Gwent is a card game in The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt. Somehow with a massive world to explore, lots of quests to do and some great story writing Gwent still manages to be one of the best things about the game.

To keep things simple, Gwent is a maths game where the aim is to get a higher score than your opponent using a limited number of cards.

Getting more advanced, the board on each players side is split into three rows (melee, ranged and siege). You play with ten cards to start with from a deck of around thirty cards. Two rounds must be won to claim the match. There are a few different kinds of cards to play which will all help in defeating the opponent. There are four nations in the game which all have a set of Gwent cards dedicated to them, each of these gets a special ability and a choice of Leader cards that have another ability.

Unit cards have a value which provides score. Some units have an added effect such as adding to the value of other cards or bringing a card back from the discard pile.

Hero cards are extra powerful Units which can’t be effected by weather or special cards, they’re rarer so must be played wisely to get their full effect.

Weather cards weaken specific areas on the board. This would be the melee, ranged and siege areas. When a weather card is active everything in the targeted area is weakened to only be worth one point. There’s also a clear weather card which removes any of these effects from the board.

Special cards are the real advantage in a match. Card withdrawal, power doubling, enemy destroyers, that sort of thing. Combining the right buffs to your own side while destroying and weakening the enemy can pull an unexpected win from where all seems lost.

Leader cards are a guarantee in the random chance card draw. You always have the ability of the Leader which is like an eleventh card that could be a game changer.

The mix of all the card types, the different nations, the deck building and having to find different opponents to acquire more cards add up to make a fun and mentally stimulating experience.