Gwent’s new expansion brings us the Novigrad gangs

Gwent’s second expansion was just recently announced and it takes us into the seedy underbelly of Novigrad. It will introduce 5 of the free city's gangs which have formed an alliance called the Syndicate. Cleaver is the leader of the Crown Splitters, Hemmelfart rules the Fire-sworn, King of Beggars leads the Blind Eyes, Whoreson Junior heads the Cut-ups and the fifth leader is a new addition to the game’s lore. Gundrum Bjornsdaughter heads the Tide Cloaks and will be free to all players.

The expansion will introduce 15 cross-faction cards. These cards will represent both Syndicate cards as well as one of the other existing factions, 3 to each. Crowns are a new resource in the game which represents money in the Gwent world. With this resource, players are able to activate new abilities. It’s just one of a few nice additions that fit in with the expansion’s theme.

Novigrad brings a new category of cards called “Crime,” similar to how some cards are designated beast, agent or alchemy. Also, an additional 6 keywords have been added;

1. Profit, gives the player a certain number of crowns when played.

2. Fee, uses crowns to activate abilities after playing the card.

3. Bounty, marks enemy cards for termination. If they are successfully removed from the board, the player is rewarded with crowns.

4. Tribute, this is an optional ability that players can activate when playing a card. They have the choice of not activating this ability too.  

5. Intimidate, boosts the card that has this keyword by 1 point for every crime committed.

6. Hoard, allows a certain number of crowns to be saved before using them to activate a strong ability.

During its livestream, CDPR revealed 20 cards from the Novigrad expansion with 6 to follow every day after, until release. These cards will be shown by different Gwent content creators, so it will be fun to see who reveals what cards and how.

The Novigrad expansion will also include a free Syndicate game board and a new soundtrack for opponents using the new faction. Two pre-order packs are now available, with the standard 15 Novigrad kegs pack costing $19.99 and coming with the Eternal Fire premium cardback. The second has 20 Novigrad premium kegs with the Spectral Fire premium cardback for $39.99.

Novigrad launches on June 28, with the announcement coming as a bit of a surprise considering the last expansion, Crimson Cures, was just released in March. It will be interesting to see if CDPR can keep up with this pace.

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