The Witcher (Gwent) ports.

Worked on a few this time adapting from two Scoia'tael archetypes.

Spella'tael

This is one of my favourite Gwent decks of all time. The deck works sort of like a storm deck in MTG, since you want to play as many spells (special cards) as possible to get a big pay off at the end. The deck has ebbed and flowed in the game for some time and has seen a huge amount of changes to its card pool and their effects that has meant that at times it has been OP and other times absolutely dreadful. I decided to take a but of a cross-format approach to adapting this, using some later cards and some older variants of other cards which I will identify below. 


Leader



Eithne (pronounced enya) is one of the Scoia'tael faction leaders in Gwent, and she is the leader exclusively chosen for spella'tael decks. In Gwent she lets you replay a silver or bronze spell in your grave when she enters the battlefield. I felt like I didn't just want to make a snapcaster here and also as a leader I wanted to build the card like a commander, so it really had to have a static ability. Felt like it made sense to make the card a lord as well. 

Creatures



These three are the stars of the Gwent deck. There is another as well which was commonly played in the earlier days of the deck (Farseer), but I couldn't really work out how to adapt it for mtg in a meaningful way.

In the Gwent deck, you play as many special cards as possible, tutor them, replay them and get the storm count up, then you end out the last three (or four if operator was played) turns with huge Dol Blathanna Sentries - they start out at 2 power but get buffed by 1 (from hand, deck or on the field) for each special card you play. I'm pretty sure there's some rules issue with the way I've written Sentry on the magic card but I'm not sure how else to do it.

Elvish Mercenary is an example of how different Gwent and MTG are - in Gwent it tutors up two random special cards from your deck, you play one and the other goes back into the deck. This adaptation is obviously like a cross between Augur of Bolas and Radha, Heir to Keld. I have had issues with the colour identity as initially I made it RG, but the deck is already in Bant colours so I decided to make it GW but it really doesn't feel right.

Elven Sage (just called Sage in Gwent) is a relatively newer addition to the Gwent deck, though he actually disappeared from the deck briefly after some big game changes occurred. In Gwent he lets you replay a special card from your grave when he enters play and then banishes it, so yeah I took a snapcaster/direfleet daredevil approach to this card, though I added in a condition to it to make it an archetype-specific card.


Spells




Stemmelfords Tremor is not played in the Gwent deck any more, largely because they removed the part about creating Earth Elementals, which to be fair absolutely broke the deck. I decided to adapt this version because I really liked the card at the time and it was an absolute joy to play the deck as it was, though I'm sure it was a nightmare to play against. Back then you'd play down your weak creatures that tutor spells, and then this card would replace them with elementals, or otherwise you'd have creatures with quen shields on them (another thing that has since been removed) so you usually played sucessive tremors, wiping your opponents board or seriously damaging their score, while leaving elementals behind, which themselves turned into lesser elementals for the next round which gave you carryover so yeah it was broken but I loved it, and I made this one a legendary sorcery so I think thats a bit fairer.

Natures Gift is another demonstration of the game differences, I know that wizards hate tutors these days, but it is pretty necessary for squeezing up your storm count. In Gwent there's no mana, so you get to instantly play the card for free, and I felt like letting you pay no mana cost would be a bit broken here, so instead I decided to add the ritual effect. I limited the search to green to try to constrain it as an archetypal card.


Mulligan

This is an archetype I honestly have not played, but I've always sort of admired its strategy because it is pretty cool. Basically you play a bunch of cards that let you mulligan cards, and then other cards that have trigger effects when they get mulliganed, honestly this could probably be a mechanic in MTG some day because its really unusual and interesting. 


Leader




In Gwent she actually lets you chose any card in the deck to replace the one you mulligan. I know. That wasn't going to work here so I decided to limit the search to the hand size. Similarly to Eithne, I felt like she had to do something while on the battlefield rather than just having an ETB trigger. I initially considered doing this as put the card on the bottom of the library and reveal cards until you reveal a card of the same type and add that to your hand and put the rest on the bottom of the library in a random order, but that didn't really work with the trigger effects so I just made it a mulligan. Just as I'm writing this I realise that I changed the mana cost to make it Temur but I kind of forgot to change the ability cost, RG seems a bit weird for this ability.

Other cards



Wardancer was broken in Gwent for the longest time, I mean its not a powerful card, but if it was mulliganed, including during the mulligan resolution part of the pregame you put it onto the field leyline style, but I felt like that is actually a bit less broken here, the add  part felt right and you don' exactly benefit from it if you leyline the card. I felt like to make the card fair you want it to feel bad having to hard cast it, but I didn't have the heart to make it a 4 costed 3/3 vanilla. 

Vrihedd Dragoon buffs random units in your hand in Gwent and that doesn't really work here, so this felt like the most appropriate way to adapt it and also opened up this archetype as a counters deck which I included on the other cards. 

Not a huge amount to say about Saskia apart from, yes she is a Dragon, play Witcher 2. I mean in Gwent she mulls your cards into bronzes only, but how can that really be done here?

Vrihedd Officer basically does the exact same thing in Gwent - mull a card and boost itself by the base power of that card.

Vrihedd Vanguard also does the exact same thing in Gwent essentially.

Alzur's Thunder I actually made in the Spella'tael batch, but its off colour for that deck. In Gwent it deals 9 damage. Yeah so there's no way to make that work without making it a high cost and useless card, so I decided to make it modal and fit into this theme.