Gwent

Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge

Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge is a six-week event introduced with the Master Mirror expansion. It replaces the previous method of earning reward points through daily crowns, and works similarly to other previous in-game events where players are forced to pick a side. The difference is that there is no winning side in Gaunter's Ultimate Challenge, and the sides to choose from rotate on a weekly basis. For complete information regarding Gaunter’s Ultimate Challenge, visit this link. 

Week 1 allows players to choose one faction across Monsters, Scoia’tael, and Skellige. You can find the quests for each faction in the table below as well as the title that will be awarded upon completion of the final step. 

Season of the Griffin

This month’s seasonal mode is Power Shift. The rules are as follows: At the start of the match, set the power of every unit in your starting deck to its Provision Cost.

Reward Book

Here are some decks that you can use to accomplish the quests in the seasonal trees for the Season of the Griffin:

• Play cards with 8 provision cost or more, play cards with 7 provision cost or less, and win rounds with a lead of at least 20 points - Northern Realms Pincer Maneuver Devotion Orders
• Play Humans and Play Beasts - Skellige Second Wind Gedyneith
• Play Bombs - Scoia'tael Mahakam Forge Gord
• Play Spells - Skellige Second Wind Great Swords or Scoia'tael Guerilla Tactics Gord

Events

The Invitational

Team Leviathan Gaming’s The Invitational takes place next week. For more information join Team Leviathan Gaming’s Discord.

Here's our lineup for The Invitational. Lionhart and Johaggis will also be casting games for the event. 

Team Aretuza

Stream Schedule

Here is the stream schedule of Team Aretuza’s Pro and Stream Team for the week of July 6 to July 12.

Videos

Check out Lionhart and TheaBeasty's recent guides for Northern Realms and Skellige, respectively.

Post-Gwent Open and Master Mirror Interview with Redrame

In this interview, get to know Redrame's post Gwent-Open insights as well as his experience so far with the Master Mirror expansion. 

First of all, thank you once again for spending time with us in this interview. How are you and what have you been up to since the open?

I’ve been alright, mostly just been trying to get back into a good streaming routine since I took a break to prepare for Open.

Your day one performance was really exceptional and fun. People really enjoyed and looked up to your plays as well as your entertaining personality. How did you feel before, during, and after the games? 

Contrary to what most people seemed to think, I was pretty nervous the whole time.  Not nervous in a way that affected my play, as I’m a pretty experienced tournament player.  Just nervous.  It didn’t feel good to know that I would have to beat a singleton deck in the quarterfinals, especially one that had the edge on some of my decks.  I expected that series to be a clown fiesta, so I just embraced it as much as I could, and figured that maybe I could finally make a Gwent Open bearable to watch in the process.  

What do you think you could have done better on day two? 

I made a pretty important mistake in Game 1 where I chose to shove out round 1 by committing Royal Decree instead of allowing a bleed.  Neverhood wouldn’t have been able to save enough of a short round for the bleed to be truly problematic, given that I had the proper golds in hand. 

I caught a few other minor mistakes, but for the most part it was pretty much just that and luck that determined the series, and while I keep trying to tell myself that I’m over it and ultimately I did make a mistake, it still really hurts.  Having one early mistake cost me 3 games on Draug as a result of bad matchups and draws felt terrible, especially when the more creative half of my lineup was pulling its weight.  I’d beat myself up over it less if Neverhood had played flawlessly and clearly had me outmatched, but in my opinion this was far from the case.  

We are a few days into the expansion. Any thoughts on the cards and the factions?

I’m sick of facing Skellige.   

Any cards or factions that lived up to your expectation and any that turned out to be underwhelming?

I would say that the prediction that I’m most proud of would be the Nilfgaard spy archetype being solid but fair.  A lot of people really overhyped this faction, and a lot of my fellow Aretuza mates were judging me for saying that Coup de Grace was a well designed payoff card that had a real deck building cost.  But I think it’s pretty clear that that’s the case now. 

Some of the Skellige cards like Tyrggvi Tuirseach and Blood Eagle looked as insane to me as they actually were, but I missed a lot of their later releases and also underestimated a few cards like Skjordal Drummond, and also thought Harald an Craite would struggle a bit more with resurrections than he does despite obviously being insanely powerful. 

Monsters is just a puppet faction for Ethereal which is a little sad to see.  I was hoping that Wild Hunt would be able to put up a bit more of a fight, though I didn’t really expect it to be able to. 

I think I’m most disappointed by the Syndicate cards, as I thought that there would be more of a chance there, as some of their cards like Ulrich, Fallen Knight, and Dies Irae seemed to have the potential to be good, but the archetype overall was still missing a lot of tools. 

I also thought that Oakcritters would be much stronger because it was revealed so early when the Scoia'tael cards could potentially be going in a more harmony centered direction, but from there the deck received more nerfs than buffs, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

You finished in the Top 64 of the previous season, how are you preparing yourself for the qualifiers this month? 

I’m gonna bring whatever piles I feel like bringing the night before. It’s not exactly a tournament worth exhausting myself over in my opinion.

How is the climbing experience so far this season considering things haven’t really settled and everyone is still building and testing decks?

I haven’t really tried to climb that seriously.  I imagine it would be as frustrating as it always is at the start of a season.

Do you have any message to the Gwent community? 

Red coin Draug monkaS.

The Master Mirror expansion has introduced new and fresh archetypes for each faction. The meta has not yet settled so now is the best time to experiment and have fun with homebrew decks. Good luck!