The opening of the Marketplace was pretty much the most important moment so far in the history of Gods Unchained. Although there’s a lot more to come, we thought it’d be interesting to countdown the most popular cards* on the official Marketplace in the first week and what was behind their popularity.
With the Core wipe shaking up every facet of the metagame, you’ll find a wide variety of different cards on this list, ranging from common cards to legendary and from meta-definingly powerful tools to meme machines.
Analysis and insights brought to you by featured writer, Luci Kelemen...
The top dogs: from Demogorgon to Runestorm
I think most of us could guess which card was the most popular on the official GU Marketplace [found in the game client] in the opening week. That’s right, it was Bombfly! No, actually, not at all. Perhaps unsurprisingly #1 was Demogorgon.
The nefarious Nether is topping the charts due to the combination of its powerful effects allowing for huge mid-game stabilization potential, and the way the community embraced it as an anti-aggro tool recently has had a massive impact on the metagame.
Its Roar sends all other creatures to sleep, buying you valuable time, and it has further immediate board impact by dealing 3 damage to a random sleeping enemy creature at the end of the turn. Better still, it has Leech, and the Roar basically ensures you’ll get some healing off of it over time!
So, you know, you might want to pick up a couple sooner rather than later. Just saying. There’s a reason why some people took to “Lambogorgon” as a nickname. It’s good stuff!
Interestingly, a portion of Legendary cards are also already trading above their initial value – one of which, Jason, Medea's Muse, was the second-most purchased card in the opening week of the Marketplace. It’s the jack-of-all-trades option for many decks.
Next up, a triplet of common cards, though perhaps fittingly, one of them is not quite like the other: due to 24-carat levels of memery, A Real Man at #3 skyrocketed on the market due to a select few buyers apparently hellbent on turning every meteorite version of the card into a diamond fusion, which means that, market processes being what they are, it ended up being the Genesis card with the biggest increase in value.
Personally, I find this the most interesting development out of them all on the Marketplace so far. It’s so quintessentially weird, the sort of thing that only happens in the world of gaming. And who knows, maybe they’ll have the last laugh if it ever becomes an ultra-powerful tool!
Next up, #4 Rolling Watcher and #5 Runestorm.
The latter is, of course, a staple in Mythic-level Rune Magic decks – though it remains to be seen how crippling the Rune of Life change ends up being in the long run –, while the former isn’t just an adorable Atlantean but a great way to leverage an early tempo lead.
Did you know it has already been through two iterations? Originally a 1/2 without a tribe which gained +1 Attack each turn, it was adjusted on a card text level twice to reach its current form.
The best of the rest: from Pyramid Warden to Agrodor Protector
As it turns out, the only rare card on the list of top sellers is Pyramid Warden at #6, an Anubian which you’ve no doubt encountered on your travails towards Mythic, especially in Death Zoo decks. It is one of the “winningest” cards according to the Cards Unchained statistics (alongside Skeleton Heavy, an unassuming pile of stats which is nevertheless an important inclusion in many decks) – in part due to its flexibility, which allows you to include it in a wide variety of decks.
The popularity of the aforementioned archetype also shows from card stats further down the totem pole, with Dangerous Ritual coming in at #18 in the first week of sales.
Moving back to the top, Pyramid Warden is followed by two Avatars on the list of most popular Marketplace cards on the opening week: they are, perhaps unsurprisingly, #7 Avatar of Magic and #8 Avatar of War, both of which are also core cards in popular decks, which revolve around the former’s fancy OTK combo in certain gameplay scenarios.
Aeneas is #9 – an inclusion in the Onslaught War archetype – followed by Agrodor Protector at #10, a 4 mana 3/5 Nature card which reads “Frontline. Regen 1. You could argue that’s one with an eye on the future, considering the limited success of Nature decks at the top tier of play recently.
Going just outside the top ten, it’s mostly Legendaries which dominate the list: in general, higher-rarity cards seem to be performing better on the Marketplace for now – which may very well remain the case until bulk purchases and sales become as straightforward as the developers intend it to be – but gameplay considerations also seem to factor into this, with familiar faces from top players’ decklists showing up among the top sellers.
That said, it’s Ocular Fiend, an epic, which sits at number eleven, but it is directly followed by That Which Aches (#12); Hercules, Son of Zeus (#13) and Odysseus, Tried Victor (#14) – all of which are present in top-tier War decks at the time of writing.
Going further down the list, Amplification Machine is #15, followed by Tyet, Heir To The Sky at #16; Nimble Pixie (#17); the aforementioned Dangerous Ritual – and finally, Odin, Endless War (#19). Last but not least Anputian Magus rounds out the top 20 from week one of trading!
It will be interesting to see how these stats will change over time, especially as further content updates and balance patches roll out. However, this already shows how vibrant and important the buying-and-selling aspect is to the Gods Unchained experience (and how valuable the blockchain-enabled true ownership is from a player perspective, especially in light of the Core reset).
One thing is for sure: the statistics from the first week will serve as an interesting footnote in Gods Unchained’s history, regardless of how they will fluctuate in the future – and for the trading enthusiasts out there, the freedom on the marketplace allows for a very different kind of metagame beyond the one inside the card game itself.
*Official rankings provided by GU analytics team.
Read more:
.png)