I thought I would try my best to cover the new expansion, Tides of Fate, but things have not worked out how I hoped they would. But that is neither here nor there. But I would like to cover what I believe is the biggest and most important aspect of the new expansion, the cards you can only get through crafting. So let us dive right in.
Card Crafting
This aspect was first introduced with the previous Band of the Wolf mini-expansion. The reason behind it, at least as far as I can guess, was to try and limit the availability of certain cards, once you get through crafting. At the same time reduce the number of of cards for the cards in the set that were used during the crafting. And with an increased scarcity comes a higher price. Judging by the fact that this expansion's crafting looks to be stepping things up, I think they judged the initial crafting to have been a success. Be it the reason I think is the primary or any other reason they might have had.
There is one big difference between this expansion's crafting compared to the Band of the Wolfs´s crafting. And that is the fact that you do not only "merge" or "upgrade" the cards in order to get the reward. Here the recepies involve more cards than the normal upgrading. The new crafting will however still be done in the Forge. So that part is important to note, there will be no separate site och anything added to the game where you do the crafting. It will simply be added to the forge.
There will be a total of six legendaries that can be crafted, one for each god. So far there have been no neutral legendary on the crafting list, and for that matter no neutral card whatsoever. But maybe we will get some neutral goodies on the next expansion? But let us now take a look at the specific recipes, or I should say the cards you will be hoping to get or looking to snag up on the marketplace. One thing I would like you to note is that while the images only feature meteoric cards. You can use the same recipe to craft a legendary of any quality. All you need to do is have the corresponding card be the same quality as the legendary you want. Meaning if you want a gold legendary you need to use gold cards to craft it.
Of the six cards, there is one that stands out, and that is Digby, the Emerald Peril, the deception legendary. The reason it stands out is that by playing it you will summon Captain Thibbs, if you do not control that card already. But there is more or less no info about that card, as it is not included among the expansion cards on the Gods Unchained site. This means you will only be able to get the card from this card or by delving it. And at this point, you are probably wanting me to get on with things and just tell you what the card is or does. And I will, I will. I give to you Captain Thibbs.
The Captain is a 4 mana 6/4 with Blitz and an effect that lets you pull your weakest creature back to your hand if Captain Thibbs attacks and survives. This leans even more heavily into the new deception mechanism of pulling your creatures back. And it has the possibility of you being able to set up a loop where you can play Digby and get it back to your hand. This means you then can play Digby and summon Captain Thibbs again. Assuming your opponent kills her on their turn.
Epic Crafting
Or perhaps I should say crafting of Epix cards. As with the previous expansion you are also able to craft other cards and not just legendary cards. There is also a total of six epic cards, one for each god, that you can craft. And these cards have taken crafting to the next level yet again. As their recipes are demanding an even more varied list of cards in order to craft them. But let us take a look at the epic cards we can craft before diving into the deep end.
Unlike with the six legendary cards, there is no card that brings more stuff to the table so to speak here. They simply do what they do. With that said before we take a look at the crafting recipes, there is one major thing I would like to make you aware of. This is the fact that the crafting rewards have been heavily revised compared to what they initially were. The original reward was simply craft and you will get 1 meteoric version of the epic card. But after receiving some "feedback", more likely a lot of upset people using a fair bit of explicit words and imagination, they have revised the rewards. Meaning now instead of 1 meteoric card you will receive 20 but also 1 diamond version of the card. Quite the change. It is very similar to going from the Sherrif of Nottingham and then transforming into Robin Hood. But let us take a look at the crafting recipes.
These recipes are quite a lot more involving than the ones for the legendary cards. They each follow the same structure so let us take a look at it. First, they require two copies of a card that comes with the Tides of Faith expansion. You will need a meteoric and a shadow version of the card. This will most likely be the part that will cause the least problems for people. Especially as this expansion will be sticking around for a while. The second part is two more cards, these will however not come from the latest expansion. They will instead come from two separate expansions, Mortal Judgement and Devine Order. But as you probably also noticed these two cards look a fair bit different. You need to have them in diamond in order for you to be able to craft these epic cards.
In case you are wondering if this has had any impact on the cards. Well, no one major it seems. Well if you do not count a 1-2000% price increase for the diamond version, and many of the other quality ones as well. I did however only look at the six divine order cards. Oh and yeah I almost forgot the small bit where there only are a handful of diamond versions of these cards in existence. So good luck crafting these cards without having to pay an arm and a leg to do so. But then again I assume the cards will be priced in accordance with that as well. So by the looks of it, you will be losing that arm and leg no matter if you go the crafting route or simply buy it from someone else.
Personally, I am not a fan of this. To be precise, it is the inclusion of older cards I am not a fan of. The crafting is perfectly fine. I think it is artificially inflating the price of older cards, as well as making them way more scarce. And with the end of the year phone app just around the corner, I think it is a bad idea. Well unless they already now know the app will be a dud. The reason why is that this seems to only cater to the current small crop of players, and perhaps a handful of older players looking to cash out or get back in after a break. It does nothing to help new players get into the game. If anything it most likely only will be seen as a deterrent.
But seeing how many players and members of the council of mortals that seemed to mostly care about the value of their collection rather than the game and gameplay. I probably should not be surprised by this. And I am basing that on the Council of Mortals twitch streams I have been a part of. And no not saying all members are like that. But one, if loud enough, is enough. And most likely there are many like-minded making their voices heard on the discord as well.
It sort of fixes a problem or placates some of the player base, But in doing so it creates future problems, and possibly bigger ones at that. But maybe they plan to reprint cards in the future, and make a "crafting pack" where you get every card you need in order to craft cards. Still not a good solution for the game in my book. But it is just my two cents. But I would like to hear what you think about the crafting of the new expansion. Are you looking to get some cards in particular, if so which one? Please let me know in the comment section below.
And you will find a link to the entire expansion post below.
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Picture provided by: Gods Unchained Media
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