Unmatched: Battle of Legends, Vol. 1

We've always played that attacker gets to break impasses, with the advisory that it's worth his while to not get on the wrong side of his opponent, who likely could escalate all future encounters and rule in his own favor.

This game certainly sets all of that drama aside. Quick and easy, I'll wait for final printing before judging the color scheme.

S.

The LOS discussion is kind of funny, because it's not an either or thing. I don't get why they didn't just go with Tannhauser style rings around the circles instead of solid graphics that obscure the art.

When a mini is inside the space you can't see the center of the circle anyway, so having all of them colored in all the way serves 0 purpose.

I think the problem with a lot of LOS rules is their attempt (or not) to deal with dynamism in the play of the game. 3rd Ed 40K had the "if you can see it, it's a target" approach which was universally awful for any army that wasn't durable (aka Space Marines) and any model that was interesting. This was the King/Johnson "We're a modeling company, not a game company!" mantra writ large. If you played Dark Eldar and tried to field an army that actually had Raiders, you were screwed, because those things had so many spikes and fins on them that you'd never be able to completely hide them unless your terrain was a bunch of shoe boxes. But that kind of absolutism doesn't work in an "I go/you go" game. You're attaching static situations to a squad-level game, the fantasy of which is that everything should be moving ALL THE TIME. A 40K firefight is a very different thing from an Epic Armageddon firefight, simply by dint of unit size (i..e it's a helluva lot easier to put your 10-man squad under cover than it is your regimental formation.)

So 4th Ed used the percentage rules, similar to what MB refers to. You had to be able to see X percentage of a model before it was considered a target and X greater percentage before it didn't have a cover save. No more shooting down my Ravager with your average bolter because I decided to model it with cool blades on the tailfin. So, yeah, LOS rules can be a pain in the ass, but I think the only way to make them work is by some of that "gentleman's agreement" stuff in a game where modeling is an inherent aspect of the game. It's a little less murky in games with static figures like Descent, Tannhauser, et al.

*** Poorly shot images below ***

I was at Origins last week, and Unmatched was high on my list of games to investigate.
I did not play a demo.
Every time I walked past, there was a queue. So I observed, I listened, and I took a few photographs.
I have mixed feelings.

Pretext: I played Epic Duels NON-STOP upon release. I'm one of the knuckleheads that created custom decks. Not of missing Star Wars characters, no. Decks of my fellow grad students and our director. We were nutty. My point. I love Star Wars and I love Epic Duels.

Preparation: I read the rulebook for Unmatched online last month. I liked the adjustments. Nothing seemed radical. Daviau didn't need to change much from his efforts in the first edition.

Pretext part II: Old time F:ATties know I love Heroscape. So thematically, Unmatched is RIGHT UP MY ALLEY. Genre bending melee action with miniatures. Hell yes.

And here are my observations:

I know it's no longer 2002, but 2019 Unmatched is going to cost a lot more than 2002 Epic Duels. A lot more, for a lot less. It's not a terribly deep or complex game, and there's nothing wrong with that. But here's my rub:

Epic Duels: 12 Characters
vs
Unmatched: 4 Characters

Epic Duels: 31 miniatures
vs
Unmatched: 4 miniatures

Epic Duels: 2 boards, reversible for 4 maps
vs
Unmatched: 1 board, reversible for 2 maps

But Drewcula! Surely you acknowledge the economics of scale and the quality of the miniatures!

Mmmmm... It's not like Mondo/Restoration had to pay licensing rights to any of these characters.

The business model for this new iteration is gross IMO. It's expansion city. And the expansions will be pricey. Instead of a plethora of options in the core box - I'll have 1/3 of the original. More options will cost a premium and convention exclusives (Bruce Lee) are not even paired (ala Sherlock vs Dracula), they're single figures!

Lastly, and this is perhaps my biggest rub; In Epic Duels, every Character had support miniatures. Twelve character cards, but different back-up miniatures. Ex. Han Solo had Chewie, but Darth Vader had two stormtroopers. Unmatched is no different in that Characters have support. BUT THE UNMATCHED SUPPORT CHARACTERS ARE NOT REPRESENTED BY MINIATURES! Nope. Instead, I get to push around a disk with an illustration on it. Sweet Alice miniature! Jabberwocky? Not so much. WTF.

The jaded prick in me wouldn't be surprised if Restoration / Mondo make an expansion down the line of just support character miniatures. In a different universe, I would have thrown money at them. On this temporal plane, I'm pretty skeptical. I want Unmatched. I do. But right now, I want the value of Epic Duels more. I'm going to sit on my hands for a while.

~ I also dug the Transformers version.

I still hate those maps. Can't get over that. Don't want to play on pie graphs.

I've come around on the boards. I appreciate that they may not be everyone's cup of tea, but;
1) They're unique
2) They keep a small footprint (as did the original)

My hangup is still with the tokens. The miniatures are very charming. Bigfoot and Robin looked perfectly kid-friendly. I'd like to paint them. But those discs of Robin's merry men and Bigfoot's friend the stag? I hate it. HATE IT.

I still intend to try it, but I agree that the mini/disc combos look pretty weird. Apparently I made their reviewer list for it. If that comes through I'll be sure to give it a proper writeup.

Bruce Lee being a squad of 1 is pretty sick, I won't lie.

Oh, I'll try it. Hell, if there's a copy at Gencon and it fits in my suitcase - I may even have a change of heart. I need to acknowledge that Unmatched fits the bill for my wife; it's short in duration, it's small in footprint, and it has its share of female characters.

There's a part of me thinking that, in spite of the cheesier components, the old version "looked" better. This thing looks pretty stupid, three or four different artistic concepts layed on top of one another. There's no unity here, even the colors are strange.

The big images on the maps with the thin grid in the original gave the game more spirit. Granted with the unified Star Wars theme they could represent solid chunks of real estate that made sense for all characters. But the photos above make the game look hokey as hell.

Publishers are over a barrel on this stuff. If they print it with cheap minis to get it to a competitive price for Target they get vilified on the Internet for looking cheesy. So they print minis with super-quality and the rest of the package looks junky underneath it. They don't want to risk a big enough print run for Target's Christmas season, so instead they print a version with gourmet components with a higher margin and less copies (hopefully pre-ordered) to satisfy game connoisseurs. This is a kid's game, they're marketing it to "collectors".

The Bloomberg article is right. We look like assholes. I'm tired of it. Give me a good game for a good price. The storm troopers with the little nick on their base in the original version looked just fine and I didn't feel bad throwing them at my opponent when they go killed. I'm not going to buy this because it's going to be "an investment" and I'm looking for a game. The epitome of doing it wrong.

Sagrilarus wrote: Publishers are over a barrel on this stuff. If they print it with cheap minis to get it to a competitive price for Target they get vilified on the Internet for looking cheesy. So they print minis with super-quality and the rest of the package looks junky underneath it. They don't want to risk a big enough print run for Target's Christmas season, so instead they print a version with gourmet components with a higher margin and less copies (hopefully pre-ordered) to satisfy game connoisseurs. This is a kid's game, they're marketing it to "collectors".

The Bloomberg article is right. We look like assholes. I'm tired of it. Give me a good game for a good price. The storm troopers with the little nick on their base in the original version looked just fine and I didn't feel bad throwing them at my opponent when they go killed. I'm not going to buy this because it's going to be "an investment" and I'm looking for a game. The epitome of doing it wrong.

Ideally, the best games should have the best components and cost the most, and the mediocre games should have more modest components and a more affordable price. But cynical publishers and kickstarters understand that adding minis is a convenient way to make their game look better and to justify a higher price and hopefully profit margin. As a result, unpainted gray minis have become like a plague of locusts in this hobby. Many gamers (including me) would be better off with attractive cardboard standees or stickered wooden tokens instead of miniatures.

Shellie's recommendation is so obvious, it pains me to acknowledge I had not even considered it. That's how foolishly engrained I am in the hobby aspect of this hobby. I want to paint the god damn minis. But really, I just want more options in the box. Want want want. Consumerism run amok, and I'm part of f&*#ig problem because I give money to these publishers far too often. This game doesn't necessarily need miniatures [insert opinion; what game "needs" miniatures?]. Had Mondo/Restoration opted for disks across the board, they (presumably) could have shoved more characters in the box.