PaWeloWi joins us to go over his experience as a new Gwent player on the recent Android device release!
To honor GWENT: The Witcher Card Game's recent release on Android, I've decided to make a quick overview of the basics and some of the things that I considered the most essential when I first started playing Gwent.
What is Gwent?
You might be familiar with Gwent from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, as the card game was built into it as a mini-game for you to play while passing by the tavern. Gwent isn't your typical CCG where you play your cards and attack with them to reduce your opponent's health to 0. Instead, to win a match in Gwent, you must have more points than your opponent by the end of each round. Every unit card has a health value that also determines the amount of points the card provides. At the end of a round, if you have more points than your opponent, you get a crown half and win the round. The player who gets both halves wins the match. If the players have an equal amount of points at the end of a round, both players get a crown half. If both players get two halves, the match results in a draw.
A match of Gwent consists of either two or three rounds. At the start of your first round, you draw ten cards from your deck. To increase your odds to draw a favourable hand, you may choose up to three cards to shuffle back into your deck and redraw. The player who gets to go first, starts with a stratagem card, as the starting player usually ends up in a card disadvantage later on. The default stratagem card, Tactical Advantage, allows the player to boost an allied unit by 5. During their turn, a player can play one card from their hand and activate additional abilities on other cards. The round ends when both players have passed or played all of their cards. At the start of the next round, all cards on the game board are sent to the graveyard. Unplayed cards will remain in your hand, and you will draw three additional cards from your deck to reinforce your hand. It is advisable to play your weaker cards during the first round and save the more powerful cards and combos for later.
Game Board and Card Interaction
Each side of the game board is divided into two lanes: Melee and Ranged. Card placement is often crucial, as some of the cards have special abilities that can only be activated when the card is played on a specific lane. Cards can only interact with each other through their abilities. There are too many abilities to cover in one article, but here are a few examples: Deploy is an ability that activates when the card is played. Deathwish, on the other hand, activates when the card is destroyed and sent to the graveyard, and Order is an ability activated manually by the player.
Deckbuilding and Rewards
A deck must contain at least 25 cards and at least 13 unit cards. The card types are unit, special, artifact ad stratagem. Special cards are sent to the graveyard after casting, and artifacts are placed on the board. Every card has a provision cost and a deck cannot exceed 165 provisions. The game offers you five starter decks, each for a different faction. The factions are Monsters, Scoia'tael, Skellige, Northern Realms, Nilfgaard and Syndicate. A deck can only include cards from the corresponding faction and neutral cards. Each faction has seven different leader abilities to choose from and their own unique playstyle. When choosing a leader ability, the game shows you a tooltip with a few cards that would work well with it. Choosing a leader ability will also boost the provision limit of your deck.
And finally, the rewards! By completing contracts and quests, you can collect reward points that can be spent in the reward book for card kegs, avatars, leader skins and card backs. In the patch 1.6, an additional reward pass, Journey, was added to the game. The Journey unravels an exciting story and rewards you with additional reward points and other exclusive rewards for collecting crown halves! And don't forget to press the GG button at the end of a match to reward your opponent with 5 ore as a gesture of good will!
I hope my quick overview gave you all the essential information and got you interested! Gwent is by no means an easy game to master, and this article has only scratched the surface of its incredibly complex gameplay. It is, however, a fairly easy game to learn and enjoy as a fan of The Witcher or card games in general. But that's all I have for you today! I want to thank you for reading my article and wish everyone a wonderful day!
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