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    The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

    Game » consists of 27 releases. Released May 19, 2015

    CD Projekt RED's third Witcher combines the series' non-linear storytelling with a sprawling open world that concludes the saga of Geralt of Rivia.

    Gwent: A Review

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    Darth_Navster

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    Edited By Darth_Navster

    Gwent, the collectible card game (CCG) nestled in every corner of The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, may very well be my favorite aspect of my favorite game of 2015. The deck building, collecting, and strategy of Gwent proved to be endlessly entertaining and I often found myself shirking witcher duties to play yet another match with the local innkeep. With the release of the Blood and Wine expansion and its introduction of new cards and faction, I was once again pulled into playing more of the irresistible card game. Gwent, how much do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

    It may look complex at first, but Gwent is quite easy to pick up.
    It may look complex at first, but Gwent is quite easy to pick up.

    For those who haven’t played The Witcher III, or for those that have but couldn’t be bothered with yet another minigame, Gwent is a CCG akin to Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone. The game is played by two players, each with their own customized deck. Players begin the game by each drawing ten cards from their deck and flipping a coin to see who goes first. The players then alternate taking turns by playing cards, activating abilities, or permanently passing their turn once they are satisfied with their board position. Most of the time players will play unit cards, which can be creatures, soldiers, or named heroes such as Geralt or Yennefer. Each unit card has a certain number of strength points, which are added up when both players choose to permanently pass their turn. The player with the higher strength total wins the round, and whichever player wins two out of three rounds takes the match. The most intriguing part of all this is that, unlike other CCGs, the game does not allow further draws after the match starts. What this means is that the initial draw of ten cards must last all three rounds of the match, barring additional abilities, and that opens up some intriguing strategic considerations. Should you over-commit on round one even if that limits your options for rounds two and three? Should you build your deck with weaker cards that allow you to draw more from your deck? It’s all very well considered for something that could have easily been dismissed as a niche minigame in an otherwise expansive world.

    The deck building menu is pretty intuitive, although I wish there was a more zoomed out view for high-resolution monitors.
    The deck building menu is pretty intuitive, although I wish there was a more zoomed out view for high-resolution monitors.

    Speaking of the expansive world, one of the neat things about Gwent is how well integrated it is in the customs of the land. Geralt seems to be able to locate a fellow enthusiast no matter where he goes, be it in the brothels of Novigrad or the taverns of Toussaint, and there’s good coin to be made in wagering on games. Furthermore, almost every person Geralt defeats will provide him with another card for his ever-growing collection in a viscous cycle I like to call gottacatchemallism. It seemed odd at first that kings and barons would be obsessed with an ersatz Yu-Gi-Oh!, but eventually I began to buzz at the sight of a Gwent option in a dialog tree. Plus, those barons and kings offer much better cards than your average barfly, so I was more than willing to put aside urgent life or death matters for a match or two.

    Gwent also takes on flavor from its world, with the five factions each representing a major power in the Continent’s geopolitical landscape. To build a deck, one must first choose which faction to play, be it the freedom fighting Northern Realms, the expansionist Nilfgaardian Empire, the reclusive elven Scoia’tael, the chaotic Monsters, or seafaring Skellige. I like the faction system in theory as it forces players to use different strategies. For instance, with the Northern Realms faction I was able to deploy spies and gain card advantage over my opponent, whereas with the Monsters faction I was able to overwhelm my opponents with plenty of unit cards. However, in practice the factions end up playing quite similar for two reasons. First, the game is dominated by hero cards that are not tied to any faction. These hero cards, which include characters like Ciri, are immensely powerful units that cannot be removed from the board or have their strength mitigated. As such, any successful deck includes a fair number of these hero cards regardless of faction. Second, the most important non-unit cards, such as Scorch or Decoy, are also factionless and so will be included in just about every deck. However, that’s not to say that the factions are completely irrelevant. Each faction comes with a set of leaders with unique abilities, such as the ability to destroy certain units or buff up units, that can tilt the game one way or another. In addition, the factions have innate abilities that activates regardless of chosen leader or deck composition. As examples, the Scoia’tael always go first to start the match and Monsters are able to keep a random unit on the board between rounds.

    Despite them upsetting the balance of the game, being able to play cards of in-world heroes is pretty neat.
    Despite them upsetting the balance of the game, being able to play cards of in-world heroes is pretty neat.

    The murky differentiation of Gwent’s factions is probably it’s greatest weak point, and I can imagine that savvy players would be able to crack its metagame in no time at all. Had Gwent been designed to be a competitive human against human game, this aspect may have sunk its viability. But luckily, the game is played exclusively against NPCs who wouldn’t know deck optimization from the werewolf that’s eating their kin. Because of this I was able to experiment with suboptimal decks for the sake of variety and still be able to compete. This was best demonstrated as I tried out Skellige, the newest faction introduced in Blood and Wine. Skellige’s big mechanic are berserker cards that can transform into superpowered bears in the presence of a mushroom called mardroeme. While the mechanic is quite situational as it requires two or more cards in the same hand to work effectively, it’s loads of fun when you’ve turned a whole row of berserkers into bears with 20 strength each.

    As far as card-based minigames go, Gwent is probably the best one I’ve played since Pazaak in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Gwent succeeds because it recognizes both the limitations and advantages of being part of a much larger RPG. It eschews the complex nature of standalone CCGs in favor of a much simpler play style and straightforward deck building. It also utilizes the back story and characters from The Witcher canon to create evocative and beautiful cards. But above all, it recognizes that since the player will only play against the computer, there’s no reason to care about fully balancing the game. Gwent allows savvy players to “solve” it and it doesn’t punish them from running the table against NPCs. While I’m not so much a Gwent nut that I would mod it to replace combat, I still enjoy it immensely. For those of you starting a new game of The Witcher III, or even those jumping back into the new expansion, I recommend taking some time to play cards. There’s a whole world of strategy for Geralt to partake in, and it’d be a shame to miss it.

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    Astromarine

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    You should look into Condottieri https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/112/condottiere

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    chaser324

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    #2  Edited By chaser324  Moderator

    Gwent was definitely a great addition to Witcher 3. It was both mechanically pretty interesting, and I liked the "gotta catch 'em all" element.

    This past week, I've gone back to Witcher 2 and started to play through it again, and boy does dice poker suck. It's pure luck, zero skill required at all, but I still run around and beat everyone just to complete the quests and get experience.

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    ll_Exile_ll

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    Gwent was definitely a great addition to Witcher 3. It was both mechanically pretty interesting, and I liked the "gotta catch 'em all" element.

    This past week, I've gone back to Witcher 2 and started to play through it again, and boy does dice poker suck. It's pure luck, zero skill required at all, but I still run around and beat everyone just to complete the quests and get experience.

    Dice poker was better in the first game. It was still essentially the same game, but they made some weird changes in The Witcher 2, not least of which was making the dice annoying to read.

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    hach

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    #4  Edited By hach

    I spent so many hours playing Gwent in Witcher 3, I had no idea there was a new faction added to Blood and Wine. I'm seriously considering buying the expansion now, the only problem is, in ng+ you don't keep your cards so playing gwent right now is not nearly as fun as when I had all the cards. On a side note, best gwent stategy, Nilfgaard, leader card that lets you draw from opponents discard pile. Play spies, when the turn is over take a spy out of your opponents discard and play it again, use revive cards to take any spies out of your discard and play those again. use decoys to pick up spies and play them. I like using spy cards in Gwent.

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    Hayt

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    Teddie

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    I completely avoided all the Gwent stuff back when the game came out, but I've been "wrapping up" my quest log in preparation for my vacation when I can just inhale Blood and Wine for a straight week. So obviously, I went through all the Gwent stuff, and it did grow on me.

    I had the AI set to easy since I'm admittedly awful at it, and got absolutely rinsed by some innkeeper for about half an hour at one point. I never went crazy collecting stuff (mainly because I don't even know where to get any of the other cards from now that I've cleared all the quests-- I still don't even have enough cards for a Monster deck), and it's still suuuuuuper weird that someone's printing cards of Dandelion of all people, but I did wind up getting hooked in the end.

    Now I'm just cursing my past self for missing a bunch of (now) unobtainable cards...

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    SirPsychoSexy

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    The game itself is just okay, but it does really add to the game having all these players in the world and dank cards to collect

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    ivdamke

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    Hoping there's a ridiculously camp tournament or some sort of over the top Gwent duel with, like, friggin French-Toussant Dracula in B&W.

    You won't be disappointed.

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    nickhead

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    I appreciate everyone's enthusiasm for Gwent and also like how its a big deal to everyone in the game's world.

    I just don't like playing it. I've fallen prey to card games in the past, but for some reason Gwent just doesn't do it for me. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who loves Witcher 3 and doesn't like Gwent, ha.

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    Castiel

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    As soon as I'm done with this damn exam I'm off to play more Gwe... er I mean Witcher 3.

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    sgtsphynx

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    #13 sgtsphynx  Moderator

    My spy northern realms deck wrecks other decks. So much so that I don't know how to pay the other decks. Love Gwent and I actually have the physical decks that came with Heart of Stone

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    Darth_Navster

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    @sgtsphynx: Get experimental duder! I stuck with Northern Realms for a good long while too, but then I realized that the AI is easy enough that you can win regardless of faction. It definitely helps to put some variety back in the game.

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    aiomon

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    I was also super impressed to see the art from the famous Magic: The Gathering artist Noah Bradley in GWENT!

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    Darth_Navster

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    @aiomon: Oh wow, I had no idea! Good to see talented Magic artists getting some love.

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    rethla

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    AlKusanagi

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    I bought both the physical copies of the DLC just so I could get the real Gwent decks that come with them. Such a cool extra.

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    ivdamke

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    @dudeglove: Wait till you see the guards eating entire Baguettes telling you to shove off because they're busy.

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    Rahf

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    #21  Edited By Rahf

    @baronsamedi: I just started and OH MY STARS THERE ARE RIDICULOUS KNIGHTS AND EVERYONE IS PUTTING ON THE WORST FRENCH ACCENT like John Cleese out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

    This is great.

    Duder, they traverse the entirety of Europe with the accents. Not that many are actually French.

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    Gruebacca

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    #23  Edited By Gruebacca

    @dudeglove: Geralt has an American accent because main character. All the witchers too have American accents, and Dandelion most likely has one as well, especially evident with his narrator voice.

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    Rahf

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    @dudeglove: Allow me to inform you! Geralt has a Rivian accent.

    Again, not everyone is attempting to sound French, apart from using French pronunciations for French words (which many Europeans tend to do). I think you should drop the pretense that everyone is supposed to have a certain accent, because that doesn't seem to be the aim with many characters.

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    Darth_Navster

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    @gruebacca: @rahf: @dudeglove: I'm loving all this accent talk. Now I'm curious as to what accents they use in the original Polish version of the game. Anybody play it and can comment?

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    deactivated-63c06c6e81315

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    Rahf

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    #28  Edited By Rahf

    @dudeglove: I'm not talking about the main game. I'm talking about Toussaint.

    Geralt speaks in a Rivian accent. It's an affect he uses. Is it really that impossible to imagine some countries simply sound different? Because that's what we're doing, imagining.

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    TravisMccG

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    Condottieri is a pretty good game.
    Also so is the plagiarized version in Witcher 3.
    I can't wait to see which board game CD Project Red steals next.

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    NTM

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    #31  Edited By NTM

    I'm of the opposite opinion; though I congratulate them on making a new, well made card game inside The Witcher 3, it's my least favorite aspect to experience, and I always put the Gwent side missions on hold until I have nothing else to do. I didn't do the 'Collect 'Em All' side mission, which was the only one I didn't do, so it failed when I played Blood and Wine. To me, Gwent is a game of luck for the most part. It's about hoping you have the right cards, and by luck, playing the correct hand. The confidence in winning raises when you collect more, better cards. The Skellige deck was pretty decent I thought. I wanted to finish the collect 'em all side mission in Blood and Wine since I thought I was close, but once I finished the 19/19, and it still wanted me to keep going, I stopped.

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    Sinusoidal

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    fetchfox

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    I'm thinking of starting another new game just to collect them all again, crush my opponents with Gwent... I hope that standalone game is not to far of.

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