures or god. Now you can! This is in line with our new philosophy of focusing on simpler designs with more possible outcomes, something we feel is at the heart of card games.
UNCHANGED
Summon Acolyte
We left Summon Acolyte unchanged. This is the defining God Power for most Light Aggro strategies, and we did not want to take the bottom out of the domain, especially with most of this expansion’s card offering being centered around the Heal god power! We’re happy with where Acolyte sits, although we are watching its impact in Sealed mode very closely.
War
NEW
Fracture
War often plays controlling deck archetypes with large amounts of leech. These decks were incentivized to take Slayer and rely on it as a slow, grinding win condition, prioritizing stall options in the deck entirely. This was a legitimately good strategy, but also a legitimately boring way to lose for most opponents. Fracture gives Control War a slight boost on it’s control strategies, but they’ll find themselves needing to take more risks with deckbuilding now and actually include win cons.
UPDATED
Raid
Name changed from Valka’s Presence. We’ve removed all of the Champion names from the God Powers just so they’re easier to read and say for a new player as part of our ongoing push to make the game more accessible. We watch a lot of streams and we’ve never once heard anyone refer to this GP as “Valka’s Presence”, instead preferring to say “Make a guy.” Now you can Make a dude with Raid.
ROTATED OUT
Slayer
As said in Fracture, this was being used as a grinding win condition for control decks rather than it’s initially intended purpose as an aggro motivator. It’s also a balancing nightmare, necessitating weaker prints for War to compensate for their potential damage from the GP. We’d rather print interesting cards than have the domain be punished by its own GP, so we’ve rotated it out.
UNCHANGED
Enrage
Although we haven’t included a lot of support for self-damage War archetypes in recent expansions, we think this is rich design ground. Enrage is a GP just waiting for the right set to really shine.
Nature
NEW
Create
Random generation is Nature’s core identity and has been strongly reinforced in this expansion. This is a slow, value oriented God Power to support that that will allow Nature to compete in control mirrors along the value axis, which is somewhere we think it should shine.
UPDATED
Flourish
This is a slightly more synergistic update to Flourish, allowing some niche combos for regen nature. Dagan, anyone?
ROTATED OUT
Selena’s Mark
Nature already has excellent ways to target hidden creatures in its card pools with its random, strength targeting and damaging AoE spells. Selena’s Mark was crushing against hidden decks and contributed to the overall weakness of 1 hp creatures.
UNCHANGED
Animal Bond
How could we get rid of badger?
Death
NEW
Ignite
Death has gotten a small amount of Burn synergy in the new expansion and will likely continue along this line into the future. This is also a much ‘fairer’ damaging GP than Blood Ritual, which was very powerful against 1 health creatures (a recurring theme here!) and would bypass protected.
UPDATED
Sacrifice
Same as the other Champion names, we felt this was too much of a mouthful.
ROTATED OUT
Blood Ritual
Destroy AND heal? We felt this was quite overloaded as a God Power, and even when it’s not meta, it can be oppressive.
UNCHANGED
Soul Burn
Soul Burn is a very fair activator for frenzied death decks and, unlike Slayer, has a downside for the Death player they have to mitigate in their deckbuilding. We feel it’s in a good spot.
Deception
UPDATED
Flip
This update means you can’t draw first and pitch back your worst cards from a full hand, giving it more of an opportunity cost. As the new expansion synergizes heavily with Flip, this is an essential change to making sure Deception doesn’t always have the perfect hand.
Stealth
We’ve removed the damaging aspect of this. That means that you can perma-hide your own creatures, which was already a trivial task for Deception with the previous god power, so we’ve also increased the mana cost so it’s much slower. With better rated removal being printed in the new expansion, this will not be the monstrous oppressor it could be in tempo-oriented Hidden Rush lists, but retains the strength and identity of Deception.
Thievery
Deception as a domain cares the most about what domain it is matched against. The new Thievery leans into this, as it’s very effective against domains with quality 1 drop spells, which are often also domains that can output aggro strategies Deception otherwise struggles with.
Magic
NEW
Overcharge
Spellboost is core to Magic’s identity, and quite a lot of their older cards synergize very well with this. We expect this to be a niche, matchup dependent pick like Pallas' Genius was, but with less risk of infinite grinding.
UPDATED
Clear Mind
The new expansion’s card offering has a lot of synergy with Foresee strategies, and this was enabling some of the more oppressive combo decks in the game to filter their draw almost perfectly every game. We like Foresee as a mechanic, but we want it to be something you commit to more in your deckbuilding if you’re going to rely on it.
ROTATED OUT
Pallas' Genius
1 mana Magic spells are, on average, pretty good, and Magic also has access to ramp allowing them to cheat themselves into a grindy value loop with this GP.
UNCHANGED
Mage Bolt
If anyone is going to keep their unconditional ping, we feel it naturally should be Magic.
Core Card Changes
To complement these God Power changes anticipating on the Tides of Fate release, we’re also making these changes to the following Core set cards:
