Newsletter, March 2026
Gods Unchained — Monthly Community Update
Another big month for the GU team! We shipped a balance patch, launched Battle Pass 12, and pushed M7 into testing — but the moment that will define the next chapter of Gods Unchained is something else that’s been in the works, and what it means for competitive play in GU.
The Competitive Mode Is Real, and It’s Being Built
Alongside this newsletter, the team has published The Competitive Identity of Gods Unchained — And What Comes Next: a detailed look at the design thinking behind a new high-stakes competitive mode coming to the game this year.
The short version: a run-based mode, gated by rank, with a real entry cost and rewards that scale with how far you go. No advantages from collection depth. No cosmetic bonuses. Your deck and your play, measured against the best in the game.
The longer version is worth reading in full — it covers why ranked play alone doesn’t create the pressure that tests elite players, what “earned” rewards actually means in practice, and how the design was built to give competitive play an identity, not just an incentive.
Battle Pass 12 Is Live. The Meta Has Shifted.
Battle Pass 12 launched alongside the Roots balance patch — the culmination of several weeks of targeted changes to the competitive meta. We published a detailed breakdown of every change in the update and the reasoning behind each one. If you’ve been feeling a shift in the upper ranks over the past few weeks, this is where it started.
Roots of Ruin closed mid-month with strong engagement from you all, which we are very pleased with — all mythic cards have found a new home!
Battle Pass 13 is coming, and its reward structure is going to look different. We’re not ready to Spoil anything yet!
The Next Expansion Is in Testing — and the Art Is Already Turning Heads
Design on the next expansion is locked. The full set has moved into system testing and balancing, with all design completed ahead of schedule. That lead time matters — it means the team is iterating on quality rather than racing to hit a date.
One early signal worth noting: the response to Roots of Ruin mythic artwork was one of the strongest pieces of community feedback this cycle. That’s carrying directly into the artistic direction for what comes next. More as testing progresses.
Fixing What’s Been Broken
Alongside the new, the team put serious time into the existing game this month. Forge stability fixes resolved order timeout issues that had been affecting players for some time. Engineering has also begun a systematic pass through the full bug backlog — categorising, prioritising, and validating against the community issues that keep coming up. The work isn’t visible yet, but it’s being done.
What’s Coming
Next up: Battle Pass 13 and continued testing on the next expansion. The design team is also working through the next wave of Emporium content.
Coming soon also, the God Power Redesign is a deliberate refresh of underutilised powers to keep the meta moving without waiting for a full expansion. Several rounds of internal testing have already wrapped. Details to follow.
And the competitive mode: the design is locked, the engineering work is in motion, and it’ll be shipped. There’s a place being built for the players who’ve been asking for higher stakes — more on exactly what that looks like as we get closer.
Join the conversation on Discord — the community has been sharp this month, and there’s plenty to talk about.
— The Gods Unchained Team