Unmatched: Battle of Legends, Vol. 1

Sounds deliberate and more-or-less final. From Restoration on ToS :

The team tried a LOT of different approaches to the board and even assessed how Wildlands treated it. But Wildlands has fewer terrain factors to cover which gave them different options for how to treat their board design and line of sight.

Ultimately the primary factors that influenced the final design were playability and accessibility. You'll note that each region has a color and a unique pattern... these were tested and tweaked around colorblind considerations. Rings were tested, but were ultimately not colorblind friendly since they didn't offer enough visual space to add quick-glance double coding. We tried coding rings with symbols, spaces with symbols or letters, larger spaces, smaller spaces, organically shaped spaces...

Totally understand that the spaces "pop" on the board and can be considered disruptive to the board art. But the tradeoff is the spaces are clearly visible, regions are quickly and easily identifiable, and the game will be playable by a wider range of people.

Fair enough, but you ended up with a board that looks like the back of Magic card.

I saw that board about 10 times before I finally zoomed in and realized they were fighting on a pirate ship attacking land. The scale is odd too in that the map is very zoomed out and the minis are very large/oversized.

I would have rather they did a VR environment or something if they were insistent on this LOS system.

Official rulebook posted on ToS: boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/274637/unmat...nds-volume-one/files

Back to crossing my fingers for the Dune reprint... Unmatched looks like garbage.

Craig Van Ness and Rob Daviau get a shout-out in the credits at the end of the rulebook for their work on Epic Duels, and Rob Daviau is peripherally credited for "Additional Restoration." Otherwise, this is Justin Jacobson's beast.

The board still looks like a color blind test.

What about the rules looks like garbage, Anjou? I haven't had time to look.

Yeah, I really like everything I’m seeing here. Rules sound cool, loving the style and sorry, I like the board. Deal with it.

Sorry, I was unbelievably unclear earlier - not knocking the rules, because who knows, really. Disappointed that the game looks like a prototype.

I'm not minding the board either.

Heh, you know what’s funny...in a board game, terrain and LOS require rules and “helpers” like this hideous board...in a miniatures game, you just have to get down and look and you can see right away what terrain is and what it’s doing.

I have to disagree, Michael. LOS disagreements in a miniatures environment can be extremely heated because of interpretive issues.

I love skirmish games. I loathe LOS rules. Any game with deterministic LOS that has no room for debate is already starting with points on the board for me. Having them be instantly identifiable and clear is worth everything.

Gary Sax wrote: I have to disagree, Michael. LOS disagreements in a miniatures environment can be extremely heated because of interpretive issues.

LOS disagreements in a miniatures game should be resolved by an interpretive dance-off.

I don’t know, I get that some ultra competitive types get I’ll about exact LOS...but it’s usually not as ambiguous as the person with a model in the crosshairs wants to make it out to be. At a casual level, it’s usually understood that LOS is a judgment call and not necessarily absolute.

Adeptus Titanicus would probably give LOS absolutists shitfits. You get cover bonuses for models being 25 percent or 50 percent obscured. How could you measure that accurately? It’s a gentlepersons’ agreement to interpret as closely as possible but with an understanding that estimation is part of the deal.

I’m thinking about all the pages of rules I’ve seen in my time with detailed LOS diagrams, 4-5 examples, special cases, and all that. But then with most miniatures games the only rule is “get down to the model’s level and look”.

Guards of Atlantis has great LOS rules. Everyone has LOS, all the fucking time.