The Dread Awakening expansion set introduced a new game mechanic for the Magic God - Elderytch Mysteries. These are a new set of spells that do not exist as minted cards (NFTs), but are generated exclusively from other cards. They are organized in tiers and there also a few companion cards that work off them.
In this post, I'll showcase the Mysteries (as I don't think there is a good resource with all the cards on display, in color), explain how they work, and lay out a few strategies for playing them effectively.
Screenshots were taken from the game client.
The individual card images come from the official assets server https://card.godsunchained.com/.
The spells themselves come in 4 tiers, the same as card Rarity. Each tier has 3 Mysteries, except for the Legendary tier, which has only one.
You will notice the color of the art gets increasingly more saturated and light beams are added at the Legendary Rarity tier.
When you play a generator card, you are presented with a choice of 3 Mysteries. The first time you chose one of 3 Common Mysteries. The second time you can choose one of the other 2 that haven't been picked up yet, or you can move to the next tier, in which case you don't get any card. If you decide to obtain all 3 Mysteries at the current tier, the fourth time will show you only the option to upgrade.
You are only shown the option to advance after you picked at least one Mystery at each tier, so you can't just race to the Legendary tier in just 4 Mysteries. The minimum would be to uncover 2 Mysteries per tier, which adds up to a minimum total of 7 Mysteries if you just select one Mystery at each tier and move on.
After upgrading, you get presented with the 3 cards of the next Rarity tier, and the same rules as before apply. At the Legendary tier there is only one spell to choose from. If you uncover more Mysteries after picking up the Legendary Elderytch Sacrifice, the cycle starts over from Common with all options available again.
The win condition is to obtain a discounted Avatar of Magic from the Legendary Elderytch Sacrifice and play it with another cheap spell so that you have some mana left to generate enough Beams to win the match. Or hope the Avatar survives the opponent's turn and then deal lethal on the next turn.
A common strategy with Avatar of Magic is to hit it with the Beams if there are no other targets on the board, which will allow you to deal 15 damage to the opponent's God, before the Avatar is destroyed and you stop being able to generate more Beams.
The standard approach is to obtain a Divine Birth Rare Mystery, save it to Dreadtouch another cheap creature and obtain a 6 mana target for Elderytch Sacrifice, which will generate a 3 mana Avatar of Magic.
The Common Mortal Rise Mystery is often used to summon a 5/5 with Blitz, able to remove most threats from the board. This will often happen by sacrificing Cosmic Witness in the same turn it is played.
The Rare Divine Secret Mystery will often win matches by protecting and healing your God, giving you enough time to reach your win condition.
You can use Pyrrhic Knowledge to recover critical Mysteries from the Void, for example to heal in an emergency or to generate another Avatar or Magic.
These cards are also frequently paired with Arrandion, which means the Epic Leyline Flow for ramping is also a popular choice to quickly Manasurge Arrandion as a win condition, instead of relying on the Avatar of Magic. Leyline Beam can deal damage to the opponent's God if Dreadtouched, so it may be a good choice to ensure lethality.
These cards are not really popular in the current meta, but we never know if this situation could change with new Game Modes or as new expansions are released.
