Leaders in Legendary: Untethered Soul’s Carlitos
Carlos discovered Legendary: Game of Heroes through the advice of one of his patients. As a full-time physiotherapist in Melbourne, he’s occasionally solicited by acquaintances for some pro bono treatment, so he found himself at a friend’s house, working out the kinks of that friend’s girlfriend’s neck, when he caught her tapping through a multicolored gem board and assassinating an endless line of eldritch beasties. “I asked what she was playing, and she goes, ‘Oh, I’m playing this game where you get the cards and match the gems and you get to smash monsters. Come join my guild!’” remembers Carlos. “I was like, ‘Alright,’ so that’s how it started.”

That fateful physio session was almost two years ago, and Carlos’ life hasn’t been the same since. Today, he’s the guild leader of Untethered Soul and he’s doing his best to reshape the power structures in the Legendary community.
“You know, you walk into the guild that you think is going to be super amazing and it’s just quiet. And everyone is only worried about themselves. Getting to know the players was something I just needed to do as a person.”
Full-time medical professionals aren’t exactly the stereotype for hardcore guild leaders. This is something that Carlos knows quite well; he’s never been the type to bite off more than he could chew, and he speaks like someone who’s genuinely surprised to be in a position of authority. In fact, his ascension was gradual, almost accidental. After months of grinding with his real life friends, Carlos applied for entry into War Beasts 2, the sister guild for the top-tier players in War Beasts. He was admitted into the roster, and after a month of high performance, he was promoted into War Beasts, which took him by surprise. Carlos credits his success to simply being the kind of player who “gives a damn;” he might not be the most active player or the highest spender in the game, but you could never doubt his dedication. That moxie eventually lead to Carlos’ promotion into War Beasts’ governing council, which is where he tried his first hand at in-game leadership. His goal was to soften the culture; when he walked into the guild, he found a community of super dedicated players who rarely spoke to each other, and hadn’t developed the intimate kinships you’d expect from a tight-knit organization. War Beasts, he says, needed to get more amicable.
“You know, you walk into the guild that you think is going to be super amazing and it’s just quiet. And everyone is only worried about themselves,” he says, on his time in War Beasts. “[Getting to know the players] was something I just needed to do as a person.”
“Some people say to me, ‘Oh, you’re too nice,’ and, ‘You want everyone to like you.’ On a social level, if you are not using your people and talking to them and know what their concerns are and directly addressing them, that’s wrong,” continues Carlos. “I think if you aren’t doing that and you are not having fun with them, then why would you have a guild? Why would you want to have a guild with all these people who are angry?”
“I wanted to create [a guild] that had a bit more soul in it. I feel like what I’ve been able to do is give players who really want to work the opportunity to show what they’re made of on a platform of soul. But also, we’re a bunch of misfits. We’re not perfect.”
All told, Carlos was in War Beasts for about a year, and left after relationships were strained with two other high-ranking members of the guild. (This is fairly predictable as far as online gaming goes. “War Beasts was the top guild in the world,” he says. “There’s always going to be drama around them. It’s just what happens.”) Carlos still keeps some friendships within his former home — in fact he plans on meeting up with one of them in real life later this year — but outside of that he tends to keep his distance. That being said, it goes without saying that Carlos’ exit from War Beasts left him a little dismayed. Ending things with a guild often feels like ending things in a relationship; it makes you want to start over and fix all the things that went wrong. Credit to Carlos, that experience directly inspired his founding philosophy for Untethered Soul. “I started the guild because I felt like it was something that was needed,” he says. “Something that couldn’t be taken away from me so easily.”

“What I wanted to do is I wanted to create [a guild] that had a bit more soul in it,” he continues. “I feel like what I’ve been able to do is give players who really want to work the opportunity to show what they’re made of on a platform of soul. But also, we’re a bunch of misfits. We’re not perfect. We all have lives. We can’t stop our lives and not be so active in the game. We set minimums but we don’t adhere to them and we realize that people are people and you need to talk to them first and see what you can do first to empower them, rather than just sort of “not playing, okay, we’re going to kick you.”
Don’t let that geniality make you think that Carlos doesn’t have lofty goals. He very much wants to make Untethered Soul platinum, but he also wants to achieve that without sacrificing his personal health, or his enjoyment of Legendary. That, he says, is far too often an oversight among hardcore players.
“People can grow in a guild,” says Carlos. “We’ve had a lot of players that we have taken chances on because when we started the guild, we couldn’t recruit really strong named players, but what we’ve done is look at new players and those seeds are starting to sprout a bit. We’re really happy how things are going at the moment.”
This is also Carlos’ first turn as guild leader. (He never inherited that position in War Beasts, instead he was just on the council.) It’s a large responsibility, especially considering that he holds down two jobs (in a non-profit that does outreach work in the Philippines, and as a consulting physician,) when he’s not making calls in-game. Carlos tells me the best advice he has for any other prospective leaders is to open yourself up to your members; ask them questions, soak up the knowledge they share. It’s the same mindset that made him excel in War Beasts, really, expanded into a doctrinal ethos.
That being said, he still puts in a ton of man hours. Carlos averages at least 16 hours of passive tagging each day, with an additional four hours of active playing in his spare time off the clock. He routinely plays from his work bathroom, and says he’s even logged on from the top of Machu Picchu. That rigorous schedule works for Carlos, because the game is his primary hobby. There are no other mobile games in his repertoire, because he simply doesn’t have the bandwidth alongside the multitude of guild leader responsibilities at his feet.
That being said, Carlos does manage to maintain a full social life, and promises me that he manages to get a full six hours of sleep every night, (though some people in Untethered Soul have their doubts.) Overall, he hopes that Legendary will continue to be a reasonable venture for players who want to both play at a high level, and not risk burnout by going too far down the rabbit hole. This is the dream Carlos is working on. It’s no secret that Legendary favors the raw grind, but if he’s able to build a guild that reaches the stars without sacrificing anyone’s humanity, it’ll be a boon for the entire community.
“I don’t want to have this game turn into something that’s going to be unworkable, that causes all my friends to retire. I want sustainability. And that’s sort of why Untethered Soul is here,” finishes Carlos. “If you’ve been here in your life, you can’t do the sort of number of points that we require, that’s absolutely fine, because that’s you and your life and we’ll just keep you. We’ll keep you around.”
Luke Winkie is a Brookly, NY-based entertainment writer. His work has appeared on A.V Club, Sports Illustrated, Kotaku, Playboy, Mel, PC Gamer, Vice, Glixel, and Rolling Stone
