A supervillain and his henchmen terrorize the city. Unlikely superheroes team up to fight the threat. Who will win, in Unmatched Adventuresour board game of the week?
What is a board game? Unmatched Adventures ?
Danger hangs over the city. The Butterfly Man or the Martian Invader arrives in force with their henchmen, to destroy everything. Fortunately, superheroes, as improbable as they are effective, come together to fight this threat.
Accessible from 9 years old, for 1 to 4 players, and games lasting around sixty minutes, it is a cooperative game where you work together to defeat the supervillain and his henchmen. The game is also completely compatible with other episodes in the range, for unlimited renewal of your games.
Edited by Iello, Unmatched Adventuresis a game by Jason Hager and Darren Reckner, marketed at the price of €49.90 at Philibert.
How do you play it?
Two years ago, we presented to you Unmatched , an excellent epic fighting game, primarily for two players. It has since gone through many expansions, each bringing new fighters with new abilities.
Unmatched Adventuresis a new version, which is a continuation of the range, but with a very distinctive element: the cooperative mode, in which the fighters team up to face a common enemy, managed by the game.
The basic rules are the same, the box also includes a booklet which covers them, for newcomers. As well as a second booklet, which details the rules specific to cooperative mode.
We start by choosing the supervillain we want to face, the Butterfly Man or the Martian Invader, each with their own little specificities, rules and objectives. As well as the minions who come to his aid, among six possible (Queen Ant, the Blob, the Swamp Gorilla, etc.).
Each player plays a character: Dr. Jill Trent, heroine of the golden age of pulp magazines , Annie Christmas, captain of a Mississippi ship, Nikola Tesla, Serbian inventor best known for his work on alternating current, or Golden Bat, swashbuckling hero from Japan. Here too, each character has their own way of playing and their own specificities.
The game then proceeds in a very simple manner. Each turn, a small pack of cards determines the order in which everyone acts. A player’s turn is almost identical to that ofUnmatched classic: move and play a card from your hand. When it’s an opponent’s turn, they try to get closer to the nearest player to attack them, or if they can’t, they advance their objective. The minions are only there to distract us and waste time, but we must not neglect them, because they hit hard.
The game ends either when the heroes have beaten the villain, or if the latter has fulfilled his objective or killed all the heroes.
Why play Unmatched Adventures ?
The game Unmatched classic is one of the very best confrontation games. Simple rules, fast paced games, crazy replayability thanks to the multiple characters in the expansions.
Unmatched Adventures takes up 90% of the principles of its big brother, with just a few specific rules linked to cooperative mode. And, as one might expect, the result is just as effective.
As in the other boxes in the range, the material is crazy, especially the two big supervillain figurines. But the rest also, whether it is the hero figurines, the card illustrations, the tokens, the life point counters, etc.
Mechanically, the game is very simple and very fluid. It’s nervous, the turns are fast, it’s easy to manage the enemies’ turns. Winning is a different story, especially against the Martian Invader, much stronger than the Butterfly Man.
Be careful though, we had a great time, but it’s not the best cooperative game out there. It thus presents some small defects, far from being prohibitive however.
It is indicated that the game can be played solo: so yes, it’s true, but you’re going to have a hard time. You have to play two characters better to have a chance of winning.
Where the basic game is a skirmish game, where you circle around with your opponent, a sort of cat and mouse game, in which movements are important, in Unmatched Adventureswe lose a lot of this aspect. Here, it’s mainly attack-defense with the villain, where ultimately the movement is a bit incidental.
But, above all, the game lacks a bit of variety, with only two bosses. We want to have more, with more different mechanics, to renew the experience. On the other hand, if you already have other boxes, you have the possibility of playing with other heroes, or even of using the heroes of this box to make them face others, without taking into account the cooperative aspect.
Unmatched Adventuresis thus a very nice game, of which we love the material and the atmosphere. It is perfect for getting into the range and learning about the mechanics ofUnmatched, and even more to enrich the latter if you already have other extensions. On the other hand, if you are simply looking for a cooperative game and you are not interested in the rest of the range, it may be better to look at another more complete game.
For our part, we like to alternate games between pure confrontation and cooperation, by mixing the contents of our different boxes. And we hope to see a second opus with other villains to fight.
In short
We liked
- Another way to play Unmatched, with a common base of rules
- Full compatibility with the rest of the range
- Equipment
We liked less
- We want more supervillains
- Rather reserved for fans of the original game, who already own a few expansions
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