I haven't been playing Gods Unchained that much lately. I was buried in Blocklords for the 60-day contest and just haven't jumped back in to GU yet. I did however take a look at some card prices and my things have changed!
Pyramid Warden
Pyramid Warden has always been my go-to card to measure overall GU game health. This might not be quite as good a measure as tribal decks definitely eat into the demand for PWs. However, I was shocked to see this:
Compare that with my PW activity:
To be fair, I was probably just lucky, but in my mind I had figured that two things would drive PW prices down:
- Tribal decks don't want PW
- ETH entering a bull market while GU cards are priced in $
It appears I was right on both counts. Most players think about card prices in $USD (a mistake if you ask me), but you can see that the $USD prices have fallen. This is the meta effect - I just don't think they are as critical a card anymore.
Second is the ETH pump. ETH is worth much more $USD than it was 2 years ago - and even 10 months ago.
Still, it is shocking to see the combined effect so stark: .015 ETH for a PW!
Diamond hands are apparently not always the path to Valhalla! Glad I sold.
Blade of Whiteplain
Now this goes against every trading advice I've ever read, but I can't help but check BoWP prices because I sold them and always want to know if I made a terrible mistake 😆
The sell thesis here is related to the PW thesis (tribal decks + ETH pump) but also just a general recognition in the new set(s) that they were purposefully boosting attack stats to 4 to prevent blade from being any good. Also, with both PW and Blade (and any card really) the more sets they release, the less valuable any single card is going to be.
So how did I do?
In $USD terms, only so so. This seems to suggest the card is still great despite the 4-strength cards being printed. People still want it in their decks (and since most think in $USD), the price has stayed up. However, once again, the bull market in ETH has made a huge difference.
Remember when I said using $USD as your unit of account is a bad idea? I give full credit to CarnivalBigTop for snapping me out of that. Start thinking in ETH. You buy and sell cards for ETH. Look to increase your ETH stack.
Hortuk
Lest you think I'm an oracle, I decided to hold on to Hortuk.
The main reason? I was still playing at the time, and I was using him in most of my decks.
The $USD price has gone up quite a bit, but I'm down .02 ETH. I don't worry about this one too much, though. I probably should have sold him before taking a break to play Blocklords for 2 months, but that's OK.
Other interesting bits
Wow! Tides of Fate took off! Sadly I never bought Francesca. Seems like a fun aggro deck that I would have enjoyed, and I don't have to check GUdecks to realize it's good. The price tells me. I do have Admiral Mayday and Xansiddion. Those were good buys:
Full disclosure I sold the first mayday at .02 ETH or so back when that was just $40. I'm honestly tempted to sell both of these cards right now before ETH keeps pumping! I'm still breakeven on Xan and a little ahead on Mayday.
Shredder
The last card I wanted to check was 'ol Shredder. I had my eye on this guy for a while, but I figured he'd get diluted by sealed. Looks like I was right (doesn't take a genius - everyone knew this):
Still, glad I didn't shell out $20 for him since I wasn't going to be playing him for a while.
Moving Forward
What's next? Honestly, there are so many promising web3 projects that it's hard to stay hitched to Gods Unchained. Don't get me wrong, the occasionally aggro dragon death game, foodchain nature, etc. is fun, but holding these expensive cards for control decks I'm unlikely to ever play again doesn't make much sense.
As you can gather, I already downsized my collection by a large margin months ago. These are my most expensive cards remaining:
I'm for sure holding both Nefs and canopic, because the deck I enjoy most these days is aggro dragon death.
I was hoping for a big pump with the mobile release. We did see new players, but it wasn't the floodgates opening like I was hoping:
And even worse, you can see the weekly unique player peak is already sliding. Web3 gaming is about to be absolutely saturated with options, and players will be less likely to put up with bugs or hang around unless they are having a great time.
And if you're in it for the money and don't care about fun, you have better options, too:
Anyway, that's it for me for now. I'm happy to see the usual suspects here grinding, playing, and having fun (I hope!).