After being teased for about a week now Gwent's massive balance update has now finally arrived to PC and consoles. It brings with it nerfs to both golden weathers, a significant nerf to some of the most problematic gold cards such as Ciri and Villentretenmerth (I had to check his spelling 3 times!), the revival of Northern Realms as an actual faction, as well as a bit of a power shift for Skellige.

While I'm slightly worried Skellige's Savage Bear is going to end up being an incredibly problematic card since its buff to 6 power, overall I am incredibly happy with this update as its going to give rise to a whole new batch of decks. If you're interested in all of the details you will find the full patch notes over at the official website, or in the game itself.

There is one more thing worth mentioning, and that is the fact that nerfed or reworked cards will award full scrap value when milled for the next five days. Furthermore, premium versions of nerfed cards will not be milled into scrap + meteorite power, they will instead award double the scrap value of the base card! In other words, you now have a way to transform meteorite powder into large amounts of scraps with which you can craft pretty much every deck you want. Just craft a premium version of a nerfed golden or silver card (this part is important as bronze gives less), and then mill it for a ridiculous amount of scraps, repeating for as many times as you can afford. I would personally recommend milling every single card that got changed because you can always craft those cards back for 'free' if you ever find yourself in need of them, and if not you get a ton of scrap to play around with. Have fun with the new decks!