The protagonists of two of my all time favourite RPGs share something in common. Both (the best Final Fantasy game) Final Fantasy 8’s Squall and The Witcher 3’s Geralt simply cannot get enough of leaving their friends and the entire world in mortal peril while they sneak in a quick round of cards, and I love them for it. Way back when the Wild Hunt released, there was a special edition kicking about that gave you a few decks for Gwent – the fleshed-out, playable card distraction that ended up being responsible for some of the game’s best moments. I pined for those decks, but I never acquired them. Now, Hatchette Board Games is putting out a full physical edition of Gwent next year.
The set contains “over 400 cards and a playmat” for £44/$39.99. I’m still recovering from various Fantasy Flight LCGs, so my value sense for this stuff might be a bit skewed, but that strikes me as incredibly reasonable. A good Gwent deck consists of only about 25 cards. They’re not bad cards, either! I’ve got a real pet hate for tabletop versions of videogames that just use in-engine screenshots for the cards, but these ones look to have the proper artwork from the game on them:
Gwent itself has seen a few iterations over the years. There was a standalone online game that I had some fun with for a bit, even if it shattered CDProjekt’s image as the ‘No Microtransactions, Free DLC and a Back Massage’ studio by having the most nefarious loot box animation I’d ever encountered. Then there was the rather good Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, which wove Gwent into a single-player story. Brendy quite liked it.
You can read the full press release here, if you’d like. This one is supposed to be out Q3 of next year. In other Witchly news, The Witcher 4 has entered “the most intensive phase of development”.