by guest writer SnarkElemental
Mythgard continues to grow with every patch, acquiring new features, balance tweaks, and layers of polish that bring it ever closer to leaving beta. Last Tuesday’s update was no different. It quietly came and went, adding support for custom-curated Cube drafts in the game’s tournament mode, fixing a handful of glitches, and mercifully nerfing Scion of Pride, Temptation, and Allfather’s Horn to hopefully contest the reign of Valkyries and especially RO Midrange in the meta. Under the surface however, the latest patch added much, much more, and it all has to do with Mythgard’s next expansion.
Expansion When?
A new expansion to the game, entitled Rings of Immortality, which adds ~130 new cards, a new path, and a new power, is on its way. Frankly it has been for far too long. But amidst complications for a small dev team implementing an ambitious tournament system and dealing with the effects of a certain global pandemic, we have to accept that the roadmap on Mythgard’s website which placed the release of the game’s first expansion in April 2020 is wildly outdated at this point.
The game’s ranked tab offers us some hints as to when the next expansion will drop.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have any idea when the next expansion drops.The current ranked season is set to be the last one before the release of the new set, as well as Mythgard’s last season in beta. Though its current end-date in client is a big fat TBD, all ranked seasons so far have been either 2 or 3 months long. That would put the end of the current one, and the release of Rings of Immortality, at the end of either July or August. And for added confirmation of the next set’s impending release, you need look no further than...
Q-Mode
Q-Mode is a hidden option that some of the game’s most trusted players gained access to after Tuesday’s patch, which allows them to see and use cards from the upcoming expansion. Don’t worry, they can’t use these unobtainable cards against the rest of the playerbase. Players using decks that include them can only be matched against each other.
The Q in Q-Mode stands for “quality testing”, which is the whole purpose of the mode being included in the first place. As we speak, a contingent of the game’s top players are working hard to ensure that by release, the next wave of cards is as balanced and bug-free as possible. And with those cards all already in the client, we can’t be too far off from getting to experience them ourselves. The devs have said on Mythgard’s official Discord server that, while Q-Mode is restricted to a small handful of elite players for now, more may be allowed in as the set gets closer to release.
Spoiler Season
Unfortunately for us Mythgard peasants, the devs have requested that all Q-Mode testers remain silent for now about all the new cards they get to experience. The windfall of card reveals we were all hoping for isn’t quite here yet, though spoiler season is still in full swing. The devs at Rhino Games haven’t opened the floodgates, but we do get to see the trickle of cards they’ve handed out to various streamers and content creators for our viewing pleasure. I’ve done my best to make sure all of these cards are posted on the game’s subreddit, r/mythgard, but for a more reliably up-to-date, professional spoiler gallery, be sure to visit mythgardhub.com, where Noah is compiling all the revealed cards in one place.
One of the earliest spoiled cards, revealed on Ejecty’s tournament stream.
Of course, those are just the official spoilers.
One of the devs, rhino_MarthaStewart, has graciously talked on Discord about an upcoming cycle of cards that has yet to be properly spoiled. Each of the 6 colors has access to a spell with the tag “Omen” which has an immediate effect like all spells, but also adds a 1-cost item to your hand. The items each have their own effect, and when they are all played in conjunction, a 20/20 minion is created; think Exodia crossed with the Infinity Stones. The specifics of how this will work are still vague, but we do know some more details about the green Omen of the cycle, because MarthaStewart told us.
The placeholder art for the green Omen used internally by the developers, shared by rhino_MarthaStewart on Discord.
The green omen is a mythic spell that costs 5 mana, and one green gem. It returns the bottom 3 cards of your boneyard to your hand, and the item it adds to your hand gives a friendly minion the same Demise effect as Hopeless Necromantic: being replaced by the bottom minion of your boneyard. This might not be the final version mind you, but 6-color Omens looks to be an exciting archetype to build nonetheless.
It was only as recently as Sunday that the expansion’s name was revealed via a casual name drop from one of the devs on Discord, but we already know from a combination of assorted leaks and art pieces that its theme features a sporting event, modeled after the Olympic games that were meant to take place this summer before the outbreak of COVID-19. See, for example, the tennis rackets featured in Wry Trickster’s art, or the suspiciously Olympic-esque logo of overlapping colored rings that appears in graffiti behind Impoverished Ogre.
The logo of six rings behind Impoverished Ogre invokes both the real life Olympic logo and Mythgard’s six colored factions. Could this logo or the event it represents be the “Rings of Immortality” the set is named after?
Those are all the spoilers I can talk about without going into the forbidden area of leaks. I should note that across the internet, some of the artists working on pieces for the set are sharing their work, so if you want to get oh so slightly ahead of the game when it comes to art spoilers, feel free to do some more digging.
The Future
Once Rings of Immortality is released, Mythgard will finally be out of beta. This is an important milestone for any game, though at this point a largely symbolic one. Just think that as great as Mythgard is currently, Rhino Games doesn’t even consider it a complete product yet. If that doesn’t tell you how high they’re aiming, I don’t know what does.
Mythgard’s player base right now is small. While it's nice to know individual members of the community, consistently match with them in the client, and talk to them on Discord, Mythgard can’t afford to be as tiny as it is now forever. Thankfully, the game is growing, however slowly. It already has more features in-client than many of the large players in the genre, and the size of its card catalogue will be increasing very soon. Once Mythgard is out proper, and maybe gets a bit of a marketing push, I have hope that this game can gain the rest of the needed momentum on the basis of quality alone.
So here’s to Mythgard’s future, both the short term and the long term. The team at Rhino Games is putting a lot of work into making sure the game is a success, and it's clear they care about it deeply, as do many of the names and faces in Mythgard’s community. Plus, early reports from Q-Mode testers on Discord are very positive. Let’s hope that’s a good omen.