Unmatched: Battle of Legends, Vol. 1

Restoration Games Announces Unmatched Game Line, Mondo Partnership Extended line...

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I tried Epic Duels around 6-7 years ago and wasn't overly impressed. I think it may have been overhyped. I'm looking forward to this new version though and seeing what they did with the system.

Never got to try out the original, but this is great news to give access to what I've heard is a great game system!

I figured this out last week after seeing their teases on Twitter. LOVE the direction they’re taking on this!

Guess this is the thread we're using.

I've been on a serious skirmish kick lately. This couldn't have been announced at a better time. The licensed character packs could be literally anything. We're approaching Heroscape levels of potential characters here.

charlest wrote: I tried Epic Duels around 6-7 years ago and wasn't overly impressed. I think it may have been overhyped. I'm looking forward to this new version though and seeing what they did with the system.

It's a kids game. Plays fast and fun, you get to mook your character's voice as you play. Vader kicks ass in it, as it should be.

A lot of fun, but don't expect deep deep thought.

Continuing off the other thread regarding depth, Sag nailed it. The deepest the game gets is when you use the often overlooked Transformers Armada set and use the two characters per player variant. The TF one offers slightly deeper gameplay, better balance, but at the cost of the worst versions of the Transformers (yes, I’m counting the Bay ones).

I love the literary theme they’re going with here. I’d love to see Sherlock Holmes and Dracula in the future.

So this is Heroscape Duels? ED looks like it has sold for roughly double the price of Transformers Armada on ToS - maybe people didn't see the same value in the TA box, but I suspect history favors the Star Wars theme.

The licensed tie-ins here don't particularly interest me, but hopefully they encourage people to support the new game. The variety of potential characters is still exciting. That Penny Dreadful-esque expansion they have lined up sounds cool, too. Deadliest Warrior ran for 32 episodes, which totals 62 historical warriors plus vampires and zombies. If the added crunch in Unmatched can give the Epic Duels system new legs (a la MtG: Arena of the Planeswalkers), I may have to clear a bunch of shelf space.

I just read about the Buffy set coming, cementing this an autobuy for our house. I think my wife has had the series on repeat while she works for the last 5 years now.

Mondo has a number of John Carpenter licenses. Love to see those get some play.

OMG BUFFY!!!!!!!!!!


P.S. - I merged the two threads.

Josh Look wrote: I just read about the Buffy set coming, cementing this an autobuy for our house. I think my wife has had the series on repeat while she works for the last 5 years now.

Mondo has a number of John Carpenter licenses. Love to see those get some play.

I don't think Mondo has Big Trouble in Little China, but I would absolutely lose my mind for a team from that. With Wang as the main character and Jack as the sidekick, of course.

I could see this doing INCREDIBLY well depending on how the licenses shake out. They said that Bruce Lee was some kind of limited thing, which worries me, but we'll see what happens.

Sagrilarus wrote:

charlest wrote: I tried Epic Duels around 6-7 years ago and wasn't overly impressed. I think it may have been overhyped. I'm looking forward to this new version though and seeing what they did with the system.

It's a kids game. Plays fast and fun, you get to mook your character's voice as you play. Vader kicks as in it, as it should be.

A lot of fun, but don't expect deep deep thought.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think at the time I played it, I would have less appreciation for such a thing.

I'm hopeful it has a bit more teeth than the original Epic Duels. It was a fun game that you could see a lot of potential in. The kind of game that makes your inner designer happy since making cards could be a good way to stretch those kind of muscles, and not make people cringe at what you create.

Especially when you compare them against Darth Vader and his 20 point choke-the-ever-loving-shit-out-of-you card.

Tannhauser LOS system was interesting. Maybe that's enough to raise it above it's original incarnation. I wonder if I can just throw this on Heroscape tiles and not have any compatibility issues.

The board is not at all like Epic Duels. Looks like a point-to-point thing. I’m interested to see that shake out in a skirmish game.

They did say this is the biggest deviation from the source material than any Restoration game has taken so far.

Evidently, they "did a big enough overhaul on enough different fronts" that they decided to change the name. Sounds like the Star Wars characters won't be backwards compatible. The game will need an upgrade kit, obviously.

I guessed what this was correctly last week on Twitter. The tease images just added up. I made a joke about Sherlock Holmes being an “epic” detective, and lo, Holmes is coming in the “Cobble and Fog” expansion.

I’m down with this but I am way more interested in the literary figures than the licensed stuff. It looks great- the Mondo illustrators are doing excellent work with it.

However...the long term fail rate for this kind of mash-up game is spectacularly high. So I’m worried that we are looking at something that may very well start strong, but may falter. I know some of y’all are excited about Buffy, but that is not a license that sells papers, so to speak. So that is a lot of time, money, and other resources invested in a license that has a niche appeal. I’m concerned hat if this game becomes a clearinghouse for the kinds of flagging, inexpensive licenses that are popular in board games today it’s not going to go anywhere. Look, I love Bruce Lee but...who’s next, Chuck Norris?

But the thing is, the literary hero/villain thing is great! It’s a neat idea, and everybody is familiar with what the characters and what to expect- much like Star Wars. I want to play a game where Robin Hood squares off with Dracula- that’s my Mace Windu versus Darth Vader moment here. But do I really want to see Spike versus Hudson Hawk or whatever? Nah.

Regardless, the base game is a must have and I am very interested in what Mr. Daviau has done with the design after all these years. Epic Duels was good dumb fun that definitely could have been better.

I am wondering how this will compare to WH Underworlds, Wildlands, 40k Combat Arena, and other contemporary comparatives. I’d like to see this stay dumb fun with some mod cons.

I still own Star Wars: Epic Duels. It doesn't hit the table much, because I'm not a huge fan of Star Wars and Epic Duels is a pretty shallow game. And yet, I've never had a bad game of Star Wars: Epic Duels. And when a friend brought it over for the first time, our role-playing group instead played Epic Duels all afternoon.

So I am at least somewhat introduced in this reboot. I think that the literary characters are a great idea for famous yet open license source material. But I don't consider Bigfoot to be a literary character. I still like Buffy, so that set interests me, and it would be great if they make every deck pretty close to equal in power.

I see the literary/legendary characters approach and all I can think of is Extraordinary Gentlemen. The comic wasn't that great (by far one of Moore's lesser efforts) and the movie was, being generous, pedestrian. The concept of King Arthur and Sherlock Holmes squaring off leaves me completely dry and I'm someone who used to love TORG and Shadowrun. Pass.

If it's like the original, this game is so light as to be almost transparent. Not my style regardless of license.

The more I see of this the more I'm convinced this is Daviau and crew making a game for the modern era with Epic Duels as its skeleton. Movement, LoS, and the structure of the decks are completely different. The only close match rules-wise that I can see is the combat.

I'm increasingly excited for this as I see more of it. Skirmish board games are great, but they need to straddle an incredibly difficult line of accessibility to hook newbies and having actual meat to be replayable. Recently I've seen a lot of games fail one, the other, or both. Warhammer Underworlds is an exception (and is phenomenal) but deck construction and model building has put a lot of people off in my area. Something visually striking, simple to play, and replayable if only for the sheer variety of teams could be exactly what I've been looking for. Plus licenses help attract players.

I'm cautiously but enthusiastically optimistic.

Vysetron wrote: Skirmish board games are great, but they need to straddle an incredibly difficult line of accessibility to hook newbies and having actual meat to be replayable. Recently I've seen a lot of games fail one, the other, or both. Warhammer Underworlds is an exception (and is phenomenal) but deck construction and model building has put a lot of people off in my area. Something visually striking, simple to play, and replayability if only for the sheer variety of teams could be exactly what I've been looking for.

Gorechosen and Shadespire are good examples.

The former is a bit too light and the latter misses the mark a bit as you note as well. Both great great games, but that elusive middle ground... The baby bear of Goldilocks skirmish games is hard to find.

But we've gotten close to a truly solid and evergreen game engine on many occasions. Okko, Gorechosen, Shadespire, Frostgrave, Marvel Heroscape, etc. I feel that Epic Duels is likely to hit the "too light" extreme though due to the lack of granularity in the cards, even after the rumors Jacobson has shared about how they work now. Time will tell.

Gorechosen handled this best, I think. Three differing options on each card is just good design granularity while maximizing player agency in the face of random option distribution.

But that's ok. There is room for all types of these games and more variety is mo' bettuh. Some days you feel like playing Epic Duels. Some days you don't.

Got to play test this one. It played light and quick and my rather clever 8 year old son figured it out fast and beat me on several occasions. I couldn't make the association that it was a restoration of Epic Duels as I had only played that one once many years ago. The decision points all focus on board position and card usage. Easy to pick up and play anywhere for sure. No drafting required.

ToS has been streaming from the GAMA Trade Show this year and they did a spot with Restoration Games this morning. They should have the clip up later if they don't already. Neat to see it all laid out and watch Jacob Jacobsen be excited about it for a couple minutes, even if it's nothing we didn't know already.

The mook tokens leave me cold considering the detail they've lavished on the cards and miniatures. I just bought Blitz Bowl for $38 and that has twelve GW miniatures; I know that's kind of apples and oranges since GW is a huge company and it's a B&N partnership, but at the end of the day I feel like I'm getting a lot more for forty bucks. Do the Unmatched characters really have to be Forge World-level miniatures? I would have settled for Heroclix quality if it meant figures for every combatant.

The spaces on the board also seem more pronounced in the video than in the promo photos. I know a lot of people complained about how hard it was to see the spaces on Tannhauser's board. Unmatched takes it to the opposite extreme - it looks like a mini's game set up on a Chinese checkers set.

Just aesthetic nitpicks, though. Still look forward to hearing more about how it plays!

EDIT: Mondo games has the Fight Club license, apparently? "That's right! In Unmatched, Tyler Durden can fight Abraham Lincoln! Create your own match-ups!"

Yeah, the board looks like you're fighting on pie charts.