GWENT
From the mention in the book, to a quick made mini-game, to the separate collection card game, Gwent has evolved over the years.
Today’s Gwent player base is mostly made up of people who started playing after “Homecoming” — the biggest update in the game’s history. Before this big event, Gwent still looked like a primary source from The Witcher 3. Still, a lot of people really liked it.
Since “Homecoming”, many OG Gwent players claim the game is dead right now.
To be honest, it’s a rather outrageous statement. The visual elements of the game became better — each faction got their own battlefield, leaders of factions turned into 3D models, which reacted to your actions on the battlefield, cards were made animated… CD Projekt RED did their best to improve the game.
But if a lot of early Gwent players claim the game’s demise, maybe we should think about the previous features that made players fall in love with that game?
We found 3 things that make some people feel nostalgic about the good old days in Gwent.
- Spies. Each person who played early Gwent remembers how imbalanced and annoying cards of this type were. This deck brought victory to its master literally every match. After “Homecoming” these cards were changed, but after a whole change of the mechanics, players said that spies were absolutely broken and even deleted from the game. The main spies’ tactic was to gift your opponent some points in exchange for two cards in your hand. Sometimes you could play the first round, win it, pass in the next round and play a spy once again the third round. Also there was a popular tactic with bluff; when you provoke your opponent to pass after playing a spy. So, then you could win the round with only one card. The Cantarella card was a real pain for lot of players.
- Weather. As in case with spies, these spells are still in game. But could we say that they are still so good? Well, no. The weather from old Gwent was a real thorn in ass and at the same moment kinda trash card. These cards are good in some situations, when you have some ideas for combinations. Like in case with frost and monsters. Another cards like storm and rain brought a lot of impact in a match. Also they are very unpredictable as for your opponent, so for you. In old Gwent you should better had a card that can avoid opponent’s weather. Nowadays, you don’t need it.
- Esports. CD Projekt Red are still supporting esports in their game, but do you remember previous tournaments with old Gwent? CDPR did really great job with all the locations, visuals, videos, cast of talents, broadcast and atmosphere. These events were all about The Witcher’s vibes. One of the best events was held at "Wieliczka" Salt Mine with a $100 000 prize pool. Broadcast of this tournament was so high, that some people think that cut scenes from it were better than The Witcher from Netflix.
Nowadays, there are some official tournaments from CDPR, but there are no atmosphere and former glory of previous events. Players still show interesting decks, create highlights, but you know that it couldn’t be compared.
Actually, any game should change elements to attract new users as well as entertaining oldfags. “Homecoming” was a good decision, because it achieved a new level for the game with all this visual effects, new boards, sounds, models of leaders and also “Thronebreaker”. But about this addon we will speak later.
Maybe you can name some things from old Gwent before “Homecoming”, that make your heart
