Gwent was a surprising addition to Witcher 3; I wasn't that crazy about the mini-games (dice-poker, etc) in Witchers 1 and 2, but I do love me some Gwent. It seemed a shame that I could only play it on the computer. Wouldn't it be nice if I had my own real-life set of Gwent cards?

So yeah, I went ahead and did it. I made my own Gwent Collectible Card Game.

This isn't the first Gwent deck posted to the Internet but it does seem to be the first one designed as a complete game. Given that they've let the others slide under their radar I hope CD Projekt Red and GOG don't get mad about this one either (if there is, let me know and I'll take everything down).

It took a little doing getting all the art-work from the game (stupidly, I didn't check to see if someone had done all the work before me). I used screenshots rather than pull the art from the resource files simply because I couldn't find complete cards in the latter; apparently the computer game assembles all the cards from its various bits'n'pieces whenever it displays them on screen. Anyway, with screenshots I got the assembled package so it was just easier than messing about with the data-files directly. Some quick cropping and editing and clean-up, and I had a collection of 207 cards. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a high-resolution BACK for the cards, so those are a bit pixelated, but it's the portraits on the front that are the real draw of the game anyway ;-)

Next, I wrote a rulebook for the game. I tried to keep as true to the computer version as I could, but obviously there had to be some changes. The biggest change is that the "real life" Gwent Deck only needs 10 Unit cards per faction, rather than 22. This change was made to speed up the gameplay. Other changes are what happens when you win a battle (rather than winning money, you randomly select a card from your opponent's collection), and victory conditions for winning the game (you lose if you don't have any factions with 10 unit cards). For those familiar with Gwent from the computer game, it should be very easy to get into the game but I think that even newcomers would have no difficulty starting a battle. The rules also detail what all the special abilities do and the specific values and abilities of each card so it might even be a useful resource for people who play the computer game.

I threw in a cleaned-up image of the "Battlefield", although the scale isn't quite right with the cards. I consider it more of a guide as to how arrange the cards anyway.

The whole set is collected in a 40MB PDF. The cards alone take up 52 pages (26 pages of 8 cards a page for the front of the cards, alternating with another 26 pages with card backs). You print out these pages and then cut out the cards individually to get your deck. I'm not sure about the legality of taking these to a print-shop so they do the job for you, but in any event this is intended only for personal use.

This is a work of love made by a dedicated fan (me!). I in no way mean to challenge CD Projekt Red's rights to Gwent, or the Witcher 3 or anything like that. Its not intended for commercial gain; it was just a fun project and I share it with other Witcher 3 fans so they can share the fun. Obviously the name "Gwent", the rules, all the artwork etc. remains the property of CD Projekt Red. It's all used without permission but I hope they forgive me. If they don't, I'll gladly pull the file back down (but I'd be even more glad if they used this as a basis for a "game goodie" for Witcher 3 owners on GOG :-)

Anyway, enough with the preliminaries. If you are interested in seeing the end-product, here it is:
Fan-made Gwent Collectible Card Game

(Additional)
Please don't distribute or make it available for download anywhere else. If you want to share it with a friend, please point them to this post. This is really intended for Witcher 3 fans/owners and not intended for general distribution. Hopefully that will keep CD Projekt Red on our side. Thanks

Have fun!

This is fantastic! Huge props to you as I think a lot of people (myself included) were looking for something easy to use like this. +1 Already downloaded

It's no longer a collectible game if you have all cards available from the start.
The number of hero cards in deck or on hand should really be limited, comparing to in-game rules. Heroes play a support role, not main attack force. For paper edition, players could draw 9 cards from the base deck and 1 card from the hero deck. Otherwise, there's too much luck involved (probability of drawing more hero cards than opponent). Also, heroes with 15 attack points should be changed to 10 and all heroes with 7 attack points should have an additional bonus (Triss). IMHO.

To be honest, I think that in paper edition, all hero cards should have 0 attack points and a unique ability (different for every hero). Then it would make sense.

Well, it has a "collectible" aspect in that the players don't have access to all the cards from the start. They can "collect" them from the other player by winning Battles. But more to the point, I wasn't going to make dozens of different packs of cards each with a random assortment. For one thing, that's a hell of a lot of work (and probably to no gain since interested people would just download all the packs anyway, so we'd be right back to square one with everyone having access to all the cards), and for another, Gwent required a minimum number of cards to play (in the computer version, at least 1 Leader Card and 22 Unit Cards that match that Faction; in my version, at least 1 Leader card and 10 Unit cards that match the Leader's faction). Random packs wouldn't work with these minimum requirements.

Plus, whether it is a collectible card game or not is just semantics and since I saw the game referred elsewhere as a collectible card game anyway, allow me this completely childish response to your valid complaint: :-P

As to rule changes, I'll be the first to admit that the game-as-written - be it my version or the version shown in the Witcher 3 computer game - isn't very balanced. But I had a choice between completely changing the rules trying to keep things in balance or trying to replicate the computer game's version. Given that this project was made to appeal to the fans of the computer game, I chose the latter. You are, of course, free to change the rules as you see fit; if you wish, print out the cards and ignore the point-values on the Heroes cards. I won't mind. ;-)