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CD Projekt RED have announced a trio of tournaments for recently released Gwent: The Witcher Card Game,with a combined prize pool of $850,000.
This is a pretty big amount of money for the fledgling CCG, with it’s closest competitor Hearthstone handing out $250,000 for their seasonal championships. The three tournaments are the Gwent Open, Gwent Challenger and Gwent World Masters, with the Gwent Open and Gwent Challenger events feeding into the World Masters.
The Gwent Open is an entry-level event, allowing participants to qualify with their professional ladder points, here called Crown Points, at the end of every season, which will last for two months. There will be eight tournaments in the Gwent Open series, each offering a $25,000 prize pool, with the two finalists from each earning a spot in the Gwent Challengers event.
The Gwent challenger events will happen for every two Gwent Open events, so will take place once every four months. Here, eight players will throw down for a share of $100,000 and a shot at the World Masters tournament, with two players from each tournament advancing to the top tier championship, which will take place after four Challenger events, after 16 months of fierce competition, to divide up a $250,000 pool.
This makes it roughly equivalent to the Hearthstone figures listed earlier, and this financial parity should do a lot to encourage CCG pros to take the game seriously.
The first Open tournament is taking place this Friday, August 25, at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. The Pro Ladder season for Gwent kicks off on September 1. More details are available on the Gwent esports website.
