GWENT: The Witcher Card Game

Just one thing: try it out. It`s free to play, with a little perserverance you can quickly build up a good collection and I enjoy it a lot. If it is fun for you, you have to find out for yourself. But please don`t let all the 1 star ratings fool you into thinking it`s such a bad game. There are a lot of trumps out there :) To give you a little perspective: I play mtg since 1994 (started with antiquities) and had a lot of fun with the homm card game till it`s demise. Also I tried Spellweaver (not a bad game either). See you on the battlefield....

I came to Gwent beta in the wake of the Uroboros set update for Hearthstone, which for me, was the last straw in a line of such blatant power creep and pay to win tactics that had ruined the game for me. Old Gwent had a feeling that anything was possible. Sure you will hear complaints about the big bad alchemy or greatsword or reveal decks in Old Gwent, but the truth was that it was designed as such that you could make just about any archetype work with enough time spent optimizing your deck and strategy. Every card I put down felt powerful if played correctly. Every turn was exciting. There was a strategy to everything. It was fast paced, high octane, online card game action. An best of all it felt like when I won, it was because I played better, and if I lost, its because I made a mistake. I either got too greedy, or made a misstep, or my deck was missing a vital component. Unfortunately Old Gwent, Beta Gwent, the game I am praising so much... No longer exists. New Gwent (Gwent Homecoming) is almost entirely the opposite. Cards are low power with boring (mostly very similar) abilities. Most use the new "Command" archetype (which is so universal it is more like the new driving game mechanic), which makes most deck feel bland and samey. Games play out painfully slow, and archetypes are either bland and uninteresting or removed entirely. Most cards are very low impact save a select few which only serve to make games feel like even more of a slog as you try to "Ping" them down over 5 turns, or sloooowly build up your own board. I honestly don't know what else to say. New Gwent isn't even interesting enough to right a properly critical review about. I could talk on and on for ages about Old Gwent and its strengths and weaknesses, but New Gwent... I just can't be bothered to even play. I heard it put best in a Gwent forum post. "New Gwent may have more "potential" or be easier to expand or balance but it isn't fun, I had fun when I played Old Gwent."

The game has changed so much from the original form everyone fell in love with, and it was done all at once and without user input. Not sure how someone thought this was a good idea. I tried toget into thenew version -I was excited at first to check out all the new stuff. But after a few hours playing it became painfully obvious that homecoming is clearly inferior to the original, and I legitamatle didn't want to play the game anymore So I just stopped playing and went to play something else I could actually enjoy

As many previously stated this game is no longer enjoyable. Which is pity because I played many hours in beta and it was my favourite game even outside card games genre. I played 3 days in a new 'gwent' and realized that I will not play this game anymore. The tempo of the game became really slow. Balance issues at its core in both constructed and arena: either you have a lot of cards that will snowball you the game overtime if not get answered and you win or they have an answer (multiple answers) to those cards that generate value and you lose and visa versa. Not fun nor interactive. No tacticks anymore, no mind games, no complexity. You either have an answer or you don't and games are boring and predictable. 10 cards cap kills the core mechanic of the game - card advantage as well as new mulligan and draw system - now player with the best starting hand wins and your deck always plays in the same way 1st 2nd and 3rd round. Sometimes you bleed your opponent because of his deck but you know it already since the matchup started - predictable and boring. And random decks like reveal Nilfgaard makes it worse because you feel bad when they high roll. Controlled random was the reason why I loved old gwent as well as the fact that you used to play with your whole deck and now its gone together with my desire to play it.

Homecoming was a chance to return to the pre-Midwinter roots of Gwent when it was at its peak. Sadly, CDPR derived all the wrong conclusions from years of beta testing, choosing to discard a wonderful rough gem in the making for an abominable simplistic reductionist offering that still carries the Beta's flaws yet none of its strengths. Judging by GOGstats (http://gogstats.com/game/1971477531_gwent-the-witcher-card-game) as well as Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2016-10-27%202018-11-27&q=%2Fg%2F11bzs2z_sr) and Twitch numbers, the game has never performed worse than right now, shortly after the release of Homecoming. The release version has rendered Gwent as a game irrelevant in today's market, as reflected in Homecoming being less popular than even Beta Gwent during the infamous 6+ months of complete content drought. Sadly, CDPR hasn't shown an ability to identify the core issues of Homecoming. Homecoming's design removed every shred of emergent complexity within the game, reduced the creativity and outplay/outsmarting/counter-play potential of the game, and devolved most strategies into binary scenarios of "answer or lose." After more than 2 years and thousands of hours played, it is painful to see a beloved game reduced to this.