The Witcher fans can now play Gwent with real cards thanks to the official physical adaptation. Revealed last December, Gwent: The Legendary Card Game starts shipping this month, and Amazon is now taking orders for $45. The complete set features five factions, over 400 cards with new artwork, and six game modes for 1-5 players.
Gwent: The Legendary Card Game was designed by No Loading Games and published by Hachette Boardgames. Amazon’s store page for Gwent just popped up this month. Though not marked as a preorder, the delivery estimate of three to four weeks suggests Amazon still needs a few weeks to get its inventory situation sorted. Gwent is sold by the game’s publisher but will ship from Amazon for free.
$45 | Supports 1-5 Players
Unlike many card games–including the digital version of Gwent–this is a one-off release. No Loading has no plans to release expansions or booster packs, which is why it’s advertised as the “complete set.”
Gwent’s physical edition has five factions: Northern Realms, Scoia’tael, Monsters, Skellige, and Nilfgaard. Players can build their faction decks from a pool of 436 cards, each of which has new artwork inspired by CD Projekt Red’s hit series.
Along with an impressive number of cards to pick from when building your deck, you can play six different variants of Gwent with the physical edition. Newcomers can use pre-built decks to learn the ropes in Initiation Mode. Four players can split into teams for 2v2 matches. Three to five players can battle in Free-for-All. If you want to test the deck you built or don’t have anyone to battle, Solo Challenge Mode is a single-player variant.
Advanced Mode and Tournament Format utilize Gwent’s conventional 1v1 set. Advanced Mode tasks you with making your deck from scratch, and Tournament Format uses Gwent’s traditional competition rules. A typical round of Gwent is around takes 20 minutes.
What’s in the box?
- 436 Faction Cards (5 Factions)
- 10 Aid Cards
- 4 Tokens
- 4 Gem Tokens
- Score Tracking Board
- Paper Game Board
- 2 Rulebooks
Gallery
Gwent has been playable as a digital card game for a decade at this point. It first appeared as a minigame in The Witcher 3. The minigame’s immense popularity led CD Projekt Red to release a standalone version in 2018. Though official support ended in October 2023, Gwent remains playable today on consoles, PC, and mobile devices. Additionally, the Gwent community is keeping the digital version fresh with fan-made content updates and mods.
Gwent has technically been available in physical format before. Decks of cards were offered for a limited time to support the launch of The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine. That said, the new retail edition includes the first full set of Gwent cards.
The Witcher Board Games
The Witcher video game series has served as the inspiration for multiple board games over the past few years, including the competitive strategy game called Old World. More recently, The Witcher joined the strategy fighting game series Unmatched.
The card game isn’t the only exciting release for The Witcher franchise this month. The ninth novel in Andrzej Sapkowski’s original book series will be published in English on September 30. The Witcher: Crossroads of Ravens is a prequel novel that explores Geralt’s backstory before he became the character we know today. You can preorder a hardcover copy of Crossroads of Ravens for $23.49 (was $30) at Amazon.
Just like the mainline games, Gwent was inspired by a game mentioned in Sapkowski’s novels called Gwint. If you haven’t read Sapkowski’s other Witcher novels and story collections, you can get the first seven by purchasing the two box sets below:
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