Gwent 2019: A Year in Retrospective

[DRK3]

The year is about to end and just like CDPR did in their latest stream, i did my own take of what happened this year in Gwent.

Part 1 - Calendar

January - Thronebreaker New Leaders
The new leaders came as a breath of fresh air, ushering a year full of big updates. And with the mulligan update came leaders being associated with provisions, instead of number of mulligans. At this time, Big Monsters was still dominating, as they did since the beginning of HC, but their demise would arrive in the next update.

March - Crimson Curse Expansion
More new leaders. Everyone playing Dethlaff. Dethlaff nerfed within a week, and we would fall into oblivion until the recent vampire revamp (pun intended). It was around this time that witcher trio, that had already been nerfed from 4pt to 3pt, was then nerfed to 2pt, the biggest nerf in Gwent history. I think the Unicorn/Chironex were also very popular, and got nerfed and disappeared from the map.

May - NG Update
The reveal archetype got scrapped and Morvran became the soldier leader. Ironically, it was Calveit, one of the least popular leaders at that time, that after the underdog leader challenge, suddenly became the most popular NG leader, which later would lead to the infamous NG Hyperthin deck.
Also in May and June, Skellige and Svalblod rose to the top and completely dominated the meta in these months.

July - Novigrad Expansion
Then came Syndicate, and it was OP AF. It was labeled by CDPR as an advanced faction, but it was so blatantly more powerful than other factions that everyone wanted to play it. King of Beggars and Bounties dominated everything (creating an eternal hatred for bounties for me)

August - NR Overhaul
Northern Realms was at the bottom and suddenly got really good, and it was here that engines started gaining territory. But it was also the month of Dijkstra townsfolks and Blue Stripes madness, plus the NG counters to those with Usurper and Hyperthin, making it arguably the worst meta in HC Gwent.

October - Iron Judgment and iOS Release
New cards arrived (with lots of powercreep), but also a lot of changes to old cards. It was here that the tutor leaders really started dominating the meta - Mystic Echo was already popular thanks to Harmony and Waters of Brokilon, but its strange that Pincer Maneuver (NR) and Wild Card (SY) were not popular at all on release but here started being the meta. It was also here that Summoning Circle was destroyed. Coincidence?

December - Mistery Update?
We still dont know the scale of what's coming. But i decided to make this before this release anyway, because whatever it is, it will affect early 2020 more than this year.

(Part 2 coming soon, with some personal opinions and criticisms of the direction the game is taking)

 

[DRK3]

You can check Part 2 on this thread

Gwent's Problems (All of Them)

Note: i planned on adding this to my gwent retrospective thread. But since nobody commented, it would just get attached to the other post and the thread wouldnt get bumped. Im sorry but i didnt spend hours thinking and writing this for it to be never read. Even if it's just a few who have the...

forums.cdprojektred.com

 

[DRK3]

Time to return to this topic, be my whiny self and present another criticism in the form of nostalgia:

Now that we had a full year of Gwent Homecoming (assuming we're not getting anymore updates this year), what do you miss the most that was removed THIS YEAR?

Quite a few things for me,

- the old school Arachas decks, where you destroyed your bugs and new ones would spawn, coupled with the "vran machineguns", that new players will never find out about. The new arachas deck is still viable, just not as much fun.

- summoning circle. I know it would be super problematic on the current meta, where leaders that allow multiple cards to play in one turn rule supreme (and the old SC would allow one more), but it was also the most creative card in all of Gwent HC, and not without a lot of risks.

- the old Unseen Elder's ability, Whispering Hillock and Zoltan. I mention these 3 together because i used them mostly with monsters - Zoltan used to provide +2 or -2 to a row, now it's dead with +1 or -1. Whispering Hillock allowed some awesome combos, like replaying that Zoltan, Yennefer, or even making a 3/4 Phoenix deck, which became completely unviable with Seizes, banishes in the form of Regis Bloodlust and all this powercreep (16pts is not as scary now as it used to be).

And this new Death's Shadow ability, which i see was well received and praised for bringing consume and deathwish back? I agree its interesting, but it's a placebo. The ability itself is a little better and opens more possibilities than before, but before you had 3 charges, one for every turn.

Unseen Elder and Bran were the only leaders like this, with their leader ability available on every turn, but Bran was too weak to push R2, but not Unseen Elder - even if you lost CA, you could still use your leader ability again R3 and hopefully you had forced your opponent to use his R2. Now the game lost diversity again, and all leaders are becoming this super ability, saved for R3 or an aggressive R1/2 push. Im not a fan.

I'll add/edit more if i remember them. Please share your stories too.