A Gwent Tutorial
Getting Started with Gwent
Getting started with Gwent might feel a little overwhelming at first, but the game is pretty simple, especially if luck is on your side. Your ultimate goal is to be the one to wrack up more points than your opponent at the end of each round. Do that twice and you win. This may require some finesse to learn to play your cards right, meaning knowing when to pass or, figuratively, when to double down.
At this point in the game you will have a base deck for all of the deck sets, but you’ll only have enough cards to play a round with the Northern Realms Deck. You will have to collect more cards for your Socia’tael, Monsters, and Nilfgaardian Empire decks before you can play with them.
Building Your Northern Realms Deck
To start building your Norther Realms Deck you first want to access your deck from the settings menu. I have no idea why it’s embedded there. Once there you will want to move the new cards you just bought from the Innkeeper during the Lilac and Gooseberries quest into your deck. Keep in mind that once you accept to play an opponent, you can not edit your deck. That can only be done outside of a match.
What’s on Screen
At the very top of the screen we can choose which deck we want to edit by switching between them. At this point in the game that includes the Northern Realms, Socia’tael, Mosnters, and Nilfgaardian Empire decks.
On the left hand side of the screen we can sort through all of our cards that are not currently in our deck. Opposite of this on the right side of the screen we can sort through all of the cards that are currently in our deck. Within these we have the option to sort our cards by type. So we can view All Cards in our deck, or we can look at just the Close Combat Unit Cards, just the Ranged Unit Cards, just the Siege Unit Cards, just the Hero Cards, just the Weather Cards, or just our Special Cards.
Down the center we have the ability to change our current Leader card.
Below this is a running tally of the different types of cards you have in your deck. Total cards in deck will describe how many individual cards you currently have in your deck. Number of Unit Cards describes how many Combat, Ranged, or Siege cards you currently have in your deck. (You must have at least 22 unit cards in your deck to take on opponents.) Special Cards describes how many decoy and weather cards you currently have in your deck. Total Unit Card Strength describes how many points your deck has in total. Lastly there are the Hero Cards which tells you how many Hero Cards are currently in your deck.
Choosing Your Cards
You only need 22 unit cards in total, so I like to keep the number of these cards as low as possible, meaning only having 22 unit cards at any time to make better use of the high point cards we have. This allows you to remove any excess cards starting with the lowest scoring cards. So move the Blue Stripes Commando, Catapult, Crinfrid Reavers Dragon Hunter, and Decoy cards into your active deck.
Next we will want to switch out our current Leader card for the one we bought at the inn. Instead of the Foltest King of Temeria card, we want to use the Foltest Lord Commander of the North card which grants you the ability to clear any weather effects in play once per encounter.
You start with 9 Special Cards already in your deck, but we only want to keep the essentials that will help us win. Again, keeping the number of cards in our deck low will help us make better use of the high point cards we acquire. So we can remove the Impenetrable Fog, Torrential Rain, and Clear Weather cards (as long as we have our Leader Ability, we won’t need any Clear Weather cards). We will only be needing the two Biting Frost Cards.
We end up with 22 Unit Cards and 3 Special Cards in our deck. Twenty Five in total.
Cards of Note
Make note of any Leader, Spy, Medic, Tight Bond, or Hero Cards you have as they all have special abilities that are particularly useful. As of right now those cards include the two Foltest cards, the Prince Stennis Spy card, Dun Banner Medic card and Blue Stripes Commando Tight Bond cards. You’ll also want to be familiar with your Decoy, and Biting Frost cards. All together these are our more powerful moves.
Keep in mind that your opponent can apply these same tactics against you - so watch out!
Leader Cards: as mentioned earlier, leader cards allow you one special ability per game. The default leader is the Foltest King of Temeria card which allows you to ‘Pick an Impenetrable Fog card from your deck and play it instantly.’ I consider this to be the weaker choice as it may or may not be a necessary card depending on what deck you are playing against. You won’t know what deck you are playing against until a game starts so this card is not essential to your victory in all circumstances.
Alternatively you should already have the Foltest Lord Commander of the North card which allows you to ‘Clear any weather effects in play.’ I consider this to be the superior choice as all decks include weather cards so this one will be more essential to your strategy no matter who your opponent is.
Prince Stennis Spy: spy cards when played go down on the opponents side and gives all his points towards your opponents total score. Although this might seem like a disadvantage, his ability allows you to draw two additional cards from your deck and that is always more useful and more powerful than the points you just gave your opponent. Always play these cards so that you can grow your hand with even more powerful cards. Keep as many of these cards in your deck as possible.
Dun Banner Medic: medic cards when played will allow you to revive a single card from your discard pile. They themselves usually have decent point scores allowing you to put two cards down in one single turn.
Blue Stripes Commando Tight Bond: tight bond cards when played allow the player to ‘Place next to a card with the same name to double the strength of both cards.’ This means that one single Blue Stripes Commando card when played is worth four points, but that value will double when you have two or three in play.
Hero: hero cards are a special type of card independent from the others. They feature a main character, such as Geralt or Yennefer and usually carry a high point count. Hero cards can not be nerfed, so they are unaffected by weather cards, and can’t be discarded until the end of a round. Some can double as Spies or Medics.
Decoy: decoy cards allow you to ‘Swap with a card on the battlefield to return it to your hand.’ These cards are quite useful because you can call back a card to your hand, either to use in a later round, or apply its effect for a second time within the same round.
An example of this would be to use a Medic card twice. If you play a Medic card once you can draw a card from your discard pile. If you then recall your Medic by using a Decoy card you can then play the Medic for a second time, later in the game giving you the ability to recall yet another card from your discard pile.
Another example would be if your opponent uses a Spy card, you can switch their Spy card on your playing field for your Decoy card so that you can then play that Spy card and receive two cards from your deck. It does not matter if that card was originally used by your opponent, if you play the card you will receive two additional cards from your own deck.
Weather Cards: different weather cards have different effects. Biting Frost cards ‘Sets the strength of all Close Combat cards to 1 for both players'. Close Combat cards are cards that are delt to your first row. Impenetrable Fog cards ‘Sets the strength of all Ranged Combat cards to 1 for both players.’ Ranged Combat cards are cards that are delt to your second row. Torrential Rain cards ‘Sets the strength of all Siege Combat cards to 1 for both players.' Siege Combat cards are cards that are delt to your last row. Clear Weather cards ‘Remove all Weather Card effects.’
Playing Against Monster Decks
When facing an opponent they will use a variety of cards and the Scoia’tael and Nilfgaardian Empire decks will usually be on level footing versus your Northern Realms deck, that is - as long as you are going against someone who is at a similar level of difficulty. Play against people that are at the same level of difficulty and you will usually do just fine as long as luck is on your side.
The deck you need to outsmart is going to be a Monster deck- no matter their level of difficulty. Monster Decks are primarily comprised of not only Close Combat cards, but Tight Bond cards that can easily overpower whatever cards you’ve got on the playing field so you have to be strategic. This means building a deck with cards that are primarily either Ranged Combat cards or Siege Combat cards. The only Close Combat cards you want to have in your deck are other Tight Bond cards or Hero cards.
This is why you want to have those two Biting Frost cards in your deck. Remember that this card will only effect Close Combat cards, so when played against a Monster deck - which has the potential of placing a ridiculous number of points in their first row - we can dramatically reduce their number of points with this weather card to hopefully eek out a win.
Technique
Although people who play with Monster Decks have a slight advantage - they tend to follow a pattern. Usually in the first round they will throw everything they’ve got at you. Wait it out and let them play all their major cards, wracking up points… and at the last second, use your Biting Frost card to reduce their points to an amount you can easily beat.
The best strategy is to try and play the Weather card after they pass, or they can use their Foltest card, or a Clear Weather card to remove your Biting Frost card from play securing their victory at the last moment. This is why having a second Biting Frost card is useful because if they remove your Weather card from play - you can use your backup. If you were lucky to be delt multiple Spy cards, the chances of having these Weather cards is much higher.
The great thing about this strategy is that you aren’t wasting your cards, because once you’ve played your weather card, those points out in the playing field aren’t just going to waste, they are going towards your point count and you are way more likely to pull a W.
At that point you just have to go through the motions as the second round will prove to be a whole lot simpler.
My original technique against these decks was to just hold on as long as possible, scrap the first round and hope to god they got most of their cards out in the initial round. I would pass and ultimately lose my first round. This meant I had to win two rounds in a row, but with a smaller hand this got hard to do especially if it turned out they still had something really good left up their sleeve. This usually led to me losing a few games until I got lucky. This technique was not as efficient and led to more losses then wins. Tailoring your deck this way will prove to pull an easy win from all the other Card Factions.
This alternative strategy, to stack your deck against Monster Decks, is the most efficient way to win against them, especially in the early game when you don’t have as many high point cards.
Start your first game.
You have up to three chances to win two games against your opponent. If you end a round with less points than your opponent, you will lose that round. Lose twice and the game is over - your opponent wins.
At the start of each game and your first ten cards are delt, you will get the opportunity to redraw any two cards for the hopes of getting two, more efficient cards. I usually focus on removing lower point cards in hopes of getting something better. We are looking to stack our hand to have as many points as possible or as many useful cards as possible. This can be hard to do in the early game with so little points, practically useless cards, and not really knowing what you are doing can lead to a quick L.
On your turn you will have the option of Passing, which will automatically end this round for you, use your Leader card, or play one card from your hand. The point of the game is to try and outsmart your opponent - and ultimately to have some fun.
There are going to be different techniques you can use such as just throwing all your high cards to overpower your opponent, you can draw it out by using a lot of low point cards to get your opponent to play his hand and run out of points for a round 2, play your high cards and wait so that they deal up a lot of combat cards that you can knock out at the last second with a weather effect, or you can use spy cards to draw more cards and use Medic cards to bring back old cards, and just run them into the ground… it all depends on what you have in your hand and just how many points the opponent has.
Each game will be different, but it is usually a good idea to draw each round out just a little to really get a feel for your opponent. For example, just because your cards are being affected by a weather card doesn’t mean you have to immediately dispel it. Remember, even if your total score might be low now, your cards still hold potential. The score isn’t tallied until you both pass, or one of you run out of cards... But waiting does give us a small advantage. See what the enemy does, that way you have more information and can make better choices. Best case scenario: our opponent ends their round - giving us time to play anything we want giving us a total advantage.