So I'm not sure if this is just my crappy luck. But this card game seems like utter rubbish. Given I'm not far into the game yet, only up to doing the bloody baron, but since I finished it and saw getting the card from him failed. I reloaded to try get it first. Which seems to be a waste of time. Is there just a huge amount of luck around this?
Which if that's the case, it just seems stupid. I remember doing that dice game in witcher 2, which as much as I didn't like it, though I did beat everyone in it. This one seems to be, you don't have the right cards you are screwed. All the baron does to me is, spy after spy cards. He normally uses at least 3-4 spy cards on me. Which he just has way too many cards on me in the end. Any help would be most great.

If you have a dummy card you can grab his spy.
If he's too hard, go around the inns & buy a few more cards.

The more cards you have the more to can control the outcome and the less it will depend on luck. If you still don't have a good enough deck to defeat the Baron, try to win against other opponents and buy more cards from innkeepers and some of the shopkeepers.

This is how I melted him,ofc you need a good deck,the initial one is just to learn the mechanics of Gwent:

- I have King Foltest Commander special power that double tha Catapult line damage.
- I played and win all the merchants and whoever I came across that could play Gwent,ofc I got all the card from the
innkeepers..
- I got the card from Oxenfurt inn master.

- My deck is with 3 Blue Stripes Commando,2 Crinfrid Reaver Dragon Commander,1 Catapult,2Ballista,Vernon Roche,Yennefer Card (Oxenfurt innkeeper),all the most powerful ranged card that can fill in,Vilentretenmeth (op card imho,since if will destroy the most powerful card in the close combat enemy line if the power is 10+,pair this with decoy and gg ),some spy card and weather cards,2 battle horns (to counter the Nilfgardian king that nullifies commander skill),the cataputl medic that will let you pick cards from your discarded deck,and the rest depends on what you randomly got from casual gwent players.

Keep in mind that I've still need to go to Novigrad,(just did the cat school gear base quest,cuz I'm lvl 14).

Ofc if you got a shitty starting line no way to do something good.
You can counter his spy unload behaviors with Decoys,and force him to spam lot of cards,initially while you waste some weather one,or the weakest then,you have 2 options,if the A.I is pushing cards on the 1st turn you can push too but you must win,save the powerful one and the buff for round 2 ; or you can pass and let him win the 1st round while retain your cards,and unleash hell on round 2 XD.

Most of the time I dont even go to round 3 XD.

Yennefer and Vilentretenmeth combined with Decoys are op vs Monster and Scoiatel deck ,who spam the card skill that will auto summon the same cards and pimp their power == put down your weakest ones,Vilentretenmeth,melt most of their cards,decoy,wait for the I.A and if you need do the same again,once Vilentretenmeth is on discarded ,use Yennefer to recover him XD,and do the trick again,same deal with the Catapult medic (cant remember her name XD). You can also spam your spy,ammass cards,use the wheater card to counter the bonus and win the round XD.

You can do what I do and never play the card game.

I have been buying every card I can find so far, just in case I ever want to play, but since the starting Inn I think I may have played Gwent only once. I started about 5 games that I immediately forfeited because I realized how much I REALLY don't ever want to play it. Always think I will give it another try and never do...

I finally beat him, did have those decoy cards. Brought 3 thinking that would do something and still didn't get them to appear. But seemed those horn cards pushed me over the line, though he only used 1 spy against me, so maybe I got lucky. Though vsing a few others after him seem heaps easier or maybe I just had more good luck against them.
I suppose the plus is there doesn't really seem any huge plus from doing it, just wish it wasn't so much based around luck. Thanks for all the tips though, something to try next time I play it.

Yeah, he was a tough one. Wait to you get to the guy in Oreton! He has one heck of a deck.

If you meet someone who is too strong, you just need to keep playing others (and winning their cards) and buying up cards at merchants until you get a deck that can beat him.

And keep playing others even if they are better to get strategies. I never even realized the full power of spies until the Baron used them all over the place on me. That's the fun of slowly learning the complex strategies...

Conversely you can add in console access and then add specific cards (or all cards). But to me that's cheating. I'm having more fun having to slowing build my decks up!

(Note the console allows you to play Gwent at anytime though which is nice)

Asterix