The standalone success of Gwent

Gwent was more or less a success in Witcher 3. I never had much interest in dice poker in the last 2 Witcher games and didn't think much of Gwent when I first started. But like all things once I figured out the rules and started to win I enjoyed the game immensely. In truth i'm not very good at CCG, after suffering a consistent loosing streak in Hearthstone I generally took the approach that card games; where not really my thing. Gwent continued to enforce this decision when I lost the games main card quest, which you can try about half way through the game.

So what are the rules? Gwent is a game where two players try and win 2 out of 3 games. They do this by laying out cards on the table which simulates a battlefield. After a little back and forth one play will decide to pass: either by not having any cards left, or by believing they have the stronger hand to win the round. We then see who has the highest score. The player with the most points on the board at the end of the round takes the point. This simple explanation does the game little credit, but its this basic Idea which makes the game quick to pick up.

You get different card which have different abilities which allows the player to gain additional cards by giving the opposition points, or cards which multiply the players score if they are placed next to each other. All manner of different cards with different abilities are available to the player which can give certain buffs and benefits. But nothing alters the game more than weather cards, which have the ability to reduce a whole section of cards down to one (for example `fog` will reduce your siege line down to 1 point each).

In my opinion Gwent has all the characteristics to make a good standalone game. It currently stands with a very basic deck, nothing in comparison to the waves of cards that come with hearthstone or other card games of this type. I believe that its relative simplicity could be the key to giving the game some standalone success, personally games like Hearthstone have the issue of overwhelming the user with choice (ironic considering I felt Witcher 3 overwhelmed the user with choice), the learning curve for hearthstone in my opinion is very high and the cards you start with will in no way hep you against a seasoned player. Gwent has a relatively small amount of cards to choose from which will reduce this learning curve. My personal preference would be to alter the game a small amount and give the player all cards from the start moving it away from the collectible card game genera and putting everyone on the same level from the start.

It would be interesting to hear other peoples opinions on what they would do to turn Gwent into a standalone game and hopefully Cd Project Red might help make this a thing.

One of the only outstanding issues I had with Gwent was the lack of any real challenge later on when it came to fighting AI opponents, you could very easily role the same strategy and win almost 9 times out of 10 (...apart from you failed the main Gwent quest, Shut-up) with the introduction of real players we could have a thriving little community.

Unfortunately Gwent is currently stuck in the Witcher, which is a shame as its a game I would like to continue outside of my PC screen and preferably on [INSERT GENERIC TABLET DEVICE HERE].