remember remember games in september

[grue]

is/how much is gwent pay to win?

kind of, kind of not. I dont know much about the game yet

I don't know howw much you know about Gwent, but it's a weird game. You start out with like 10 cards (I think) and you can mulligan 3 (one at a time, so you can mulligan 1 -> draw -> mulligan the card you drew). Plus you have your hero or champion or whatever, which is a one-time effect that plays like a card too. Then you play round 1, you dump cards and try to score higher than the opponent. In round two you draw two cards and can mulligan 1 (out of every card in your hand including the freshly drawn cards). Round three you draw 1 card and have 1 mulligan. Every game is a best of 3, so it can end in two rounds if you win both of them.

And that's what makes it weird. Like, you can dump your hand on round 1 and win that round, but because you only draw 2 cards on round 2, you will have fewer resources than your oponent if they chose to not play cards and concede round 1. Which means that your opponent will then most likely win round 2, and round 3, because you don't have the resources to match. Couple that with the fact that you play one card at a time (unless the card states otherwise) and that draw mechanics are very rare or, more normally, contingent ("if you have x type card in play, draw y type card and play it"), and even rarer are the draw mechanics that draw cards to your hand (it's usually "draw and play" or just "play a card from your deck").

This creates a game that's STRONGLY based on mindgames, resource management and hand reading. And in that sense, it's a very skill intensive game. Which strongly mitigates the "pay to win" feel.

However, you will also face a lot of bullshit cards, that flood the board with minions, or just bring back cards from the graveyard (which sometimes includes YOUR graveyard), or other game-turning mechanics. The fact is, there are some legendary cards that you just need to have for your decks to be good. Again, there's a mitigating factor: you can only have a max of... three? Five? legendary cards on your deck. So you can't just stomp the shit out of people through the sheer power of your wallet. But the power spike is real, and starter decks hold very poorly vs players with just one or two of the good legendaries.

Even so, there's a cool feature that helps with building your collection: every keg (card pack) gives you five cards, where four of them are random cards like in Hearthstone, and the fifth is a choice of one between three cards. So, you can go after cards that you don't own, and there's a slightly increased chance that you'll get the one you want every time you open a keg, compared to hearthstone packs. This is way more satisfying and makes it so the game doesn't feel as bullshity.

So, TLDR: There are very strong legendaries that you need, but there are gameplay and card pack mechanics that make it less bullshit-y than in other CCGs. Still, there's a definite feeling that you can pay to skip the grind towards those powerful cards. So, I would say, it's a pay-to-skip game, slightly pay-to-win, but not obnoxiously so, and skill outshines deck quality anyway.