If you’re a fan of The Witcher 3 (and you should be, the game is seriously amazing!), then it’s also likely you’re familiar with Gwent, the collectible card mini game found within it. It was a rather amusing experience playing against strangers in the pub, but ultimately lacked any real depth, and was hindered by having to find the cards throughout the game to improve your deck in order to beat tougher opponents. Since moving to a standalone game, currently on Xbox One Game Preview, Gwent has addressed many of those issues, becoming an incredibly fun, stylish, and dare I say it, addictive card game that I can’t stop playing.
The game itself is more colourful, with new art and animations for the cards. Just seeing the new format for Gwent already breathes new life into Gwent, and should reinvent it for players who dropped it when playing through The Witcher 3. The main objective has not changed; have a higher board strength than your opponent, and win two of the three rounds. New abilities have been added this time around, varying from card strength buffs, cards to deal damage to your opponent’s board, cards that stay on the field between rounds, and trigger abilities when a card dies. Lasting the three rounds is now more intense than ever, and turns into a much bigger strategic affair; going explosive from the start can win you the first round, but leave you with a severe disadvantage in the remaining two. On the flip side, if you wait it out or perhaps bluff your opponent into an attack, you might leave it too late, and not have time to recover. Knowing when to concede the round, either because you’ve lost it, or are ahead and can keep card advantage going into the next round, are also now more important than ever.
The game starts off with an optional tutorial that is worth playing through, as it gives you a quick refresh of the tactics behind the game, along with rewards for completing each section, in the form of ore and scraps. Ore is used to purchase kegs from the shop, a means of acquiring more cards to improve your decks. Kegs contains 4 random cards, and then a selection of 3 special cards from which you pick one to keep, a nice move from CD Project Red that leaves some control in the hands of the player. Kegs can also be purchased with real currency, as is becoming the norm with modern day games. 100 ore equates to one keg, which also equates to £1. Players will also be granted kegs as rewards from time to time, though I have yet to work out the criteria for these. Scraps are used to craft new cards, and are either earned through rewards, or milling (recycling) cards you have duplicate copies of (more than 3).
The 5 Gwent factions are all available as starter decks to play with, each having their own theme, and sets of cards that play off each other perfectly. Some cards are only available for their particular deck, whilst others are general use cards available for any deck. Thankfully playing with one deck does not mean gaining cards only for that deck, so if at any time you want to switch things up, you should have enough options to modify a different deck and make it stronger than the starter option that is open to you.
So far, the game consists of casual or ranked multiplayer, private matches and a campaign which sees you travel the land in order to recruit fighters (cards) to your cause. The latter two are currently locked out during the closed beta, and the ranked multiplayer unlocks after reaching level 10. The campaign is due to be more than just a few AI characters to beat in battle; apparently we will have to make tough decisions throughout that could win or lose our cards. I’m excited to see what that means exactly, but as far as good storytelling goes, CD Projekt Red have a very good track record for it. Right now there is cross platform play between Xbox and PC, which can be turned on or off. Hopefully PlayStation join the mix too when the game launches fully.
Were you a fan of Gwent in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt?
