When comparing Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft vs Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, the Slant community recommends Gwent: The Witcher Card Game for most people. In the question“What are the best digital Collectible Card Games on PC?” Gwent: The Witcher Card Game is ranked 1st while Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose Gwent: The Witcher Card Game is:
A good deck synergy and perfect decisions are needed for success in this game.
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Pros
Pro Active community
It has a lot of players due to Blizzard's fanbase which means finding multiplayer matches is not all that difficult.
Pro Polished overall aesthetic
Possibly the most polished user Interface of digital CCGs. Unified and fun art style and flavor text.
Pro Great even for casual players
Hearthstone has a friendly learning curve that makes picking it up and getting started easy for people who don't want to spend a lot of time learning rules and tricks.
Pro Multi-platform
Available on PC and on mobile. Makes a great commute companion (provided you have internet).
Pro Familiar characters from Warcraft 3 and World of warcraft
The characters used in Hearthstone are all from the lore of the Warcraft series, making for a familiar universe for fans of the series.
Pro Brawl events, that don't require you to follow "the meta"
You can take advantage of weekly brawl events that give you a certain set of cards (so no need to pay to stay competitive). It keeps the game fresh, fun and fairly "casual".
Pro Entertaining Voice Acting
The voice work really adds to the game and makes it entertaining to play.
Pro Card Balances and Game Updates Often
The Hearthstone team is always looking at their data and community reaction towards cards and the state of the game, and they have made many card and game changes/updates to balance and improve the game for all players.
Pro You won't be cursed at in the chat.
Interaction with opponent limited to simple pre-made phrases, so you don't have to see how many 1337 gamers had their way with you or your mother. Or deal with the spam about free decks, new hacks etc.
Pro Near-perfect balance between going first or second
There's no significant first-turn or second-turn advantage in Hearthstone. The player going second gets an extra card from his deck as well as "The Coin", a card that gives one extra mana crystal for one turn. This subverts the advantage that would be gained otherwise by the player going first.
Pro Free to play that doesn't exploit
Yes it's free to play, but it's designed to easily continue to play and have fun without having to feel like you HAVE to pay. At the same time, after playing a while you'll probably want to.
Pro Great if you don't take it too seriously
HS is meant to be fun, lighthearted, and generally casual. It requires a lot of time and money investment if you wish to play seriously.
Pro Very strategic
A good deck synergy and perfect decisions are needed for success in this game.
Pro Unique concept
The mechanics of Gwent are different from other CCGs in which you need to destroy your opponent. Instead, you carefully build your army, while trying to prevent your opponent from doing the same.
Pro People who enjoyed the Witcher games will probably enjoy this one as well
The game was originally built-in Witcher 3 as a minigame. All the cards reference Witcher characters and events.
Pro Easy to build up a collection
Game allows you to get a good 2-3 packs a day, easily get a legendary in 2-3 days of playtime.
Pro Great for Free to Play
The game gives you a lot for free. It's easy to be competitive and it's free to play (F2P).
Pro Limited RNG
Unlike in many other CCGs, luck doesn't play too noticeable of a role in Gwent.
The cards you play and decisions you make create a lasting impact on the outcome of a match. When you lose, you know where you went wrong, and you learn. Matches feel rewarding and fair, knowing you won or lost because of your own decisions.
Pro Beautiful card art
This is the only CCG that can compete with MtG in terms of art.
Pro Players are able to choose the last card of every keg (card pack)
Every keg gives 4 random cards, and a choice from 3 cards. This makes the card pack process significantly less RNG-based, allowing you to more easily get the cards you need without having to craft them.
Pro Feel of making progress
You get new cards every day, get rewards for doing challenges, for leveling, and for ranking up.
Pro Two guaranteed kegs (packs of cards) per day
You can be sure to get 3 kegs (pack of cards) if you play a few minutes every day.
Pro Addictive, has this "one more game" feeling
"Oh, few more games and I'll level up and get a reward. Oh, a new rank is close, I should keep playing. Oh, the daily tier is almost done". You get the idea.
Pro Nice community
The community is usually not toxic and nice to everyone. There is also a lot of discussion about game and strategic aspects from pros, streamers and gamers.
Pro You get to play all your cards, any time
Say goodbye to your opponent defeating you before you could pull off that sweet combo.
Pro Great starting decks
Unlike many other CCG's, the starter decks actually feel very competitive with 4 legendaries each, one from the faction and three neutrals.
Pro Good developer support
The developers of the game are always in contact with the fans and updating the game constantly.
Pro You need to think before you play
Especially when you get to higher rankings, you can't just slap your cards on the table. You have to think before every move.
Pro A single-player story coming soon
While not present in the Open Beta, the game will feature a single-player story after official release.
Pro Generous and skillful developers
The devs are incredibly generous with the rewards for playing daily and achieving ranks in ranked play. Also the ingame skill and the deckbuilding is decisive for success, and not RNG (there is some, but not that oppressive usually).
Pro Great in-game music and atmosphere
The dark atmosphere and the folk music are outstanding!
Pro Gwent is the whole package
For a game that’s still in beta and the first to introduce a new core mechanic, different than every other CCG out there (i.e no previous reference but itself), Gwent has proved to be a skill-rewarding game (both deck building & gameplay). It has RNG limited to a minimum, a very generous free-to-play reward system and still more to come for the official release: from UI improvements to new game modes, to single-player campaigns, all backed up by a dev. team that’s fast on its feet to act and please its community.
Pro Building your own Decks is real fun
Cons
Con Huge Money Sink
Although you can "technically" play for free, Hearthstone is very stingy on rewards. To get the limit of 100 paltry coins free a day, you have to win 30 games vs mostly players who have much better cards than you. It can take a new player 6 to 8(or more) hours to accomplish this. And after all this you get a pack of 5 cards that are often completely worthless to any viable deck. It's possible to get cards like "Angry Chicken"(worthless card) as the "Rare" card several times. You can also get a bunch of cards you already have a lot of.
Con Many mechanics based on random numbers
Random effects in the game use a random number generator, which causes an uncertainty of all outcomes. This causes one or both players to be frustrated because they can lose an already won game despite playing to the best of their ability.
Con The reward system is not significant enough
Hearthstone's reward system is very lackluster, providing little to nothing of significance to the casual or excessive player. There will be times when you feel heavily rewarded by the game, but these times are few and far between and if you are driven by rewards you will likely lose attraction to this game quickly.
Con Lacking a lot of depth found in better TCGs
Con Crafting is expensive
In lieu of trading cards, this game uses a disenchanting/crafting system to handle duplicate copies in your collection and being able to obtain the cards you want. Many cards disenchant for paltry amounts, and the best cards cost lots of "dust" to be able to play with.
Con Luck is more rewarding than skill.
When you lose a game in Hearthstone you don't learn anything because you generally can't play around most of the cards, most of the cards have random effects you have no control over it whatsoever.
Con Additional "Cards" must be paid for if not earned by continuously playing
There is a bit of a grind in earning new cards, so for those that do not want to spend the large amount of time needed to earn quality cards they will need to be purchased, which can get expensive.
Con Dependent on Battle.net infrastructure, not playable offline
The game requires a connection with Battle.net servers from the developers, and thus can't be played offline.
Con Ridiculously bloated
Over 4 GB data installed on ones device. Which is quite a lot of room, something many might not have to spare.
Con No trading with other players
Con The discover mechanic alone ruined this game
Luck tends to be more important than skill: there are numerous RNG-based cards in this game. Players that care about skill are better of playing other games, like Magic.
Con Simplistic and unintuitive card design
Very little mechanical depth, most of the complexity is based on random numbers.
Con Sometimes unfair matchmaking
Sometimes players will be matched up with people who clearly have been playing longer.
Con Poor port
Plays much better on PC. Sluggish and crashes often on mobile, sometimes connections can be difficult to make as well.
Con Chinese money > Freedom of speech
Blizzard WILL sell your soul to the chinese overlords for a couple sheckels. DO NOT play this game if you care about freedom of any kind. There are many other CCG out there. Have some dignity and principles.
Con The coin flip
At the start of each match, a coin is flipped to determine who plays first. Currently, going first is usually a huge disadvantage.
Con Unreliable UI
An obviously console-optimized UI makes some aspects of the game annoying on PC. For example, at the beginning of every round you can mulligan cards; the UI shows 3 of your cards with a barely-noticeable scroll bar to see the rest, confusing many new players into thinking you can only mulligan those 3 cards.
Con If your internet connection is slightly unstable you will have trouble finishing a match
Con Bad "friend" system
Currently, there are no rewards for matches with friends and you cannot spectate your friend's games.
Con Hard for new players to get involved
Initial impressions of this game might be negative due to the way it presents itself at first — it might feel like it's just counting points like in solitaire, when in reality the fun begins once the gameplay becomes more complex.
Con In beta
This game is currently in open beta. This means you may encounter some bugs while playing.
Con Not available on mobile
For players who are used to playing other CCGs on mobile devices, not being able to play a few quick rounds of Gwent while you're out and about may be limiting.
Con Uninteresting cards
Con Feels like two players playing solitaire
Con Greedy pricing model
Con Feels like doing your math homework instead of a game
Con Developers listen to the community too much
The Developers are addressing the feedback received by the community, but they are not filtering it and they are introducing some bad ideas from time to time.