It's ok but i find it too simple. Haven't lost a game since i got the third Foltest as commander (which was very early in the game). The common players i just wreck without thinking; the unique card players it's just a game of spy, spy, substitute spy with decoy, trick the opponent AI in wasting their scorch, use in the next rounds a medic to get another spy in play, then waste them. As long as you are on top on the card count you have nothing to worry about.

PS: The dragon with 7 power and the ability to kill the strongest melee opponent fighters if the total melee strenght is more then 10 is just op, basically destroys alone the monsters decks.

It's no Blitzball

It's total bullshit. Triple Triad in FFVIII is the best, IMO. How in the fuck am I supposed to win against those bullshit monster decks? This pic wasn't the worst case of bullshit I have come across.

Gwent is fun, but I wish you could speed up the turns. It takes way too long between plays.

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: Bait them. Bait Scoia'tael and Monster decks with shit cards and hero abilities in the first round so that they use up all of their best stuff early on - even in that picture you can see that it worked, as hero cards are one-time use only, so now the AI has lost a potential tie-breaker. Hell, get a Djikstra or Stennis in your deck, you'll roll them fairly often and drop them at the very beginning of the first round - their ability is that they are added to the count of your opponent, but you get two cards from your deck in your hand. It'll force your opponent into making a move and you get two free cards for the price of losing a round you've already decided to lose.

Seriously. Set yourself up for the next round in the first one. That medic card you have is perfect for such setups: you drop a high card, like that trebuchet or one of those catapults in round one, it goes to the discarded deck. Then, first thing you do in round 2 is you drop the medic and take that trebuchet or catapult and you start a round with 10+ points, which in turn forces the AI to react. Once you nail that combo, you can set up some crazy shit - for example, if you have Yennefer or another medic card, you can waste that medic card, then drop the second one in the next round and get three units on board for the price of one.

Another good way of handling the rush cards of Monster and Socia'tael decks is the Demise card. Not sure how it's in English, but it's the one that destroys the cards with the highest value. You can either just drop it, as they often have the same stats, or set up something like this: for example, if your enemy shits on you with a bunch of rush melees, then drop a couple of your own weak ones and then drop a frost, then the Demise card. It clears the deck of all the cards, since everyone has a value of 1 when in bad weather. You lose some bullshit, the AI loses most of its hand and you can drop it with a single catapult.

Beat the big tournament yesterday, it's fun and all, but it has some issues. The biggest problem is probably that without any other resource but cards it pretty much boils down to who has the most big cards and spies. It also sorta sucks how they don't give you one deck for each faction at the start. By the time you get enough cards to actually make more decks the additional cards you've gotten still makes Northern Realms the best deck (and it's probably the strongest faction on top of that).

And then ofc there's the lesser issue of balance, like the strongest card in the game (Commander's Horn) not having any real counterplay, Scorch hitting multiple targets and Villentretenmerth just being stupidly strong.

@ghostiet: I did just that and still lost that match. The third round was absolutely rage inducing. I was winning, had two cards left, and then the AI went from 10 points under to 35 ahead, and I had nothing to counter it. It was such bullshit.

Although I did finally beat a fucker who was using a monster deck. I shouted with joy and screamed at my screen like I was watching a Maple Leafs' game while Dion Phaneuf is on the ice. Each time he's on the ice, I have a massive urge to start shouting, "fuck you, Phaneuf!" It was the same type of thing after beating that fucking deck.

@rafaelfc: You can hit X (PS4) to make all the prompts/animations etc quicker.

Seems dumb, so far the AI uses all its' best cards round one and i win round 3 with one card. Granted i've only played 2 games in like 40 plus hours

I'm enjoying it a lot. That said, I don't think it would work as a multiplayer game unless they decided to only allow a selection of pre-built decks. There's too many cards that are just outright better than other cards for a balanced system. That's fine though, because it works fantastically as a fun story diversion.

No . Plus the first time I played it the game froze , so fuck that game .lol

Gwent's a blast. They put a lot of thought into how it's designed and enticingly scattered it through the game... As to to the matches themselves, it's a remarkably deep minigame with a bunch of strategies to take and opponents to defeat. Best of all, it's quick, straightforward, and easy to drop into or out of; embrace it at a whim or ignore it entirely, it's perfect for everyone.

Really, Gwent's the best minigame I've seen in over a decade. It's the sort of thing that could - or maybe even should - pass as a full game itself. The last time I thought that about something was FFVIII's Triple Triad. (I think that's what it's called.)

I love Dice Poker! Is there any dice poker in this game?!

...

Does anyone want to play some dice poker?

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: First of all, i don't know why you have a clear weather card since you are using a commander with the same skill. Get rid of it if you plan to use that Foltest in the future. In that situation: bait a scorch with the other melee with tight bond (so you don't have to worry about it for the catapults), use clear weather and the commander skill to make him waste other cards. You'll come to the second round in clear card advantage. If he pass instead: if he did after scorching, play the two catapults that will get you to 32 and win the round. If he didn't scorch and passed right away you'll be already at 16, use sigfried, zoltan and the siege 6. You'll be picking an extra card in any case. Now if you pick a frost grip (to use as last card against monsters) or another medic you are set, if not use the clear weathers and make him waste cards while you keep your units for the final round.

My advice: use the third foltest, get 1 frost grip and 1 clear weather in your deck (no other weather cards), 2 decoys, 2 horns, 1 scorch (2 if you don't have the dragon), all the spies, tight bond and medics you have. Rest is up to you, doesn't matter that much.

The game does an AWFUL job at teaching you how to play. Even with the in-game instructions, I was pretty confused my first handful of games. Initially I only played it at first because there was a quest chain associated with it, but once I actually taught myself how to play it and got a good grasp of it, I find it to be really fun. I now go out of my way to challenge people to the game, and I love getting rare cards from beating people. My only issue with it is that getting cards for the monsters deck is a pain in the ass. I'm 40~ hours in and still don't have a complete monster deck.

I really wish Dice Poker was back in though, just for variety if nothing else.

Dudes.

dudes ....

Dice poker sucked unbelievable amounts of drowner ass. It was the most boring tedious mindless mini game of rng ever conceived. Just doing the bare minimum games necessary for the quest was an exercise in teeth pulling. Throwing plain dice would have been more fun, and faster. Thank sucking god that shit is gone.

@cagliostro88: Guess what, it's what got drawn. I had no control over that until I had more better cards.

Gwent is OK. I see a lot of people getting really excited about it but I can't help but feel the strategy element to it is lacking. Just stack your deck with the best cards and you'll win every time. It's a fun little diversion though.

Hard to stop doing it, but as cardgames go it is not great.
I would also say it is too reliant on just getting good cards, Then again it is just pretty much there as a timewaster/collectible.

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: i meant why you had it in your deck, not in your hand. It's just redundant since you use that particular Foltest :)

@ares42: Weather cards counter Commander's Horn nicely, since the only thing to do in that situation is to either brute force a lane or have several weather cleaners, which you can bait the AI to waste fairly easily. As long as you have hero cards in your deck and the means to get them into your hand, the AI can go fuck itself with that Commander's Horn, as you can just drop them in the bad weather lane and call it a day, focusing on building other lanes, while they'll have a 20 at best from that lane. This tactic becomes problematic only with Nilfgaard, as the deck has several high-value cards, which makes Scorch a bit too important.

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: @cagliostro88:Exactly. Similarly, if you have a different Foltest (the default for example) and roll a fog at the beginning of the match, reroll that shit immediately.

@ghostiet: Weather cards can answer the Horn, sure, but they don't really counter it since the horn still remains in play and can either go back to it's original value or still give as much or more power than most normal cards. But most importantly, weather cards are generally pretty bad. They have a lot of potential, but are much too conditional, and can both stifle your own plays (not just nerfing your own lane, but also make your Clear Weather much less effective) and set yourself up to be trapped. All you're really doing by playing bad weather is allowing your opponent free reign with Scorches and giving his Clear Weather cards amazing value.

I dunno guys, it's no darts.

I mean, listen to that shit.

As someone who will likely never get Witcher 3, but loves card games, is there any chance there might be a standalone Gwent game to check out at some point?

@ares42: Eh, that's why those hero cards come in play when setting up bad weather - their scores are set in stone and can't be modified positively or negatively and can't be removed, so the AI has to waste cards if they don't have their own.

Sure, it's risky, but I've won plenty of matches by baiting the AI into wasting their higher value cards by playing the archery lane while having a Yennefer card - I leave myself with maybe one unit there in round 3, then I start a round with Yennefer, drop something potent to the melee/catapult lane through her (which negates Scorch nicely most of the time) and focus on building those. Then I wait 'til there's maybe 1-2 cards left each and I drop a fog card. It works well against Nilfgaard, since more often then not the AI playing that deck likes to put Commander's Horn onto the archery lane, since that's the one with the highest amount of bullshit (like the Nilfgaardian Archer).

A good way to negate weather cleaners is to have in hand those you don't need. Drop a Foltest default or use a Frost you don't want and the AI will finally waste that shit. Unless you have terrible luck and that AI keeps 3 of those fuckers, you're good to go - even if it has 2, you can wait until the last moment to drop the weather card you need.

I'd really like to see Gwent in a PvP setting, because that's what would make discerning if the balance is shit or not much easier. Right now, we're debating abusing AI patterns, so it's not that measurable - especially since I've had Monster decks that just annihilated themselves in round one with little input of mine.

@ghostiet: I think we're talking about two different things. You're talking about how to beat the AI, I was talking about the general balance of the game. If gwent had multiplayer weather cards would be basically be tech cards ala MC tech/Kezan in Hearthstone. They are usually not played, really strong if you suddenly bring it, but as soon as it gets popular it becomes bad again.

@cagliostro88: I didn't have anything good at that point in time. The only alternative cards I had were those non-special 1 rated shit cards. At any rate, I have improved and got gud. Spy, decoy, those medic cards, and of course, the siege cards of the same name that give an awesome buff, plus a morale boost in the mix make for an awesome time.

@ares42: I guess. It's hard for me to talk about balance since the AI is the only point of reference. I would have to play it with a human being to get a good sense of it.

@bollard: Doubt so, there's no balance as some cards have the exact same ability as others but with better strenght rating and it's "solvable" as long as you have a good deck. In a real world setting, the game would be pay-to-win in the worst way. In a fictional setting, it makes for a great distraction and your deck getting stronger means that you won't have to lose time replaying easy opponents.

It may be partly because I absolutely despised the dice poker minigame in the last two, but I really love gwent. Running around getting more cards and then playing are pretty enjoyable for me. I've never really played card games like it before either. Kinda want to find some similar games like it now.

I'm the kind of guy who hates mini games in open world games. Too often they're based around chance. Gwent is different, though. It's like a Beginner's Guide to Magic: The Gathering. I've also never played Magic: The Gathering, so I could be completely wrong on that assumption.

In any event, this Gwent shit is like crack and I have a problem.

@rubberbabybuggybumpers: Nice! Good job duder :)

@fear_the_booboo: Ah bummer.

The thing I want is an easier way to acquire cards. Like I've played maybe 10 games now, all against decks which are clearly crafted to be synergistic and not just random....I wanna be able to do that!

Worse, I've only got a single deck, and even filling out the cards for any of the other 3 factions doesn't seem like a thing I could do without 40 or 50 games of gwent, or being 40 hours into the game and finding every last merchant.

I want a merchant that sells nothing but gwent cards, maybe one for each faction. Even a set of NPCs that pay out in 3 card 'faction specific' packs per win just..something?

As it stands I've got a few interesting cards, but my deck is not being built..I am purely dumping the highest numbers into the deck I've got, replacing the lower, and putting the special cards I actually have which arn't trash. I've got a background in MTG and the specials you begin with , the weather effects, are all pretty garbage. Like, too narrow/random to be useful. Where as..I only randomly found a single 'double any row you want' horn from a merchant in god knows where, and have a couple training dummies (which are completely broken).

My deck isn't bad? And clear I'm having fun so I'll play a game whenever I run into an npc with the option but it gets damn repetitive when I can't look forward to the deck-building part of the game (the best part of a ccg in my opinion) for another, what, 50 hours?

Good potential, I enjoy it..I just wish they would let me buy all the cards I want from a single location.

@bladededge:That would make it much more interesting. I'd absolutely love the fuck out of this game if it were like that. Gwent definitely needs more options, and thankfully, CDPR has always been open for suggestions. They have yet to upset or annoy me with any of their DLC decisions or what-have-you.

@cagliostro88: There was this game with one of those high rollers about two hours ago. It was interesting, but I wasn't ever worried since all of my spies, medic cards, and two heroes ended up in my hand. {=o)

I know it's a bit of a different beast but I have to give that award to WoW for essentially just having pokemon as a mini game throughout the world. Second place would be Triple Triad. But third, most certainly, goes to Gwent.

I have been really liking the Gwent game as well. I enjoy FF's Triple Triad more, but this has some interesting mechanics. I built my N. Realms deck around drawing cards so I can usually outlast my enemies. It came in quite handy against this monster deck:

In between it's okay, and it sucks. I really don't care for it, so much so that any mission that has me doing it I will just not. And I don't collect any of the cards. There was one time when I did it for fun and it didn't really matter if I won, but it was more for a character than it was my own entertainment out of the game. It's well designed enough, but I don't much care for it is all. Like the games in the previous two Witchers, it largely feels like a game of luck because there is no knowing who will win, and there's very little strategy to it beforehand; you have to decide what you'll do to others cards after the choices have been made, if you have the correct cards to combat the opponents. I'm sure it'd change here though if you have incredibly good cards, which would make it have no challenge. So, it's a well designed game, and I'm glad it's in there, but it's the thing I least care to do in the game. However, you did ask if it's the best mini game in any open world, and I don't know, but there are a lot of bad ones, that also have the same issue of about just being about luck really. That game in Red Dead Redemption; I forget what it was, but it was terrible. I also really disliked the card game in Far Cry 3. I think it was card game. I just hate when they force you to do the mini game to complete a task.

30 plus hours? You must have went straight through the story. I mean, it would have made a bit more sense to say 100 plus. 30 plus tells me you didn't care to explore and experience that much outside of the main narrative, and there is much to be discovered and enjoyed beyond it. I agree about Gwent though.

Its alright, I think I'll like it more once I get rid of all the shitty 1 point cards without any abilities you start out with. Does anyone know if the difficulty you pick at the beginning of the game affects gwent AI?

@bezerker85: That was my issue early on against monster decks. They're pretty rough when you don't have a deck with a rating of 100 or more. Personally, I don't use decoys anymore. Use the spy cards. If one or more end up in your hand, use them. Yes, you're giving your opponent free points, but you also gain two cards, which means more turns for you. The medic cards are also great since they resurrect 'dead' cards from your pile. In my decks, I also have no more than two morale boosts. My strongest line is the siege line. Even with some weather crap and a scorch card being used against me, my opponents using monster decks are no match.

Fuck this game! Oh my god. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.

It sucks. How do I beat anyone with the starter deck? I ignored the minigame until I saw this thread, then went to play with some Novigrad merchant, and FUCK!

@viciousbearmauling: The dudes in Novigrad have a bit better decks then the ones in the starting areas, so play those guys first instead to get a better handle on the mechanics and a few utility cards (dummy, command, weather effects, scorch), which is all you really need to start winning even against strong decks.

It took like an hour but I eventually beat Stjepan with the basic deck, which apparently nets you Yennefer; which is a broken ass card however I think it's Nilfgaard only so going to be a while before I can actually use it.

Edit: Yennefer is neutral apparently, though that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

@fredchuckdave: I'm using Yennefer just fine with my Northern Realms deck.

That's your problem. You should be playing people in White Orchard or the various small towns first. The Novigrad and Skellige people have way better decks.

I really REALLY don't want to fall down this rabbit hole so I've barely touched it :p. Did play a game recently against a merchant. Tied 1-1 he is killing me with like 50 points in the final round, but I play a card that knocks a bunch of his cards down to 1 point. Twas exhilarating. Seems funs but man I'm afraid of getting too into it lol.

I'm sorry you must have misunderstood me, I'm still in Velen and I'm level 10, I explored almost every question mark, looted thousands of items, done all side quests. Still haven't entered Novigrad yet! I'm just saying that I've come across many cards and many "Wanna play Gwent?" options, and I ignored them, so I can't go around looking for them now.

@terminatorz: Oh, yes I did. I misunderstood the 'after I beat it'. Sorry. Alright, well yeah I agree. The game is much too long for another playthrough unfortunately. I would like to see what happens if the witch hunters weren't around though. I wonder if Kalkstein and a few other character would still be alive. First time I played The Witcher 2, I saved Triss, but I kind of don't remember everything that happened with that choice, and the last time I played it a while back, to get ready for three, somewhat unknowingly I chose to help Ioreth, and since I remembered that choice, I hesitantly chose that instead. I helped Triss already in three though to say the least. Novigrad and Velen are part of the same open map (Novigrad being the northern part, Velen the southern), so it's possible you've already been there within the 30 hours you've played. I went to Skellige and played there for some hours before realizing I should just finish up everything in the other area first, that's when I was still getting the hang of it all (45 hours in). Four days plus five or so hours in so far. I'm about to play it again.