Gwent's Midwinter update brought in 100 new cards last December, though unfortunately this massive influx of new cards and balance changes did not end up panning out as expected. Instead of having even more archetypes to play around with, the update resulted in only a couple of ridiculously overpowered decks dominating over everyone else, to the point that Scoia'tael represented more than 50% of the ladder!

With that number in mind, I am very glad to say that Gwent's latest update has gone to great lengths to rebalance some of the overpowered cards and bring about a more interesting meta. In other words, most of the problematic Dwarves have been slightly reduced in power, the various Create cards have received minor nerfs to make them less overbearing, and perhaps most importantly for the future, Nilfgaard's Impera Enforcers now no longer deal 2 damage for every spy already on the board.

The one thing the patch did not do, however, was buff some of the underused archetypes. So if you were hoping for some of the forgotten Monsters and Northern Realms decks to rise up once again, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until the next patch as this one was aimed almost exclusively at bringing down the strongest decks. On the positive side, the generally lower power level has given rise to some new archetypes among the various factions, so things aren't as bad as they might seem on first glance. There is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to balance, but this update has definitely been a step in the right direction.

There are far too many changes to cover in brief, so if you're interested in all of the details I would recommend you head over to the official patch notes. CDPR has done an excellent job explaining why they've done all of the major changes, so you should get a pretty good idea of what to expect from the current Gwent. Enjoy, and make sure to tune in to the official Twitch channel later today as the devs will be revealing a new game mode!