Full disclosure: A review copy of Unmatched: Battle of Legends, Volume 3 was provided by Restoration Games.

What’s any sort of orderly process among friends? Yes, you read this correctly: I’m launching directly into a review of Unmatched: Battle of Legends, Volume 3 today. Why is that? Well, let’s pretend like I thought about this in advance and planned for both of my reviews this week to be Pandora-themed, since I’m also covering Pandora’s Legacy. That’s not what happened, but looking back on it, it seems really well-planned and smart, no? I wish my brain worked like that. Maybe some day. But Unmatched is a series with a lot going for it (just look at that list of stuff!), so after my big game day this week I thought it might be fun to dive back in and take another look. I will eventually find someone to play all the Unmatched games with me, though.

In Unmatched: Battle of Legends, Volume 3, players can take on another set of legendary characters, like Blackbeard, the Chupacabra, Pandora, and even Loki (no, not that one). These characters have their own quirks, strengths, and weaknesses, sometimes all of them at once. But to win a battle of legends, you’ll have to master what makes each of them tick and fight your way to the top. Will you be able to survive a third set of battles between these myths and monsters? And Blackbeard; I mean, he was an actual guy.

Contents

• What’s New?
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

What’s New?

Four new characters appear this time around! Let’s give each of them the quick once-over, just for your benefit.

• Pandora: Straight outta Greek Mythology, it’s Pandora! After being given a box that contained all the evils of the world and opening it (that feels like it’s mostly on whoever gave her the box) she’s here to throw down. Pandora’s also got some evil spirits to help her out, which is very nice of them. Pandora comes with a deck of Miseries, and each turn you must reveal the top one and carry out its effect. If you’d like, you can reveal more, but be careful! If you reveal three feathers (each Misery has between 0 and 2 feathers), you must stop and Pandora loses 1 Health per Misery revealed! Her cards, however, can occasionally give you benefits based on how many you revealed, so, it’s a complicated affair.
• The Chupacabra: The classic goat-eating cryptid! He’s pretty much always hungry, and that hunger is dangerous. After every time you attack, you get to draw a card for free! Many of the Chupacabra’s cards give him a boost when his health is low, so stay low (but not too low).
• Blackbeard: Edward Teach and The Queen Anne’s Revenge sail in to fight! Blackbeard craves gold, and he’s got a treasury to manage! To start his turn, he can spend a doubloon to the Treasury for an extra action, but his opponents can return doubloons to him from the Treasury to cancel out some of the effects on his cards! For all of y’all who were craving an economic gameplay subelement in Unmatched, your dreams have finally come true.
• Loki: Loki is all about tricks and traps! Certain cards in Loki’s deck are Tricks, and when they play one, it immediately goes to their opponent’s hand! Loki gains +1 to Movement for each Trick in an opponent’s hand. So normally you’d just play cards or discard them, right? Tough, because Loki’s tricks only work for them; when you use it, it’s usually bad. Similarly, if you discard them instead, they go right back to Loki! The more you have, the more likely you’re going to have a lot to answer for if Ragnarok occurs, as the prophecy fortold…

There are also two new levels! Venice adds some twisty canals and roofs, but Santa’s Workshop adds one-way movement spots and a conveyor belt that moves everyone on it one space at the end of every player’s turn! Once you run out of conveyor belt space, you get dumped in the gift pile!

Player Count Differences

I don’t really enjoy heavy combat games with a third or fourth player, as they can often feel like distractions or spoilers, so I play Unmatched at two pretty much exclusively.

Strategy

• Don’t forget that Blackbeard is ranged! Part of what works great for him in this set is that he’s the lone ranged character with a bunch of melee jerks, so he can especially get away with a lot in Venice. He’s a bit of a bad matchup against Loki, though, since Loki gets a speed boost for each Trick in your hand.
• I usually stop after two feathers with Pandora. Granted, if you’re at high health it probably doesn’t matter that much, but better safe than sorry with that whole thing. It might be worth going farther if you have one of Pandora’s cards that heals her one per Misery revealed, though. Then you can at least unto the damage you took.
• Several of the characters in this set charge up for a big hit; be careful. Chupacabra at low HP, Pandora with lots of Miseries, and Loki with lots of Tricks in your hand; all of those things give them a huge attack boost in certain situations, and they will absolutely punch clean through your character if you’re not careful. Blackbeard doesn’t have quite as much of a scaling effect; he can hit for 7 and you can give him doubloons to reduce the damage, so it’s not quite as much of a building-up effect as it is a scaling-down one.
• Loki makes it very hard to plan on how to attack them, so just hit hard and try to deplete their hand. They can swap values on cards or get extra damage or defense if you have more cards in hand than they do, so that can sometimes intimidate you out of attacking. If you don’t attack, they’ll just get even more cards and get stronger. Sometimes the only way out is through, unfortunately.
• You kind of just need to play Loki’s terrible Trick cards, even if they hurt you; better that than keeping them in your hand. If you try to discard them, they’ll just end up in your hand again later. If you play them, they’ll at least be out of play. It can feel like holding on to them is the right move because they benefit Loki so much to be played, but once they’re played, they’re gone.
• Chupacabra players should take some early damage to try and activate some effects, especially if you can get players to waste otherwise good cards. The nice thing about Chupacabra is that it wants some damage, so you can choose to tank certain cards and save your better cards (especially cards that cancel card effects) for later when you’re reaping the benefit of boosts.
• Watch for the best time to use your Feint and Feint-like cards. Players will try to exhaust your defensive cards so that they can play a big attack or an attack with a nasty effect. If you see them acting like that might be coming, save one Feint (a card that cancels all effects of the opponent’s card) to avoid any nasty aftereffects. Just keep in mind that that does not cancel the damage, so you may still end up taking it on the chin.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• Unfortunately, I’m an idiot for push-your-luck mechanics, so Pandora might be one of my all-time favorite characters. As mentioned, every turn you have to start with opening Pandora’s Box, but that usually gives you some kind of effect and sometimes feathers, which are bad. You want the benefit of the effect but you hate getiting feathers, and you really can’t do one without the other. Plus, certain cards in your deck specifically reward playing lots of Miseries. It’s super fun and makes every turn feel exciting, even if there are only seven cards and shuffling them can sometimes get a bit old.
• Loki is a nasty character; very good if you like direct conflict and aggressive play. There are several reasons for this. One, as mentioned, is that Loki punishes you for having, discarding, or playing their Trick Cards. That’s bad, but they also actively add them to your hand, hitting both your hand limit and filling your hand with less-playable garbage. Then, they are even unpredictable past that; their cards have a variety of unexpected effects. This makes Loki feel a bit like a timer character, in that the longer the game goes on, the stronger their character feels. Their one weakness is that they can draw out their whole deck if they’re not careful.
• Chupacabra has a lot of nice defensive options! If you can survive right at the cusp of death, Chupacabra will hit hard and gain some health back pretty regularly. It has the benefit of favoring players who take a lot of hits early, as well, which can lead to some interesting turnabout, especially if you get your opponent to waste good cards thinking they’ve got you in a bind. Save up big defensive plays for later, once you’re closer to zero HP!
• Blackbeard is solidly fun; I like forcing opponents to try and evaluate the pros and cons of giving you something useful or something else useful. The fun here mostly comes down to evaluating whether or not blocking whatever Blackbeard might let them block is worth giving Blackbeard a potential third action on a later turn. Is it worth 2 damage? Is it worth an action right now? Is it worth a card from your hand? The best part is, the answer to those questions might change depending on the game state, so you have to think it through every time. That’s cleverly designed and pretty fun, to boot.
• The Santa’s Workshop Map is also an all-timer, for me. One thing tips the scale, and that’s forcing players to make the conveyor belt noise at the end of each of their turns. I told them if they didn’t their hero automatically takes two damage, and that was enough to enforce that rule for the entire game. I may be a tyrant, but I know how to have a good time, and that’s making silly noises during board games.
• The sculpts look really good. Whoever Restoration has on 3D art, they deserve some props. The characters are intricate, thematic, and exciting, and that makes the game even more fun to play.
• The 2D art is equally impressive. That almost went without saying because Unmatched is a routinely beautiful game, but I think the novelty is never fully lost on me.

Mehs

• I think it would have been nice to have at least one map that was related to the characters in some way. Give me Elysium or Asgard or The High Seas or … a Puerto Rican livestock farm? Honestly, the latter would be a hoot just for how inexplicable it would be. I’m certainly not mad about Santa’s Workshop, and Venice is a really neat idea for how complicated it makes movement (the canals do not overlap as much as you’d like), but I do occasionally miss some thematic sets. I wish it made financial sense to sell map packs.
• It’s odd that they’re moving away from the “Battle of Legends: Volume X” sets, but I guess I understand why? Market forces, mostly. Turns out stores and customers, no matter how you frame or phrase it, don’t want to buy X3 without having X1 and X2 available as well. They’re all standalone, except for the Deadpool one, which was a single guy. (Bruce Lee used to be Standalone but now he’s in the Lee vs. Ali set.)

Cons

• I wish the Venice map were clearer. It’s pretty tough to navigate on your first play, just because the canals are single-pass paths and there are places where one path crosses over another one. They’ve added some shading around the intersection, which helps a bit, but it’s still pretty tricky. Especially if you’re just starting with Unmatched, I’d recommend going with Santa’s Workshop. Yes, the conveyor belt might goof you a bit, but I think the movement is clearer as an operation.

Overall: 8 / 10

I really like Unmatched, as a series, so it’s no big shock that I think Volume 3 is also pretty great! My favorite character, far and away, is Pandora; I love that Pandora’s Box is appropriately integrated into her gameplay and that you both must open it a little and kind of want to open it a lot, as many of her cards directly depend on how many of your Miseries you’ve got face-up. Loki, on the other hand, is impeccably designed but almost hatefully not my playstyle. They are a nasty little god, forcing cards into their opponent’s hand and then punishing them for having them. You literally can’t know what to expect, because they’ll keep switching it up on you. I love it as an advanced-play character for expert players, but I would neither like to play Loki or play against Loki. But more options are good. Chupacabra and Blackbeard are both interesting, for sure, but I don’t think I’m as personally invested in either of their characters or playstyles to say more than “they’re neat and good additions to the game”. It’s sort of like games like Sushi Go! Party, where you have cards that are designed to show specific mechanics; for Unmatched, a lot of characters feel built around a specific key mechanic and then their cards support that. Cobble & Fog really leaned into this with Sherlock Holmes and his cards that favor deduction, for instance. For Chupacabra, it’s defensive play while trying to maintain low (but non-zero) HP; for Blackbeard, it’s all about coins. Definitely cool, and especially rewarding for players who like that playstyle, but not going to be the highlights of the set for me. That’s okay! Pandora is fun enough to carry the whole box. I think that’s why I like Unmatched so much, though: you can tell how much care went into the design of each character and why they could be someone’s favorite, similar to a Super Smash Bros. or similar style of game. Then they work together in mix-and-match pretty flawlessly (even if the Venice map gives me a tiny headache). If you’re reading these mechanics and saying to yourself “oh, that would be super fun to play”, then you’re going to enjoy Unmatched: Battle of Legends, Volume 3! I mean, you could also just be a completionist, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.

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