Just that opening up of the potential of something, that messing around with the boundaries that have been established. I think I would get a lot more out of it if I'd encountered Gwent in The Witcher 3. I love that this game is about tweaking the rules of a game that's already established.

There's something really gripping about dealing with boulders falling towards you in the first one of these I played. Overall I prefer the puzzley battles to the main events. Here's Bertie in the snowy dwarf land of Mahakaman later on. I also love that the battles themselves really do a good job of making you feel like you're moving an army around and dealing with lots of units on a battlefield. There's a lot of love and care in this game.Д¬hris: It's definitely got that thing I love about card games in that it feels like as much as you're making a hand you're designing and programming a little machine to do in the enemy for you. I actually think it draws characters as vividly as The Witcher 3 and tells some stories as powerfully, and the way it plays around with the rules of Gwent to keep the combat experience interesting - particularly in the puzzles - is masterful.

But actually it's a really indulgent, um, experiment I guess, and you can feel that quality as you explore. It wasn't a spectacle like The Witcher 3 and that hurt it. Thronebreaker didn't really make much of an impression the first time around and I've always thought that was a great shame. There's a murkiness to Thronebreaker which is in keeping with the darker Witcher world.Д«ertie: Can I just say I am so glad you're playing this. There's a lovely sense of a game that has emerged from the stuff you find in a tavern, the stuff that's lying around. I get the sense that you could almost play this on a pub table with the grain of the wood standing in for the different rows. I love the lighting and sense of caricature - huge hands and golden light. Two more things - the animated cards are absolutely dreamy. I am a story-skipper by nature, and you can just about do that here, but it's clear the care and pride that's involved in bedding this card game into the Witcher world. God, so much storytelling all over the place. The overworld map, the resources and all that jazz, the camps. For the first ten minutes I was filtering everything through the question of - how does Hearthstone handle this? But very quickly that ceases to be meaningful.ДЄ few initial observations - there is so much here beyond the cards. This is wrong, obviously, but it's taken Thronebreaker to remind me of that. First up is Spintires and Thronebreaker! ThronebreakerД¬hris: I have sort of fallen off of collectible card games over the last few years, and in the back of my mind I think they've all become variations on Hearthstone. Then we'll chat about what we made of it all. This week we'll be getting together in pairs (virtually) and forcing each other to play a beloved game. Hello and welcome to the first of our Clash of Fans write-ups.

Spin tires game