The Witcher 3's Gwent Card Game Going F2P Standalone

That there Ian Video Games was telling the truth, you know: The Witcher 3's card game Gwent is being spun off into its own standalone game. Gwent: The Witcher Card Game [official site] will be free-to-play, and is due to enter beta in September.

Gwent, if you've not played The Witcher 3, is a card game where players summon warriors to the battlefield in three different ranges - melee, ranged, and siege - to put together a high power score than their opponent. There are cards to murder their men, of course, and various fancy abilities. Players only have ten cards across the best-of-three match, so caution is necessary.

I really like Gwent in The Witcher 3 as a diversion from all the questing and monster-slaying but I'm curious how well it'll work as a standalone game. In TW3, too much is decided by drawing high-power cards immune to spell effects, and a limited pool of cards means you can't be too creative with decks. Surely they've got some clever ideas up their sleeves for this standalone, though.

You can sign up for the beta if you fancy a go early.

Do check out the rest of our E3 2016 posts, previews, odds, ends, and gubbins.