GWENT: The Witcher Card Game

Is there life after The Witcher 3 for CD Projekt Red’s card game?

- Phil Savage

Card games aren’t my thing. I don’t enjoy Hearthstone, and Magic: The Gathering makes me sleepy. Gwent is different—not in function, but in conception. It’s the Trojan Horse of collectible card games, having already infiltrated my consciousness through its presence in The Witcher 3.

Gwent is the perfect minigame for an open-world adventure—an entertaining pastime that encourages you to seek out fellow enthusiasts in order to expand your deck. I played it obsessively.

This standalone incarnation is more complicated, but not over whelmingly so. At its core it’s a best-of-three battle in which players take turns playing a single card. At the end of the round—either when both players pass, or when everyone has run out of cards—the player with the highest attack score wins. Unlike Hearthstone, with its mana pool, your only resource is the number of cards in your hand. When a round ends, your hand isn’t redealt. Play too many cards in the first round, and your opponent will have the advantage over the next two.

At a basic level this is good design. When to pass becomes a crucial decision. Playing high value cards and passing early might tempt your opponent into overextending—giving you a card advantage in later rounds. Or they could accept the loss, leaving you with lower value cards for the rest of the match.

To further complicate matters, cards can have special traits. Each represents a unit, person or spell from the Witcher’s world, and is played on one of three rows—melee, ranged, or siege. Geralt, for instance, is a melee card. He doesn’t do anything fancy, but he’s a legendary— making him immune to most types of damage and debuff. He’s also powerful. Keep him around, and his 12 attack score can tip the balance when both players are low on cards.