Basic Gameplay for Beginners
Welcome, Aretuza Novice, to our course Basic Gameplay for Beginners! The lessons in this course are aimed towards complete Gwent beginners. We will introduce you to the basic rules and card mechanics of Gwent. You will learn about rows, different types of cards, keywords and many other factors that make playing Gwent a unique experience. After completing this course, you will be able to play and understand Gwent, as well as move onto more detailed content that we have prepared for you in our other courses.
Contributors: Writing: lordgort, Editing & Review: SwanDive & Lothari.
Welcome to Aretuza Academy's lesson on card draw and mulligans. After this lesson, you will know how players draw and mulligan cards at the start of each round.
Card Draw
We begin with the basics of card draw:
- At the start of Round 1, each player draws a full hand of 10 cards.
- At the start of every round after that, each player draws 3 more cards.
- Players can never have more than 10 cards in hand.
- At the start of a round, each card a player would draw beyond the 10th becomes a bonus mulligan. During rounds, however, cards drawn past the 10th are discarded automatically, so be careful when playing Birna Bran!
Speaking of Birna Bran, while it and others can let you draw cards not already in your hand, most of them force you to then Discard or play the same number of cards. In fact, only Ciri: Dash can let you draw an extra card without also giving your opponent one!
Because the cards you draw are hard to replace, Gwent gives you a chance to improve your hand when you mulligan.
Mulligans
After players draw their cards at the start of a round, they get the opportunity to mulligan. A mulligan allows a player to redraw, putting a chosen card back in the deck and drawing a different one with the goal of making their hand better.
Players can mulligan up to two times after drawing at the start of a round. In Round 1, the player going first gains an additional mulligan, giving them 3 in total. In later rounds, players can also get extra mulligans if they would draw more than 10 cards, as mentioned before.
Mulligans happen one at a time, so you can see the result of your first mulligan before deciding to take another. Also, cards you mulligan cannot be drawn again while mulliganing that round, so if you use your 1st mulligan on Roach, you cannot draw it off the 2nd mulligan. If you are playing two copies of a bronze card, however, if you mulligan one, you can draw the other.
Mulligans do not carry over between rounds, so use them or lose them! That said, you never have to take a mulligan if you are happy with your hand or worried about drawing a card like Roach that is better in your deck than your hand.
Conclusion
In this lesson we covered card draw and mulligans at the start of each round. You have learned how players draw 10 cards at the start of Round 1 and 3 cards at the start of later rounds.
You have also learned how players get to mulligan at least 2 cards at the start of each round, why players might want to mulligan, and the details of how mulligans work.
You are now ready to take the quiz and apply what you learned. Good luck!
Author
SwanDive
As a big fan of the Witcher franchise, SwanDive is always on the lookout for her next Witcher fix. She started playing Gwent in the Closed Beta for the lore – and stayed for the game and the community. Long an avid gamer, Swan found her passion for CCGs and competitive gaming at the Gwent table. Away from it, Swan is studying for her Master’s degree in English and worked as content manager for Team Aretuza.