Gwent: The Legendary Card Game Review

What's in the Gwent box?

The box contains five different factions: Northern Realms, Scoia'tael (elves), Monsters, Skellige (a Viking-like people) and Nilfgaard (boooo). Each deck has enough faction-specific cards to create a unique playing style and combinations of strategy based on who and what you're playing. Nilfgaard is sneaky, Monsters will overwhelm you with hordes of critters, and Skellige units transform into powerful beasts. There are also some relatively powerful neutral cards (Triss, for example) that provide everyone with access to strong heroes without unbalancing the game. And there is also a cow...

Deck building in Gwent:

The cleverest mechanic in Gwent is deck building. Each player must have a minimum of 22 unit cards, 1 leader and a maximum of 10 special cards (weather, for instance). This means a player might load the deck with lots of units, especially if they work in combination together (hordes of monsters, for instance). If they do load the deck, then they may struggle to win the game, because players must deal 10 cards randomly from the deck to play across all three rounds. At the end of each round, all cards played are discarded. So if a player goes too deep in round one to win, there is a good chance they will lose the game! On their turn, players can only do one of three things: play a card, use their leader's special ability or pass. And passing can sometimes be the most powerful move of the three!

This is such a simple but powerful ruleset because players must carefully choose the card types, the number in the deck and work out the chances of them being drawn into a hand. Fill the deck with too many units, and you might not have enough of one type in your hand to use special abilities, but stack too many heroes and you won't get the multipliers you need to beat factions with lots of hordes.

Each faction has enough flavour to dictate your playing style and to force your opponent to change their deck to suit. For instance, Northern Realms vs Monsters is a tricky match-up. Northern Realms can link cards together with the same names and create a powerful multiplier, but only if enough of the right cards are drawn, which might mean requiring a smaller deck, impacting future rounds. While Monsters can play lots of different cards onto the table, significantly boosting the strength in every round. Certain abilities allow players to add cards from the deck and the hand, requiring strategic thinking to determine which cards to stack and which to leave in the larger deck. It's clever, challenging and very satisfying.

Once play begins, players must carefully watch each other, mentally add up the strength of the cards that have already been played, and try to keep one eye on the size of both players' remaining hands. Playing a card means it is committed for good, so the strategy should consider this round and the rounds to come. When both players have passed on a round, it ends, strength scores are totalled up, and the loser must discard a gem.

Why passing might be a winning move in Gwent:

Passing is a powerful move in Gwent; sometimes, the most important thing is NOT to play a card, especially if you have more strength than your opponent. But if you miscalculate, and your opponent also passes, then you may lose. Similarly, if you can see there is no way you can win the round, you still have strength in your hand, and your opponent has overcommitted, then sacrificing it for a better position in the next two rounds might be sensible. There are very few games where NOT playing is as powerful as taking a turn.