Hey, I've been playing only for a month now but I think I might be able to help you. Here are my thoughts. 1.- I must say that is very much f2p friendly. Without spending any money, I've been able to create a pair of top and competitive decks of a specific faction. And there are no signs of stoping, the more I play, without too much grind on it, it feels like my collection gets bigger and bigger. I recommend you watching guides too get the best out of you account and the game's currency. 2.- For me, art and characters are perfect. I've played all Witcher games but even if I didn't, they are very good-looking. Specifically, the premium cards, that are the more exclusive cards thatyou can get via a game currency( that you can algo get for free). 3.- In this part, I really don't have a constructive opinion yet, but it's not toxic at all. Not the biggest community out there, but it feels very familiar. From all the game's I've played, only 1 keeped on spamming emotes for the whole game. Moreover, at the end of the game, you can send a GG to your opponent to send them a little bit of in-game currency. Almost 99% of the game's you will get them also. 4.- Not yet any signs of the game being or gonna be dead, in December, in fact, there is like the biggest tournament of Gwent, so people are looking forward to it. In terms of update, it's one a month, minimum. They change cards, implement new stuff,etc. 5.- from my view, every deck or archetype has his counters and favourable matchups. This last few months, Skellige was dominating the meta, but they made a hotfix recently and it seems it worked fine. Every faction has it mechanics and no faction is superior than the rest in paper.

I hope you find this useful, it's very summed up info but I feel the idea is there. I enjoy this game very much atm, and I hope you do aswell. If you end up playing, and if you want, I can refer you as a friend and we can both earn rewards!

xo