Year: 2023 | Players: 1-4 | Min: 20+ | Ages: 9+
This Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze review was made after playing the game seven times, with at least one game played at each co-op player count.
What is Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze?
Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze is a cooperative fighting game in which you and your teammates play as heroes taking on Mothman or the Martian Invader.
Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze was designed by Jason Hager and Darren Reckner, and published by Restoration Games.
Rules Overview
In Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze, you and your teammates work together to defeat either Mothman or Martian Invader in a cooperative battle. The box includes four heroes—Nikola Tesla, Annie Christmas, Dr. Jill Trent, and the Golden Bat—but you can also use heroes from other Unmatched sets.
You’ll face off against unique villains and minions, each with unique decks of cards and abilities. Your goal is to defeat the villain before they complete their objectives or eliminate all of your fighters.
Characters in Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze
Heroes
These are the four heroes included in Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze:
- Nikola Tesla – Uses his charged coils to make his abilities stronger.
- Annie Christmas – Becomes stronger as she takes damage, making her a powerful fighter the longer she stays in the fight, with her sidekick, Charlie, supporting her in battle.
- Dr. Jill Trent – Uses her special gadgets and sidekick, Daisy, to adapt to different roles in battle.
- Golden Bat – Can fly around the board, but he deals the most damage when he doesn’t move.
Villains
You’ll face one of two villains:
- Mothman – Aims to destroy bridges, gradually cutting off the map and making it harder for heroes to move and act.
- Martian Invader – Spreads alien tokens across the map, advancing the invasion and increasing the pressure on the heroes.
Minions
Each villain is accompanied by a group of minions (one minion per player). Minions have their own decks and abilities:
- Ant Queen – Acts as a mini-boss, advancing the threat track and adding cards to the initiative deck.
- Blob – Leaves acid tokens on the board.
- Jersey Devil – Forces players to discard cards from their hand and deck.
- Loveland Frog – Hops around and attacks, and adds extra initiative cards to the deck.
- Skunk Ape – Hits hard and takes extra turns when it loses combat.
- Tarantula – Places web tokens on the board that make movement tougher.
Round Structure
Each round begins with the initiative deck, which determines turn order. The deck includes a card for each hero, the villain, and any of the villain’s minions in play. At the start of the round, you shuffle the deck and reveal cards one by one. When your hero’s card is drawn, it’s your turn; if it’s a villain or minion card, they act instead.
Player Turns
On your turn, you’ll take two actions, choosing from these options:
- Maneuver: Draw a card and move your fighters. After moving, you can interact with nearby elements on the board, like removing alien tokens or activating special effects from bridges.
- Attack: To attack an enemy, you play an attack card from your hand and reveal the top card of the enemy’s deck as their defense card. Your attack value must exceed the defense value to deal damage, which reduces the enemy’s health. The hero and villain cards have effects that can trigger before, during, or after combat.
- Scheme: Play a scheme card from your hand to trigger powerful effects.
Enemy Turns
When the villain or a minion’s card is drawn, they act according to their abilities:
- Move and Attack: Enemies target the closest hero or sidekick, moving if necessary. If no targets are in range, the villain’s threat marker advances, bringing them closer to completing their objective.
- Unique Effects: Each villain and minion has special abilities or tokens they deploy to complicate things. For example, Mothman destroys bridges, while the Martian Invader spreads aliens across the map.
End of the Round
Once all cards in the initiative deck are resolved, you resolve any end-of-round effects, like advancing the threat marker further or triggering villain abilities. You then shuffle the initiative deck and begin a new round.
Winning and Losing
You’ll win the game if you reduce the villain’s health to zero.
You’ll lose if the villain completes their objectives four times or if all heroes and sidekicks are defeated.
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Pros and Cons
Pros
- I’ve always been a fan of variable turn orders in cooperative games, and the initiative system in Unmatched Adventures is another example of it working really well. The unpredictability of who will act next adds extra tension to each turn.
- The game’s flow is excellent. There are multiple steps to each turn, but once you get a feel for the characters’ decks, turns are really snappy. It’s the kind of pacing that keeps everyone engaged and the game moving quickly.
- Both villains are fun to go up against. I like the Martian a bit more since he jumps around the board, but both are good challenges.
- I also like that the enemies raise the threat level when you’re not within range during their turns. It’s a cool mechanic because it forces you to think about who should stay close to the villain to defend and potentially take damage rather than just keeping everyone out of range. I haven’t seen that in a lot of other co-op games.
- The replay value here is pretty high even if you don’t have any other Unmatched sets. Mixing one boss with random minions changes how you approach each game, and the different hero combos mix it up even more.
- The Amazing Events cards make it easy to raise the game’s difficulty. You can add 1-3 cards, with each card introducing new challenges, like adding +1 to all minion attacks or making them faster.
- Setup is quick thanks to the well-designed insert that keeps all the components nicely organized and easy to access. The layout minimizes time spent sorting cards and tokens, which lets you jump into the game faster.
- You can use characters from other Unmatched sets. If you’ve built up a collection of heroes, you can mix and match them into this cooperative mode, which is just awesome.
Cons
- The look of the map circles bothers me, just like in the other Unmatched games. I understand why they were designed that way (to represent different zones), but they don’t match the great look of everything else in the game. I wish they had found a way to make those circles blend better.
- The game feels a bit too easy on the standard difficulty level, especially at the two and three-player counts. We won all four of our games by simply rushing the villain and attacking every turn. Adding multiple Amazing Events cards definitely makes things more challenging, but I wish that wasn’t necessary so early on.
Final Thoughts
Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze is one of the better cooperative fighting games I’ve played, which didn’t surprise me since I was already a pretty big fan of the competitive version. It’s straightforward mechanically, but the unique abilities and the excellent pacing take it to the next level. All the heroes are a blast to play with (Golden Bat is my favorite), and the different combinations of villains and minions are fun to square off against and make each game feel unique.
I’m definitely keeping this one since my group has plenty of Unmatched stuff and I want to see how all the different combinations of heroes work in this game.
If you like cooperative games and are already a fan of Unmatched, this is an easy recommendation since it gives you a very cool new way to play the game. Unmatched Adventures is also a great introduction to the system and is the best option if you prefer co-ops.
Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze Links
BGG | Amazon
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