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What’s It All About
Unmatched is not a game I would normally like, a head-to-head card-based battle dueller-type affair. Magic: The Gathering—a game that fits into this genre—is my lowest-rated game of all time. I’d give it a rating of minus infinity if I could.
But even so, I thought I’d give Unmatched a go, and push myself.
And I loved it. It doesn’t take itself seriously, there are no keywords to remember, and it’s fun. I can have a fight between Medusa and Daredevil, Sun Wukong and Sherlock Holmes, or Alice (from the In Wonderland stories) and a great stonking T-Rex. And yet my first love in board games is cooperative games. Wouldn’t it be great if they made a cooperative version of Unmatched?
Enter Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze. Yes, it’s Unmatched but co-op. It comes with four new fighters: Annie Christmas, Nikola Tesla, Dr Jill Trent, and Golden Bat, who are perfect for this co-op mode but also work as competitive fighters, able to go up against any of your other Unmatched fighters.
How Does It Play
This game is very simple to learn if you are at all familiar with Unmatched which in itself is an easy-to-learn game. There are two big-bads, Mothman and Martian Invader, and they each use a different side of the board. Added to this there are six minions to choose from, one per player. We have The Blob, Ant Queen, Jersey Devil, Skunk Ape, Tarantula, and Loveland Frog. Your end goal is to kill the big-bad. Do that before you all die, or the villain achieves its goal, and you are the winners!
The game works using the same system as Unmatched: each player, minion, and big-bad has its own deck of cards and attacks and defends in the usual way. On your turn you can draw a card and move, play an event card, or attack an enemy. Each card has a special power that activates at a certain time. It’s all nice and easy.
Unmatched Adventures has an initiative system that determines the order of the fighters each round. Each fighter has an initiative card that gets shuffled to form the initiative deck. One card is turned over. That player or villain has their turn. Then the next initiative card is revealed. And so on. When all the cards have been revealed, you go through them in order and check for any end-of-round effects. The cards then get shuffled and this process is repeated. It’s very smooth.
One of my favourite aspects of Tales to Amaze is the Deception card. Each villain and minion has one of these in their deck. It is a 0 attack and 0 defence card. Plus, whenever it is discarded the whole deck is shuffled again. It can be amazing to get this card when you’ve just played a 6-attack card, but it can also kick you in your pants if you play a 4-defence card against it. It is a minor thing but it adds massively to the fun. It’s great to use a power that lets you know what the next card is, find out that it’s the Deception card, and then smack it with a huge attack.
Is It Any Good
I’m going to start off with a couple of negatives. I’m not particularly keen on Dr Jill Trent. She feels like the weakest of the four heroes. This could be all down to the luck I had when playing with her. Her talent with gadgets never seemed to pay off for me and she just wasn’t that much fun. This may well be different when you play.
My other downside is that it doesn’t give the best first impression. I was distinctly underwhelmed by my first game. But as I got to know how the big-bads and minions worked, my love of this game skyrocketed.
The other fighters in Tales to Amaze are all good. Nikola Tesla has two Tesla coils that he can charge up. His cards give him extra options that he can perform if he discharges one or two of his coils. He’s cool. Annie Christmas is a beast. If she has less health than her opponent, she gets +2 on her attacks. Sit her next to the big-bad and let her smack it about the face. My favourite is Golden Bat. If he hasn’t manoeuvred that turn he gets +2 on his attacks. He has so much character as he flits about the board, and in our games, he always seems to be the goal lagger who hangs around and does the final bit of damage to the big-bad. And takes all the glory.
Each of the two scenarios plays differently and the minions add more variety. The Blob is a real pain; it puts out tokens that damage you if you enter that space. Ant Queen is a real pain. She advances the threat track and can heal the baddies. Jersey Devil is a real pain. It makes you discard a load of cards and can even get rid of your entire discard pile. Skunk Ape is a real pain. It hits sidekicks hard and does loads of damage in general. Tarantula is a real pain. It puts out web tokens that force you to stop when you enter. And finally, Loveland Frog is a %^&$. It is weak but as time goes on it gets numerous attacks that all add up. Plus, the Leg Thrash card is massively irritating. So you get the idea. All of the minions are tough, and you don’t particularly want to play against any of them.
What is incredible about Tales to Amaze is that it is compatible with all the other previous Unmatched sets. So, if you want to play a game with Dracula, Buffy, Elektra, and Houdini, you can. Helpfully there is a page in the back of the rulebook that sorts out a few rules niggles when using Unmatched fighters from other sets and everything is pretty straightforward. There are occasionally cards that are next to useless in the cooperative game, but the designers have been clever about this. Both scenarios require players to discard cards either to prevent bridges from getting destroyed or to prevent aliens from being put out. This is the perfect time to get rid of those duffer cards.
We’ve had some really close games that have come down to the turn of the final card. These have been games where we thought we had no chance of winning and yet, somehow, we came back and were victorious. If you find the base game too easy though, there are event cards that apply to the whole game that you can add in to increase the difficulty.
Conclusion
I love Unmatched as a competitive game. I’d rate Tales to Amaze at 90%. But as I lean toward cooperative games more, I love Unmatched Adventures Tales to Amaze even more. The developers have been so generous in having this set be compatible with everything else. If you’ve already got some Unmatched sets, it’s like buying a game and finding out that you’ve already got loads of expansions for it. It’s a major achievement that it all works so seamlessly.
We opened this game just after Christmas day, and we’ve played over 10 games of it so far. We’ve forced ourselves to put it away and play something else for a while. It is so addictive to just pull out 4 fighters and see how they play in a cooperative setting. There’s just so much replayability.
I mainly play with my wife and we’ve found that although playing with 2 characters is good, the game comes alive when you play with 2 characters each. There are so many opportunities for ganging up on the baddies and pulling off heroic moves. At its best, it feels like the scene from the first Avengers film where the shot flows from one hero to the next.
If you already love Unmatched this is a no-brainer. If you’re interested in the system, this is a good place to start: four fighters that you can play with competitively or cooperatively, what’s not to like? This one comes highly recommended.
Editors note: This post was originally published on 25th January 2024. Updated on 5th June 2024 to improve the information available.
