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OFFICIAL GWENT THREAD (in-game version)

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
rezaf basically you haven't got a clue at the moment, so just actually play a few games.

You can win 1 card from each card player by winning; there are many more in Velen; everybody starts by drawing 10 cards and you only 'get more' by special abilities.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,925
Pazaak was indeed better, but still depended on what cards you had to some degree if I remember correctly.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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I need an explanation. When I pass a round, the opponent just plays a card and wins. When it's the other way around and the opponent passes and then I lay a card I don't win. Why? What are the rules concerning passing?
 

made

Arcane
Joined
Dec 18, 2006
Messages
5,130
Location
Germany
I need an explanation. When I pass a round, the opponent just plays a card and wins. When it's the other way around and the opponent passes and then I lay a card I don't win. Why? What are the rules concerning passing?
Ernsthaft?
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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Ja ernsthaft. Das ist jetzt mehrmals so passiert und ich würde gern wissen wie die Regeln da genau sind. Vielleicht hab ich ja was überlesen oder so. Ich verstehe ja, dass man aufpassen muss gegen jemanden mit Nilfgaard deck, da der wohl einfach Gleichstand herstellen kann und dann automatisch gewinnt, im Tutorial steht eine Runde endet wenn beide Seiten gepasst haben, Gesamtstärke wird ermittelt usw der mit mehr Punkten hat die Runde gewonnen, es passiert halt laufend das ich mehr Punkte hab, der Gegner passt, ich passe und die Runde geht trotzdem weiter. Warum?
 
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Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Sep 13, 2014
Messages
5,062
Location
Safe Space - Don't Bulli
  • Gwent is not balanced - It's all about stacking high value cards
  • Hero Cards can't be boosted by spells or revived so they aren't always the right choice
  • Spy Cards are overpowered - Chain Spy Cards with Decoy / Revive Cards to draw your whole deck in a single game
  • Play Northern Deck (Most Spy Cards / Best Hero Cards / Free Draw When You Win First Round)
  • Your opponent will almost always give you the first round after dumping spy cards
    • He will then go big dick Second Round - Don't be afraid to slow play shit cards to draw him out of spending everything on Round 2 then finishing him up in Round Three
  • Monster Decks can be hard countered with scorch because of how their abilities work

Gwent starts off wrecking your ass because the game is purely based on the power of your deck. At this point I can beat every opponent with little effort but I have done all the quests / tournaments, so there is little point in playing except to collect the rare cards for the quest.

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

There are certain cards you can only get once at certain points of the game. It's good for what it is.. I wouldn't save it to the end of the game.
 
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made

Arcane
Joined
Dec 18, 2006
Messages
5,130
Location
Germany
Ja ernsthaft. Das ist jetzt mehrmals so passiert und ich würde gern wissen wie die Regeln da genau sind. Vielleicht hab ich ja was überlesen oder so. Ich verstehe ja, dass man aufpassen muss gegen jemanden mit Nilfgaard deck, da der wohl einfach Gleichstand herstellen kann und dann automatisch gewinnt, im Tutorial steht eine Runde endet wenn beide Seiten gepasst haben, Gesamtstärke wird ermittelt usw der mit mehr Punkten hat die Runde gewonnen, es passiert halt laufend das ich mehr Punkte hab, der Gegner passt, ich passe und die Runde geht trotzdem weiter. Warum?

Dunno, never happened to me. Seems to work as intended here: one side passes and the other either keeps laying cards until it beats the score or passes as well and loses the round.
 

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
Sasha and Tybalt both gave me issues, but that's because at the time I played them, I still had a bunch of crappy cards in my deck, while their decks were stacked with spies, 8-10 attack cards, and heroes. To win them with an average draw without reloads, you'd need to get a deck on the same level.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
When you pass a turn, you're passing for that entire round. So the opponent can take as many turns as he wants to win that round, or not. So as Immortal says, you can use this to lure the enemy into wasting his good cards.

There's some good moments when you try and beat decks more powerful than yours. I can imagine if I'm not collecting then I'll always have a very underpowered deck, changing the situation.
 

rezaf

Cipher
Joined
Jan 26, 2015
Messages
650
rezaf basically you haven't got a clue at the moment, so just actually play a few games.

Can't argue with that.
However, for most people I played with, I think there's no chance in hell I could beat them with the cards I have in my deck. Lots of lowest level cards (1 or 2 attack) and no cards that boost everything of a certain type.
I once was enthusiastic after an enemy played a huge amount of siege cards and I could disable the row with a weather card, but he beat my entire array of melee cards with a single hero and one additional unit card he played after that and still won the round by a slight margin.
It often seems evident after two or three cards played that I'm going to lose spectacularly to all the high level heroes fielded by my enemies.

Is there any benefit at all to having low level cards in your deck? I can maybe see a slight advantage if you have a large number of units of the same type and then a booster that affects them all, but that's about it.

I've played a bit yesterday and went out of my way to visit each and every vendor I could, yet none sold gwent cards. But I feel like I NEED to improve my deck to have any chance against players in the area.
Can someone point me to a good vendor in Redania? Or do I have to go back to the first map and acquire cards there?

I'm not sure I'll bother at this point, but I might. Depends how much time I get to play the game on a whole. When I can play an hour or two, I'm not going to waste most of the session playing gwent and rather finish a quest or two.
 

Carrion

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 30, 2011
Messages
3,648
Location
Lost in Necropolis
Is there any benefit at all to having low level cards in your deck? I can maybe see a slight advantage if you have a large number of units of the same type and then a booster that affects them all, but that's about it.
They're good if you know that your opponent might have a Scorch card, because as long as your opponent has the highest card on the table, he can't do anything with Scorch. You can also use a low-value card instead of a high-value one to keep the total of your close combat units below 10, which makes them immune to the special ability of Villentretenmerth which can be devastating otherwise. They give you a bit of flexibility as they're pretty much disposable, and they're therefore good for baiting the opponent into playing a few more cards as well, after you already know that the round has been won or lost.

Generally it's not really worth it to keep low-value cards around unless they have some special abilities, though, like Medic or Muster (not to mention spies), or if you know that you can reliably boost their value in some way, like with your leader ability.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
rezaf White Orchard is lacking (there's like 1 gwent player and 4 cards for sale), but as soon as you reach Velen it's easy to build a 'good enough' deck so that you don't include shit like 2 Attack Generic Creatures at all. Innkeepers are the most reliable source to purchase Gwent cards, but any normal merchant can also stock some, and every time you win a gwent game you can receive a card from them.

You should be able to just explore Velen and play normal games - usually, the standard players you play can be beaten using the deck you'd have by buying cards off those standard merchants. Don't rush the 'special' games, though - for example, the player in Vizima is too tough for your just-out-of-White-Orchard deck, and the Gwent quest players for special cards are also tougher. Yoana at Crow's Perch is also tougher.

The second Foltest leader card (free Clear Weather) is a solid ticket for about the first 1/3 of the game in terms of Gwent. It lets you control weather almost completely. Use weather cards against the enemy, when they use them against you, wait until the very end of the round and clear the weather.
 

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
Use Northern Realms. It's hard to find enough of the high-value cards for the other factions to build a competitive deck around them till the end of the game, especially Monsters due to its horde mechanics.

The best way to play, I've found, is basically to follow this policy vs. the different decks you face.

vs. All

* Card advantage > all. Spies are your best friend.
* Decoy spy cards that your opponent plays, so that you get to play them later
* Don't play spy cards till final round against Scoria'tae and Niilfgaard because of mass healers
* Use healers to resurrect spies that are in your grave yard
* Try to maintain a card advantage throughout the game by strategically losing rounds
* When playing a leader who has the ability to draw a specific card from the deck, redraw that card when it's in your beginning hand
* Don't put every hero card you find in your deck. Triss for example isn't all that useful later on, but Yennefer, Geralt, and Ciri are <3
* Don't put every high-value card in your deck. Design the deck to be small to maximize your draws.

vs. Northern Realms

Northern Realms decks usually have a lot of siege cards, a couple of front liners, and poor ranged cards. Don't bother with fog, and for that matter don't play with any weather cards in the mirror. Use clear weather Foltest, switching to the destroy siege engines Foltest when you are able to get him later.

Strategy: because Northern Realms draws a card when they win, logically speaking you want to win in two rounds, rather than three. But at times the AI plays stupidly and plays a high value hero card in response to a small advantage on your side, in which case it's okay to pass the round. Otherwise, try to force the AI to pass the first round to maintain a card advantage throughout.

vs. Monsters

Monsters decks usually have a lot of frontliners, a couple of siege cards, and poor ranged cards. Again, don't bother with fog. Do, however, try to include 2x frost in your deck, and try to draw into one of them for when you need to neutralize the Monsters melee stack.

Due to the Monsters horde mechanic, at times you simply have to pass vs. them in order to up your shot at victory. In fact, it's normally a victory to force a Monsters deck to play a high-value horde card in the first round, because then it has none of those cards available later.

Don't try to pass strategically vs. a Monsters deck when they have only 1-2 high-value normal cards on board, because the Monsters special mechanic allows it to keep the card on board. Instead, try to pass strategically after forcing them to play a bunch of lower-value cards.

vs. Scorie'tae

Scorie'tae plays with a lot of ranged and melee cards, and practically no siege cards. As Northern Realms, I usually put one fog in my deck and use the Foltest who gets to search his deck for a fog and play it. Whether you include a frost card is up to you - ie up to whether you have a lot of frontline cards. In both cases, the strategy is to force the Scorie'tae into a card disadvantage by strategically losing the first round, because Scorie'tae has fewer spies.

Remember not to play spies vs. Scorie'tae till the last round, because their abundance of healers allows them to use your spies against you.

Remember also to include clear whether when you have a lot of siege cards in your deck, because Scorie'tae plays rain.

vs. Niilfgard

Niilfgard is tough, especially Sasha's end game deck, because of their abundance of spies - allowing them to gain a card advantage - and their abundance of healers - allowing them to gain an even greater card advantage when they revive your spies. They have a fairly balanced set of frontliners, ranged units, and siege units, so there's no targeting their unit set specifically. But given that you're Northern Realms and have poor ranged units, I'd include fog/fog drawing Foltest.

Against Niilfgard, you want to exploit the fact that their spy cards frequently have a lot of strength. For example, they have a 9 strength spy card. When they use those spy cards against you, try to use them to force extra cards from the Niilfgard player.

Lastly, do the Collect Cards quests. Not only do you get the rare cards from the people you beat, but you get extra cards, too, for completing the quest. For example, I think you get Ciri for beating the Velen collection quest, and Ciri is an incredible card that allows you to bulldoze through a lot of lesser decks. For the High Stakes tournament, know that you are going to be reloading. It's simply not practical to beat decks as stacked as Sasha's without a decent draw.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Northern Realms are good until you've got going, and then Nilfgaard becomes very competitive once you can build a deck not filled with dross. It's easier to get more spies, the "draw from opponent discard pile" / "see opponent 3 cards" can be very useful later (especially since opponents seem to use less weather cards as time goes by? Maybe just me). But yes, I find the other two factions not very competitive.

Otherwise, everything Azarkon says.
 

Monkeyfinger

Cipher
Joined
Aug 5, 2004
Messages
778
Spies are only good once you've built up a decent collection of heroes and horns. Early on they draw you crap and give your opponent a relatively big body for free.

Start including them after you've replaced all the power 1 and 2 creatures in the NK deck. That also means before then you should use medics to revive your strongest normal units instead of spies and you shouldn't run decoy at all.
 

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
Spies are only good once you've built up a decent collection of heroes and horns. Early on they draw you crap and give your opponent a relatively big body for free.

Start including them after you've replaced all the power 1 and 2 creatures in the NK deck. That also means before then you should use medics to revive your strongest normal units instead of spies and you shouldn't run decoy at all.

Decoys are useful vs. the spy-heavy decks that you face when playing vs. end game Niilfgard and Northern Realms players. Card advantage > all when you have a decent deck of high-value cards, and a decoy for a spy is an extra card. It also allows you to return healers to your hand, which provided you have a dead spy, is also an extra card.

I'd include 1-2 decoys when you're facing 4 spy decks eg end-game Niilfgard and end-game Northern Realms, because it ends up giving you the card advantage when you start trading spies. Against other decks it is indeed pretty useless though.
 
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Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Spies are only good once you've built up a decent collection of heroes and horns. Early on they draw you crap and give your opponent a relatively big body for free.

Start including them after you've replaced all the power 1 and 2 creatures in the NK deck. That also means before then you should use medics to revive your strongest normal units instead of spies and you shouldn't run decoy at all.

No. Spies are almost always good. You should have gotten rid of your sub-4 NK units by your third or fourth Gwent game (early Velen). Your first two spies, in all likelihood, are a 5-Atk Spy & 4-Atk Spy. So already they are paying themselves off. In any case, you can unload your spies in the first round in many early games, and then just fold that game, having encouraged the enemy to waste 2-3 cards of his own as well.

1 Decoy can be useful in many cases - not only what Azarkon says, but also because when you 'give up' on a round you can retrieve your most powerful unit at least.
 

rezaf

Cipher
Joined
Jan 26, 2015
Messages
650
In my limited playing session yesterday I still found nobody selling cards (though I plan on explicitly looking for inkeeps soon), but I played and actually won a match. I'm not sure how exactly, but I won.

For starters, I had more cards somehow than I used to have - do you sometimes find some in chests or get them as quest rewards? It was nothing exciting, but a catapult here, a weather card there and a 4 str unit card can make a difference.
What decided the match early on was that the opponent spammed melee cards - even AFTER I had played the weather cards (was it fog or frost?) that disables the melee row. So I guess I won the first match thanks to weak AI.
In the second round, the AI passed early and had almost no cards on the table, but somehow it had like 20 attack (I'm guessing it was a leader ability?), which I couldn't match with what I had, so I folded.
Last round I played what little I had left and the AI insta-passed, obviously had no cards left. Then SOMETHING happened that again boosted it's attack value without ANY cards. I'd have lost if not for another mysterious happenstance which allowed me to draw a couple additional cards, with whom I managed to take a slight lead. Victory!
Now I only need to figure out why and how the heck I even won...
 

VentilatorOfDoom

Administrator
Staff Member
Joined
Apr 4, 2009
Messages
8,600
Location
Deutschland
Where to get the following cards:
Thaler (many northern realms deck opponents have this card)
Mysterious Elf (spy card with 0 strenght)
 

Turisas

Arch Devil
Patron
Joined
May 25, 2009
Messages
9,926
Elf is reward from Gwent: Skellige Style and Thaler you can buy from Innkeep at Arinbjorn.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,925
Seems the card DLC changed a bunch of images for the neutral cards.
 

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