by TFJ383
Welcome back to An Unmatched Roster, a series of articles that set out to study the nuances of my favorite game in order to assemble a line-up of characters of equal caliber. As some of you may have noticed, I've taken a sizable hiatus from writing this series; between personal life events and writer's block, I've found it hard to get into the headspace of delving into the nitty-gritty of this title. But with the release of some new content, my wife's rekindled interest in exploring the game with me, and a stark realization of where my headspace has been in relation to the series as a whole, I'm coming back to this series of articles with a newfound sense of vigor.
As a brief disclaimer, this series is designed to look at characters from the perspective of one-on-one match-ups. I don't take into account the viability of a character for team play, free-for-all matches, or the recently released co-op mode. While these are all valid ways to play and enjoy Unmatched, they are not the ways that I play/enjoy Unmatched. Just wanted to clarify that, since I've seen many comments asking me about this in particular in relation to these articles.
It dawned on me lately that much of what has been holding me back from writing more of An Unmatched Roster stems from how much I've been wanting to discuss the Marvel era of Unmatched but had previously insisted on covering the game in chronological order based on release date. Well, no more! With Brains and Brawn having been released a few months back, we now have every piece of Marvel content that will grace the Unmatched series. It's been a long journey, with the IP dominating Unmatched releases for the last couple of years, and while the announcement initially excited me, looking back on the five boxes as a whole, I largely find this period of Unmatched to be a difficult one as a consumer. Even as a huge fan of the Marvel IP, having read the comics since I was 10, I've become thoroughly jaded with the property over the last few years and find myself less and less drawn to new content featuring what used to be some of my favorite characters. That's not to say that, had a lot of these characters featured fantastic designs, I wouldn't be enthusiastic for these Unmatched boxes. Unfortunately, I find that these boxes, as a whole, work to expose some of the limitations of the Unmatched design (important elements to understand whenever exploring a design space), but does so in unflattering or frustrating manners. To provide a glimpse behind the next five articles, of the 15 characters that have been released under the Marvel IP (not including Deadpool, who I will not be covering here for obvious reasons), I find myself only willing to include four in my Unmatched Roster, each hailing from a different box. This means that, across the board, these are some of the worst value-to-product boxes for the purposes of this project, as each box is $50, comes with fewer characters in general let alone ones I will be including in my roster, and features my least favorite map mechanic to date.
That all sounds negative, and it's hard to talk about this without coming across that way, so let me be clear; some of these characters that I dislike or will be picking apart are another person's favorite character in the entire series, and I'm glad people have found themselves invested in some of these designs. Similarly, I am in no way looking to talk down to or be rude to the designers of the game, having personal relationships with a few of the team's members. Unmatched is still my favorite game to date, and thus I am never looking to be negative for the sake of negativity or to be harmful in my critiques. Rather, I want to look at each of these characters in terms of what design lessons can be learned from them; what does this character say about the design, and why doesn't that choice work for me within the confines of the system? If you can't tell, I'm genuinely excited to get down and dirty with the specifics, so let's waste no time talking about the characters from the first Marvel box, Redemption Row.
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Ghost Rider has been a messy character since the day the box was released, with his core ability being errata-ed and then promptly un-errata-ed. He's a character who acts like a silver bullet against some and is hopelessly feeble against others, and a lot of these issues start with what type of character he is at his core; a currency character.
During my time with Unmatched, I have started to coin particular phrases to describe particular playstyles or mechanics to allow me to better compare them, yet I don't believe I've introduced any of them into the series yet, so let me expand on this briefly. A currency character is any character that needs to spend a currency in order to allow them to do their special effects. Often, the method by which they get that currency and the puzzle of how/when to spend it is the appeal of the character. Examples of other currency characters are Beowulf and his rage, Dr. Sattler and her Insight, and Tesla and his coils. Ghost Rider requires Hellfire in order to do just about anything on his cards, so using and maintaining his wallet of resources is essential to playing him.
The trouble with this has less to do with the archetype this character takes on and more to do with how he goes about obtaining Hellfire. Most characters have some kind of passive method to get said currency; Beowulf takes damage, Dr. Sattler moves, and Tesla automatically charges a coil at the end of his turns. Ghost Rider, however, has no means of getting more currency beyond his card effects, meaning he is very particularly at the whim of his card draw. While he starts the game with 5 Hellfire at his disposal, 18 of his cards require that he either spend Hellfire or have a decent amount of Hellfire already at his disposal. This means that if he runs out of Hellfire and has no means of regaining it, he isn't doing much of anything for a long period of time. Even compared to Willow, a character who we have criticized in the past for her reliance on her Dark form to allow many of her effects to trigger, only have 12 card effects locked behind that threshold. This can result in swingy and unforgiving games for Ghost Rider entirely dependent on the order of the cards in his deck. On the flip side of this, I've played games with Ghost Rider where I find myself with all 5 Hellfire and a fist of 6 cards that all want to give me more Hellfire. This can be equally frustrating and discouraging, as you don't want to spend any of those cards since they're your only way to get more Hellfire later, but you need the room in your hand to get cards that can actually spend Hellfire at all.
This brings us to the motorcycle in the room; Ghost Rider can essentially spend Hellfire during his Maneuver actions to boost his movement, drive through opponents, and deal damage to them in the process. A powerful ability against any character that has minions, shutting down the likes of Medusa or Robin Hood, but can also quickly become a trap. Many players spam Ghost Rider's Manuever action in order to try and deal as much passive damage to opponents as possible, which is an unfun play-loop to deal with as an opponent, but that leaves the player with no Hellfire to do any of their card effects with. This can result in games devolving into Ghost Rider zipping back and forth between two fixed points on his turn before forcing his opponent to move into range and attack. It's tiresome and only highlights the issues that plague this character.
Beyond that, though, there are a few other issues that spring from his design. For one, most of his cards sit around a value of 3, and those cards that are his big swings are either luck-dependant or incredibly risky. Blaze of Glory does flat damage to every character in Ghost Rider's zone based on the amount of Hellfire he spends... including himself. So while you can deal an insane amount of unblockable damage, it's often to his detriment and rarely something that he is able or willing to do. Penance Stare, on the other hand, gets boosted by the boost value of his opponent's card, and that can be further boosted again by spending Hellfire. If the opponent plays a high enough boost value at the wrong time, this can end games, but that so heavily depends on Ghost Rider's opponent and what boost values they have, and there's never a guarantee that a high-value card will be spent in response to it. In other words, it is an incredibly unreliable option that could win games but rarely can be counted on to do so.
So, all in all, Ghost Rider is a great example of how not to do a currency character. He relies too much on his card draw to allow him to do anything, can get locked into hands of cards that he can do nothing with, and is pressured into a repetitive and boring play-loop that is too effective against some characters and not particularly effective against others. It doesn't particularly help that he's a solo character, which perform statistically worse than characters with minions across the board, so the odds were stacked against him to begin with.
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Despite solo characters often getting the short end of the stick, Moon Knight is a surprisingly fun and engaging character that may be one of my favorite designs from the Marvel Unmatched era as a whole. This in part has to do with him being a twist on the classic Alice design which I still hold up as the pinnacle of Unmatched design, or it could be that this design thematically pulls from one of my favorite Moon Knight comic book runs of all time, but I think there's more to it than that. Moon Knight presents an interesting puzzle in how players are pulled between different forms forcefully and have to plan turns in advance in order to succeed with him. He has a dash of Little Red in him in that respect, looking to chain card effects based on when he'll be in what form and how to take the most advantage of the benefits they offer.
Moon Knight, your starting form, provides your character with a boost of movement at the start of your turn, allowing you to enter the fray aggressively during your first turn and giving you flexibility regarding how you approach future turns. Do you press your advantage and move in for the offensive, or do you take the opportunity to back off, reposition, and prepare for your next form? Khonshu is Alice's Big form, giving him +2 to all of his attacks, but with some extra spice, allowing him to ignore all damage that would be dealt from card effects. This means that you can both pack a punch and utilize card effects that would deal damage to yourself with reckless abandon, giving you some pretty strong benefits. But if you can't wait, you can always deal yourself that damage in another form in hopes of throwing your opponents off at the cost of your health. And Mr. Knight is Alice's Small form, giving him +1 to all his defenses. Perhaps the least exciting of the forms, Mr. Knight still offers some important decisions regarding how you want to place yourself in order to take hits more effectively or pressure your opponent to back off while you have the extra armor.
There's a lot to think about here even before you consider card effects that allow you to skip forms prematurely, giving you tactical choices as to when and how you want to skip forms at the right time to throw off any groove your opponent has begun to maintain. Moon Knight is a complex puzzle box, allowing him a hefty skill ceiling that I'm excited to explore more. I wouldn't say he's an especially powerful character in the grand scheme of things, but he's a character that I've had a lot of fun playing in the past and has a place in my roster for sure.
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This leaves us with Luke Cage, who may be one of my least favorite characters from Unmatched in general. He's a character who is simple to pilot, oppressive in how he plays, and goes against what I view as one of the core principles of the game; any character that is too defensive can become a liability to the game space as a whole. There have been many characters with defensive abilities; we just talked about how Alice and Moon Knight can get +1 to their defenses, as can Invisible Man. But those characters are regularly limited by needing to play a card in order to get that bonus and needing to be in the appropriate form/space in order to get that bonus. Luke Cage gets a 2-damage reduction to every attack done to him, period. This oppressive wall can be too great a hurdle for many characters to climb over, with Yennenga, Bullseye, Robin Hood, and countless others standing very little chance simply because their damage output is so heavily reduced that they struggle to earnestly make a dent in Luke throughout the fight. This is further exacerbated by Misty Knight, who can shoot for massive damage at range and can have Luke swap with her to prevent her from taking big damage at key moments.
All of this comes to a head with Trash Talk, a card so downright discouraging that it has left many a player at my table feeling frustrated and upset at the end of matches. It's a 2-defense card (which becomes a 4 if played by Luke) that, if you win the combat, simply ends your opponent's turn immediately. This can be an incredibly jarring card effect to encounter if you aren't expecting it or a looming and constant threat if you are waiting for it, as it can easily shift games into a slugfest if Luke is positioned just so. And it's not particularly hard to pull off; a 4 defense is a high value for most characters in general, making it a reliable tool for Luke to take advantage of.
For all the upsides Luke has, his Achilles heel is card effects; any character that can deal a decent amount of damage from card effects alone can take down Luke Cage without too much issue (see the two characters Luke happens to be packaged with for example). Ignoring how unthematic this can feel in relation to how Luke's power works in the comics, this necessary loophole in his design makes Luke another character that feels like a silver bullet, designed to take down certain characters while being ripped apart by others. But what makes him worse in this respect than Ghost Rider is what a negative play space he can create. Luke Cage, at his core, can be fun to play from a smack-down perspective, but he regularly makes the play experience for his opponents exhausting and unengaging. Having such a fantastic offense and defense makes him a character with few weaknesses, pressuring most to take advantage of his low movement to run to the opposite side of the board and wait him out, a well-documented symptom of Spike-itis. (For those not in the know, this stems from Spike's design from the Buffy set, which all but tells opponents to always move away from Spike before the end of their turn to force Spike to never take advantage of his ability and be forced to approach his opponent each turn).
With so few barriers to get into the meat and potatoes of what he does, Luke could have been a fantastic character to provide newcomers to the game with a taste for how Unmatched worked, but his kit is just too frontloaded with powerful attacks, a wall of defense, and a couple of weaknesses that can be exploited if you have the right character for the job. Every game I've played with him has felt like a wash, whether it was in Luke's favor or not, which leaves games feeling unsatisfying for all involved. To me, this highlights how delicate a balance there is when designing defensive characters, as overdoing it even a little can lead to devastating results.
As I mentioned before, the various Marvel boxes will likely remain at the bottom of the overall box rankings list when I get around to making a visual for it; beyond those who are as entrenched in the Unmatched system as me, it's hard to recommend any of these boxes in earnest, especially with them going out of print early next year. As for Moon Knight himself, I would wager he sits just above Bruce, topping our trailing tier of solo characters that have been running behind the core pack of characters.
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Next time, we'll be talking about Hell's Kitchen and possibly Teen Spirit as well, since we've already talked about Elektra in the past. Please feel free to leave your thoughts below, as I'm curious how everyone else has felt about the Marvel era of Unmatched as a whole.
By popular request, here's an index of the characters we've covered so far in the series. Shout-out to @fanaka66 for the recommendation and format:
An Unmatched Roster: Entering the Arena
❌Medusa
❌Bigfoot
❌Sherlock
❌Elektra
⭐Sinbad
⭐King Arthur
An Unmatched Roster: Humble Beginnings
⭐Alice
⭐Robin Hood
⭐Bruce Lee
An Unmatched Roster: Cobble and Fog
⭐Invisible Man
⭐Dracula
❌Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
[thread=3101319]
An Unmatched Roster: Jurassic Park[/thread]
⭐Muldoon
⭐Raptors
❌T-Rex
❌Sattler
An Unmatched Roster: Buffy Ain't So Buff
❌Willow
❌Spike
❌Angel
⭐Buffy
An Unmatched Roster: The Opposite of Redemption
❌Ghost Rider
⭐Moon Knight
❌Luke Cage