Gwent was a huge part of what people enjoyed when playing through The Witcher 3, so when developer CD Projekt RED announced a standalone version, there were plenty of happy gamers around the world. With the first full closed beta coming up very soon, we thought this would be a good opportunity to cover the many changes between Gwent in The Witcher 3 and the version of Gwent people will play in the standalone game. Most of the main themes and strategies of the game remain the same, but there are some important changes.
Card Draw
In The Witcher 3 version of Gwent you would start each game with 10 cards and could only draw more cards if you used a special unit card with the ability to draw more cards. In the standalone game many of the cards that had a draw ability have been changed. Instead of drawing from other cards, most of your draw ability comes between rounds now. You can draw two cards after round one and one card after round two. This adds a bit to the random factor of the game (RNG), but gives it a more competitive feel since you gain more cards that can potentially lead to a comeback.
Card Types
The types of cards in Gwent have also undergone a change from the Witcher 3 version of the game. In the standalone Gwent there are no longer Character, Hero and Troop card types. Instead the card types are now Bronze, Silver and Gold. Special cards have also seen a significant change. In the standalone game special cards are now considered events and no longer have a separate category in deck building as they now fall under the Bronze, Silver and Gold card types.
With the changes to card types comes changes to how you build a deck as well. You had to have a minimum number of cards in a specific type in the Witcher 3 version of the game (12 Troop cards). In the standalone Gwent you now must have 15 Bronze, 6 Silver and 4 Gold cards in your deck. This increases the variety of cards and gives CD Projekt RED a lot more freedom with event cards.
Card Abilities
Alongside the new card types comes new card abilities to further increase the amount of depth in Gwent. You can now use a Wounding ability to reduce the strength of an opponent’s card. If you can drop a card all the way down to zero strength it is removed from the board and placed in a graveyard.
As you can see, there are quite a few changes to Gwent from Witcher 3 to the standalone game. In addition to these changes in the mechanics of the game, there have been a number of visual changes as well. As you might expect, Gwent feels like a more tradition card game along the lines of Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering, instead of just a mini-game addition to another title.
We’ll have more on Gwent in the coming weeks and months as we draw closer to the closed beta and the official release of the title.
