Gwent impressions: It Beta Be Good

Not to be confused with a county in south east Wales, Gwent is the latest addition to the Witcher family. Developed by CD Projekt RED and announced last June, it builds upon the ‘mini’ version of Gwent first seen in the ‘Witcher 3’.

Now a fully-fledged, stand-alone trading card game, it is a far cry from the hours spent rolling poker dice in dodgy alleyways with even dodgier people in the ‘Witcher 1’. Whilst Gwent has not yet been released, we were lucky enough to be invited into the closed beta and thought we’d give you a quick overview of how the game is shaping up.

A Gwentleman’s Honour

To those scratching their heads and completely unfamiliar with what Gwent is, here’s the down-low: It is basically a two-player card game that involves using various unit cards to add to your strength value, the highest strength value at the end of a round wins. You need to win the best of 3 rounds to win the game.

Each unit card is placed in one of three rows according to their type; melee, ranged, and siege. You can then add various buffs and de-buffs to your cards by using the many special cards in the game, for example the ‘Commander’s Horn’ doubles the strength of units in the row you assign it too.

The mechanics themselves are largely simple and easy to pick up, yet as you progress and gain more cards, the number of different strategies available to you quickly opens up, adding a great deal of complexity to the game.

As a veteran of the Witcher series and a fan of the ‘mini-game’ version in the Witcher 3, I was quietly confident that I’d be a able to jump straight in and hammer people left, right and centre.

Needless to say, I was wrong: This new edition had me back to square one, learning new strategies and tactics. Whilst the fundamental mechanics have stayed the same, much of the gameplay, artwork and characters have been completely revamped.

New content has also been added, in particular the entirely new ‘Skellige’ deck, which offers a whole new play-style, ensuring that the experience is still fresh and challenging, even for long-time fans of the series.

It’s a buff ting

Perhaps the biggest change from the mini game version is the sheer number of added effects that each card brings to the table, with most cards offering some sort of buff to strength or decrease to the opposing player. These effects now include damage to other cards, which effectively means cards can be weakened or potentially destroyed. Which for some units is not a bad thing at all, as I had great fun baiting my opponent into damaging the ‘Young Berserker’ card (part of the Skellige deck), which causes it to morph into a bear… Again this greatly adds to the strategy of the game as second guessing your opponent becomes increasingly difficult and, let’s not forget, this whole game is built around bluffing your opponent.

Another major addition is that of gold, silver and bronze cards, denoting both rarity and determining what buffs can affect each card. Gold cards being impervious to many buffs and de-buffs whilst bronze and silver cards tend to be the target of most effects.

This again adds to the depth of the game, as the Northern Realms starter deck seems to focus on creating gold cards, which then get a strength bonus if using ‘King Foltest’ as the faction leader.

However as is perhaps evident, this is only one of the strategies open to players, with seemingly no end of various balanced play-styles for each faction, the days of accumulating a deck of purely rare, overpowered cards as in the ‘Witcher 3’ are very much over.

Visually the game is very attractive. The individual artwork of each card well detailed, with many of the rarer cards having animated pictures (even more of a reason to treasure those shiny cards). The general look is quite polished and simplistic, yet the UI is a tad clumsy and a little frustrating to navigate. The deck builder offers a drag and drop option which isn’t always a smooth experience, and I’ve also had a few issues with finding games with the game taking several attempts to find a suitable player.

Currency concerns

What perhaps worries me most is the game’s economy. Currently the main form of currency is ‘Ore’, earned after winning games. It’s used to purchase new card packs. There is also the secondary currency ‘Scraps’, which is gained from ‘milling’ old cards and as a bonus for just playing or receiving a good game from an opponent. ‘Scraps’ are then used to craft individual cards, usually at quite a high price, the rarer gold cards costing up to 800 ‘Scraps’. Whilst I have no problem with the principal of ‘in game currency’, which now seems to be a mainstay of most games, but I do dislike the pay to win element that runs alongside it.

For £1.99 you can buy two card packs from a vacant looking troll, something that would probably take newcomers a couple of hours to purchase purely using the in game currency. Again this is something we here at DLC Not Included feel strongly about; surely it is skill that should be rewarded, not how much money you can throw at the game?

Whilst it is only the beta and I didn’t feel that I was entirely outclassed by the ‘paid elite’, I am worried that potentially the game could go the same way as Fifa’s Ultimate Team, where it would take an inordinate amount of game time to assemble the deck I wanted in comparison to those who just bought their way to the top.

Granted there are a few things that irk me about this game, especially its economy, the game itself however is a thoroughly enjoyable and challenging experience (turns out I am distinctly average at Gwent, much to my ego’s disappointment).

CD Projekt RED have also told us that there will be a campaign, and the ‘Nilfgaard’ faction deck in the final version of the game, so what we’ve seen thus far is only a slice of the ever-so-addictive Gwent pie. Certainly, if you had fun with the previous in-game version, this new stand alone will provide hours of fun. Whilst I’m sure as with the mini game version some strategies will become stale (already playing the powerful ‘Geralt’ card in the first round has become a trend), there is enough new content and possibilities to keep it from becoming a monotonous grind.

All in all, it is a promising glimpse into the future of Gwent. I have high hopes for the final version and trust CD Projekt RED to produce a game that isn’t mired in pay to win rhetoric. In particular I am excited to see the campaign and how it unfolds, if it’s anything like the Witcher RPG series then we’re in for a treat.