So I've been playing a bit in the beta but I think I preferred the decks and abilities from the original game.

has any of you guys played it? And if so what do you think of it?

 

The game version was simpler, sure, but I don't think it would have worked in any competitive setting. The online game version is more well suited to that.

Having said that, I'm still relatively new so I don't have many cards so I lose a lot, but the thing is that I'm having fun even when I'm losing, which is a new experience.

The online version introduces many new features that didn't exist in the game, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, though imo it loses a bit of its original charm. Decks overall seem to very entirely dependent on a wombo, to which if you have an answer, you win. If not, you lose.

 

And there are pretty much only three answers right now, Philippa, Weather, and Dimeritium Bomb.

The meta is leaning heavily towards the minimum deck-size of 25, which means that the decks have to be self-sustaining. Being able to pull off your combo once just isn't good enough, you need to be able to use it in at least two of the rounds.

As a result, the big issue right now is the lack of deck variation. Sure, you can make a ton of different decks for each faction, but in reality very few of them are actually viable right now.


Skellige:

Revenant - Tons of card draw, with the proper setup you draw all 25 cards in your deck between the three rounds. Resurrections everywhere. And if by some chance you blow all of your rezzes in rounds one and two, you can drop Madman Lugos at the end as a 22 gold.

Wound Zoo - Buff your cards by hurting them. Less reliable than Revenant, gets shit on by control.


Monsters:

These two run about 14 rows worth of weathers (including double weather silvers) With your opponents limited to two Clear Skies and one Dime Bomb per deck, unless you play like an idiot you're probably going to win.

Weather (Wild Hunt) - A mix if Wild Hunt Riders, Foglets, and various other fun things (Ice Giant). It has a bit more freedom than the Foglet deck and is less likely to get annihilated by Philippa.

Weather (Foglets) - This one's pretty simple, play Foglet, play Nekker Warriors and duplicate Foglets. 3 Foglets becomes 9 (or 11 if you run Decoy). Now every time you play a fog card, you have 18 points on the board. A Thunderbolt Potion and you now have 45 points. My favorite of the Weather decks. Gets royally fucked by Philippa or Dime Bombs, you really NEED to have card advantage and save a Thunderbolt for the last card.

Swarm - Arachas or Nekkers and Fire Elemental, drop em, drop a Monster Nest, drop another Monster Nest, Thunderbolt. Fun if you like ending games with 300+ points, awful if you hate getting ruined by Philippa and Dime Bomb. Removal will make you cry.


Northern Realms:

Make It Gold and Keep It Around - Let your opponent pass turn 1, then buff Poor Fucking Infantry, buff it again, buff it some more, buff it one more time for good measure, then Adrenaline Rush it so it stays til the next round, then use your Leader to duplicate it (and then it duplicates itself), then Commander's Horn, and then promote them to gold. So now you have three Gold 50+ cards that stay for all 3 rounds.


And Scoia'tael:

Scoia'tael is kind of all over the place right now. I don't think I've ever really seen a consistent Scoia'tael meta... it honestly feels like the most underwhelming of the four factions right now.

 

Dr. Strange Lulz what's your username on GoG then?

 

DrStrangeLulz

Shoot me an invite

 

I find Gwent pretty strange tbh. I'mn ot entirely sure if I don't like it. I enjoyed it a lot more in the Witcher 3, I like that I can pick whatever deck I want (I really wanted to new game+ Witcher 3 with different decks) and I enjoy the core gameplay on the occasion but sometimes it just frustrates me. Like being hit by a weather and you know you have a card to counter it in your deck but you aren't drawing it.

Anyway, what decks are most people playing so far. According to Dr. Strange Lulz's names of the decks, I've been doing a revenant Skellige deck and I've been pretty successful with it. Have pretty much no gold cards that are good with it though. I only have Geralt and Kambi and Kambi seems awful.

 

I have only played Gwent in the original game and I thought it was really fun. That said, are there any major differences between the online beta and the Witcher 3 version?

 

So I picked this up again recently out of curiosity. I was shocked at how changed everything was. The developers waste no time in patching and changing cards around. Weather has been changed, dime bomb has been changed, tons of cards have been balanced, Nilfgaard is now a new set, etc.

I'm not sure if it's a result of these changes, but the game has seemed a lot less obnoxious now than it used to.

I've finally managed to craft a slightly not-terrible Monster deck that plays off Wild Hunt monsters + Caranthir and Foglets + Woodland Spirit, plus Yennefer: The Conjurer (Because she's fucking broken), Geralt and a few high value basic monsters for hero power value and Katakan value.

Anyone else still playing this?

 

I've been playing this a lot in the last week or two. It's pretty fun, I prefer it a lot over hearthstone though HS definitely has more dynamic moments (since you draw a card every round).

On the reddit people are whining about the OP decks but that's kind of par of the course of any game.

Weather Monster variants are still good, and there are two Devour monster variants that are very strong (with or without Vran Warrior is the main distinction - whether you make a wide or tall board). Monster lists are quite fun to play since managing your board with Devour or timing your weather can be challenging.

Northern Realms have a few lists mostly based on recurring their Reinforced Trebuchaes every round. It's not that interesting to play as imo.

Skellige has 2.5 archtypes, wound with a focus on self or enemy and discard/revenant. They seem weaker than NR and Monster, at least when I'm playing them.

Nilfguard seems weak but not many people play it and it seemed the least fun after my early games so I milled the cards for my other decks.

Scoia'tael is the strongest atm because of their uncounterable ambush mixups, recurring removal and the card advantage they get from their passive. I haven't personally played the stronger ST lists because they require too many legendary cards.

I have one closed beta key for someone who wants it as well.

 

Gwent's in Open Beta now so anyone who is keen can play.

You get a starter deck for each faction and there's about 15 packs you get for doing the single player challenges, which isn't too difficult.

Every faction except northern realms has viable decks, though probably Nilfguard variants are the the best right now because they're extremely consistent and high value.

 

Yeah, open beta looks to have a pretty great new user experience. All faction leaders are currently unlockable through completing challenges. They've also given each faction a starting legendary gold card plus a neutral way to tutor for a specific gold card.

Good time to sign on if anyone's interested. Though I'll be the first to admit there's a steep(ish) learning curve. Lots of small things can punish you pretty badly early on.

 

Learning curve isn't too bad I think, it's mostly a matter of familiarity with what the decks and cards do.

Knowing to play around/minimize Scorch and Geralt's Igni, for instance.

The free golds are good. Triss is good if boring, Phillipa would be good if NR had a deck that suited her removal, Royal Decree is great when you don't have 4 very good golds, Cahir is really strong, Imlerith is good, and Saesenthesis / Erimon are just ok.

 

The biggest problem I'm currently having is that there's not much to do. I started playing a few days ago and I play a few games to get the second ore reward on dailies and then I'm pretty much done. Tinkering with decks is not really an option as I don't have many cards, ranked is also not possible as I'm too low. Just spamming casual games, doesn't seem like a worthwhile thing to do.

Lots of people are saying that the new player experience is better than Hearthstone for example as you get more cards, decks that you can play from the get go, rewards are better etc, and that's all true, but not having something like Arena is really hurting the game in my opinion. I just spammed Arena in HS and while it might have been just my perception it gave me a feeling of faster progress than in Gwent.

 

It's pretty difficult for me to be honest. I lost every game against the bot and the original Gwent was much easier to grasp.

 

I wouldn't say I steamrolled the earlier levels in Gwent, but I remember winning more than losing. It's the other way around since I started trying to climb the leader boards. Mainly running ST right now...

Gwent has that 'just one more' playability because you keep looking back and think "I shouldn't have done that".

 

Pretty much. Was rolling around at a 60% win rate for the longest time, then slammed into a brick wall around rank 15. Really enjoying the game on the whole, but man does it feel bad to get 2-0'd occasionally. Vicoro medic is now positively terrifying for any QG players.