Sealed Mode coming to Gods Unchained

The long-awaited Sealed Mode is finally here. Let us take a look at what it is and how it is played, and finally if it offers something new and exciting for us.

What is Sealed Mode?

This is one of the previously reported 12 game modes they are working on. But what makes this one very different, in my book, is that is have its own reward mechanism tied to it. The previous modes we have had in the game have, at least for that time, only been "play and have fun" game modes. While Sealed Mode now offers all types of rewards. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We will get to the reward part soon enough. =)

Back to Sealed Mode, this game mode is also different as it has a buy-in cost. The cost is set at 15 $GODS, which means that it will be a deflationary mechanism for the $GODS token. And for the long-term viability of the game, and its economy I see that as a good thing. But now we know that we need to pay to play, as the cool kids say. But how do we play?

As we start up the game, we have some choices to make. The first one that we are prevented from is which god we will choose to play as. Here we get a selection of three random gods to choose from. And do not sweat this choice. You are able to go back and pick one of the other gods after you see the cards and build your deck. And that is the second choice, or perhaps I should more accurately say choices two to 61. Because you get a total of 60 cards from the three domains. Of these cards, 12-20 are from each god. And at least 4 of those cards are spells. That should guarantee that you have plenty of variety to pick and make your deck from.

And if you have been paying attention you noticed that you are only guaranteed 12 cards from each of the three gods domains. That means you could end up with 24 cards that are not. And these are of course, as you most likely already have guessed, neutral cards. The Gods Unchained team has also tried to make sure that you will be able to have a good mana curve with the decks you make. 12 of the 60 cards are 3 mana or cheaper. Then you are also guaranteed 3 cards each that are 6 and 7 mana. The rest of the cards will be either 4 and 5 mana or 8 and 9 mana. But there is one caveat tho. You are not guaranteed to get any 8 and 9 mana cards at all.

You can also, if you are lucky, or cursed, end up with multiples of the same ledgendaries. You are also able to use any of the 60 cards with any of the gods you pick. This means we will be able to see some interesting combos in this game mode as well. I have however not been able to find any information if the cards that cost more than 9 mana will be available in this game mode. I am talking about cards such as the Leyhoard Hatchling that have a base cost of 10 mana, but get cheaper the more cards you have in hand. And there are several other cards like that as well. I guess we simply have to see how those cards are handled. As they might be excluded altogether, or lumped in with the 8 or 0 mana cards as cards you only get on rare occasions. I have neither been able to find any information on how often you will be seeing those legendaries. But going by the fact that you can get multiple of the same, I assume every card has a small percentage of being a random legendary.

After you have finished crafting your deck and choosing your god to play you then will move on to the actual playing part of the game. The part I assume at least most of us are looking forward to. Now you will be able to play until one of two things happens. You either managed to win a total of 7 games, or you lost a total of 3 games. After that, you're Sealed Mode gaming experience is over for this time. Then all that is left is to marvel at all the loot one hopefully has managed to collect.

The rewards

Now we are getting to the juicy part, the rewards. Due to the fairly complex nature of how the rewards are structured, I have taken the liberty of making some copy pasta of the official post. So let us take a peek at it and then see what we can get.

By the look of things no matter how you are performing you will at least always end up with a common card. It's probably the most expensive common card you will ever see tho. And with my long-term rivalry with RNGesus, I am sure to be on the receiving end of a lot of those 1 common cards. =S

Let us start with the card packs, currently, the packs will be either Core- or Mortal Judgement packs. But the plan is for Mortal Judgement to be swapped out by whatever set is the current one. This means that we have the new big expansion to look forward to. Sadly no ETA on it, at least non that I am aware of. Hopefully, the odds are skewed in favour of the expansion packs, but I fear a 50/50 is most likely the best we will get. But imagine being able to nab two legendary packs of a new expansion. That would be a truly epic get.

We move on to the $GODS reward. We see that the only way you will be able to "play forever" is if you constantly win 7 games. That is the reward level where you will get enough $GODS back in order to pay for your next run. I had some small inkling of hope that we actually would be able to get a little more $GODS as a reward for fewer wins. But on the other hand that would sort of defeat the purpose of this game mode. As it ultimately is designed to be a deflationary mechanism for the token, or a money sink if you will.

The next two types of rewards, Flux and cosmic packs are all nice. And I am happy to see that they are actually giving out a fair bit of Flux. The cosmetics I will save them for a second post. As they are fairly large in scope if you want to know all about them.

What can we expect while playing

The first thing you should know is that this type of game on average will have people averaging out on 3 wins and 3 losses. This is simply due to how it is made. For every win, one player has to lose. Ergo the average across the entire player base will be 3 sins and 3 loses. That means if you are an average player like me you should not get your hope too high.

For free-to-play players, unless they have managed to get a deck that gets them a lot of gods every day. That will never be able to play this game mode to any large extent. My recommendation would be to hoard your $GODS and only play when the rewards include the new expansion card set. In order to maximize your rewards. At least that is what I think I will do. But I am still mulling it over. It is currently between that and just hoarding $GODS in order to buy expansion packs.

At the end of the announcement the Gods Unchained Team also list their three reasons why you should play. Let us take a look at them;

• Build your deck from a pool of randomized cards from 3 domains
• Battle on a level playing field based purely on strategy and skill
• Win Card and Cosmetic Packs rewards exclusive to Sealed Mode

And I agree 100% with two of them. And I am not sure if they simply made a small error with the second statement, the purely strategy and skill one. As that is simply not true at all. Wich, I hope you have realized as well. If not let me explain why. Starting off you are given a random selection of three gods you can play as. And random is the keyword there. That means you have no control or input at all. And then you get a set of 60 random cards with some asterisks attached to them. But again there is that word, random. Ultimately you can be the best deck crafter in the world, but if you get hosed by RNGesus there is nothing you can do. That means to claim it is purely strategy and skill involved is complete and utter nonsense. The only way that would be true is if everyone got the exact same three gods and the exact same selection of cards to choose from. Do this mean all is bad, no. But I think you should call a spade a spade.

I do however think that the game mode will be liked and enjoyed. But I think it primarily will be played by the "good" players or players who do not mind spending a lot of $GODS. And I see a big risk with it for our small current player base. I think it will work in a similar way to online poker. If you are new and end up at a table with experienced players you are just giving them your money. Or in this case, wins. And I think it can end up being a frustrating experience for new or casual players. But hopefully, I am being too cautious/pessimistic.

I would love to hear what your opinion is about Sealed Mode and how much you're planning to play it. Please use the comment section to the fullest.

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Picture provided by: Gods Unchained Media

Resources

1. https://blog.godsunchained.com/2023/09/08/introducing-sealed-mode-only-the-skilled-dare-enter