I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Witcher 3 is a deckbuilder with an open-world RPG minigame squeezed in. Far as I'm concerned, Geralt is a rambling card shark who occasionally finds himself ensnared in conspiracies and side quests that just distract him from his love of Gwent.
Well, someone has finally heard my cry, and Hachette Boardgames is set to release a physical version of Gwent—pretty much The Witcher 3's choicest cuts—next year (via Polygon).
Hachette says it as the "full support" of CDPR, which you'd hope, wouldn't you, and when it releases it'll come with 400 cards and a playmat, thereby "replicating the full experience of Gwent’s iteration within The Witcher 3." It's even got variants—which I didn't know were a thing but probably should have guessed—enabling everything from casual through tournament play.
- CD Projekt knows why we're all really here: Gwent is coming back in The Witcher 4, and the devs 'don't think anyone will be disappointed'
- Witcher 3 modders just upended everything we know about how it was made with a 584-page breakdown of an early prototype that had a 150-hour main quest, all thanks to a database 'containing almost every single line of text' from its development
I am curious as to whether the physical version will take after the in-game version of Gwent from The Witcher 3, or the now-wound-down standalone game, which had a whole bunch of changes to make it a bit more crunchy, to varying responses from fans. The way Hachette is talking about it, it sounds more like the TW3 version, which I reckon would be the correct choice.
Rob Trounce, marketing manager for Hachette, says "Gwent is the biggest ‘game within a game’ in media history," somewhat questionably, and that's why the company is so excited to be getting its mitts on handling the physical edition. Do you reckon he's ever won a game and shouted 'Get Trounced!'? I bet he has. It's all I'd ever do if I were called that.
I'll be honest, I kind of assumed there had to be a physical version of Gwent floating around out there, and have done so for the past nine years. The fact that there apparently hasn't been has shaken a lot of my fundamental assumptions about the shape of the world.
Anyway, physical Gwent is due out in Q3 2025, and will cost $40 or £44, which is the wrong way round and not really how exchange rates work. Oh well, hopefully it'll be worth it. At the very least I can wander around my local high street asking people "How about a round of Gwent?"
