Gwent

Journey Quests - Week 3

The second week's Journey quests require players to do the following: 

• Play units with Vitality 10 times (Regular)
• Play 10 cards with the Mage category (Premium)
• Play witchers 10 times (Regular)
• Play 3 matches using a Monsters deck (Premium)
• Finish 3 matches in any online mode (Regular)
• Win 1 match (Premium)

Here are suggested decks for these quests:

• Play units with Vitality 10 times and play 10 cards with the Mage category: Northern Realms Uprising - credits to TheaBeasty. Be sure to check out her video on this deck in the latter part of this report.
• Play witchers 10 times: Nilfgaard Strategic Withdrawal
• Play 3 matches using a Monsters deck: Monsters Overwhelming Hunger

Pro Rank Cutoffs

Here are the key cutoffs for Pro Rank as of August 21 at 5:16 PM CEST

Team Aretuza

Stream Schedule

Here is the stream schedule of Team Aretuza’s Pro and Stream Team for the week of August 17 to August 23.

Events

Wild Hunt Online

The Wild Hunt tournament series by 983 Media is back, this time in an online format. For complete details, click here. Be sure to join their Discord server for the latest updates. 

Team Aretuza

Top 64

Best of luck to Team Aretuza's kolemoen, Shaggy, and Crozyr in this week's Top 64 qualifiers. Congrats as well to Shinmiri2 for qualifying for this event.

Video

Check out TheaBeasty's deck guide for this week's Journey quests

Welcome!

Ville joined us as the latest member of our Pro Team. Welcome Ville, we are very happy and excited to have you on board. 

Recruitment

We are currently seeking a video editor who will be closely working with us in producing content for both Gwent and Legends of Runeterra. 

Manager Spotlight: Apero

Anna "Apero" McDougall

Hi Apero. Thanks for allowing us to have this interview with you. How are you and what have you been up to in Gwent so far?

Hey, no worries! I’m really well and really excited. So far this year in Gwent I’ve made some great new beginner videos and done some casting of community events like the Team Clash Tournament, the TLG Invitational, and the CDPR Gwent Partners Open. Now, obviously most of my spare time is spent as one of the four new Team Managers for Team Aretuza. 

Could you please tell us something about your new role as a Team Manager and as Project Management Lead?

Sure! Damorquis and Green Cricket have both moved into new careers and knew they’d have to make an exit from managing Team Aretuza. As such, there were two huge shoes left to fill and Damorquis decided the easiest way to split the workload was to bring on four managers in their place: this also provides us with the ability to take holidays if need be (whew!). 

All major decisions in the team are discussed and agreed upon by each of us: gulox2, DarxPhoenix, Redrame, and me. However, we each also have our ‘area of specialty’. For me, that is being the Project Management Lead. In short, that means I have my fingers in all the mashed potato with thick gravy: I make sure that projects are created, planned, and maintained in an effective way. I then make sure the right people are on the job and chase them up if/when things don’t get done. I’m also involved in all discussions around recruitment and personnel needs, and will be mentoring JoshWitcher as a Junior Manager.

Who are you most excited to work with from the team? 

I’m really pumped to work alongside my fellow managers, and DarxPhoenix in particular is someone who I’m really thrilled to have by my side. He is going to be planning out and heading up all our events and also brings a lot of experience from his time at Gwent League. My hope is that his initiatives and expertise will mean some awesome events coming from Team Aretuza for the Gwent community and for tournament hopefuls.

What projects are you excited to start and/or bring back? 

A big one for me is the revival of the Team Aretuza Public Discord. For a long time it was the centre of activity for the Gwent community, but over time it grew a bit unmanaged. JoshWitcher and I are going to be working closely to come up with a new structure for it so that people can regularly interact with our team members and experience more of what the Aretuza family has to offer in a way which makes sense and doesn’t spam people. 

Team Aretuza has been mostly involved in Gwent. How will you, as one of the new managers, start working on LOR.

I am determined to improve our presence and reputation in the Legends of Runeterra community. For too long, Team Aretuza has been a “Gwent first” kind of team, and I think that if we’re serious about growth and expansion then we have to move beyond that and really get serious about making LoR content.

I’m already receiving coaching from Asher to improve my own gameplay, while working closely with our LoR Content Manager EmpressTeemo to get some new projects and articles out the gates as soon as possible. Our big project in the near future is our first Legends of Runeterra Meta Snapshot, which will hopefully be out in early-mid September.

Could you please tell us how you started as a caster?

If we’re being technical about it, my first experience casting was back in university when I worked part-time running local poker tournaments, and I actually used to cast the final table using a wandering mic. That was a lot of fun!

For Gwent though, at the time of my first casting experience in 2018 I was becoming pretty well-known in the community for streaming and also hosting GwenTalk (a TA talk show I hosted with Shinmiri). I can’t say my first experience was particularly great (it’s a total blur!), but over time I’ve found a good rhythm and a balance between my high-energy antics and still conveying enough useful and interesting information about the game. I’m most known for the ‘Shinpero’ casting duo, and I think that’s because Shinmiri and I both value educational insights but we convey them in different ways: he’s chill and I’m easily excitable. He and I also just get along really well, so it always feels like I’m just hanging out with a good friend! 

Do you have any tips for current and aspiring casters?  

I think I have three:

1. No experience is too small: By that I mean, even recording your own matches and watching them back while commentating is something. Alternatively, go onto YouTube, find some tournament matches like this one from the Gwent Partners Open, mute the video, and try commentating. Get experience in front of a camera by streaming or even just recording yourself, and volunteer for community events. Now that the tournament platform is available, you can even hold small events just with immediate friends and practice casting their matches.

2. KEEP TALKING: In radio they call silence “dead air” and it should be used extremely sparingly. One of the most common problems in new streamers and new casters is that they get so focused that they go silent. You cannot afford to do that. Even if you just say out loud what you’re thinking, it is how you connect to your audience.

3. Know your style: Everyone’s different! Are you analytical, professional, business-like? Or maybe you’re someone who knows how to get an audience hyped? Perhaps you’re really good at calling next moves, or talking about round strategies? Find what your strength is and play to it. Then, when you’re looking for casting partners, look for someone who is on the other side of the spectrum! That’s generally where the magic happens.

Do you have any message to the Gwent community? 

I want to say thank you to everyone who reached out to congratulate me and the other team managers for our new positions. It has been wonderful having conversations with people I haven’t spoken to in a while and reconnecting with the community, to remember why I love this game and its players. I really hope I don’t let you down. 

Recruitment-wise, we are also always keen to hear from Gwent fans who have an article idea and want to get themselves published on our website and benefit from the insight of our editors and writing team. Alternatively, any video editors who want more experience and/or coachings from TA members should get in touch: we’re looking for a video editor to join as soon as possible. Message me on Twitter or by email.

Lastly I’ll say hang tight, because casting-wise it won’t be long before you hear my excitable Australian accent again!

The season ends in a little over a week. The decks from the top 16 qualifiers have slowly translated into becoming the meta. There is still time for that late-season ladder push: Good luck!