The problem is that the quest log tells you to play him but when you talk to him the option doesn't come up. Either the quest to play him for the card should not be available until you can actually play him, or else the game should let you play him whenever you have the ability to meet and talk to him regardless of the state of any other open active quests involving him. This is supposed to be a non-linear open world game afterall. :)

That's never happened to me.

That's the beauty of a non-linear open world game in which you are free to discover and do quests in any order you decide to do them. No two gamers are likely to make all the exact same decisions in the same order in the game, and so all of the pathways through the game storyline and quests will be triggered in a different order for different people. Naturally bugs and issues that only appear when things are done in a certain order will only happen for people that play the game in that order, while someone else who does them in a different order may not experience the problems someone else does.

I also had this problem happen with Triss Merigold. You can buy a mage's statuette at a shop in Novigrad and a quest opens up with "Talk to Triss about the statuette" however Triss is in the process of trying to get all the mages together in Novigrad to get them out of Novigrad and in my case I was helping her with that already when I got this statuette. Every single time I talked to Triss the only options available pertained to the existing quest I was doing for her. At no time was I given an option to talk to Triss about the statuette.

Now, if someone happened to find that statuette before they started the questline to help Triss to save the mages, perhaps that option would have appeared in dialogue with Triss, I can't say because that's not the order things happened in my game. But now Triss doesn't exist in the game anywhere that I'm aware of currently. She exists in the game universe but there is no map/city/location in the game I can travel to and talk to her. She's disappeared into video game limbo in the story right now. If I activate the statuette quest, it highlights Kaer Morhen as the point where I'm supposed to go to talk to Triss, however I've been to the Kaer Morhen map and completed everything there is to complete there without going to continue quests on other maps, and so I've been doing that - but Triss is still nowhere to be found. The quest for the statuette (and possibly others) is completely dead to me as a result. It is possible that when I do next encounter Triss in Kaer Morhen that the option might avail itself to ask her about the statuette, but it's clear to me this is a quest the game intended for you to do much earlier on as it is level 14 and I am level 28, but I never even found the quest until I was level 18 or so and have not been able to talk to her about it since.

I've encountered a few other similar issues although they resolved themselves eventually.

I've also got the "Shortcut" quest bug where it shows up in your quest log and tells you to read the note you picked up, but I've already read the note and the game wont register that it's been read so the quest line is incompletable. There are people who have completed that quest out there also. The conclusion is that whether someone experiences the bug in that quest or not depends on the order in which they do things and the game doesn't force one to do things in a particular order, so different people will get different results.

The whole game is that way - no two players will experience the exact same things throughout the entire game. There will be overlaps, and there will be unique experiences both with gameplay and progress, and with bugs/glitches. It's just the nature of open world non-linear games.

But... at least it's not Skyrim that has 7843289472398234234823473 quest breaking game breaking bugs in it that require you to go into the console every 20 minutes to issue some console command you googled to fix the broken quest. :)

So I figured the Ciri card thing out on my own; I had found the merchant but didn't have the quest yet so he wouldn't play.
I just got the quest for Lambert but he's already in Kaer Morhen which is unfortunate since I can't get the next card (Geralt) until very late.
Djikstra, I got the Gwent option in the middle of the Junior/treasure quests so I ran with it as not to risk it at quest's end.

@mepe_ruse: I believe that the card collecting achievement only requires you to collect one of each card in the game - you do not need all the duplicates. For the record, I only have 3 PFI as well.

@skeletonbow: That's interesting about Triss; I finished her quest line up until she has something important to talk about. After that I picked up the soldier statuette (I did the other statuette earlier, after I started her mages quest line) and she gives me both dialogue options. Not only that, I finished the statuette, she disappeared, and her other quest is still open.

What I did to make sure I get every card and play every player is print out a checklist for both. I don't generally fish for cards by looking up their location and going after them (I only did that for Ciri because most decks I play against these days have one or the other - one played both in the same game) but I do mark each card/player off as I encounter them.

As for Skyrim, I know it has quite a few bugs, but I've never encountered a game breaking one and I've never had to use the console to fix it. I do have one or two of the unofficial patches from Nexus. I just don't think it's that big a deal for most players. I don't think the issue with W3 bugs comes from the order in which you do certain quests, at least not consistently; some people just encounter different bugs. I have yet to run into a quest-breaking bug in W3, just video glitches.

The Card Collector achievement is rewarded when you have every single card available in game.
I can confirm this as i already had every card except for a Scorch card(I already had 2 Scorch cards) which an InnKeeper on An Skellig was selling, after going back & buying this card the Collect 'Em All quest completed & the Card Collector achievement was unlocked in Galaxy.

As for Triss & the statuette, the quest is still active for a reason just carry on playing & eventually you will be able to complete the quest

Looks like Zoltan is a bust. I now have all Random Win cards and players are giving me random stuff instead of cards - no Zoltan. Oh well.

If you add the zoltan card with the console, does it complete the quest?
additem('gwint_card_zoltan')

I don't know; I'll try once I have all the other (non-random) cards. Thanks for posting the command.

Might be worth saving before you earn your last card & add Zoltan then.
I am interested to see if it completes the quest.

That's my intention.

I missed the prologue card zoltan as well. I'm hoping they patch in a way to get it, as it doesnt seem too uncommon of a thing to miss. I mean like who really is thinking about missable gwent cards 10 minutes into the game. Hopefully this random card drop works, or the console command. I'm not super far into the game but I really don't wan't to reset 30 hours of gaming for 1 card missed 10 minutes into the game. I will be looking forward to seeing what happens with this issue.

At the very least, this should be fixed when we have real modding tools; sure hope that is soon.

Indeed, mods for this game could be such a great thing. Also I really hope using mods and editing the game, will not disable the gog galaxy achievements. So disappointing when devs go that route.

I've started my second playthrough and all I need is the Zoltan card. I already checked underneath the tree, only finding the book. I'm playing this on PS4 and I really really want the collect them all trophy. Can you please fix it in the next update?