Unmatched: The Witcher-Realms fall and Steel & Silver double Review

Let's be honest, rabid fans of Unmatched and The Witcher already picked up these sets as soon as they dropped, so I'm going to frame this review on the question of if they're worth picking up if you're in my shoes: apathetic about the license and enjoy Unmatched but don't feel the need to be a total completionist. Well, yes and no. It really depends.

Starting off with what the boxes have in common, these maps are my favorites out of a ballooning library. Realms Fall's Novigrad is by far the most generic, but plays well and needed to be that way, as a gateway IP product like this really shouldn't have exclusively weird maps. Its partner, the Naglfar, has fighters jumping between above and below deck. It's kinda funky, but is one of the best beginner maps for forcing newbies to learn zone spacing and cornering opponents. Steel & Silver's generic is a forest that has a one-space zone, which I'm here for. Finally, Kaer Morhen is Raptor Paddock 2.0 with a host of one-way movements off the ramparts into the courtyard, and you're wrong if you didn't love the map in the first Jurassic Park set.

As far as the heroes go, it's our standard licensed 3-pack with a headliner, another strong one, and, well, a third (at least we don't have Spider-Man or Squirrel Girl just taking up space levels here). Realms Fall has Eredin giving Achilles' "sidekicks as a resource" cranked up to 11: there's Under Achilles' Helm-style switch defenses, but some cards need you to kill off a Rider sidekick for full effect, and others only resolve a weaker version if you haven't killed all your sidekicks off first. Triss and Yennifer are a "pick which one's the hero and who's a sidekick" deal, but Yen being a ranged, strictly better King Arthur with draw effects means you're probably gonna stick with her. I'm sorry, but if you're not opting for the 7 value attacks you can boost to 11, maybe you should be playing something else. And then there's Philippa, the answer to "what if Dracula taught a wizard to murder Wukong?" You've got Do My Bidding, strictly worse Beast Form, strictly worse Mist Form, conditional card advantage, and a handful of AoE attacks. She's easily my least favorite in the two boxes, but she still isn't Squirrel Girl or Spider-Man, so she's got that going for her.

Sticking with the bottom of the barrel, I hate Geralt; the build-your-fighter gear shtick being new to Unmatched is his only saving grace, just it's implemented so clumsily that I absolutely detest him. The idea is that at the start of a game you'll choose your gear (potion, armor, and sword) and jam the two copies of whatever into your deck. First off, you're increasing setup and tear-down time, and then all of the cards are just labeled as gear, instead of the specific type they are. Sure, you can infer most through the illustrations, but there are definitely people who are gonna need to check the rules to find out the wolf medallion is armor. All this could've been streamlined by just having two generic cards for each gear type that stay in your deck and another double-sided that you flip to indicate your choice for each, but whatever. The real reason I'm never going to play Geralt again is a common problem with these customizable fighters: you're spending extra time to make it crystal clear you're counter-picking your opponent (oh, you're playing raptors? Here's Geralt, he'll eat your lunch). Ciri feels a lot better, but has a similar issue to most of the other characters; she feels like a retread of someone we've seen before, namely Sinbad. The difference is while Sinbad's Voyages had a linear power curve, Ciri's Source cards are more parabolic: you run away until you hit Unicorn Ally and can start churning through your deck until you're dropping 4-value unfeintable versatiles that discard a random card or some other nonsense. She's fine, but every game with her turns into can you murder Ciri before she comes online? All these meh designs are immediately redeemed by the Leshen, who's become my favorite dude in all of Unmatched. You've got the Leshen, who is ranged with a move of 1 but hits for an extra 3 if it pulls off a double attack, and two wolves that exist to pull off their dinky attacks that refund their action and move their victim 3 places to try to set up the big double swing. In practice, it winds up hitting that swing spot between insanely thematic and actually fun to play: the Leshen feels like a lumbering threat defending its territory, and the game of positioning the wolves where you can drag somebody in but also have the Leshen able to keep them safe (or trying to avoid such as the opponent) is genuinely interesting.