When I got my hands on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I was immediately gripped by it. The world, the characters, the presentation. Everything popped and stood out. Everything except this stupid little card game I played in a tavern right near the beginning of the game. A card game called Gwent.

The tutorial for it was simple enough, it's a game where each card has a number value and when you play that card, that number is applied to your points. Simply have more points than your opponent over 2 rounds and you will win.

But, I mean, I didn't care. It was such a huge game and the hype surrounding it was going off the charts, I didn't care about some stupid little card game. I just wanted to get in and stab some monsters with my sword.

And I did that. For what must have been over 100 hours. I avoided every instance of playing Gwent because that's not why I was there. I missed out on bonus objectives for quests, I missed out on rare exclusive cards from characters that would either go on to die or just leave all together.

In fact, there is a casino you go to for a quest that allows you, as far as I'm aware, to earn a ton of money by beating the patrons. But I decided to just get down to the nitty gritty and simply stab dudes with my sword.

The funniest thing about Gwent, easily the funniest thing about my entire 50000 hour long playthrough of Witcher 3, is that when I did finally sit down and try to get into Gwent, I fell in love. Like, 10-year-old-just-discovered-Yu-Gi-Oh love. And any former 10 year old out there can tell you, that's some intense shit.

The rules of Gwent are simple: At the start of the round you draw 10 cards, but then must redraw 2 cards by choosing which 2 cards get sent back to your deck. This can help you weed out the chuff and get better cards in your hand.

The round system is set to a "2 out of 3" win system, as you have two life gems. You lose a life gem(and the round) when your opponent has a higher number value than you do. Since can't draw more cards, the usage of "Spy" cards become invaluable.

Once summoned, spy cards are placed on the enemies side of the field, and then you draw two cards. The interesting thing about these cards is once placed on either side of the field, the cards will stay with that player until the game is over. You keep your cards, there's no risk of losing your stuff, but what I mean is, they stay in that players discard pile. So they can place a spy card on your side of the field, the round ends, then you can summon that card with the help of a medic card. So while the game may be as simple as "Have more points than your opponent" the strategies in which you can do is staggering.

Easily my favorite cards in the game, and that says a lot because I only have 2 of them, the medic cards! Once placed, you can summon a card from your discard pile. It's important to note that nothing works on Hero Cards, which means you can't lose your hero and then immediately summon them back again. But these cards work in a pinch when your opponent uses spy cards, which means next round you get to summon them and a bunch of other cards!

I would say that Hero Cards are the Bread N Butter for your deck, only because by this point I have, I think, all of them. But the reality is I have better more reliable cards. But the hero card, as depicted by Witcher 3's main cast of characters, and some important supporting characters, are the muscle. They are who you send in when you're down 15 points and have to make back the difference before you lose.

Other than the basics of the cards, you've also got a leader card that gives you a special perk. For example, my current leader card allows me to double the strength of my siege unit cards, which, considering how many siege cards I have, can, and usually is, the wining move.

Unfortunately, if I had to say anything bad about Gwent it's that the A.I. seems to let you win by making decisions that ultimately hurt them more than help them. One game I played with a guy who had a shit-ton of spy cards. He was winning, and I mean BOY was he kicking my ass, and then all of the sudden he started playing his spy cards. While yes, it was allowing him to keep drawing more cards, he gave me like 5 cards, making my score tower his, resulting in me winning. Another game, which is pretty similar to what happens in my above video, the person built an entire line of close combat cards. There had to be at least 10 of them. The line itself was imposing, but then he used a commanders horn which DOUBLES the strength of each card. But he used it on the ranged combat cards, of which there was only one. So the one card sitting there went from 5 to 10 points, whereas he could have very easily won if he had used the horn on his close combat cards.

It's funny to point all of his out, as it's just one small feature of a major game in both scale and scope. A game I spent a majillion hours in without even touching the card aspect. But when it comes to Gwent there is good and bad. Artificial difficulty that makes it impossible to win sometimes, and also once you get good cards, impossible to lose. Regardless of the issues found within the Gwent side of the game, or anywhere else, it's a solid addition to the game and one well worth digging hours into building your deck, living out the open world Yu-Gi-Oh game you never knew you wanted. Well, be damn sure of this: It's here.

Play Gwent. Love Gwent.

Yo I'm N7 I do blogs and stuff and I wanted to let you know about Gwent because I passed that shit by for like 40,000 hours of my Witcher 3 playthrough and that turned out to be a big mistake. I also got my own website but it doesn't have ads or anything weird like that. Unless you want to buy some blackmarket health tablets, in which case I know a guy...

I promise I will learn it before my next playthrough on death march.

It's so great. There's this one quest that eventually opens up into a tournament where you have to duel some really tough people. It was great. Shame I beat them though because I don't know where to find any tougher opponents. Innkeepers are super easy.

Hopefully the expansions add onto Gwent. There's a free DLC pack coming out in a few days which will add more cards but I don't know if that will be enough.

I could learn it now and still see tournament, but I want the games to actually matter in the story and I need to beat those NPCs with special cards.

Oh that's right! I sort of forgot you need to beat all of those people first. Don't forget to duel innkeepers and whatnot. You can get some pretty good cards from random people in the world.

WHAT'S THIS ABOUT NEW CARDS? TELL ME MORE.

I played it once, had no answers to three insane 10 cards, and said fuck Gwent forever. It didn't help that upon the first tutorial, the game crashed.

Maybe I'll reconsider when I get to 50,000 hours. But as of now, whenever I meet a merchant and Geralt wants to say "Actually, I want to play some Gwent," it takes me out of the experience. I would never even think to say that sort of thing.

Probably my lack of culture.

It seems next week's free DLC were exposed somewhere and it's going to be a new mission called Fool's Gold and the Ballad Heroes pack, which look to be neutral cards, which would mean they can be used across all deck types.

It's actually pretty fun. You should give it a try. The only time I play Witcher 3 now is to do some Gwenting(Which sounds super dirty said out loud). You get some cards and stuff and can build your deck and become the pokemon master you always wanted to be but couldn't because your parents could never afford a gameboy so you were stuck pretending. Or something.

I absolutely love Gwent, which is not something I expected to even be in the game. It's not exactly surprising that I love it, though, seeing as how my younger self was deep, deep, into Yu-Gi-Oh. I think I have about 500-600 cards sitting in a box somewhere to this day. As someone who also really despises most gambling activites in almost all open world games, it really is a testament to just how good Gwent is, that it is still an engaging and interesting game to play, in a game that is already so god damn good. There is just so much to do, and pretty much all of it is interesting and well written, and I still will catch myself going: "Man, I know your wife/husband is in trouble and shit, but d'ya wanna go a couple rounds in Gwent? I wanna try out this new card.".

@n7: I didn't think we'd get more cards until the expansions. I also forgot until just now that we get more cards in the expansions.

Geralt is the true King of Games.

Same here. There's a herbalist in Skellige that you can duel for a unique card and I was actually kind of disappointed to find that I had to go through a whole quest to even get the option. I'm like, dude, I get it, but I just want to play some Gwent.

There needs to be some kind of Gwent mobile game to saite my hungwent.

EDIT: I should point out that I went deep into Yu-Gi-Oh as well. I think I still have a folder filled with cards. I remember I went to a flea market on my 13th birthday and bought a holographic 1st edition Barrel Dragon for like $26. That shit is like crack. It is no wonder we like Gwent so much.

@csl316: I actually had a very similar experience at first. The regular crashing put me off of keeping with it until pretty late in the game, at which point my cards couldn't hold up to the competition.

But once I decided to give it an honest try I went around to every inn I could find and bought out all their cards and then did all the Gwent related quests for the unique cards and things went way better. It's now one of my favorite parts of the game. No crashing either.

Also I find the idea that the dark depressing world of The Witcher is obsessing over a collectible card game and will jump at the idea of pulling out their deck to play anywhere and everywhere like a bunch of 10 year old playing Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon fucking hilarious. One of my favorite moments in the game was realising that the head madame of the whorehouse was obsessed with a card game and brags to you about her awesome deck.

Gwent is fuckin dope. I just finished the tournament and I've played every merchant/innkeeper/blacksmith/herbalist I've encountered, and I've done all of the gwent quests that've popped up. I still don't have a complete deck, so I'm guessing someone else pops in the story at some point later that I can play.

After ignoring them for the first half of my journey, I've come around hard on utilizing spies, medics, and decoys. At the beginning of one round, I had 17 fucking cards in my hand haha.

@theblue: Indeed. Judging by the name "Ballad Heroes", I'm expecting to get some badass cards.

Oh yeah I sorta forgot to point that out. I heard about a LOT of people crashing but I didn't start Gwenting until they fixed it, and I've done every single duel in the game without a single crash. Even played some innkeepers so much they'll only give me crafting materials. So it's totally safe to dive in.

I too love the idea of this world being downtrodden and ripe with anguish at every turn, yet this 97 year old Sheriff Warrior rides through town with a deck in his holster, just ready to duel any merchant woman or child in his way. It's only a shame you couldn't get an alternate end to some of the boss battles by choosing to duel them with Gwent. Now THAT would've been fucking rad.

Fuck yeah. I love that shit. I love when I play a spy, then they use a decoy to take him, then use him on me and then I use a decoy to take him back and use him all over again. Some first rounds go on longer than the rest of the game because we're spy-swapping so much. It's great. Then you use a medic to bring them back and keep it going even longer.

It's such a simple concept and yet I can't get enough. I'm hooked on Gwent. CDPR must be magicians or something.

I avoided Gwent until you play against Priscilla while waiting to rescue Dandelion. I had a similiar reaction to yours; that's a great card game and one that actually wouldn't be that difficult to make a real life game out of.

Difference was that whenever I saw the cards for sale, I bought them even though I never intended to play Gwent. It was a good thing I did buy those cards because it has allowed me to win most of my matches.

I'll admit, the whole Witcher world being obsessed with this dumb ass game is amazing.

I won't lie, Gwent was the real reason I amassed my small fortune. I made sure to raid every bandit camp and sell everything I could get my hands on so that I would never go to a new town and think "Damn, I can't afford those cards". Thankfully they fixed the issue in White Orchard where you couldn't buy the cards from the innkeeper after you finish the prologue, so I was finally able to get the cards from the very beginning of the game. How poetic, the cards from the very beginning were the last cards I had to acquire.

I'm pretty sure there is a whole conversation about Gwent between Zoltan and Geralt during a quest where they discussed cards and such. It was pretty great. Most games would have this card game and acknowledge it at some points but never really bring it up again. There's a ton of Gwent related shit to do.

While I do love gwent, I wish they also kept dice poker in the game. So you could play both. I'm also missing a couple random cards still. And I am not sure where the merchants are for them. I've played everyone I've come across. Unless there is a village somewhere in Skellige that I missed.

DID SOMEONE SAY DICE!?

Thanks for the new wallpaper.

Also what deck do you roll with the most. I for some reasons always use the nilfgard deck.

I thought this thread was going to be about that one guy. You know, that one guy

I cut him in half :(

I would watch a Gwent anime tho

I roll the starter deck. Northern Realms. I figure he's already got most cards for it from the beginning so I might as well just stick with that. Thankfully most cards I have are neutral so it complements it nicely. Also I like my leader ability that doubles my siege units strength. I have a ton of siege units so it's perfect. I love playing both catapults and then using the leader ability and having like 20,000 points. I never lose.

:(

I felt really bad for that guy. He tried so far and got so far but in the end it didn't even matter.

@sterling: I like using the Scoia'tael and Monster decks, but I still need a few more good cards for them to really shine, so I tend to gravitate to the Northern Realms deck if I really need the win. Nilfgaard has some fun cards too, but the faction perk and the leader bonuses are probably my least favorite.

I think the Monster deck is the most fun, but you need lots of duplicates to make it shine and I never found nearly as many as opponents seem to have.

@zeik: @n7: I like the nilfguard deck for the draw perk. Its a good backup for a win. Also the ability to see 3 cards of their hand or draw one from the discard pile is great. Plus all those spies. I also haven't found all the cool ones for the monster deck to get all those play one and get 6 cards played type thing. Plus the monster deck is easily defeated with two winter cards.

@sterling: @zeik: I think I like going up against monster decks the most. There's something really satisfying about seeing them rapid draw like 5 monsters, then me using my monster with Scorch and killing them all. It's so nice.

My biggest threat so far is the special card weather effects. I got rid of all my sunlight shit so I can't clear them. In my defense though it hurts them as well so it doesn't go as far to beat me.

My favorite combos are using my big siege units for round one, scoring the win, then using both medics I have in my deck to immediately bring them back and sham-wow those fuckers.

I don't lose very often. Of course I have 99% of the best cards in the game, so...

@sterling: I don't find I get draws nearly enough for it to make much difference. The free cards from the northern and monster decks tend to be a lot more valuable in actually winning. The ability to choose who goes first with the scoia'taels isn't the most useful thing ever, but letting the opponent go first means they tend to have to waste one extra card by the end of the round, which is usually to your favor. I do kinda like the leader card that lets you check the opponents hand, it can be useful for deciding what to do near the end of the last round, but I still like other leader cards better.

Monster decks tend to be pretty easy to counter as a player, but the AI rarely uses their weather cards effectively, and they practically never have more than one of each, so more often than not even if you don't have a clear weather card you can just force them to waste it by holding back most of your melee for the next round.

Yep. I explain above, about a guy I was d-d-d-dueling who had an entire line of like 10 close combat guys. I believe he was a monster deck and he used that musker ability or whatever it's called to get cards on the field in a rush. He used a commander horn on his one ranged combat card instead of his 10+ close combat guys. It's like the game is challenging to a point, but then lets you win.

Same thing with weather cards. They seem to go out of their way to do more harm to themselves than me. It's a little disappointing. But I guess in a game that can actually be 200 hours long, it may be a little unreasonable to complain about how sometimes Gwent players totally let you win.

I feel like I'm beefy enough with the northern realms that I don't really need tricks. I can just power through it. For spies I have decoys, for revives I have medics, and for weather effects I have heroes.

This is exactly why I still haven't played any Gwent at all yet. I know I've gotten obssessed with worse mini-games before, and I really don't want to lose even more focus off the main story than I already am by clearing out the points of interest and doing all the side quests. If I can beat the poker dice questlines in the other games without killing myself, then Gwent should be a treat. I just don't want to expose myself to that possibility and spend even more time on one game. T.T

"How about some gwent" should be the ONLY dialog option.

I'm really liking Gwent and when that can be played to save a life it's that much more fun.

I did like the Gwent tournament but sadly I was not nearly as good as I thought and got wrecked. Thankfully the quest keeps on going if you win or not so I didn't feel to bad.

Yeah, but think about all those sidequest bonus objectives you're missing out on by not playing Gwent... you might even get a bad ending by not playing Gwent... You might lose out on an exclusive romance subplot between a man and his deck of cards if you don't play Gwent...

I await the inevitable PC mod where all combat is replaced by aggressive Gwent tournaments.

My favorite part of that quest is that it starts with this mischievous plot to steal the tournament winnings. Then, if you actually manage to win the tournament, Geralt questions why the girl should get any money at all since he legitimately won the money. It's another pretty funny example on how characters will call other characters out on their bullshit. Also it's an interesting time to learn that I don't know how to spell "mischievous".

Oh and yes that tournament was quite hard. I actually almost got stuck because of that fist-fight that happens. I was like level 18 and the guy was like level 30 or something so he was 3-hit-killing me. It took a fair amount of loading to actually beat that fucker.

EDIT: Sorry for the double post mods, I thought I was editing my other post but I dun goof'd. :(

@n7: MUH SIDEQUEST OBJECTIVES NOOOOOO.

Next playthrough in 6 years will be as a travelling Gwent player, unwillingly forced into a subplot of finding a relative or something.

CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES?!?!

God that picture is fucking fantastic.

If my next child is a girl, I'm going to name her Gwent.

Thanks boo.

That's true post modernism parenting right there. Not naming a child after fictional characters, but fictional card games. Now that's culture!