Gwent's Midwinter Update, while certainly ambitious, ended up causing a lot more problems than it solved. The whole situation culminated a few months later when CDPR announced that they are banning the most overpowered cards from constructed play as a sort of band-aid fix, and that they are planning to go on a 6-month hiatus in order to bring "Gwent back to its roots".

Quite a lot of time has passed since then, and if you're wondering what exactly CDPR has been working on all these months, you might be interested to hear that the much-anticipated Homecoming update is now live on the PTR (Public Test Realm). It will only be available until October 9th, however, so if you're curious, do make sure to give it a try while you still can. 

As for whether it's actually a quality update/redesign, I'm genuinely not sure what to tell you. On one hand the UI is massively improved, and while it may be a bit too dark for my liking, it does a pretty darn good job of representing the Witcher universe. On the other hand, pretty much every card and mechanic has either been reworked or heavily tweaked, so much so that I can barely recognize the Gwent I fell in love with a few years ago.

It is because of this that I simply cannot tell you whether Homecoming has been a successful rework or not - a few hours of gameplay is just not enough to judge what is essentially a brand new strategy game. You'll just have to give it a try for yourself and see how it goes. It's free after all!

The official launch for the Homecoming update, as well as the long-awaited Thronebreaker singleplayer campaign, has been set for October 23rd on PC. The PS4 and Xbox One versions will be following suit on December 4th.

And just for good measure, I'll leave you with the latest and somewhat brief teaser for Thronebreaker. Enjoy!