Introducing Novigrad — the newest GWENT expansion

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Welcome to Novigrad!

Don’t be fooled by the city’s beauty and wealth — it’s rotten to the core. Crime lords are vying for control of the streets using any means at their disposal. Yet strange events are becoming more commonplace. Once rival gangs are now being seen working together. The chaos is evolving, but why? And more importantly, into what?



MEET THE SYNDICATE, GWENT’S NEW FACTION!

The wait is over — mysterious Syndicate is joining GWENT as the newest playable faction! Collect over 90 new cards representing various sides of Novigrad’s underworld, including 15 cross-faction cards that can be used in the decks of already existing factions, 3 cards per each.

NOVIGRAD’S MOST WANTED

Meet 5 new leaders with unique abilities: terrorize your enemies as the reckless gang leader Cleaver; deal in the shadows as the elusive, yet ever present King of Beggars; cleanse the city of non-believers as Hemmelfart, the city’s ruthless hierarch. And that’s just the beginning.

NEW WAYS TO PLAY

Embrace the new meta! Syndicate expansion brings a new battle resource — Crowns, which can be used to activate powerful abilities of cards with the Fee keyword. Look at Grand Inquisitor Helveed, for instance.



You might also notice another new keyword — Profit. When you play a card with this ability, like the aforementioned Grand Inquisitor Helveed or Pickpocket below, you will gain a specified number of Crowns.



Units are not the only source of income — you can profit from playing special Syndicate cards called Crimes. Sometimes Crimes can trigger a secondary effect — that is if you have units with Intimidate, like Crownsplitter Thug here.



Units with Intimidate are getting a boost each time you commit a Crime.

Another way to fill your coffers is to place Bounty on enemy unit and collect your reward after successfully eliminating the target.

Sometimes it makes sense to save some Crowns to use them later with a greater benefit. For instance, cards with Tribute ability are required additional payment to use a more powerful version of their ability. Another example would be a card with Hoard keyword, like the Sea Jackal below.



Units with Hoard ability require a certain amount of Crowns to be saved in order to get the maximum out of them.

Finally, some units are just not like the others… take the Casino Bouncers for example. Their Insanity allows you to spur them into action even if you don’t have enough coin to pay the required Fee. However, what can’t be paid in gold, will be paid in blood — the activated unit will lose a portion of it’s health equal to the number of missing coins.



You can find more revealed cards here.

PRE-ORDER NOVIGRAD KEGS!

We’ve listened to you feedback about Crimson Curse pre-orders and prepared 2 different offers this time — choose your heart’s desire!

Both of them will be available until the expansion release on June 28th.


 

rrc

Forum veteran
Looks like we're in for a crime wave, straight from the back alleys and docksides of Novigrad.
Dear Riven, Honestly, I was thinking about you when I saw the stream. I know how much you love and support Dwarfs!New dwarfs are here and you should be very happy about it, right?
 
I know how much you love and support Dwarfs!
Indeed. Nice of you to remember me!
New dwarfs are here and you should be very happy about it, right?
Well, yes, and no. It's always grand to see more of our bearded friends join the fight, no doubt there; however, personally, I do prefer Mahakam Dwarves to Carlo Varese's gang of skull-cleavers -- after all, these chaps are quite criminal. I'll not complain loudly, though. Heh.
 
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Reactions: rrc
I have to say I am rather dissapointed that we are not getting Redania and Radovid back.

The new faction maybe good, but it does not really exite me. :(
 
Dear Riven, Honestly, I was thinking about you when I saw the stream. I know how much you love and support Dwarfs!New dwarfs are here and you should be very happy about it, right?

I am most likely going to be unhappy with this expansion. The game has needed more dwarfs and better dwarves overall for a long time now and how many have they added? I can't remember any. So this will be two expansions now where ZERO dwarves get added to SC and the archtype just flounders in a nearly unplayable state. Unbelievable. And the icing on the cake is that I saw they are adding a few dwarfs to the game. To a different faction! ARG!!!!
 
This looks amazing, thank you so much for the hard work! Can't believe it's coming out so soon as well :)
 
On one hand I'm a bit worried that they had to create an entire new game mechanic for creating a new faction, but at the other hand it seems to be well executed and looks good so far.

I'm not quite sure what I think of splitting the faction up so much into those clans as that might leave the faction in a similar situation as ST, with all their races. Though at the moment it looks like it should be possible to mix cards from different clans and they just have different priorities.

Also, I'm not so sure about those dual factions cards either. I'm a bit afraid that they will perform far too differently in one of the factions and thus become a nightmare to balance or just be useless in one of the factions.

And why is SK always getting the best card? As a NR player I would kill to get a card like Sukrus, who is able to protect an engine. That is basically the card I have waited for ages to be added to NR. A low value low tempo card, but which can protect something and which is a lot more effective than shields.

Moreoever those new poison cards are a pretty terrible design in my opinion, because they will extremly dependent on the enemy deck. If you play against NR, SK or MO who have no poison at all you will get for example 6 value out of a 4 provision card with no downside at all, while against decks with poison those cards become useless. The only way to counter it for factions without poison is devils puffball, which will be a complete brick against any other deck.
That is all in all far too binary in my opinion.
 
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I am most likely going to be unhappy with this expansion. The game has needed more dwarfs and better dwarves overall for a long time now and how many have they added? I can't remember any. So this will be two expansions now where ZERO dwarves get added to SC and the archtype just flounders in a nearly unplayable state. Unbelievable. And the icing on the cake is that I saw they are adding a few dwarfs to the game. To a different faction! ARG!!!!

You missed that there will be cards with two factions now in the comming expansion. The dwarf "Sausage Maker" will also be included in Scoia'tael for example.
 
You missed that there will be cards with two factions now in the comming expansion. The dwarf "Sausage Maker" will also be included in Scoia'tael for example.
The Sausage Maker won't be part of ST for sure, as his abilities would be rather useless without any coins you could get or crimes you could play. Also, he wasn't one of the cards mentioned to be dual-factioned in the stream.

Nonetheless, I wonder if he is a reference to C.M.O.T-Dibbler from Discworld.
 
You missed that there will be cards with two factions now in the comming expansion. The dwarf "Sausage Maker" will also be included in Scoia'tael for example.

I did not miss the two faction cards. I have not seen any dwarves yet that they say can be used in SC. Sausage maker would not make sense because you need the coin mechanic to make it work. Not to mention intimidate is also faction specific.
 
Stop releasing half finished products. If you have to delay an expansion by 1 month to get every animation in the game just do it. This is how you get another Midwinter update, and you don't want that again.
 
I am disapointed a lot for several reasons. I will name a few:

1) I strongly dislike theme. When I play, I do not want to be "crime maker", I want to be "crime fighter". That means, I can play against other players using this expansion cards and enjoy fighting against crime, but for me myself, new expansion has nothing to offer. I see no counterbalance to crime in this expansion, just support for criminals of all kind. If I would want to play new expansion cards, I would have to join criminal side and I do not like it. I may eventually do it for some contracts and for refreshment from usual play, but theme is one big disappointment for me and if I would play with new cards, it would be despite theme, not because of theme.

2) Pre-order packages are strange. I bought pre-order for Crimson Curse and if I remember it right, it was about 35 euro for 40 kegs. Current pre-order is just official price for 15 kegs (about 17 euro) which can be bought anytime and only what makes it feeling as pre-order is extra card skin. My long time experience with MtG and HS is, that pre-orders offer special price, just like Crimson Curse did. Pre-order for official price and extra card skin does not feel like pre-order to me and this time, I will pass this offer.

3) Frequency between releasing new expansions and gathering reward points for unlocking leaders trees is unbalanced and I am falling behind even faster than before, because there was longer period between Thronebreaker and Crimson Curse, than is between Crimson Curse and Syndicate. I doubt, if I would have even been able to catch up lack of reward points if I would play 4 hours every day. I would very much like to either increase frequency of gaining reward points or decreasing frequency of releasing expansions with their reward trees.

4) I very much appreciated, when new cards for Crimson Curse have been posted in this forum and people could see them there. Shifting card galery to facebook is big minus for me, despite this is probably more subjective matter than other points above. I would very much appreciate if cards would have been posted in forum as well.
EDIT: In the meantime, cards have been posted in forum too and I very much appreciate it. Thank you! This point 4) is now "solved" and is not valid anymore.

There are few more points which I do not like about new expansion (at example why do you bother making 4-power, 4 damage on deploy card for 9 provisions, when the first thing, you will do after one month from release will probably be its increasing of provisions to 10), but it becomes more and more subjective and is not so important to me like 4 other points above, so I will end list here.

I am sorry, but I am not excited about new expansion at all, I am rather worried about future of Gwent. :(
 
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This is all certainly not bad, but the stomach from such a large amount of quality updates will soon burst! More!
mrrr.jpg
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
I guess now we know why we didnt get the balance patches we needed on last month's update.

I know they're probably super busy with this faction, but i hope some adjustments from the existing factions also come, June 28th.

Otherwise, it will be weeks of everyone playing Skellige because its OP and the Syndicate because its new, and probably OP at the beginning.

Remember Crimson Curse? Everyone playing Dethlaff and Regis Bloodlust until they got nerfed in record time. And in general the new cards were more powerful than the base set.
 
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