GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
SPECIAL EDITION IN ENGLISH NOV 2016
THE MINI GUIDE THE SPIN-OFF BASED ON THE TRADING CARD GAME FROM THE WITCHER 3
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GRAPHIC DESIGNER: ALEJANDRO ANZOLEAGA @LALE11
GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
MAKE MY MONSTER GROW!
THE EVOLUTION OF GWENT BY ALEJANDRO ANZOLEAGA @LALE11 TRANSLATION BY BRIAN CLARK THANKS TO: MATIAS FACCINI, NICOLAS DZIUBAN, GERMAN BATTISTON.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
WHAT IS GWENT
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WENT is a card game from the literary universe of “The Witcher”, created by Andrzej Sapkowski and adapted in the form of a videogame by CD Projekt RED. The Gwent "minigame" was featured in the latest installment of the videogame series (The Witcher 3), and due to its huge success, the developers decided to create a standalone, Free To Play, online multiplayer version of it.
HOW TO PLAY
FICHA TÉCNICA PLATFORM(S) PC, XBOX ONE, PS4 GENRE(S) Card / Board Game DEVELOPER CD Projekt RED BETA VERSION October 25, 2016 PRICE Free To Play WEB SITE www.playgwent.com PLAYERS 1-2 competitive
CARANTHIR [MONSTERS]
Immune to Frost. Spawn a Frost effect and 2 Wild Hunt Hounds.
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n this little guide we’ll go through the basic rules, protips and commonly used strategies. To put it simply, this card game takes place in a war-torn battlefield where we, the player, act as generals giving orders to our various troops and characters. Before starting a new match, we must choose one of the four factions available, each one with its own skills and tactics. Our deck should contain no less than 25 cards and no more than 40. Cards are divided into 3 groups that limit our card choices: BRONZE, SILVER (up to 6 cards allowed) and GOLD (up to 4). Besides that, cards are split into three different types: MELEE, RANGED and SIEGE, determining the position a card can take in the board. Each card has a number representing its strength, although there are cards with no strength (event and weather cards), which trigger various effects that influence all the other cards and sometimes the whole board itself. Our objective is to win 2 of 3 rounds in a match, and to accomplish that we need to have more strength than our rival.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
Before starting a new match each player must choose one of the four available factions by selecting a leader card, and then draw 10 cards from their deck. Because the starting hand is very important and in some cases can define a match, each player can mulligan up to 3 cards. In the following rounds, each player can draw new cards: 2 in the second round and "The objective of only 1 in the third and final round. the game is to win GWENT is a turn-based game, and it is mandatory 2 of 3 rounds in to play at least one card in each turn. We can choose to pass a round, but we can’t go back to the game until a match. To win our opponent plays any number of cards during its a round, we must turn and also decides to pass that round. Because of have more strength this, players must apply various strategies and even units than our rival." mind-games in order to win. The game board is composed of 3 rows for each player, where the different types of cards are placed (MELEE, RANGED and SIEGE). It also has a Graveyard, GWENT is 1vs1. a place where removed cards are placed. At the end of each round, all of the cards in the table are removed from play and also placed in the Graveyard. A coin is tossed to decide which player goes first, except for players who chose to play the Scoia’tael faction, whose ability allows said player to decide who goes first. The next round will always be started by the previous round winner. Those are the basic rules of GWENT. They seem a little bit complicated at first, but playing becomes second nature once players start getting quite a bit of practice. To make it short, GWENT is a combination of bluffing and deceiving our opponent (like Poker), and crafting and implementing an effective strategy.
+ RULES
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
"GOLD cards are usually invulnerable to event cards and special abilities, unless the card says otherwise." MORKVARG [SKELLIGE]
"When moved to the graveyard, lose 2 base strength and resurrect."
It’s recommended to have a reasonable sized deck, because the more cards we have, the less likely we’ll draw the one we want. The deck should also contain a variety of card types. Don’t rely on brute force only, add some neutral and event cards too!
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
THE GAME BOARD 1.
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The 3 rows in each player’s board contain the total sum of strength units each player has.
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Faction Leaders can only be used once in a match.
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Card advantage and hand superiority are key.
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Weather cards are a double-edged sword, as they affect both our rival’s and our own rows. Some cards are immune to weather effects, and some cards gain advantage from them.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
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6 5.
It is important to pay attention to cards’ abilities, as most are exclusive of each unit.
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6.
The Graveyard is where cards removed from play are placed, either by other cards effects or at the end of each round.
GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
FACTIONS AVAILABLE NORTHERN REALMS Whenever a gold card appears on your side of the battlefield, Add +2 to its strength.
SCOIA'TAEL At the beginning of one round per match, you can choose who plays first.
MONSTERS Keep a random unit (non Gold) on the battlefield at the end of each round.
SKELLIGE At the end of each round, add +1 to every unit in your hand, deck or graveyard.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
Combining the Witcher-type cards with Thunderbolt (+6 to all) and Swallow (+12 to one unit) potion cards is a really effective combo. VESEMIR [NEUTRAL]
Play Eskel and Lambert from your deck.
PRO TIPS � Spread your cards evenly among the rounds, as playing the best ones at the start of a match does not guarantee victory. � Sometimes is better to pass and lose a round than give your opponent a big card advantage. � To efficiently build a deck we should always take into account each faction special ability. Also, building a deck around only one strategy can be dangerous, as our opponent can ruin it and we’ll have nothing to fall back on. � It is best to mentally plan and decide when to use each combo. � In order to use special cards like weather, horn, potions or scorch we should wait for the right moment. For example: Using Skellige + Warcry when we have several damaged units. � If we want to play a weather card to affect our opponent, we should save the other cards that can also harm us for the next round.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
MONSTERS FACTION
EREDIN
DAGON
GE'ELS
Play the silver 'Eredin' unit with 10 strength on the Melee row.
Spawn a First Light, Biting Frost, Impenetrable Fog or Torrential Rain card.
Set the strength of all non-Gold units on one of your rows to 6.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
COMMONLY USED STRATEGIES BY MATIAS FACCINI
This faction is divided into 2 deck strategies: Aggro (focused on generating tons of strength) and Control/Aggro (sacrificing a bit of strength to gain control of our opponent’s cards). On one hand we have Eredin and its Wild Hunt, which making use of weather cards and damaging enemy cards allows us to constantly build a considerable strength amount. At the same time, we keep our opponent at bay playing cards like Nithral, Imlerith or Caranthir. This deck allows a more flexible approach to choosing when to play each card, and it’s less expensive to build than Skellige. On the other hand we have Ge’els and the “token” deck (spawn tons of units to later make them grow exponentially). Although this kind of deck can achieve unrivalled amounts of strength, it is easily countered by cards like Manticore Venom or Lacerate, making it a deck not suited for beginners.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
SKELLIGE FACTION
CRACH AN CRAITE
HARALD THE CRIPPLE
KING BRAN
Spawn 2 Clan an Craite Warriors on the battlefield.
Remove 3 strength from all weakened opposing units and 2 strength from all other opposing units.
Discard 2 cards and add 2 base strength to them. Choose any card in your deck and place it in your hand.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
COMMONLY USED STRATEGIES BY MATIAS FACCINI
The strategies of this faction focus on staying alive the most time, since its passive ability grants us an extra strength point to every card on our board, deck, graveyard and hand. Skellige also plays with the concept of purposely reducing our cards’ strength to later reinforce them, or even removing our own cards from the game to play them again from the graveyard; with obvious benefits such as increased strength. The only downside to Skellig is that building effective decks is quite expensive. Some good combos to build a deck based on are: King Bran, Hjalmar and Kambi (with Cerys and Ciri to strengthen it); and Crach An Craite Warrior, Warcry and Commander’s Horn.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
SCOIA'TAEL
EITHNÉ
FRANCESCA
BROUVER HOOG
Return a non-Relentless unit on your side to your hand and immediately play it again.
Redraw up to 3 cards from your deck.
Play a Silver card from your deck.
SOME FEATURES This faction is based on bluffing and deceiving, since it has several trap cards (cards that are placed face down and activate when a predetermined condition is met). Most of its units are quite agile, as they can be placed in any row and adapt to our rival’s strategy. Also, since most of the cards are low on strength, most of their abilities synergize well with each other.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
NORTHERN REALMS
FOLTEST
RADOVID
HENSELT
Choose a Bronze unit on your side of the battlefield. Spawn an exact copy on the same row.
Remove 8 strength from any unit.
Convert all units on one of your rows to Gold until destroyed or the round ends.
SOME FEATURES Siege units and unit strengthening are some of the key pros of this faction. Many cards generate more strength based on the number of other cards in play as well as constant damage to our opponent. This faction also lets us promote common cards to Gold category, which on top of making them immune to most abilities, gives them 2 extra strength thanks to the faction passive ability.
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GWENT 〉 THE MINI GUIDE
GL!TCHY FRAMES | NOV 2016
If you have any questions, please contact us by e-mail at pr@glitchyframes.com
@GlitchyFrames – patreon.com/GyFs CD PROJEKT®, The Witcher®, GWENT® are registered trademarks of CD PROJEKT Capital Group. GWENT game © CD PROJEKT S.A. All rights reserved. Developed by CD PROJEKT S.A. GWENT game is set in the universe created by Andrzej Sapkowski. All other copyrights and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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