Tuesday, July 23, 2019

A guide to getting started with Gods Unchained (The Crypto TCG where your cards have value)

Hey folks. I started playing MTG about 20 years ago and then over the past maybe three have taken a fondness to Hearthstone. I've played close to every day and generally love the game.

The one thing I didn't love when compared to physical MTG is that in hearthstone or other digital TCGs the cards didn't really have any value. Of course you can go the route of trying to sell your account, but that always felt really shady and not exactly worth the effort. I've spent hundreds on Hearthstone, but if I ever decided to quit I would be entirely out my investment, and even without deciding to quit, I can't sell cards I don't care for.

Enter Gods Unchained.

Gods unchained is an ethereum based blockchain card game that is now playable in early access in a balancing and testing stage. The game has already made over $4,000,000 in sales, with 10% of all sales going to tournament prize pool funds. The most exciting part of Gods Unchained is that any cards you obtain will be trade-able through the ethereum blockchain as they are all digital assets stored on the chain. Personally I have spent maybe two thirds of an ethereum so far (roughly $134) and pulled a 1/6 card that GUdecks estimates to be worth 9.25 ethereum once trading goes live, as it will not be enabled until testing is fully complete and the genesis block ends.

I decided that I would make a guide for anyone interested in jumping in. The game has several pre-made decks available that can be played with, in addition to arena style draft mode and constructed play, and at the moment you will receive several core card packs for setting everything up and getting started.

Note: This is all only possible on Desktop at the moment. The developers absolutely intend to eventually make an app based version for Android and iOS Devices, but at the moment, browser only.

1. Install Metamask, the browser based ethereum wallet.

To start with, you will need Metamask, which operates as an in browser wallet in which to store ethereum based assets including the cards that you obtain. You can obtain the Metamask plugin which is compatible with the Chrome browser at https://metamask.io/

You can follow the video on the Metamask home page for information on getting Metamask set up, although it's fairly self-explanatory.

2. Set up an account on Gods Unchained

To do this, head over to the Gods unchained official website here and open your free pack. Metamask will prompt you if logged in to connect to the website at some point during this stage, so just accept that. After doing this and collecting the cards and hitting continue, you will be prompted to create an account. After doing this, if you are not prompted to download the game, simply click the home icon in the upper left and there will be a link at which to download the game. Log in and that's it! You're set.

To purchase cards:

Purchasing cards will require Ethereum, which if you aren't familiar with you can essentially think of as something between a digital asset, and a stock. The most secure and simple way to do this is to set up an account on Coinbase.

Coinbase is one of the most well known and secure ways to purchase cryptocurrency such as ethereum and will as such require you to verify your identity in a few ways in order to comply with federal laws. Signing up using this link will get you $10 of bitcoin for free, but after signing up you will want to link a payment method and buy Ethereum.

After purchasing Ethereum, you will have to "withdraw" the Ethereum to Metamask. When Coinbase asks you for an address to send the withdrawing Ethereum to, simply click the Metamask plugin icon in your browser, and click on the "account" at the top of the panel to copy your Metamask address. You will then have to wait for the withdrawal to verify on the blockchain. This shouldn't take any more than 10 minutes typically.

After this is done, go back to the Gods Unchained website and go to get cards. After doing this you will have the option of several packs, although I would recommend the "rare" packs at first to establish quantity over quality. overall, you have pretty much the same chance of drawing a rare card outside of the one of five cards that is guaranteed to be higher quality. After you click purchase packs, metamask should pop up with a transaction for you to confirm, although sometimes you will have to click the metamask plugin to get the confirmation to appear.

Then once you have confirmed the transaction, you shouldn't have to wait for very long before your transaction will confirm and you will be able to open your packs!

This may all sound complicated, but I promise it really isn't. I'm not a tech wiz, and this is all hobbyism for me. Once you do it once, it will seem extremely simple.

If anyone has any questions at all, feel free to ask here in comments or message me!

***** For the sake of transparency, the gods Unchained link I supplied and the Coinbase link I supplied are both referral links and I will be rewarded a little bit for people signing up using them, although I am not affiliated with either company. I appreciate anyone who uses these links to sign up for either site in return for this little introduction to getting started. Thanks!



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