I just wanted to say that I started playing LoR recently and I'm really impressed by it. It's actually amazing what they have done with such a small cardpool. I've been playing Gwent for about 3 years now and I can say for certain that the amount of strategy packed into LoR blows Gwent out of the water.
Really great strategic elements to the game:
- I love the slow/fast/burst spell system and being able to counter enemy spells in a variety of ways with your own faster ones.
- How mana carries over between rounds into a seperate spell container. Really encourages spell usage and their own resource management.
- How you can stall while on attack by playing low mana cards to bait out more from the enemy to hit with a big attack. It adds some mind games and makes weak cards super valuable.
- Positioning units on the board is very important. There are even many effects that are triggered by others mid-combat. (I'm always so disappointed Gwent never figured out how to do this.)
There's also so many unique effects on the cards, it's not just +/- points like what Gwent's become. I feel like all the cards in a LoR deck are valuable in their own way. I never feel cheated by not drawing my best cards because the power gap is very small between best & worst cards.
All the cards in a LoR deck feel like they are working together towards a greater objective. I never have that feeling in Gwent anymore, because your strategy completely revolves around 2-3 card self-contained combos (like Luiza/Savolla, Yghern/Ozrel, Dagur/Wild Boar, Scenario/trigger cards, Waters/Mystic Echo).
LoR also got it right with the tutorial. It lets you play the game against many different leaders while teaching you the actual mechanics of each faction, and gives you rewards based on each. Very similar to the challenges we had in Beta Gwent. If you ask me the HC Gwent tutorial is severely lacking in comparison. Plus you can only play against 1 AI leader in HC Gwent.
Overall I would say LoR is a game that must be tried especially if you are looking for more strategy in your card games. Pretty much no RNG in the cards is a huge bonus too.