“This turn” means the current turn. In the case of playing a defense card, that makes it your opponent’s turn.
If your opponent plays a card which causes your character to move (or you play a defense card that moves you – like hoax), and then attacks you again, you can play momentous shift as a value 5 def card. Otherwise it will just be 3.
I see how he could interpret the card that way, but I really don’t think he’s right. I think “this turn” is your opponent’s turn when you’re on defense, and he almost for sure didn’t move on that turn, right? If he moved on his turn, that was last turn. He could move on his turn and then use MOMENTOUS SHIFT as an A5, but once his turn is over, the movement doesn’t still count.
You could ask at boardgamegeek for an official answer but I’m pretty sure that’s the one you’re going to get.
Sorry for not responding earlier. Somehow forgot about it. Unfortunately I can’t remember what the dekc looked like before. What are the changes?
In general I like the effect you gave COPY GOLD LEADER but it does not counter MTFBWU in any way. If you play those two cards as a combo the defender has no basic defense anyway. So what good is doubling any defense? The only effect it will have is thar you will only play this card in that combo or if you know the defender has no defense at all.
SORRY is still a useless card I just would never play unless Wedge maybe has 1 health left but this coincidence would not happen too often. You just loose too much by giving up on Wedge.
I don’t really remember the changes. MTFBWU combos with COPY GOLD LEADER but it’s only once in a great while that you’d pull that off, with only 2 in the deck and requiring both characters to be alive.
True true. Like I said before I really like the deck and will try it out. 🙂
Only one more thing, Don’t you think 2x PREPARE RETREAT instead of SORRY would be more useful?
I think I dropped a 2nd PREPARE RETREAT in the last version. I agree with your suggestion, and want to make SORRY an optional 32nd card, almost like a promo card, that you can replace one of the other cards in the deck with. My friends and I would have a ton of fun with SORRY but it’s not very practical.
Hm,
even if you want to keep the name of the card, you could still change the card. Was thinking about what would make sense. Of course drawing is somehow missing from the deck, escpecially if SORRY is changed but I thought about a combo with MAY THE FORCE BE WITH US. Maybe changing SORRY into a big attack that does not count as an action when played after MTFBWU or something similar. So he could make use of the opponent having to drop all basics before his attack. Just an idea…
I like the idea of Wedge’s 3rd card being something that combines off of MTFBWU, could be something like “A8, any defense value is doubled” (a Tarkin card) since MTFBWU will generally strip an opponent of all defense. I’ll think about it.
That’s a tough one! Once one of them dies, it’s hard to keep the other one alive! haha i like it! Handmade figures for them too. Really happy with the results.
I can’t wait to see what you boys come up with for the Mandalorian! hahah
That is so cool, finally a “new” Ackbar deck and even one using Wedge. Can’t wait to play test it!
Love the concept and all the cards, looks really fun and will be a great alternative to my standard Ackbar deck (with Rebel Troops).
Thanks! I’m excited about it too. I think it’s a good deck, not a great deck. Good, because it has 2 very recognizable characters and some great quotes. Not great because Ackbar doesn’t really do anything interesting. I’m thinking of making IT’S A TRAP a defense card he can use to defend any character, at least that would be unique. SORRY probably needs to not count as an action, because using an action to sacrifice one of your characters is generally a terrible move. If anything, we’ll reduce the card draw.
I like your idea for IT’S A TRAP and agree on SORRY beeing a little weak/useless the way it is right now. Why kill of Wedge for a card draw espewhen he has the strongest attacks and fuels Ackbars attacks to beeing useful. Maybe this last card needs to be something completely else?
SORRY is an admittedly weak card and poor fit in a deck where Wedge has such a key role, but “Sorry!” is an iconic line among my playing group so I feel like I have to include it. Maybe I’ll even do 2 versions of the deck, one with an actual useful card.
Btw, I’m not seeing any problems with the .PDF so I’m not sure what you mean.
One thing that I think is really bizarre in your current version is that you can use Calm to power up Sith Rage which seems wrong. Everything else makes sense more or less, but this seems like a big problem. In your current version you can use all three What Must Be Done and then a Calm to power up Sith Rage to an A15. Now I’m less bothered by the fact that its a 15, as it might at least be hard to do, and I’m even more worried by the fact that mechanically that whole combo doesn’t make aesthetic sense.
So once again I’m throwing ideas out there.
Anakin and 3 Clone Troopers (again, 3 works better.)
I’ll go with the same deck you did for now, though I’m curious about the possibility of adding an attack point and subtracting a defense point for aggressive characters, so Leap Away could be a 5/3 with the same effect while Feint would be a 3/1, etc. Something to think about anyways.
x4 Anger- A7 Choose and discard a card, if you can’t, you can’t play this card (or maybe you can, but this should probably be specified anyways.)
x4 Calm- Move Anakin up to 5 spaces. then draw or discard until you have 4 cards in your hand.
x3 Sith Fury- A2 If the attack is completely blocked, it does not count as an action.
x2 What Must Be Done- Move Anakin adjacent to any enemy character without using an action.
x2 Force Choke- Choose an enemy sidekick in Anakin’s zone to receive 3 damage. If there are no enemy sidekicks remaining, choose an enemy hero in Anakin’s zone to receive 1 damage.
x1 You Will Try- D2 After receiving the attackers’ damage, if Anakin is still alive, Anakin does an equal amount of damage to the attacker.
x1 You Underestimate My Power- A9 If the defender is still alive, Anakin cannot play defense cards during the next turn.
Clone Special Cards
x2 Blind Obedience- A2 Draw a Card
I don’t know if this deck is actually better than the other one, but anyways throwing ideas around. I think your current version is a bit defensively strong given Anakin’s proximity as a defensive character, but I also wonder if there can be an equivalent to the “Red” Basic deck as compared to Arthur’s “Blue”
One other idea I want to float is maybe not using weak minors at all. Like perhaps using Elite Clones or generic Jedi or something instead of regular clones. Admittedly this is more of an aesthetic critique than a real mechanical one, but aesthetically the idea of battle droids and clone troopers having the same basic set as a jedi is kind of bizarre. Whereas with elite minors it would maybe make more sense. But maybe you think that’s outweighed by the single hit point and the lack of (or weak) talent cards. Just a thought.
Not only is stripping the other stuff away great to highlight that experience, but it also makes the whole game more accessible!
But honestly, finding that heart (or at least the /best/ heart) is the key factor in the design process. So don’t feel bad about it having taken a while!
The important thing is that you got there in the end. 🙂
Love ya Bez! Great interview on Breaking Into Board Games! Thanks so much for your comment, I’m still new to this and it really helps to get confirmation from more accomplished people like yourself!
Alrighty, so again I haven’t actually played this, but I’m thinking the defense in this deck is excessive. Mind, I agree Obi Wan should be defensive, but this seems like a LOT. You’ve got x3 D4’s, which you’ve said is the highest defense card in the original game, x3 D6, and a D-All. I realize the D4’s are also A4’s, but that still seems like a lot.
I also think you used a lot of the same mechanics that are used in the Epic Duels Kenobi deck. But I also think there’s some room to explore some things that are new. And also the clones need to have talent cards to fit the basic structure of the original game.
And just a *bit* less defense.
Basically I’m throwing this deck together for fun, with no real experience, but maybe there will be some ideas in it that you’ll like.
General Kenobi with 3 Clone Troopers (3 fits the context of the game better)
Same Basic Deck you used, same special ability.
But for the Talent Cards…
x4 Jedi Attack- A5 After resolving the attack, Kenobi can immediately take a free maneuver action. BOOST: 2
x4 Soresu Defense- D2 You may Boost this defense twice BOOST: 2
x3 Jedi Quickness- Until the end of this turn, increase your Move rating by 1. Draw a Card. Playing this card does not count as an action. BOOST: 2
x2 Do What I Must- A4 If Obi Wan has already damaged the target on this turn the attack value is 7. BOOST: 3
1x HIGH GROUND
D0. DURING COMBAT: General Kenobi takes no damage from the attack.
AFTER COMBAT: If General Kenobi can be in a different zone than the attacker, the attacker takes damage equal to the attack value of the attack card played. (Note this card is the same as your original design.
Does this card not get a boost value? You didn’t include one.)
x1 Bold Move- Move General Kenobi adjacent to any enemy character. Draw 3 Cards. BOOST: 3
x1 The Negotiator- Draw up to 5 cards. Choose an opponent. That opponent may draw up to 2 cards. BOOST: 3
Clone Special Cards
x2 Blind Obedience- A2 Draw a Card
So in this design i more explicitly built Obi Wan’s excellent defense around his boosting mechanic by making the base defense value a little lower, but giving him the opportunity to compound boosting, which would need draw power to support since I know in this game the maximum cards in ones hand is 7.
The clones get the lame 2 copies of A2 just so they can be explicitly weaker than stronger one hit minors, since all the basic cards are the same. That’s really weird but OK.
I like these ideas a lot! Especially throwing in something for the Clones — it would be weird without that.
The one card I’d probably not go with is your version of SORESU DEFENSE. A D2 isn’t a good card, even with the BOOST mechanic. I don’t even think this is a good special ability for him, but we’ll try it because it suits him. Defense is purely a reactive ability, and if you “overdo” it, you just lose cards and gain nothing in return. Arthur’s ability, by contrast, gives him a path to win the game, so a charged up A2 is a dangerous card.
I pretty much feel the same way, maybe to a slightly lesser degree. I think I’ve seen him win but he has to get a lot out of Merlin. Even with his special ability, 4x A2 is a weak bread and butter.
Yeah, I got a taste of that last night while playing Arthur. I think FEINT would be less of a stumbling block if his special ability let him BOOST during combat instead of before; that way if you get FEINTed then at least you can keep your card.
Still, I like Arthur because he has (potentially) big attacks, the frequency of which, I miss from EDs.
Sinbad seems to be the best designed and most effective deck in this set. He is the King of the Comeback, and I’ve used the hand limit of 7 with Riches Beyond Compare to get rid of 2 Voyages I didn’t need just to get stronger faster.
Sinbad is my fave! I love the “attack increases in strength as you use it” mechanic that Tim Wutke employs in his Zuko & Iroh deck, but it’s done better with Sinbad since it can utilize more cards.
Not sure which of these are questions about the deck, vs how much is just about this game in general. full disclosure, I haven’t played this yet, but just looking at the thing, I’m wondering how much my intuitions match with your experience given that you have played the game.
1: How many hit points are you intending General Kenobi and Dark Anakin to have?
2: When I looked at the game, I noticed that “team minor” sets have either three or four minors at 1 HP each. You seem to have taken the concept of single hit point minors, but only two of them. Just wondering, why did you make that call? Like why not 3 or 4 clone troopers?
3: Do you intend to use the “1 HP for generic minors” for ALL generic minor types? Like will the SBDs and Royal Guards also get only one hit point? Generic jedi minors, if you even use those?
4: This is more of a question about the game in general, than about your set, but do the characters all share a basic set? And how does that work mechanically? (It seems problematic that a blaster armed clone would have the same amount of basic attack and defense power as General Kenobi or Dark Anakin with his lightsaber, unless I’m misunderstanding how this game works.)
5: Related, how hard is it to kill people in this game? Coming from an Epic Duels background, virtually every deck has a lot more offense than defense, in its basic deck (the Blue Deck is 32 points of offense, 24 points of defense, the Red Deck is 38/18, and the Green Deck is only marginally more defense than offense at 28/31, and we all know that its hard to kill a Green Deck with power defense.) Do you find that with the equal offensive and defensive capabilities in the basic deck that its really hard for anything to get killed? And mechanically does it make sense for clone troopers to have 4 defends?
There are a lot of intriguing things about this game, but I wonder how fused basic decks would actually work out. How does it work in your experience?
1. Probably 18 HP each to start, then I’ll adjust based on how they perform.
2. Probably needs to be 3 Clones each, but I’m going to start with 2 and see how they do. They will have only 1 hit each. Also, they should have an allocation of special cards but so far, they don’t. I don’t really want to see Obi-Wan vs. Anakin come down to a “Clone Tactics” card or something like that, but I may have to relent on that point and include sidekick special cards the way all the original Unmatched decks have.
3. Yes, I would use 1 hit for all generic minors, at least for now. If you want to make Super Battle Droids better than Battle Droids, do it by giving them better cards.
5. I find that it’s harder, and takes longer, to kill off a major character in Unmatched than it does in Epic Duels. The attack cards in Unmatched have lower values (nothing higher than A6 so far) and defense is more prevalent. Also, you tend to use one action to move so you’re typically only using one action to attack, unlike Epic Duels where you get a “free move” and then use 2 actions to attack. So a typical turn might be an A5 vs. a D2 for 3 damage — and that’s it. In Epic Duels, by contrast, Dooku might step up and do 10-12 damage in a single turn.
As for my experience, I have yet to try these or any fan-made decks, so it’s hard to say, but you can count on me to let you know how it goes.
For the “after combat: discard” cards, if the defender played a “cancel all effects” card like Feint, would that mean Anakin doesn’t have to discard? That would be pretty brutal!
Thank you so much for doing all this Roman. I’ll get more into Unmatched next month after I’ve actually played the game…Of course, that hasn’t stopped me from writing up a Han and Chewie deck in the meantime.
Given the way the boards work, it could be a highly situational card that works when he is on a space that can attack at range but not melee, but that might not work as well.
Are we trying to recreate the feel of the original Obi-Wan Kenobi deck or do something entirely new?
I think for this first go, I’m just going to take ideas from the original Obi-Wan deck, plus our Obi-Wan & Anakin deck, and fuse something together. I’m not certain I want so much hit-and-run though, I feel like that fits other characters better than Obi, who is best known for defense.
I think that’s a good fit. Perhaps we could start with something basic but definitely useful: Obi-Wan may BOOST his defense. This could make him stand out among the existing decks, which as you pointed out, have no way not to take damage from A6s. It’d be relatively simple to lay out the deck in a way where that isn’t too broken, and I think Defense as his static ability sums up Obi-Wan well.
That’s an interesting mechanic and one that fits Obi well, but idk… there aren’t that many times you’d really benefit from a defense BOOST. It’s ok if his special ability is nothing great, we just make the cards better.
I think you may be underselling. The ability to boost every defend even 1 or 2 in this game feels like it could potentially be gamechanging. When you can routinely block out A4s and A5s…
Thanks for putting together such a great resource! My son and I spent the morning going over your deck lists, and at dinner the whole family brainstormed which characters we’d like to make (my four and a half year old suggested Mary Poppins, who has the power to use her umbrella to move anywhere on the board).
Is there any forum for discussing deck building? I’d love to be able to learn from people with more experience.
Yeah, so that’s sort of the question, what forum do we use? We can chat here for now, but this isn’t the best format for discussing deck building. We can give BGG a try as well, but we almost need an Unmatched Wiki, the way we have an Epic Duels Wiki. I wonder if we can copy that format perhaps?
Reddit is a possibility. Subreddits can have their own Wiki for reference, and of course there’s a built-in message board for discussion.
There already is an Unmatched subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Unmatched/) but it’s pretty dead. We could either ask the mod if they’re interested in creating a wiki, or just create a new Unmatched subreddit.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there’s a Wiki on the Unmatched “family” page (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/56937/unmatched), only on the individual games, but there is a forum on the family page. I guess things like deck lists could go in the Wikis for the game the deck came from.
That BGG Wiki doesn’t appear to have the functionality that we need. I think this game needs a dedicated space, just don’t know what or where that space should be. I suggest using this space and/or the BGG forums for now.
I came here from your post on BGG, and I’m really interested in seeing how you make custom decks. I’ve never played Epic Duels, but my son and I are really excited for Unmatched and I love the idea of being able to make our own decks, so I’m very grateful for your initial breakdown and can’t wait to read more!
You say that “it would be very tough for fans to recreate these hit point dials”, but what about 3D printing? My guess is that it’s just three simple pieces — top, bottom, spinning inner disk — so it’d probably be pretty simple to model and print.
Welcome! I don’t have a 3D printer so I wouldn’t be able to do it. You can buy hit point dials but they aren’t cheap. I’d probably just create Epic Duels -style battle cards. They aren’t as pretty, but they work just fine. However, if you’re able to create some dials of your own, please share your work!
The ability to create our own decks in Epic Duels has kept the game going for 17 years now. Perhaps it’s time to switch that creation to a new game. Let’s find out.
I’m fortunate enough to have access to high-quality 3D printers, and I’m not bad at 3D modelling simple things, so I’ll definitely give it a shot. I’ll have to wait until I get my hands on the game in September to see how it works exactly.
If it works I will definitely make the files publicly available. In fact, it looks like several people already have, e.g.: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2790191 (but my printer can do MUCH higher quality than that!)
I’ve pre-ordered this (September can get here fast enough.)
I’m enthusiastic about the game as it fixes the problems I have with Epic Duels (Boards are bland and movement is random.) I’m not enough of a programming wiz to make a Deck Builder app but I’m really excited about working with Star Wars characters and others.
I thought they may be! I especially like the static abilities: you can build a whole deck around the core mechanic of the ability, or use it to fill a much needed hole in a character’s game. It’s completely changed how I approached Flash and Green Lantern’s deck.
I do think, once we get around to testing Star Wars stuff, we can consider messing with HP Totals. Three 1 HP Stormtroopers aren’t a bad tradeoff, but a Chewbacca with less than 10 HP is criminal.
I’m very excited, and I certainly hope to make some custom maps for unmatched soon. My brother and I are decent artists, so we will see what we can do. I’m also planning with this to make my very own deck for the first time and not just making small modifications like we did in SWED. I love star wars, but I’m planning to start by trying to add The Big Boss from MGS to unmatched as a learning experience. Keeping the art up to speed will be a real challenge for sure.
I have a couple spartans back from when Halo did the Heroclix thing and i was actually thinking of doing a John – Spartan 117 deck for Unmatched once i got the hang of things (also working professionally with Illustrator and Photoshop; feel like it wouldn’t be difficult).
I’d love to see what you come up with BIG Boy himself.
Make sure to share with the class!
I’m a active fighter and just found out about this game, I love what it has to offer because most of my friends aren’t die hard gamers and I feel it be easy for them to grasp and they would enjoy it as well I’ll definitely be picking up a copy when it comes out !
Thanks Brandon! We think you and your friends will have fun playing Cage Match! Make sure you visit the main page and sign up for our newsletter so you know when it launches!
Sounds reasonable. I have to admit the whole thing that made me think of increasing/improving from the weak minor deck was that you stated The Nazguls are PROBABLY below a Tier 2 SWED deck and I would like my versions to be at least a Tier 2 deck as they feature Three Jedi or Three Sith (dependig on which version you choose).
I am absolutely on your side on trying to avoid any extra decks but like you said it almost feels as if it is necessary for this kind of deck if you want to just make it a little bit stronger than the weak version and especially don’t want to add to much defense.
I pondered a little bit about the idea and came up with those “solutions” for each version: The 23/17 (which is supposed to be a scaled down version of the red deck): 2xA4D1; 2x3AD1; 1×3/2; 2xA2D2; 1xA1D3; 1xA1D4
And the 20/20 (a weak alternative to the blue minor): 3xA3D1; 1A3D2; 1xA2D2; 2xA2D3; 1xA1D3; 1xA1D4
Maybe I will print out both. This custom version and the original weak version and play test them both ways.
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