Gwent: The Witcher Card Game

Like most people, I discovered Gwent when I played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. A delightfully addictive card game, Gwent took a life of it’s own and many players, including me, put aside the main quest in The Witcher 3 to run around the map to collect the cards. Seeing the unexpected phenomenon, developer CD Projekt released an open beta version of Gwent as a free-to-play digital collectible card game in May 2017.

I didn’t know about the game till much later but once I knew of it, I joined the beta and did all the things you were supposed to do. Climb the leaderboard; get the cards; join a Facebook group; play the game and have fun. Then six months ago, CD Projekt announced a revamp of the game before the official release in Oct 2018. Like most players in the beta, I was less than pleased with the announcement but I understood the reasoning behind it.

The game was in beta and CD Projekt do have the right to make changes to the game before the release. Hell, nowadays there are companies who change their games even after the official release! So I was willing to give them a chance and after a few days of playing it daily, the results are in.

First off, forget about Gwent before the revamp. It is now a totally different game and some players have begun to call it (old) Gwent and (new) Gwent. They are not entirely wrong. Gwent is now a more tactical game which requires you to have more interaction during the round. (Old) Gwent was more strategic and you don’t really do a lot of interaction with your cards after putting them down on the board.

That is good and I like this new change. Having ways to interact with the cards on the board gives players options and that’s never a bad thing. Having a more tactical aspect to the game is good especially since the strategic component of the game wasn’t completely lost. The decks are more varied now (though this may change as time goes on) and there’s more ways to counter decks even when you’re faced with a bad matchup. Push hard when facing a Scoia'tael deck with Eithne to get a short Round 3? Kill everything on the board when facing a Foltest Specters deck? It is possible. I find the different factions in the game to be more balanced after the revamp.

Also with the lowering of power in the game, there’s less point slamming and decks are now more effect-based. I generally find this a welcome change. I also welcome the design of the new board. I had my doubts when I first saw it but after playing for a few days, it kind of grew on me. It gives more favour to the game and makes you feel like you are a general in charge of an army.

However the game is also much slower now. (Old) Gwent was very fast paced and full of card chains. The new game is not. In the old game, I could easily reached the second tier of the daily rewards but now it would take about two hours to reach it. I think a shorter timer could be the answer but no matter what, CD Projekt need to do something to make the game shorter.

I also find some of the rules on the cards to be kind of arbitrary. For example; why does Foltest’s Pride has reach 3 when it needs to be in the melee row for it’s order to work? That doesn’t make much sense right?

Still, I do enjoy the game and is still playing it. I won’t say Gwent is now a great game after the revamp but I don’t think it is worse after the change. It is I believed just slightly better. So the results of the revamp is…mixed!