Unmatched: Battle of Legends Volume 3 – The Legend Continues

Four more heroes meet on the field of battle. Each is a cultural legend. Only one can emerge victorious. Who is truly… Unmatched?

Unmatched: Battle of Legends Volume 3 is the latest installment in this masterpiece card-driven skirmish game from Restoration Games. We’re not shy about loving the Unmatched series, so how does this one measure up?

How to Play

We’ve covered the Unmatched series in great length at The Family Gamers. (Seriously, this is the ninth set we’ve covered). If you need a run through of how the system works, check out the how-to-play for the legendary Cobble and Fog set. We’ll stick to what’s new in this set.

What’s New in this Volume

Battle of Legends Volume 3 returns to a true two-sided board. On one side, the canals and streets of Venice; on the other, the chaotic productivity of Santa’s Workshop. Both have starting spots for up to four players, allowing for team play or a free-for-all brawl.

Venice is a standard Unmatched map, with no special mechanics.

Santa’s Workshop introduces one-way movement paths between some adjacent spaces. A conveyor belt moves at the end of every player’s turn, eventually catapulting fighters into the “gift bin”.

But what about those characters?

Blackbeard

This bloodthirsty pirate is always seeking treasure, even as he takes down his rivals. Blackbeard starts the game with two doubloons. He loses a doubloon to the “treasury” any time he takes damage in combat. But he also has the option to pay one to take an extra action on his turn.

Meanwhile, many of Blackbeard’s cards give him extra benefits if his opponent(s) do not pay him a ransom from the treasury. This means doubloons often flow back and forth; if Blackbeard can hoard them, he’s guaranteed the bonuses on his cards… but if he spends them, he can use more actions.

Blackbeard is the only ranged fighter in this set, so he can attack an opponent from anywhere in a shared zone, or send his sidekick “Sea Dogs” to pin them down with melee attacks.

Chupacabra

The most straightforward character in this set, Chupacabra just wants to wound and devour. It gets no sidekicks (who would want to work with this monster?), but its fast movement makes up for the inability to flank its opponents.

Chupacabra also has “The Hunger”: an option to draw a card after every attack. So press your attack quickly and often!

Many of this character’s cards become more powerful as its health drops. This is a monster built for quick domination, and the illustrations emphasize that. This might be the scariest Unmatched hero since Bloody Mary.

Pandora

Pandora famously has a box that she can’t resist opening. So at the beginning of every one of her turns, Pandora must “open Pandora’s Box”, revealing a card from a tiny seven-card “misery” deck. She resolves it and decides whether to reveal another card – or stop.

Most of the misery cards contain an effect that’s good or neutral for Pandora. But some also picture feathers… and three or more feathers make her immediately stop drawing and take damage for each card she has revealed. The misery deck gets re-shuffled after every turn, so Pandora can never predict how far she can press her luck.

Pandora has sidekicks called Kakodaemons, but they don’t start on the board. They’re only placed through card effects, and are best used to protect Pandora by blocking off avenues of attack.

Loki

Unmatched‘s Loki is not the trickster popularized by recent movies and TV shows. Instead, this hero is pulled from Norse mythology, and that quickly becomes clear when browsing their cards.

Most interesting are their “Trick” cards, which have two abilities: One that triggers if Loki plays the card, and another that triggers if someone else plays the card.

Instead of discarding a Trick after playing it, Loki puts that card into their opponent’s hand. Loki’s movement increases by one for every Trick card in the opponent’s hand, and if the opponent chooses to discard that card (due to hand size or an effect), Loki can put that card back into their own hand – or on top of the deck – instead of the discard pile.

Of course, Tricks aren’t real. So, players can’t use them to boost. An opponent has only three choices: keep the Trick in their hand (increasing Loki’s movement), play it (for a undesirable effect), or discard it (which gives it back to Loki to play again).

Final Thoughts

Battle of Legends Volume 3 is the conclusion to the “Battle of Legends” trilogy for Unmatched, which is a little sad. We’d love to see a Greek Legends set, which could pair Pandora with other Greek figures (Achilles perhaps?), and Loki really deserves a counterpart from Norse mythology.

But then again, the beauty of Unmatched is that all of these characters can go head to head with characters from other sets. And there’s still more Unmatched to come.

But back to the Battle of Legends series. Restoration designed these to be foundational sets for any gamer, with asymmetric characters who are understandable and at least a little easier to play than some of the more complex characters. Volume 3 is no exception. It’s another excellent set for Unmatched, even for beginners.

Each hero has their own personality, without adding a ton of complexity. And all of the characters draw heavily on their specific myths & legends. Chupacabra is the most straightforward, but we did not struggle to learn any of the four options in this box.

Get your hands on Unmatched: Battle of Legends Volume 3 from Restoration Games, find it on Amazon, or ask for it at your local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Unmatched: Battle of Legends Volume 3 for this review from Restoration Games.

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