by TFJ383
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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. If you haven't noticed the time fly by, it's been a minute since my last post, largely because there's a big project I've been working tirelessly on for the past month that will ultimately tie into this series. I'll be expanding more on this in the coming days, but know that this series will continue as strong as ever, if not more so.
Unfortunately, this brings us to the end of the Marvel era of Unmatched content, and let me just say... this is going to be a fairly negative discussion today. Brains and Brawn is probably my least favorite Unmatched product to date, just barely squeaking out Dr. Sattler vs T-Rex, and just how much Marvel content exists just exacerbates my issues with it. With characters that straddle both extremes of the overall meta and introduce unfun and toxic play patterns, it's a set that, I'll say outright, will not be appearing in the Unmatched roster in any form. As for the why, well, let's get down to it rather than beating around the bush.
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It's no surprise that a mystical wizard with world-bending abilities would end up being fairly high in the Unmatched tier lists. Frankly, I think he's a surprising addition to the roster in general, with Restoration Games expressing how they've thematically wanted their characters to be relatively evenly matched, with gods or demigods being cited as too powerful to include in that respect, hence why we've seen Medusa and Achilles rather than Zeus or Poseidon. Dr. Strange is no god, but he's certainly a step above your average Bigfoot or Little Red Riding Hood in terms of theoretical power levels.
But moving past the semantics of that kind of analysis, Dr. Strange is a character whose modus operandi is having the best value answer to anything his opponent can throw at him, all while healing himself exponentially. We've seen this before in the form of Yennenga, who is largely seen as one of the upper-tier characters as well, but there are three core differences that, in the eyes of many, make Yennenga the far more preferable of the two; cancels, recursion, and card draw. For as good as Yennenga can be, she suffers, the fact that she has no cancels in her deck allows a lot of lower-tier characters to pick on her more than your average opponent, allowing for a more diverse spread of match-ups. Additionally, she struggles to maintain a decent hand size most of the time as she has no card effects that allow her to draw cards, forcing her to rely on maneuvering.
Dr. Strange, on the other hand, has Feint and Cloak of Levitation, a card that outright ignores the opponent's card if they are adjacent to Strange, outright bullying melee fighters. While he only has 4 of these cards in total (2 of each), his ability allows him to put them back into his deck, meaning he can continually benefit from ignoring his opponent's abilities. On top of this, every time he uses his ability, he draws a card, meaning he can maintain a hand size will being hyper-aggressive from across the map for however long he wishes. Yes, the ability does cost an HP each time he uses it, but he has so many powerful ways to heal it barely matters. Beyond his schemes which will outright guarantee some valuable health, Rings of Raggadorr is a truly astonishing card, allowing him and Wong (so long as he's adjacent) to heal equal to the damage it deals. This card can literally steal games from the opponent, providing such intense value that it's hard to combat it, especially when, again, he can just put it back into his deck.
As if all of this wasn't enough, he was cards that will boot his opponent across the map back to a starting space, cards that allow him to reshuffle his hand into his deck and redraw his hand, and a defense that discards the actively played attack and randomly pulls another offensive card from the deck to act as the attack instead. He just has too many answers to basically any situation and can rarely be punished. Yes, there is some skill involved in piloting him well, but he simply offers too many get-out-of-jail-free cards to facilitate games that are consistently fun. More often, Strange becomes a bully, pushing the opponent around at his tempo while never dropping in handsize.
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She-Hulk, on the other hand, has one very specific answer to any situation; hitting hard. Her ability, riffing on Medusa's, allows her to throw away a card to deal damage to a character in her zone equal to that card's boost value. While it does cost a card, dealing upwards of 3 unmitigated damage is significant. And yes, she mostly has 1's and 2's to compensate for this, but it creates unwinnable game states once the opponent's HP gets low enough, which is never especially fun.
Beyond her core ability, She-Hulk has two especially oppressive attacks; Omega-Level Threat and The Savage She-Hulk. The former, so long as She-Hulk deals 2 damage to the opponent, forces the defender to discard 2 random cards. That is an absolutely insane effect that can change games in a heartbeat. A 5 attack is pretty hard to defend in general, often guaranteeing at least 1 damage. This means that opponents are often forced to always block with their highest-value defense to avoid getting severely punished. Additionally, you basically always have to defend in general, as otherwise you could get slammed for big damage and lose cards anyway. Savage only makes this worse, a card that, if it's She-Hulk's first action of the turn, she can spend her 2nd action of the turn to turn its value from a 3 to a 9. Again, this forces the opponent to simply block every turn with a high-value card or else get bamboozled and thrown into the stratosphere. What's more, this results in most games devolving into Spike-itis. For those unfamiliar, the best thing She-Hulk's opponent can hope for most of the time is, at the start of their turn, attack and maneuver. Ending your turn next to She-Hulk is basically a non-option, opening yourself up to her ability at the start of the turn and her most punishing options. Even then, she has ways of pinning you in place or charging to your location without spending an action, meaning she always has something she can answer with.
And again I have to comment on the thematics of She-Hulk and how they feel entirely at odds with her design. The entire gimmick of She-Hulk is that she balances being a lawyer with being an all-powerful juggernaut of a fighter. Traditionally, she never loses control of herself and is capable of being destructive but does so in a way that's constructive to her job more often than letting lose and smashing things like her cousin. Here, however, we see an iteration of her that seems unbridled, unleashing her full might with reckless abandon. Her core gimmick is called "Just Throw Something", which just feels so at odds with She-Hulk that's it's outright frustrating. Yes, she's capable of losing her temper and breaking things, but this version of her feels more in line with recent interpretations that have her suffering from PTSD, her powers devolving to act more like Bruce Banner's, actively robbing her of control. It all just feels very messy and ultimately doesn't feel like an earnest representation of the source material.
All in all, She-Hulk is who I would point to if I wanted to explain what I mean when I refer to toxic play patterns, embodying fearsome tactics that are near impossible to mitigate. No, she isn't the strongest character on the roster, but much like T-Rex, she forces her opponent to be on the defensive at all times, never giving them an opportunity to let down their guard. We didn't even talk about her 4-value offensive cancel card or her ability to recur cards, but all of that is just icing on a cake that I already found overwhelming.
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This leaves us with everyone's favorite web-slinger, Spider-Man, a character that should have been a home run for most people. He is essentially the mascot of Marvel and is arguably the most recognizable superhero in the world. And with Oliver Barrett at the helm for art, it's hard to imagine this character being anything but fantastic. Unfortunately, we find ourselves with Peter Parker feeling at home going toe-to-toe with the heroes from Buffy and Teen Spirit, bringing up the rear of the overall Unmatched meta. Now, normally I wouldn't necessarily be too up-in-arms about this, as some of the lower-tier characters can be genuinely fun. I've spoken at length about Bullseye and Invisible Man before, characters that certainly aren't built competitively but have enough entertaining match-ups that they can be fun to watch at work. Spider-Man's ability, however, bucks the core ideas of Unmatched and forces the character into an unwinnable position.
With his spider-sense, Spider-Man always knows the value of any attack being thrown his way, giving him unprecedented knowledge in most fights. Being able to boil down what any attack could be to a handful of options, Spider-Man is rarely caught by surprise. However, this knowledge comes at a cost, as most of his cards are only valuable if Spider-Man chooses to lose the combat. What benefits he does get aren't especially spectacular either, dealing some damage back or drawing cards. His abilities are fairly vanilla and feel in line with the Buffy set in terms of their simplicity, with most cards allowing him to move or draw. Additionally, Spider-Man's damage output is pretty low, with few cards giving him an offensive advantage. All of this results in a character who wants to lose more fights than he wins and can't close out most fights, allowing him to be bullied at length.
On the other side of the coin, this ability is so powerful that all of his cards ultimately have to be devalued to make up for it. Having any cancels, for example, would make it too easy for Spider-Man to get out of most character's big attacks. Additionally, Restoration has in the past stated that their goal is to make every character have a reason to play offensively, with Invisible Man representing a design space that they don't have any intent to revisit, as he plays too defensively and can at times disengage with the game loop as a whole. Yet Spider-Man clearly is more defense-oriented, forcing his cards to again be undervalued to compensate.
When asked about why Spider-Man is the way that he is, Justin D. Jacobson, the head of Restoration Games, commented that "[w]e knew Spider-Man would be the top choice for new or casual players, so we designed him to work for that target audience. The special ability is designed for folks who haven't memorized the opposing deck and will just play it superficially based on numbers. "Ooh, they're playing a 4 -- I'll get to draw 2 cards -- neat! " I understand why he's not great to play in a competitive game, but that just wasn't our primary design goal." This is certainly an understandable goal, as it makes sense to want to cater to as big an audience as possible with such a well-known character. However, there are plenty of characters that already exist that are seen as fantastic introductory characters that are effective in competitive play as well. Alice, Robin Hood, Golden Bat, Annie Christmas, even Beowulf could be cited as characters that are great for new players to experience for their first game and explore the game space. These characters have complex and interesting decisions but are easily accessible by new players. What's more, they actively teach the player how to engage with Unmatched far better due to how crucial the bluffing element of combat is to every game of Unmatched. Spider-Man ultimately deprives the player of engaging with most instances of bluffing, resulting in them not truly learning how to play the game.
There's clearly good intent here, and I don't begrudge anyone for what they were trying to do with Spider-Man, but it's plain to see that the final design missed the mark. He's a character that ignores one of the most fun elements of Unmatched and does so at his own detriment, making him hard to recommend to anyone in my experience.
Before we wrap things up, I do want to address a couple of notes from previous installments in the series:
- After some more feedback from you folks and some more time with the character, I have ultimately agreed that Black Panther is simply not a good addition to the Unmatched Roster. With most games feeling exceptionally inconsistent and resulting in bad-feels, it's hard to not see how he can lead to more frustrating games than he can enjoyable ones.
- A lot of people urged me to give Daredevil a second chance, with my initial article citing how his ability to recur enough cards to not engage with the game as to why I wouldn't include him. In truth, I've loved playing Daredevil in the past, pushing more towards a press-your-luck loop than relying on longevity. And when circling back around to him, I was reminded by how fun he can be. I think that, while Daredevil is capable of being an unfun character to fight, most battles against him will see him ducking in and out of the fight rather than outright disengaging with the game altogether. And for these reasons, I am more than happy to reintroduce him into the Unmatched Roster.
In this way, we ultimately find ourselves with 4 Marvel characters making the cut; Moon Knight, Bullseye, Daredevil, and Black Widow. While it's sad to see so many characters fall short, I think it speaks to an era of Unmatched that everyone, including Restoration, is ready to move on from. Thank you all so much for reading, and next time we'll be moving on to something decidedly devoid of superheroes. As always, let me know your thoughts below, as I always enjoy reading your feedback. So you all again real soon!
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
An Unmatched Roster: Jurassic Park
⭐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
[thread=3188799]
An Unmatched Roster: What's Cooking in Hell's Kitchen?[/thread]
⭐Daredevil (initially an ❌, adjusted in Anything But Marvelous)
⭐Bullseye
An Unmatched Roster: It's Less Dangerous
❌Cloak and Dagger
❌Squirrel Girl
❌Ms. Marvel
An Unmatched Roster: Messy Politics
❌ Black Panther
❌ Winter Soldier
⭐ Black Widow
An Unmatched Roster: Anything But Marvelous
❌ Dr. Strange
❌ She-Hulk
❌ Spider-Man