So after a number of false starts with the game, my "real" game is off and running and I didn't bother playing the tutorial gwent game.

Is there any way to legitimately get Zoltan's card; some guides list him as a random win, others say he's won in the tutorial.

If not, can I use the console to bring in the initial player and get the card that way. If I do, will that muck up the achievement.

Otherwise, I guess I just wait until the RED kit is out and possibly mod a solution. There is no way I'm replaying 60-ish hours after clearing out all of Velen and Novigrad and half of Skellige. I'd kinda like the achievement, but not that badly. It will bother my pseudo-OCD, however.

If you win don't win the Zoltan card during the prologue it is supposedly gets added to the pool of random win cards which means it does become a missable card.

A friend gave himself 4 different cards using the Debug console mod in V1.05 & still got the achievement so yes it is possible to give yourself cards(i don't want to link to the command list of how to do this but it's easy to find them with a quick search)

Hm, if it's true that it goes into the random pool, then as I understand it, it isn't a missable card, correct. Since there are far more players than random win cards, it should come up eventually, right?

I won't experiment with consoling cards unless I need to endgame, especially for a card as average as Zoltan. His only real benefit is being a hero and that can be a two edged sword. Most of the heroes aren't random anyway, so that's fine; I can wait.

I've got Zoltan's card although I have no idea when or where I got it. Having said that though it's kind of low level and useless in a serious gwent game. Need to keep the deck full of high powered cards and trim the lower level units out soon as possible to win against those with better decks and Zoltan's too low to keep. Worth getting the card though to complete all the gwent related quests I imagine. The trick to winning gwent is to continuously learn strategy by playing it more and more, plus every shop keeper in the game that you visit - buy all of the cards they have for sale always no matter what they are, just buy them, then play every person you encounter who can play gwent and replay them until you win. If their deck is way more powerful than yours and unlikely you'll win - jot their name down on a piece of paper, what town they were in etc. and return to them at a future time when you have a better deck. Make sure you win one game against every gwent player in the entire game and each one will give you at least one card from them. Once you win, there's no need to play them again except for more practice and skill building.

Yes it should but unfortunately there are various bugs/glitches with NPC's who you can win or buy cards from that make the card missable although to be fair i shouldn't make the assumption that you will have that problem.

I have been told that you should also be able to find the Zoltan card under a corpse at the Hanged Man Tree in Velen, but again for some people this is glitched

Yeah, as I said, I have no intention of putting Zoltan in my deck. As it stands, I'm only missing about 36 cards, of which about 14 are random wins, hopefully including Zoltan, with all of the Stellige players to go. Most are fixed wins from the Gwent quests which I've been avoiding until I improved my decks so I've just started them now; Velen and Innkeepers are done, just working on Novigrad now.

Speaking of which, Djikstra is currently unavailable though he is listed in my quest journal. I assume that is because I'm currently doing the underworld quests in Novigrad and he'll become available when they are done. He doesn't die/disappear, does he?

Djikstra is an underworld kingpin, so you meet him early.
As of patch 1.05, you can still get his card once he's dead. (assuming you kill him)

Yeah, I had to complete some quests before I could play Djikstra for his gwent cards. I had to finish the quest then visit him in his office in the bath house, however I wandered around inside there forever trying to find him because where the game tells you to go gives you very bad instructions sometimes.

Do you know how many cards are in each deck? I've no idea but I have a shit tonne of cards in every one of my decks now. I dunno how many people are left to play gwent with though, only 2 are in my quest log (ermion and the other druid that teaches you alchemy shit, forget his name), I also have the gwent tourney in Novigrad on my quest log but I tried that and got slaughtered so I went back to a save game before that because if you lose you're out period. Make sure to save before entering that tourney! :) I've got 2 decks that have 159 points currently and thought I was pretty solid but alas, not even close for the tourney. :)

There are plenty of lists all over the place. The one I have lists 38 unique Monsters, 29 Northern, 33 Nilf, and 26 Scoia'tael. But beyond that, there are plenty of duplicates; I have as many as 4 of some. Also, there are about 2 dozen non-quest NPCs each to play in Velen, Novigrad, and Skellige. Wow, I clearly have a lot of deck building to do; my best deck is about 130-ish.

While we're at it can anyone

1)confirm that Triss' card is available from Lambert at Kaer Morhen
2)tell me where I can find Ciri's card; according to one guide you can get it from an elven merchant SW of Novigrad. I found a camp directly south of the Logger's hut signpost but the elf merchant there doesn't play, at least not for me.

This is the most accurate guide I've found.

http://www.gwentcards.com/

The only fault I've found in it is it lists 3 Poor Fucking Infantry & there are 4.

That is the merchant that has Ciri's card, but you can only play him after Djisktra has told you about him.
Just as you can only play Lambert after Roche tells you about him.
This is the case with most of the hero cards.

I have only ever played Lambert at the nowhere inn, so can't confirm Kaer Morhen.

Edit: On a side note, I've just found out that Sjusta the tailor is a cheat.
He played two Dandelion cards & you can only get one.

Personally I didn't get the Zoltan card during the tutorial but definitely got it by playing random people. Triss' card is available there yes, as part of a quest line you have the option to play Gwent with him there. It's also available before then however as there's a quest he asks you to do before that and there's the option to talk to him at the end of it if you just walk up to him and talk (possibly before then too, but I didn't check).

I've attached a map showing the location of the merchant you play for the Ciri Gwent card (it's the merchant I've put a circle round). Note: It's probably only available during the quest Gwent: Big City Players - if I recall correctly you need to play the dwarf that exchanges currency in Novigrad to start the quest.

Yes the Triss card is available at Kaer Morhen I have no idea how far you are into the game you are so don't want to spoil anything but i will point out that the option to play Lambert is not a dialogue choice when you 1st arrive at Kaer Morhen
I have collected all the cards ingame & got the achievement Card Collector & only have 3 Poor Fucking Infantry cards which confirms that there are only 3 of these cards, unfortunately it seems you have a duplicate

Well I have got 4 in both of the last play throughs & so as someone in this thread.

http://www.gog.com/forum/the_witcher_3_wild_hunt/gwent_collect_em_all

the only time the Poor Fucking Infantry cards are mentioned in that thread is by somebody telling you they have a "dupilcated Poor F*cking Infantry card"

getting a duplicate card during different play throughs is not surprising as it is a bug/glitch that hasn't been fixed yet

I can confirm that I've won against Lambert at Kaer Morhen, and I can confirm that I have the Triss card, but I can't confirm whether or not I got it from Lambert. :)

Note that sometimes you need to talk to a merchant or whoever more than once to activate gwent, and sometimes active questlines can cause someone who normally plays gwent to hide the option until the active quests are over. I consider that a bug in the game as there's no reason you shouldn't be able to play gwent before completing the quest.

Similarly having multiple open quests with someone might not let you initiate or finish a given quest until the other quest is completed. I've had that happen now with Triss, I have a statuette that I'm supposed to talk to Triss about which opens up a level 14 quest line, but Triss vanished from the game when she left Novigrad so I can't enable the quest. Prior to her leaving, the game would not let me talk to her about the statuette even though it told me I need to.

This same problem affects quests involving gwent. I had it happen with Djikstra for example. All you can do in such cases is complete the currently active quest with the given person and go back to them hoping the gwent game or other quest will magically unlock.

I must say though as a game tip, when you complete a long interactive dialogue with someone and the game gives you back control to walk away etc. sometimes it is a good idea to go talk to them again, sometimes new dialogue options show up in which you can get more details about the quest you're on, play gwent, buy/sell stuff or other options.

Also, if you know you're supposed to play gwent with someone, or you think you can or might be able to, write down their name and location on paper and return to them several times as the game progresses so you don't forget or miss out on the opportunity later. There are a lot of gwent players and some of them are random NPCs you wouldn't expect do anything in the game.

HTH

I've got 4 of them also, but they show in two piles. One is a pile of 3, the other a single. The cards look identical in every way but the game doesn't stack all 4 in one pile for some odd unknown reason that is most likely a bug/glitch.