Gwent Modes

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Recently, I have been struggling to find a Gwent mode I enjoy playing.

By far, my favorite mode is unranked. In unranked, one still gets a encounters an interesting mix of net decks, quest decks, meme decks, and test decks, played at various levels of skill. Unfortunately, the wait time for a match has just become intolerable. I have waited 5 minutes and still gotten no match. But all other modes are not very enjoyable.

I dislike ranked play. I’m not interested in highly competitive play where I not only face a repetitive selection of overturned, over tutored decks with no variety in either cards or play, but, with a still limited card collection, I eventually rise to a level where the decks I can play never win orI have to spend resources crafting cards I don’t want. I am quite content to hover around rank 14 where I still encounter unique decks, earn decent rewards, and win a fair portions of games.

Draft mode, although far better than arena, is still garbage. It does not allow any creativity in deck building and play revolves around either obvious synergies or irrelevant ordering of cards. Random and boring is not for me.

Seasonal is occasionally fun, but most of the seasonal modes are not good for me: either they have a very narrow (often one deck ) meta, they are tedious, they are random with little strategy, or they demand cards I don’t own and have little desire to craft. Let me discuss them from worst to best.

1. Absolute worst by a huge margin is Battle Rush. Even with the changes to animation, the Gwent interface on an I phone renders the mode utterly unplayable. Anytime I make a selection, I typically need to click, wait a second for lag to see if the click worked (clicking again can lead to deselecting), then click select. Just ending turn typically takes a couple of seconds either because the click doesn’t take, or something is selected an won’t deselect. Even if the interface worked perfectly, I wouldn’t enjoy the rushed feeling (especially since I typically also face frequent distractions and interruption), but that would be personal taste.

2. Trial of Grasses. Come on — NR Witcher’s is already meta without the bonuses this mode directly gives it. This is Epitome of a one deck mode — both boring and demanding numerous cards many players don’t own.

3. Dual Casting. This should be called “echo” mode as a single echo card can be played 10+ times in one match. Did I mention that even in standard play, without exception, echo cards are overpowered garbage that destroys the game? Why would I want to play against them repeatedly?

4. Switcharoo. Imagine a Gwent version with no deck building strategy, no round control/passing strategy, total draw dependence, and repeated roping as players try to read descriptions of un familiar cards. Welcome to Switcharoo.

5. Patience is a Virtue. Random and slow as players fight with choosing from totally unfamiliar cards, this mode also suffers from little strategy as no future planning is ever possible — except as regards the expect provision level of upcoming play choices. If the mode were less tedious, this latter could be interesting, but given the tedium, I will pass.

6. Irresistible Attraction. Another one deck meta— NG assimilate. At least this meta admits some slight flexibility in card choice.

These first 6 seasonals are unbearably bad; I will not play them. The next tare bad, but I occasionally play them.

7. Power shift. This mode is highly binary as widens the gap between high and low provision cards. He who draws the most golds wins.

8. Plus One. Yes, this mode is all about Idarran and movement, but it only requires crafting a single, otherwise interesting card. And how Idarran is used/reused through the match can actually be original and interesting.

The remaining seasonal modes are, so far, actually interesting to me. I wish all seasonals were as nice.

9. SeeSaw. This mode’s biggest problem is the tedium figuring out which units get boosted and which damaged as one looks ahead.

10. Double down. This mode is a bit slow, eliminates spawn, clog, and mill strategies, and reduces the value of polarization and deploy cards. Interesting, but not exciting.

11. Momentum. If this mode still exists, it presents probably the least significant change from normal Gwent, but it’s still interesting.

12. Entrench. A nice chance to highlight otherwise unused cards.

13. Banished. This mode presents an fast paced twist on Gwent that finally solves the issue of excessive tutoring. My favorite.
 
I love Patience is a Virtue! and Switcheroo precisely because they're the furthest from normal constructed.

Patience is just RNG, but you can still strategise because you know all cards will go up one Provision every turn.
Switcheroo is great for trolling opponents by playing trash decks yourself and wasting all of their good cards. The switching hands animation could be faster, but that's the only critique I have about the mode.

Battle Rush I find really great because it's so fast, and now that they've sped up the game by a significant amount it will be even better.

Most of the other seasonals, with the exception Banished which I've not tried and therefore cannot judge, I think are boring.

Everything is resilient? Units spawn an extra copy of themselves? Specials spawn an extra copy of themselves? Everything gets boosted or damaged every single turn? Witchers have an advantage over all other units? Units seize other units? :sleep:
I really hope Momentum is gone for good.


Draft I find really fun because it allows for stuff that is impossible in constructed, and it makes no difference whether you win or not (except for the experience/crown pieces gained, of course) so there's no pressure to get a good deck. Plus, it's only in early access/beta, and will be updated later on -- so it will only get better in the future.


Ranked and casual have no difference except queue time for me (never takes several minutes for casual, though) because even my highest-ever rank is barely a bigger number than my highest-ever beta rank was; I can play absolutely anything and still have a good chance of winning.
 
I wish there were a deckbuilding mode similar to draft, but with further deck progression similar Slay The Spire.
 
Battler Rush the worst?! For me, this is the most fun one! Quick play, no roping, exciting games, an opportunity to play a lot of games with less popular abilities - that's actually the only season that I am looking forward to ;) Also, this is the only time that I can reach the 350 crowns weekly limit. Can't wait to play it again
 
It may depend on your platform — on an IPhone I often cannot get the interface to correctly respond fast enough to perform one action beyond playing the card. It’s way more aggrivation than it’s worth.
 
Perhaps you are right, it can be frustrating when you misclick or when the phone freezes. I always play on my laptop, never played on the phone. Even on a laptop, with decent Internet connection, it can be tricky to play the entire sequence in 8 seconds. Still, my favourite seasonal mode
 
They really need to learn from legends of runterra.

I almost never play rank in LOR yet I keep going back to their lab of legends and many players solely play that mode only. Its really fun.

Recently they added yet another mode which is similar to slay the spire.

Gwent should at least bring back the old arena mode. It gives a very different experience. I said it many times but mods here turn it down.

It seems gwent developers are worried too many modes make waiting time longer but fail to realise too little variety just encourages more players to quit and jump to LOR or other competitors.
 
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