I cannot play Gwent. I have lost literally every single Gwent match I've ever played, except for the tutorial...

I cannot play Gwent. I have lost literally every single Gwent match I've ever played, except for the tutorial, and one round against a really low level NPC. What the fuck is wrong with me? How the fuck do you play Gwent?

Pro tip:Don't. If it's not required to beat the story, and you don't like it, then just don't. That's what I did

There's a side mission where you can save a woman by beating a guy in a game of Gwent, or by killing him. I was playing a pacifist run, but I just could not for the life of me beat him, so I ended up killing him.

Gwent is in-universe pay to win.
Make sure to buy cards and beat weaker opponents first to build a strong northern realms or nilfgaard deck, then you're set.

War horn is a key card by the way.

Same. Pic related

>getting cucked by a kurwa minigame

I honestly can't understand how people liked that stupid minigame.
And now they even made a standalone game about it lmao

Listen to this guy,OP.
Buy EVERY card you can from vendors.
Challenge everyone.
Get rid of low rank units, you don't wanna draw a 2 swordsman.
As a begginer's strategy, you might wanna use the impenetrable fog from the Foltest card (leader card) and lay some archers, luring the opponent to pass the round, the clear the weather and win the round.
For round 2, just force their hands and pass it.
For round 3, war horn is your friend.

One, savescum. Just that simple, especially in earlier games you can get fucked hard by RNG.

Two, pay attention to your questlog. Some Gwent players are easy to access early but are balls-to-the-wall hard. Don't get down if you challenge someone who has a clearly superior deck with Golds out the ass.

Three, buy cards. Tavern keepers and even some general shop-owners will carry cards, buy them all. All of them. They don't cost much and will be needed.

Four, figure out your playstyle and use the right deck for it. The four in the game are Squirrelelves, Foltest, Nilfgaard and Monster.
-Squirrels focus mostly on heavy-hitting range and melee cards, and buffing. Their weakness is absolutely no artillery and the tendency to get fucked hard by fog cards.
-Foltest is a god at everything, especially at comboing cards on all ranks. Lackluster spies but you'll likely end up picking him or Nilf.
-Nilfgaard has ass-rapingly powerful archers and the ability to zerg with low-power cards. Their main draw is their metric shit-ton of spies.
-Monsters are the complete zerg-class, and can field almost two-dozen cards in a round sometime. 90% of this is melee only though so Frost cards will fuck them hard.

The point of the game is managing your hand. You have to win 2 out of 3 rounds, without drawing too many cards past what you get initially. Spies and leader-abilities can help with this, but initially it's strictly a management game. You can't blow your entire hand on Round 1 because you'll leave yourself open in rounds 2 and 3. At the same time you have to force the computer to dedicate as many cards as you can in a round so he's weaker later.

Basically all I can offer past that is a few tips;
Do your best to hold-out for combos when you get them. Use spies all the fucking time. Combo target dummies with spies for more spies. Gold Cards are game-changers. GLHF.

congrats, your parents dropped you as a baby.