u/AgreeableLeadership2

I'm playing Hamlet for the first time and his second stance's wording confused me a bit. It reads: Add +2 to the value of Hamlet's attacks. Does this +2 boost only apply to attack (red) cards or any cards he uses to attack, so both attack and versatile cards (red and purple)?

This will be a long story. I know I will sound like a madman and Unmatched is not designed to be played like that, but hear me out.

I've been interested in Unmatched for a very long time and always wanted to play it, the issue is I don't have anyone to play with, and my schedule is extremely busy with regular work and PhD. I'm aware there are multiple ways to play the game digitally, but I already spend at least 10 hours at the PC every day, so I want to reduce the screentime playing board games, not increase it. I did a research on options to play Unmatched solo before buying the game and came across the Adversary rules by Acharlie1337 ( https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/200529/the-adversary-an-unmatched-solo-variant ) and it sounded great for my case.

Let's get Adventures out of the way, this format is amazing and very replayable by itself, but I wanted to be able to play against every character, the mix-and-match aspect of the game was the main attraction for me. I wanted to be able to play as king Arthur against Achilles or Sun Wukong against T-Rex.

With this information in mind, I decided to risk it and ordered the Battle of Legends 1 and Tales to Amaze boxes, thinking that if things don't work out with playing the regular game solo, I'll at least be able to play against the Mothman and Martians with 8 different characters. The boxes arrived, I tried playing by the Adversary rules as Sinbad against Alice, and was immediately hooked .

Now I have scored at least one victory as and against every character in chronological release order from BoL1 to Marvel Teen Spirit (excluding the Buffy box, Bruce Lee, Deadpool, Hell's Kitchen and Redemption row as I wasn't able to find these boxes yet) and lots of mix-and-match games across these boxes, so I want to share my experience. I'm enjoying the game immensely, playing it solo every day and there was not a single game I didn't have tons of fun playing.

The Adversary rules work great for earlier sets like BoL1 and Robin Hood vs the Bigfoot, and it's enough to play 1-2 games to memorize them, after which the game plays flawlessly, but later more complex characters started to require some adjustments, so I had to expand on the ruleset a bit and introduce character-specific rules. That includes playing with and against Sherlock, rules for how the opponent prioritizes Sun Wukong's clones when you're playing him, etc. The prime example would be Bloody Mary, I basically had to redesign her mechanic as the Adversary doesn't have a hand, so her ability wouldn't work. I redesigned it this way: When Bloody Mary uses a card to attack, defend or boost, place it in the Bloody zone above her discard pile. If at the beginning of Mary's turn there are at least 3 cards in the Bloody zone, move all cards from this zone to discard pile, Bloody Mary gets a third action this turn. Most other character-specific adjustments are much simpler, it doesn't make an overload.

Don't think your automated opponents are a pushover thou. While they occasionally make non-optimal turns ans waste some opportunities (which many real players do as well), they are very good at defending against attacks, baiting out your defences and decking you out. I very often have games where only 1 action separates a victory from defeat, and most games are very close.

Playing against the script doesn't take away the opponent-reading and big game-flipping aspects of the game. Yesterday I played as Black Panther against Dracula and had terrible luck with card-stealing and finding good cards in my own deck, so Dracula was dominating the whole game, I wasn't able to score a single damage on him, but lured out hos defence cards little by little. After a long battle I was cornered, down to 5 hp against full-health Dracula, but he was adjacent to mw and I knew I made him spend most, if not all, defensive options, so I went all-in and played 2 For Wakanda cards with maximum boosts in one turn, dealing 16 damage total and winning the game. It felt amazing.

This ruleset also serves as a great base for custom challenges, if you want to spice the game up a bit. For example, I came up with King Arthur's Redemption: King Arthur follows the Adversary rules. When he boosts, he gets +1 to the value of his action (both movement and attacks). The first time Arthur would be defeated either by combat damage or exhaustion, set his health to 8 and shuffle 15 random cards from his discard pile to his deck. Is it fair? Not really. But the challenge is supposed to be a challenge and it may be fun to play it.

If you have an Unmatched box, give solo play a try, it will only take 15-30 minutes, but, perhaps, you will enjoy playing the game this way as much as I do and have many hours of fun.

Thank you for reading this huge post.

I'm very interested in Unmatched and can buy some boxes sty local store, however, I have absolutely no one to play with, so my only option is going solo.

​

I made dome research and found out about OneMatched and Adversary, my store also has the Adventures box (not the TMNT one) on sale.

​

I like the characters that are offered in Cobble and Fog box, however, I guess a battle of legends box would be more suitable for a beginner.

​

I'm looking for some advice, would you still recommend the game if I will only ever be able to play solo? Would you recommend using OneMatched or Adversary rules, or is it better to simply play both characters and make optimal moves? Which boxes would you recommend to check to know whether the game would be fun for me solo?

​

Sorry if it has been asked before, your responses would be appreciated!

I'm a fairly new player and now trying to complete campaigns for the first time (true solo, standard difficulty, no boons/ultimatums). I'm planning to have my next run as Amanda Sharpe through Innsmouth and debating whether I should try to get Monstrous Transformation or not.

On one hand, I think it would be really cool and thematic with the deck I've built. But on the other hand, this card is crazy strong for investigators like Amanda, Calvin and Preston, to the point it may feel like cheating and trivialise the game.

I know it's not cheating per se, as it's obtained legally in a scenario the game allows you to visit without breaking any rules. Moreover, it comes with a downside, it's just one card in the deck that you need to find, and true solo is already challenging in itself, but the effect of Monstrous Transformation is absurdly strong for some specific investigators.

Would like to hear your opinion on this.