As I've mentioned in my review of Blood and Wine, Gwent is a card game I am still puzzled by. On one hand its a well polished (and addicting) mini-game that has managed to achieve such levels of popularity its frankly astonishing, but on the other its a complete train-wreck in terms of balance, with the best player most often being decided by the deck itself. So why on Earth have I spend over 10 hours playing it and collecting every single card!?
If you're like me, and I know for a fact that this group boasts quite the membership, you'll be both delighted and horrified to hear that CDPR has officially announced Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. Here's the recently posted trailer that showcases some of the gameplay, but also highlights a couple of much needed balance changes:
For those of you that are new to Gwent, and probably wondering why people are excited for a game's game getting an official release, I'd suggest you head over to the website in order to learn what's going on. The "How its played" section is surprisingly well done, and it should get you up to speed in a jiffy.
As for the rest, those more experienced with Gwent, I just want to say this: Spies have finally been nerfed! To elaborate, in The Witcher 3's Gwent mini-game Spies allowed you to draw two cards from your deck, but as a drawback would be placed on your opponents side of the board. This might sound devastating, and in reality it should be, but the best spies are usually complete wussies so they would contribute almost nothing to the opponent while still drawing through half of your deck.
The ones in the official card game, at least if the trailer is to be believed, seem to be much stronger themselves, but also allow you to only draw one card. You will be given a choice between a face-up card and a face-down card, after which you will be able to pick one and return the other to your deck, thus making Spies an actual strategic choice when it comes to deck building, rather than an auto-include. In short, decks other than Nilfgaard and Northern Realms are now actually viable!
Spies requiring actual strategy? Whatever next!
The Closed Beta will launch in September for PC and Xbox One, with the PS4 getting its time to shine a short while later. If you would like to participate all you need to do is head over to the official website and sign-up for the beta, with both it and the final version of Gwent being completely free to play.
To end all of this on some further good news, CD Projekt has also announced that there will be cross-platform play between PC and Xbox One versions, with other potential pairings potentially coming in the future, potentially.
