Problem with Gwent? Getting owned by the AI? Want some tips? call: 0800-SCORCHED

[deboramoreno]

Baron's shouldn't be a problems, however the end of that quest played out his card his card is available at his home in Crow's peak.

Muster is troublesome, it's a situation where you have to try your best to draw out a round the opponent plays as many muster cards as possible, without leaving your self bereft of cards. Not easy if you lack a solid card lineup, if monsters are giving you trouble try and work on a Decoy/Medic Nilfgard deck. It's probably the best type for applying pressure on all three rounds. You won't burst out the huge numbers that War Horn/Bond high number style Temeria decks, but you can fight the long fight a little better.

Thanks for the tips. I'll gonna try this... My deck isn't good enough to play against muster cards, but it's pretty good against other abilities. I'll going to try with the Nilfgard deck.

My problem with the Baron is that my deck wasn't good enough to beat him before but now...

Spoiler

Now he isn't at Crow's Peak anymore because of his wife.

I didn't search at his house yet. Thank you.

Is there cards that can be lost yet? I really wanna complete my deck, but I don't wanna start a new game. I didn't finished the main story until now.

 

[Azazel005]

I believe the are still cards that can be missed, a couple from the early game and a couple during quests that occur in locations you cannot return too. The development team seems to be making a point of figuring out a way to keep all the cards available till the end, but currently it's a good policy to try and get your cards as soon as possible.

If you are still having trouble remember to try and keep your unit count down to the 22, keep weaker cards weeded out. Temeria for Example by mid game most normal units will be at least 6 (you will still have our Blue Stripes and Dragon hunters), with 3 spies and 2 medics. Most opponents in the game will have trouble keeping up with those numbers.

Occasionally someone will give you trouble and you can try the Decoys/Medics Nilfgard. It counters enemy spies extremely well so they will seldom get card advantage over you, plus you get most of there big Heroes earliest.

 

[SolCutter]

I'm starting to really like Gwent. Had to lose a number of matches before learning the mechanics of the game.

Now I'm spending gaming sessions just playing Gwent. I skipped this game before, so now I'm backtracking and trying to buy & win cards from old merchants and 'smiths.

I still believe there's a high degree of difficulty of winning, but then maybe that's just me. The AI is really sharp, doesn't make any bad moves, and keeps you on your toes. Of course if it was too easy, we wouldn't enjoy it as much.

After learning the system, I can say it's a very good card game. More Gwent, the better. I would pay for extra content, an online version of the game, a mobile app, etc.

 

[Cirivia]

I'm one card away from having all of them and I have no idea who I haven't played yet. Some merchant in Novigrad won't talk me because I guess I didn't save him earlier....oops. The search continues!

Update 1: Still haven't found whoever I haven't previously beat *sigh*

Update 2: Finally got it!

 

[PrinceOfPunk]

Hi Guys!
It will be released a patch to get back in the fame the Scholar and win Zoltan Chivay Card from him?

This will be fixed with the next patch?

 

[deboramoreno]

I believe the are still cards that can be missed, a couple from the early game and a couple during quests that occur in locations you cannot return too. The development team seems to be making a point of figuring out a way to keep all the cards available till the end, but currently it's a good policy to try and get your cards as soon as possible.

If you are still having trouble remember to try and keep your unit count down to the 22, keep weaker cards weeded out. Temeria for Example by mid game most normal units will be at least 6 (you will still have our Blue Stripes and Dragon hunters), with 3 spies and 2 medics. Most opponents in the game will have trouble keeping up with those numbers.

Occasionally someone will give you trouble and you can try the Decoys/Medics Nilfgard. It counters enemy spies extremely well so they will seldom get card advantage over you, plus you get most of there big Heroes earliest.

Thank you!

 

[Gozeta0075]

The best strat so far I think is having the spy deck build. Those extra cards destroys opponents.

 

[christosfox]

Hi all! One question to the developers and rest of the community: If I missed the cards that were obtainable during some side quests (eg Dandelion), can I buy it / win it with some other way?? If not, it is very unfair!!! I intend to play 200+ on my Death March playthrough and I dont want to start another playthrough on easy, just for Gwent.... It ruins the whole experience and sense of completion... Please tell me that this will be fixed on a future patch... I know that the majority of the players want this... I hope you hear my pray... Cheers from a collectors edition owner

 

[Yvonio]

There is still one card from the White Orchard Inkeepress which can only be obtained during the Prologue, which is a Decoy. Will that one be patched in like the others you can obtain during the Prologue?

 

[Asmohdian]

I'm playing on the Xbox One version of the game and missed the opportunity to get the Gwent cards from the White Orchard Innkeeper. Is there any plan to make these available as with the PC? And if so is the leader card still going to remain unobtainable? I'm debating on starting my game over or being patient and waiting for a patch. Any information would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Buginfested]

Seem to have a good strategy working thus far, at level 11, still in Velen, played against the Baron, smith at Oxenfurt (those monster cards spawning extra cards are crazy), and the armorer (also similarly crazy)... also won against the minor players, who were pretty much instant/easy wins.

Found the most useful cards were: Weather cards (Or Foltest's abilities), and commander's horn, as well as cards that can group and double/triple your strength. I try to win by attrition in the first rounds, then play my best cards all at once when I need them.

First round I normally send in the "pawn", see how it goes, if I know I'm going to be losing I start using spies if I have them, and get more cards while the opponent exhausts himself. If he passes on the first round, confident, I just match his cards and win. If it's too much, I let him win, and found that he tries to save his cards on the next round, and lets you win if you play a modest amount of cards.

On the last round, I send in all the standalone cards (ones with no double strength), let him play out his card, then when he's exhausted or confident, I play all my double strength cards and commanders horns. I still remember on the match between the smith and I, he had a ton of cards on melee and I didn't have the bitter frost cards to counter, but yet, with double strength cards and commander's horn on him right at the last minute, I managed to win.

Gwent's very surprisingly fun, and it draws alot of strategy from other strategy games - military tactics actually.

 

[ManuW3]

Any tips on how to defeat monster faction opponents? I can defeat the other factions with more or less ease but monster guys seem impossible. They throw at you tons of matching cards or cards that draw more cards from their deck and then they have 4 or 5 special lvl 10 cards and scorch cards. It's just impossible to win with even a decent northern deck at the beginning.

---------- Updated at 09:47 AM ----------

Well to be clear I'm not really at the beginning, I'm in Novigrad and level 10 already, have a good northern deck with a few tricks up my sleeve already but no hero cards, special cards, scorch or anything fancy like that. THat's what I meant.

 

[Tridam.Ultimatum]

Any tips on how to defeat monster faction opponents? I can defeat the other factions with more or less ease but monster guys seem impossible. They throw at you tons of matching cards or cards that draw more cards from their deck and then they have 4 or 5 special lvl 10 cards and scorch cards. It's just impossible to win with even a decent northern deck at the beginning.

---------- Updated at 09:47 AM ----------

Well to be clear I'm not really at the beginning, I'm in Novigrad and level 10 already, have a good northern deck with a few tricks up my sleeve already but no hero cards, special cards, scorch or anything fancy like that. THat's what I meant.

Always keep Biting Frost in your deck for monsters. Most of their cards are melee, so they can have ten cards out there with a total strength of seventy. Once you unleash that Biting Frost, though, their days are done for the most part. As for them having hero cards in their deck, I don't really know what else to say since they can't be effected by anything. I would say hold off on whichever opponent you're playing and try to get some hero cards yourself. Novigrad is the heart of Gwent as well as Oxfurt, it seems, so they're filled with high level, professional gwent players. I say try to rework your deck. If you need some pointers, let me direct you to this post that I made because I'm lazy, and I really don't feel like typing it back out. Haha.

 

[Balthazars]

Any tips on how to defeat monster faction opponents? I can defeat the other factions with more or less ease but monster guys seem impossible. They throw at you tons of matching cards or cards that draw more cards from their deck and then they have 4 or 5 special lvl 10 cards and scorch cards. It's just impossible to win with even a decent northern deck at the beginning.

---------- Updated at 09:47 AM ----------

Well to be clear I'm not really at the beginning, I'm in Novigrad and level 10 already, have a good northern deck with a few tricks up my sleeve already but no hero cards, special cards, scorch or anything fancy like that. THat's what I meant.

If you have no special cards at all in your deck then you've probably not gathered enough playing/buying from merchants in Velen. With zero special cards, you're going to find it tough to beat monster decks. But you only need a few in order to do well.

The first critical thing to remember about monster decks is that their key ability - muster - is a one-off, and all-or-nothing. Once they play the muster card, all cards in their deck/hand that match that muster group will be pulled and played. It's very powerful in that situation, but it greatly weakens future power because those cards cannot be recovered. This means that baiting the AI into playing those muster groups as soon as possible - preferably all in the first round - is key. This will allow you to throw the opening round and likely leave their deck with far lower power for the remaining rounds.

The best way to bait the AI into playing muster cards is to play one or two weak cards early on, or force them to play by using Spy cards. For example: if you start with 2 spy cards in your hand, play both as your opening two moves. The AI in most cases seeks to press the advantage, and you can usually draw out at least one, if not two, muster sets. Once you've done that, simply throw the round and take your card advantage into the latter two. Alternatively, you can try playing odd cards in your hand (e.g. you only have one blue stripe commando, with no way to easily draw another) to get some strength on the board. This again serves the same purpose of encouraging the AI to overplay their hand in an attempt to secure the win.

If your Northern Realms deck is somewhat under-developed, using biting frost (targets melee) can be useful, as almost all the muster cards for Monsters faction are melee cards. It can get you out of a pinch, but is unreliable to my mind as melee is also strong for Northern Realms. Generally this is why I dislike weather cards, and actually stopped carrying them, they are too limiting to your own options and weaken your draw strength.

Scorch, which can be purchased from merchants (at least two IIRC), is probably the only other special card that can be specifically helpful against Monster decks. Note that scorch works by killing all cards that have the highest strength value on the field - both the enemy and your own. To use it effectively, you also need to understand how to protect your own cards and bait/bleed the enemy into playing their stronger/strongest cards. Hence, it can be very powerful against muster when used properly because muster cards tend to all be of the same strength (some exceptions in the Monster deck). This means you can get good value by taking out at least 2 or even 3 cards. Against the Monster deck, Scorch is best used on the Vampire Muster group (4 strength cards) and the Crones muster group (3 cards at 6 strength each). The latter in particular is very vulnerable to Scorch if you play your own hand correctly and limit your early cards to 5 or below strength.

Ultimately however, if you build your Northern Realms deck properly to take advantage of its main strengths (spy cards for draw power, and bond pairings), you shouldn't need to rely on special cards anyway to beat Monster decks. Simply draw out as much of their muster groups early and throw a round, then overwhelm what remains. Hope it helps.

 

[ManuW3]

Both posts help a lot guys, thanks. I actually don't have any special cards yet but not because of lack of playing matches or anything. I play everyone I encounter and buy all the cards merchants sell as soon as I find them. I'm just waiting to stumble upon someone who sells/gives these cool cards, so far I only get like weak cards for the other factions, which are kinda useless yet because i don't have enough cards to use any faction other than NR.

 

[wit3comat2]

Well my strategy vs. all opponents: Let's call it the Elven Rush. (Scoia'tael)

Play a Lvl 6 Card, then play that lvl 5 grouping card (i have 6 of them) so instantly 36 points with just 2 cards.
In most cases he drops off, except in cases of monsters if he also used grouping already. If so you need to decide on your cards and his but it's not that bad idea to use horn (72 Strength with just 3 cards, even if he uses Scorch - he'll just destroy that 2x6 power card and you still have 60 while he has like 15 so rly a strong opening that forces him to either loose or spend many cards on and as Scoia'tael you have 1 add. card from beginning.)

Then you can decide if you want to finish him in the second or third round, depending if you have spy cards f.e. The only real danger you have to fear is Scorch (if he didn't use it on first round). So at best you play a lvl 6 card, then use horn (card or Ability by Dandelion witch has add. strength of 2 that can be added with +1 row cards and Horn (sadly just) on himself - so i managed once a power 8 Dandelion ) and see if he destroys your lvl 12 card. He might even does this twice if he has that many cards and loosing 24 points might seem wasted - but you know he can't remove the rest of you cards, you still might have strength 7/10 cards (where if you got both and 2 horns might both get doubled) and still a great army while don#t got that much left. And as likely with elves you can decide if you want to be on front line or using bow. (in case of weather card's and you can't clear it - if he uses both and tends to play on siege i usually got that siege weather card so all are at 1 except heroes and remind: usually at that point you have way more cards than him)
That way it's likely to have 100+ in one turn (like at attach), 130-170 in total. It's usually a quite fast battle using that way.

 

[ManuW3]

Well my strategy vs. all opponents: Let's call it the Elven Rush. (Scoia'tael)

Play a Lvl 6 Card, then play that lvl 5 grouping card (i have 6 of them) so instantly 36 points with just 2 cards.
In most cases he drops off, except in cases of monsters if he also used grouping already. If so you need to decide on your cards and his but it's not that bad idea to use horn (72 Strength with just 3 cards, even if he uses Scorch - he'll just destroy that 2x6 power card and you still have 60 while he has like 15 so rly a strong opening that forces him to either loose or spend many cards on and as Scoia'tael you have 1 add. card from beginning.)

Then you can decide if you want to finish him in the second or third round, depending if you have spy cards f.e. The only real danger you have to fear is Scorch (if he didn't use it on first round). So at best you play a lvl 6 card, then use horn (card or Ability by Dandelion witch has add. strength of 2 that can be added with +1 row cards and Horn (sadly just) on himself - so i managed once a power 8 Dandelion ) and see if he destroys your lvl 12 card. He might even does this twice if he has that many cards and loosing 24 points might seem wasted - but you know he can't remove the rest of you cards, you still might have strength 7/10 cards (where if you got both and 2 horns might both get doubled) and still a great army while don#t got that much left. And as likely with elves you can decide if you want to be on front line or using bow. (in case of weather card's and you can't clear it - if he uses both and tends to play on siege i usually got that siege weather card so all are at 1 except heroes and remind: usually at that point you have way more cards than him)
That way it's likely to have 100+ in one turn (like at attach), 130-170 in total. It's usually a quite fast battle using that way.

Do you find it challenging still when having such a powerful deck? or do opponents fall too easily?

 

[wit3comat2]

Well, it isn't a challange any more with such a deck. Yet it's not rly the Deck that's the reason but the AI (or the combination of it). F.e. with scorch it could wait more till the End ... so i believe the shot last post shows a game where he used 2 scorches at the beginning of 2nd round (because for some reason it can't wait to destroy any card that's at least higher than 10). If the AI would wait till the very end it could destroy 6 cards (with 6 strength +1 and *2 power-ups so a power of 84 instead of just 28 ). But that's just one example. The AI has many likely strategies (for sure i played with other fractions and tactis too) you could easily use against it. Well - would it be too powerfull - it would be more luck than anything else. Only vs. real players you could also try find out what strategy the opponent uses so .... You can still say it's a challange to get to such a deck.

 

[ManuW3]

Well, it isn't a challange any more with such a deck. Yet it's not rly the Deck that's the reason but the AI (or the combination of it). F.e. with scorch it could wait more till the End ... so i believe the shot last post shows a game where he used 2 scorches at the beginning of 2nd round (because for some reason it can't wait to destroy any card that's at least higher than 10). If the AI would wait till the very end it could destroy 6 cards (with 6 strength +1 and *2 power-ups so a power of 84 instead of just 28 ). But that's just one example. The AI has many likely strategies (for sure i played with other fractions and tactis too) you could easily use against it. Well - would it be too powerfull - it would be more luck than anything else. Only vs. real players you could also try find out what strategy the opponent uses so .... You can still say it's a challange to get to such a deck.

Yeah I get your point. I'd like to play against human players via mobile app, but I worry that sometimes it would become a bit slow because most likely human players would take longer to plan next move etc.

 

[MattMk1]

Any tips on how to defeat monster faction opponents? I can defeat the other factions with more or less ease but monster guys seem impossible. They throw at you tons of matching cards or cards that draw more cards from their deck and then they have 4 or 5 special lvl 10 cards and scorch cards. It's just impossible to win with even a decent northern deck at the beginning.

---------- Updated at 09:47 AM ----------

Well to be clear I'm not really at the beginning, I'm in Novigrad and level 10 already, have a good northern deck with a few tricks up my sleeve already but no hero cards, special cards, scorch or anything fancy like that. THat's what I meant.

As was said already, frost is your friend when fighting monsters. Commander's Horn can also be extremely useful to help make up for the - absurdly unfair seeming, at first - monster tactics.

But aside from that, most of the time when playing against a monster deck the key is to get them to over-commit in the first round and get them to burn a lot of resources while you build yours up for the later rounds. There are a couple of ways to do that:

1. Spy cards - The monster players usually go nuts in the first round anyway, hitting you with everything but the kitchen sink - if you're going to lose, then dump all the spy cards at them you can, and get your hand size up.

2. Medic cards + Decoys: Medics let you get cards back from your discard pile. That means that you can afford to play some big cards in the first round, forcing the monster player to match you - then, in the second round, you play your medics and get those cards back. If you have decoys, this gets even better - you can use the decoy to put the medic card back into your hand, the cards you recovered from the discard pile stay in play, and you get to play the medic card again. (obviously, this only works if you played a bunch of valuable cards in the 1st round - but you want to do that, to get the enemy to use up some of his good stuff)

I actually had a sequence last night where, in the 3rd round, I found myself with a medic and a decoy in my hand, and a second medic card in the discard pile from a previous round, along with some other strong cards. It went like this:

- Play a medic, recover a regular unit card from the discard pile.
- Use a decoy to get the medic back.
- Play the medic again, this time recovering the second medic card from the discard pile.
- Play the second medic, and recover one more regular unit card from the discard pile

In effect, what was one decoy and one strength 5 medic became something like 24 points worth of units.