The Witcher: The Adventure Card Game

Designers	Magdalena Madej-Reputakowska, Maciej Reputakowski, Michał Stachyra, and Maciej Zasowski
Illustrators	Box cover of the English edition
Publishers	Kuźnia Gier [pl] (2007)
Players	2-4
Playing time	50 minutes
Chance	Random card draws
Age range	12+
Skills	Strategy, tactics, logic

The Witcher: The Adventure Card Game (Polish: Wiedźmin: Przygodowa Gra Karciana)[1] is a Polish card game released in 2007 by Kuźnia Gier [pl].[2] It was the first board game set in the Witcher universe created by Andrzej Sapkowski to be available on the broader market; however, it met with a cool reception from most reviewers, who regarded the title as rather average.

In January 2007, the publisher Kuźnia Gier was selected by CD Projekt Red Studio to create a card game as part of the promotion of the video game The Witcher.[3][4][5] The Witcher: The Adventure Card Game was released in October 2007; its designers were Magdalena Madej-Reputakowska, Maciej Reputakowski, Michał Stachyra, and Maciej Zasowski.[2][6] The game received editions in English (The Witcher: The Adventure Card Game) and Spanish (The Witcher: El juego de cartas de las aventuras de Geralt de Rivia).[7] In 2010, a second edition of the game (New Edition) was released.[8]

It was the first board game set in the Witcher universe (not counting a card game released at the same time, also developed by Kuźnia Gier, included with the collector’s edition of the video game).[3][9][10][11][5]

The game includes a rulebook, 110 cards (52 attack cards, 20 monster cards, 15 event cards, 10 location cards, 5 hero cards, and 4 Geralt cards, plus four player aid cards containing a rules summary), a cloth pouch with cardboard coins,[4][12] and a large cardboard first-player marker depicting Geralt.[4][13] The cards are illustrated with screenshots from the video game, and the game box also references the look and aesthetics of the video game’s packaging.[4][12]

The Witcher: The Adventure Card Game is a card game for 2 to 4 players; an average game lasts about an hour. Players choose heroes (Triss, Dandelion, Yarpen Zigrin, Foltest, and Vesemir), bid cards, and then, in turns, play attack cards in required combinations to fight monsters, for defeating which they earn fame points; when one of the players defeats a fourth monster, the player with the highest number of those points wins the game.[2][7][12][13][14]

At the time of its release, despite receiving mostly mixed reviews, the game gained significant popularity,[14] and the first print run sold out, which resulted in the preparation of a second print run in 2010.[8] After several years, however, the title lost popularity,[14] unlike the video game it was designed to promote, which gained generally good reviews[15] and went on to become the first in a series of a very successful video game franchise.[16]

The card game received a number of reviews. For the magazine Świat Gier Planszowych [pl], it was reviewed in 2007 by Jacek Nowak,[13] and for Rebel Times [pl], a year later, by Mateusz Kominiarczuk.[12] The game was also reviewed for the online portals Gildia.pl (2008),[2] gram.pl [pl] (2007),[4] Nerdheim.pl (2015),[14] and ObliczaKultury (2012); in the latter case, the reviewer was the writer Michał Krzywicki [pl].[9]

Four reviews used a point-rating system in their assessments: the reviewers from Świat Gier Planszowych, Rebel Times and Gildia.pl gave the game 6/10,[2][12][13] and the reviewer from Nerdheim.pl gave it 5/10.[14] On the English-language board game portal BoardGameGeek, in 2025 the game had a rating of 5.7 (based on 295 user ratings).[7]

Most reviewers regarded the game as average; the exception was Krzywicki, who considered the game recommendable, writing that “you may not play ten times a day for a month, but you will certainly come back to it”.[9] By contrast, according to most other reviewers, most players will become bored with the game after a few plays, after mastering all strategies, after which the game becomes too predictable and boring.[4][12] According to Nowak, although the game has an “attractive theme”, its drawback is “not very exciting gameplay”.[13] According to the Gildia.pl review, the game may appeal more to Witcher fans and less to experienced board game players, for whom it will be rather too simple and, mechanically, average.[2] The gram.pl reviewer wrote in the summary that “Kuźnia Gier managed to create a very pretty piece of junk”.[4] The Nerdheim.pl reviewer criticized the squandering of the atmospheric Witcher universe in the form of a very average board game, describing it as a “mediocre title”, good for a few plays, after which it will be forgotten, also writing that “the card game served only marketing purposes and to extract money from the wallets of fans of Sapkowski’s prose”.[14]

Reviewers appreciated the game’s atmosphere (references to the Witcher universe)[4][12][13] and, related to this, the naming of the cards and their graphic design (illustrations),[2][4][12][13] although Nowak criticized some illustrations, including the fact that the illustrations for identical attack cards are identical.[13] Kominiarczuk noted that the illustrations, which he also considered successful, may nonetheless not appeal to someone who does not like computer graphics.[12]

Reviewers largely praised the exciting bidding mechanism during play, in which most player interaction occurs.[2][4][12][14][9]

Reviewers had more mixed feelings about the quality of the game’s physical components. Reviewers from gram.pl, Nerdheim.pl, and ObliczaKultury considered them to be standard, decent, and solid.[4][14][9] Kominiarczuk, Nowak, and the Gildia.pl reviewer criticized the quality of the box (susceptible to damage due to the use of cardboard that was too soft and thin); the last reviewer also pointed out that the box is too large relative to its contents.[2][12][13] Kominiarczuk criticized the size of the cards themselves (slippery, prone to bending) and their non-standard dimensions (smaller than the most popular cards of the MtG type), which makes it difficult to sleeve them with protective card sleeves.[12] Reviewers from Gildia.pl and gram.pl considered the cards too thin, although they differed on whether they are nonetheless solid and resistant to damage (Gildia.pl)[2] or, on the contrary, not (gram.pl).[4] Nowak also considered the font size of the text on the cards to be too small.[13] Reviewers also differed on the quality of the large Geralt marker (which the Nerdheim.pl reviewer described as “average”,[14] Nowak as “grotesquely large”,[13] and Kominiarczuk as “nice”).[9]

Most considered the rulebook to be good,[2][4][9] except for Kominiarczuk, who felt there were too many ambiguities in it.[12]

Reviewers mostly evaluated the gameplay mechanics negatively (apart from the bidding), noting a lack of interaction between players beyond the bidding mechanic and the repetitiveness of moves.[2][4][12][14] Nowak expressed a somewhat different view, describing it as “correct” though not giving players “many real decisions”; he did not see anything special in the bidding and even suggested that limiting it might be advisable.[13] Reviewers described the game’s complexity level as low,[2][9] which on the one hand is an advantage, enabling quick learning of the rules and playing a game session,[2][9] but at the same time causes the game, after a few sessions, to become too schematic, repetitive, and monotonous,[14][9] especially due to too small a number and variety of cards.[2][4][14][12] Some reviewers pointed to an interesting exception—the event card “Pułapka” (“Trap”), which is the only element of the game enabling player interaction outside the bidding moment and which indicates unused potential in the game’s mechanics,[12][9] which could have been saved by an expansion that, however, never appeared.[14]

Although the game is described as intended for groups of 2 to 4 people, reviewers considered gameplay for 2 people to be weak, so the game effectively requires 3 or 4 people to be more interesting.[4][12]

When, in 2014, the next board game set in the Witcher universe was released, some reviewers compared it to the card game, usually to the disadvantage of the latter. The Board Times reviewer called it “shoddy”.[17] The reviewer from Polter described it as “not very successful… with a very clichéd mechanic”.[18]

• Gwent: The Witcher Card Game
• The Witcher Adventure Game

• The Witcher: The Adventure Card Game at BoardGameGeek