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Unmatched is my favourite game. Just straight up with the facts first, but I feel like that makes me a good person to give you guidance on how best to get into the world of Unmatched. Unmatched is a two to four player card driven skirmish style game where you are embodying different literary, film and mythic legend characters. Each character has a unique deck and special ability which give each hero a different playstyle. You are trying to kill off your opponent’s hero by attacking and scheming whilst keeping yourself out of trouble and staying alive.
Best Starter Set For Families
The joy of Unmatched is mashing up different asymmetric characters together and finding what you like. So for that reason I think variety is really important so I will always suggest a 4 character box for your first set. There are a few to choose from now, including the cult classic Buffy set and the literary legends Cobble and Fog set. I think that my favourite four player set is the Battle of Legends vol. 2, but in my opinion, the best to start with especially for families, is Battle of Legends vol 1. This offers you King Arthur, Alice (in Wonderland), Medusa, and SInbad, as well as two maps to choose to play on too.
These four characters introduce you to the main types of playstyles available but in a easy-to-grasp way. King Arthur is probably the simplest to play, he hits hard and Merlin allows some sneaky moves too. Sinbad is a character that ramps up, you get faster and hit harder as the game progresses. This can make it fun at the start trying to duck in and hit a few blows before running away to lick your wounds. You have a ranged character in Medusa who has three sidekicks that you can use as a meat shield to protect your hero and allow her to attack without any response. Finally, you have Alice who has the added complexity of managing whether you are big or small which will augment your ability to attack or defend. I think if you’re just starting out and you’re wanting an accessible set that will keep you occupied
Best Two Player Set
In the two player sets, you get two characters and either one or two maps. The key thing for me with a two player set is that the set is completely balanced and you want to play both characters. For me there are two contenders here; Little Red and Beowulf and Robin Hood and Bigfoot. In each of these sets I have a favourite character but I never feel like I totally walk a victory, it relies on skill and strategy still. Bigfoot is my favourite character, he is pretty straightforward to play, you can move quickly and hit hard, you will run your deck down quite quickly and the special ability has you trying to hide which can lose you the game though. Robin Hood is a little more wily, and with his Outlaw sidekicks he is able to shoot from afar with his ranged attacks with a couple of sneaky cards that are particularly dangerous against bigger cards like those for Bigfoot.
Little Red and Beowulf are up there for me as the characters I find hardest to play, but they can be the most satisfying when that combo does finally come off. Beowulf you are trying to manage your rage tokens as a resource to amp up the power of some of your cards. Beowulf and his sidekick Wiglaf are a force that smashes their opponent hard if you are clever about managing your rage resource. Little Red is the hardest difficulty character for me, I am really quite terrible at playing as her but wow is she fun! Each card that goes into your discard pile has the potential to cause combo moves by matching icons to the card you play. It means sometimes you will want to not defend to try and secure yourself a power move on your next attack, but if you are me this may break your brain! This set is brilliant, especially if you are smarter than I and can work it well.
Best Thematic Set
This used to be an easy answer, I used to say that the best thematic set was hands down the Jurassic Park Raptors vs. Ingen set. The cards feature quotes from the movies, and the way that the Raptors special ability had you surrounding your prey just felt completely on point. With the addition of the T-Rex and Dr Sattler set too, there could be a full 2 vs 2 scientist vs dinos. Also the T-Rex can just cover more board spaces and bite the heads off its prey with ease.
However, there is now a new contender which are the Unmatched Marvel sets, specifically the Redemption Row set. The characters in this set are Luke Cage, Ghost Rider and Moon Knight and the special abilities in this set really give you a sense of the characters and they play so differently. Luke Cage has an inherent 2 defence making him tough to hit and as expected, he is a beast and smacks hard. Ghost Rider is on a motorbike and so he can zoom all around the board smacking into people on his way through. Moon Knight has three different identities which you cycle through each with different special abilities. My favourite is Khonshu, who hits hard and since he is a ghost he doesn’t take non combat damage, I guess he just floats away from the drama.
Best Level-Up Set
Unmatched is all about being able to mix and match characters, and playing Bruce Lee against the Raptors, or Medusa vs Achilles. That is the fun, so you WILL want to expand your collection. There are some sets that have more complex characters in them which I would not suggest for starters but are a great step up and will add huge variety to your mash-ups.
There are two sets that I think I would class as having more complex characters in them. First up is the set by many considered the best, Cobble and Fog. This contains literary characters; Sherlock Holmes, Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula and the Invisible Man. Of these I love Sherlock where you can be mega powerful if you can guess what value card your opponent has played. This character feels very heads up and about what your opponent is doing as much as what you are planning. Dr Watson is a powerful sidekick too, and if playing against Sherlock you need to dispatch Watson ASAP. The Invisible Man is the one character I don’t like the play style of, because his schtick is mostly about defensively floating away and playing the long game. I think I like my Unmatched games to be punchy and violent.
The second volume of Battle of Legends for me is probably the best set though, it contains Achilles, Bloody Mary, Yennenga and Sun Wukong. This has four absolutely brilliant characters in it, I love them all. They all bring something new to the table, none of them are easy to pilot but they are so rewarding to play. I love playing this set. Achilles you want to kill off your own sidekick Patroclus so that you can become enraged and more powerful. Bloody Mary you want to leverage getting a third action by having three cards in hand at the start of your turn so that your cards have additional powerful actions. Sun Wukong has no sidekicks initially but you can take a damage at the start of your turn to place out a clone who is able to attack just like your hero. Yennenga is a powerful archer who has sidekicks with two health each that she can direct attacks at if they are nearby. Playing any of these characters is a great time and I love this set.
I think by now it is clear that you can't really go wrong with any set of Unmatched and if you are like me you will end up with a collection of characters that you can randomly choose from to get the absolute best from the game system. Let us know what your favourites are!