Gwent--You Gotta Know When to Fold 'Em

Having a three-day weekend is great because it means more The Witcher 3.  Geralt's explorations of Velen have been progressing well and I've managed to find some interesting loot and get killed by alghouls.  After exploring for a sizable chunk of time, I decided it was time for Geralt to enjoy some R&R and play some Gwent.  Gwent is the new dice poker and has proven to be much more challenging.  I've collected some cards, but haven't been able to cobble together more than one deck. I also decided to pursue the quest to play the different known Gwent players across Velen.

Ah, the Gwent menu.  A place to feel false confidence.

My quest to defeat these players has been difficult.  Do I need more cards?  I've been playing every person who I can but I have the impression you can win multiple cards from people.  I defeated the first of the known Gwent players in Velen with relative ease, but spent over an hour losing to the boatmaker in Oreton.  He was a tough opponent because of his variety of hero cards and spies.  I picked up on the strategy to use decoy cards to replace spy cards--this will give you opportunities to draw more cards which seems to be the major adbantage in Gwent.  I finally managed to defeat him, but it was painful.

My biggest challenge is knowing when to surrender a round.  I usually try to give up a round after using a spy to give myself a two card advantage.  This worked well until the boatmaker kept grabbing up my spies with his decoy cards.  A few times I wasn't paying attention and surrendered to lose the match...and felt really dumb.

I am going to keep pursuing Geralt's dream of being a Gwent champion.  My Nilfgaardian deck is coming along nicely and after seeing how the Scoia'tel and Monsters decks have played, I'm interested to play them and learn the strategy.  I'm enjoying the collectible aspect as well as the heightened competition that was missing from playing dice poker.