OFFICIAL GWENT THREAD (in-game version)

[WhiteGuts]

I generally don't like card games. Too spergy to get into, too time consuming...etc. But I'm liking Gwent a lot. It's simple, and yet with some complexity to it, that makes it not just about having the most stacked deck. I'd say it's 80% about having the best deck, 15% about tactic and 5% about luck.

I'm still using the Northern Realms deck cause I don't have enough cards in the others yet. But the Monsters/Scoi'aetel decks are insane with those linked cards. Nothing like seeing the AI pull 5 strong cards in one move.

I think I've lost more than I've won, but I just beat Vivaldi for his best card (Vesemir lel).

 

[PhantasmaNL]

It is a good mini game, i think you are about right concerning the factors that decide a win. Whenever i meet a gwent player/vendor ill play one or more rounds (till i win..). Right now i use the empire deck, which is my highest rated deck, mostly thanks to several good hero cards. Most troublesome opponents are the monsterdecks which can explode the board in a single move. Also their special move can be a game decider. The AI isnt great but serviceable and sometimes it pulls some amazing moves which leave me with a wtf happened there feeling.

 

[Cyberarmy]

The problem with the gwent is AI sadly, even in High Stakes tournament (Maverick!) so called best players in the world do major fuck ups. 2 of them literally handed me game.
Hero cards are both blessing and curse. Not being affected by special cards is good but you can't pull crazy combos with them. I'm getting serious high numbers with Northern Realms deck thanks too Dragon Hunters/Blue Stripes commandos/catapults. Buff them with horns/Dandellion and voila! Them scorch card though...

 

[Carrion]

The Monster decks can be all but killed with Biting Frost, at least when the opponent doesn't have the leader card that allows you to draw any weather card from your deck.

I think Gwent's fun, although it could be better (the lore-related issues mentioned in the other Gwent thread make it feel very meta — would've preferred cards based on actual "historical" figures rather than having Ciri, Geralt, Zoltan etc.), and the AI doesn't really know how to play it. It's too easy to bait the AI into throwing an entire round away, or wasting cards after having effectively won the round already.

In any case it's a fun time sink and definitely better than TW2's dice poker, although I think the dice poker in TW1 was the most addictive of the bunch as it allowed you to have much higher stakes.

 

[Pope Amole II]

I liked gwent at first but got rather disappointed with it eventually. The factions are way, way too much disbalanced. And since the game is centered around super-powerful combos and extremely hard counters, it becomes way too card-advantage centric. Not even because of the extra cards transitioning into extra power on the table - that's the lesser benefit here. The bigger one is that he who has more cards goes last. And while it may be extremely risky to play something like 2x 8-power catapults into the horn (64 attack in 3 cards after all the multiplications) when your opponent might have either torrential rain or the scorch, it becomes much less worrisome once you know they can't play anything.

So, in practice, this leaves you without much tactics in this game - you want to concede one of the rounds intentionally and with the biggest card advantage possible. The general route is spies and decoys. Then, once the opponent is out of cards, you play your super-combo or just devastate his combo by either frost/rain/fog and win. Of course, it doesn't guarantee 100% victory each time as you can draw bad hands without spies or combo-elements, but with decent enough draws you don't even need all those fancy heroes & legendaries to win.

And the problem with factions is that only two of them are adjusted for this kind of play - Nilfgaard & Northern Realms. Because only they have spies. Whereas the other factions have the stupid "play all in the deck & hand" ability - oh, it looks potent eventually, but way too often they cause your opponent to play 2-3 cards out of his hand in one turn, creating a virtual card advantage for you and letting you have the last word. Which is absolutely deciding in gwent.

What's worse, monsters & squirrels combos demand you to collect a boatload of specific cards (3x crones, all the vampires and arachas, all the havekar smugglers) to be potent and it takes so much time that by the time you'll do that, there won't be any opponents in the game remaining. Squirrels are also much weaker than the monsters - their agile special abilty sucks (it's supposed to help you playing around the hard counters but it just doesn't work that way) and their general card quality is real crappy.

And it's not like nilfgaard & north are balanced too - north has better spies, more combo potential (commandos+archers+catapults vs nobles only, really - 2 and 3 attack multiplying units are not worth it), better faction abilities (winning is much easier than causing a tie, actually) and leader abilities too. You also assemble north much faster than anything else.

So yeah, nice idea but the execution could've been somewhat better.

 

[Talby]

Spies seem a bit overpowered. The winning strategy is to use 2-3 spy cards in the first round, pass, and then steamroll the next two rounds with your extra cards because the AI was dumb enough to use half their best cards in the first round pointlessly. Then just use overpowered hero cards like Geralt and Ciri and it's GG. Seems all that hard work gwent to waste.

 

[WhiteGuts]

The Squirrels/Monsters decks are indeed tedious to build up efficiently, which makes them de facto the AI decks. I don't think this was by design, but that's how it turns out.

 

[toro]

Spies seem a bit overpowered. The winning strategy is to use 2-3 spy cards in the first round, pass, and then steamroll the next two rounds with your extra cards because the AI was dumb enough to use half their best cards in the first round pointlessly. Then just use overpowered hero cards like Geralt and Ciri and it's GG. Seems all that hard work gwent to waste.

I had one round with 2 spies and 2 decoy cards. The opponent had the same. It was awesome.

 

[Ivan]

Last night I realized I would never be able to get the Baron's unique card!

Did I miss out on much?

 

[Killzig]

Last night I realized I would never be able to get the Baron's unique card!

Did I miss out on much?

I thought I looted it from his office after he fucked off to the mountains. Is the card different if you actually play him for it?

 

[Zep Zepo]

Last night I realized I would never be able to get the Baron's unique card!

Did I miss out on much?

Go back to his camp...it's on the desk in his office.

Zep--

 

[abnaxus]

Already fucked Sasha.

 

[Ivan]

Thanks! Also, I'm noticing that some areas have new jobs on the notice boards. Are these completely new cuz I'm in Novigrad and wondering if it's worth it to go back to Baron's house.

 

[Carrion]

Thanks! Also, I'm noticing that some areas have new jobs on the notice boards. Are these completely new cuz I'm in Novigrad and wondering if it's worth it to go back to Baron's house.

They show as yellow on the map if there are new jobs available.

 

[Trash]

I miss the original Witcher's dice poker. That was a neat minigame.

 

[Gerrard]

I have a bunch of hero cards now and can reliably roll over any opponent (finished all Velen and Novigrad games). For the most part I used the NK deck with the "Double your siege weapon power" ability.

>begin game
>play blue stripes commando
>AI destroys it with scorch before I even play the second one then passes while having 5 attack

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Tigranes]

Gwent is a nice, simple little game, and I think it was a good addition to TW3. It's most comparable to the card games in FF8/9. And like them, the main problem after a while is the braindead AI - it's almost impossible to lose games after a while if you studiously collect cards.

As Pope says, spies are the way to go. Nilfgaard can have 4 spies in the deck (maybe more, but it's redundant). Add 1 decoy, use the 'draw from enemy's discard' Emhyr, also throw in a couple of Revive creatures. Ideal result = you play with 26 cards, the opponent plays with 10. If they have revive, draw from discard, etc. of their own, or if you never end up drawing your spies, then less so - but you're still going to have a significant advantage.

Scorch is a reliable killer against Scoiatael/Monster mass summons, because you can get many of them in one go. Hell, you can just wait until they summon 12 creatures & double their power - and then just Weather them, Scorch, they're all at 2 so they all die.

They needed to load the superior players, e.g. the Tournament, with better decks than the player.

 

[Jools]

They needed to load the superior players, e.g. the Tournament, with better decks than the player.

This.

Again, as stated before, I really dislike Gwent. Yeah, it's visually more pleasing than dice poker, but the concept is really weak. Halfway through the game, I entirely stopped losing. I used the starting deck (Northern), and only had the additions from beating other players (merchants, then innkeepers, then whoever was available). After one get 2/3 heroes, it's just a downhill road to 100% victory ratio, and a straightforward one at that. After the high stakes tournament, I even stopped losing the occasional (often deliberate) round, and the game became even more of a chose. Sorta wasted potential, and in fact randomly losing at dice poker (sheer bad luck) was more challenging and enjoyable. The stupidly low stakes also really undermine the game's enjoyability and usefulness within the game's world.

 

[abnaxus]

Only half decent opponent is Sasha.

 

[Gerrard]

All that shit doesn't matter, I've been playing with the NK deck with the leader that boosts your siege weapons for most of the time and the only times I lost was when the opponent had a bunch of bullshit hero cards. With the cards I have now it's impossible to lose, AI is dumb as shit.

Oh look, I wonder who won that game

The game would be better if it was to 3 wins.

 

[Tigranes]

They needed to load the superior players, e.g. the Tournament, with better decks than the player.

This.

Again, as stated before, I really dislike Gwent. Yeah, it's visually more pleasing than dice poker, but the concept is really weak. Halfway through the game, I entirely stopped losing. I used the starting deck (Northern), and only had the additions from beating other players (merchants, then innkeepers, then whoever was available). After one get 2/3 heroes, it's just a downhill road to 100% victory ratio, and a straightforward one at that. After the high stakes tournament, I even stopped losing the occasional (often deliberate) round, and the game became even more of a chose. Sorta wasted potential, and in fact randomly losing at dice poker (sheer bad luck) was more challenging and enjoyable. The stupidly low stakes also really undermine the game's enjoyability and usefulness within the game's world.

Dice poker was also generally unloseable once you worked it out, although the lack of any deck development meant bad rolls could screw you. But yes. For my second play through I plan to use house rules (e.g. put all cards you own in the deck), or just not bother with it.

 

[Gerrard]

There was nothing to "work out" in dice poker.

 

[rezaf]

I have mostly ignored gwent so far - have I missed much?

I thought the tutorial for it was teh suck and the few games I ended up playing, I lost spectacularly. Sometimes I won the first round if I really tried hard and fired away everything I had, but then there were two more rounds and the AI seemed to always have more cards than I.
From what I understood, you get to use every card you hadn't already used in previous rounds? With a flexible deck size? If that's indeed true, what a retarded mechanic.
Whatever, it lead me to conclude you were supposed to build up your deck for a bit first by acquiring cards from vendors, but I only found a few actually selling cards since, mostly for other factions.

 

[Talby]

I have mostly ignored gwent so far - have I missed much?

I thought the tutorial for it was teh suck and the few games I ended up playing, I lost spectacularly. Sometimes I won the first round if I really tried hard and fired away everything I had, but then there were two more rounds and the AI seemed to always have more cards than I.
From what I understood, you get to use every card you hadn't already used in previous rounds? With a flexible deck size? If that's indeed true, what a retarded mechanic.
Whatever, it lead me to conclude you were supposed to build up your deck for a bit first by acquiring cards from vendors, but I only found a few actually selling cards since, mostly for other factions.

The first guy who teaches you the game is easy to beat with the default deck. Remember that it's often worth it to intentionally lose one round - just let your opponent play a few powerful cards, use a few weak ones, then pass. You can easily beat him using the cards you have left over, especially if you draw the medic cards that let you re-draw a discarded card from a previous round. You should keep your best cards in reserve for the last round when you can go all out.