Unmatched: Hell’s Kitchen straddles the line between board game and comic book collectible

polygon.com:

The Unmatched board game series is a smash hit, allowing players to put pop culture icons like Bruce Lee up against mythical heroes like Achilles and Sun Wukong. The franchise’s latest stand-alone expansion, Unmatched: Hell’s Kitchen, explores the grittier side of the Marvel universe — and it may be one of its best releases yet.

We’ve had Unmatched: Hell’s Kitchen on the table for the last week or so, and its three fighters — Daredevil, Elektra, and Bullseye — all introduce some new and curious strategies to the dueling game. Best of all, the elegant production values of this $50 set help it straddle a line, appealing to both fans of board games and fans of comic book collectibles.

The Unmatched series, launched in 2019, is a joint venture by Mondo and Restoration Games. It’s a reimplementation of two previously successful board games: Tannhäuser, an alternate reality World War II-themed action game designed by William Grosselin and Didier Poli and published by Fantasy Flight Games, and Star Wars: Epic Duels, designed by Craig Van Ness and Rob Daviau and published by Milton Bradley. Each player in a game of Unmatched gets a miniature and a pre-constructed deck of cards. Miniatures help with the tactical action, making sense of ranged and melee attacks on a game board (à la Tannhäuser). Cards, on the other hand, are what give players their offensive and defensive abilities (à la Star Wars: Epic Duels).

The result is a series of fast and furious games that can be over in as little as 20 minutes, but that also sustain themselves with a one-more-round mentality. Sure, the velociraptors from Jurassic Park are strong. But are they stronger than Buffy the Vampire Slayer? All you need is another 20 minutes to find out.

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