Unmatched - Characters and Concepts I'd like to see

A little while back, I spoke about the Unmatched board games and my enjoyment of them. Since then, I've invested in even more and do my best to play the game more often than I buy expansions, though I don't always succeed. Unmatched has expanded since I wrote my last entry to include a couple of ideas that I had thought to write here,to include PvE expansions in the "Adventures" series. Of course, there is still room for improvement, I am not fond of the way all the Marvel expansions are entirely heroes and not villains, for example, but I'll discuss that more below. So that this whole exercise doesn't have too much of an air of wish listing, I'll endevour to give examples of how I feel a character should run, or at least what an idea would be bringing to the game that isn't there already. As I tend to go with these articles, I'll begin with what I feel to be more reasonable and within the realm of possibility, and then move on to more fantastic and fanciful ideas.


More Villains

Whilst this feels the most prevalent with the Marvel expansions, Unmatched always seems to focus more on heroic characters, and I feel a bit of variety in this regard would make for a better ludonarrative experience. With the whole "crossover" nature of Unmatched, the Battle of Legends boxes are fine, and Cobble & Fog only has the one heroic character in Sherlock Holmes, but a mix of "baddies" in there would be great. The Marvel boxes are especially baffling, with three heroes all fighting one another for no real reason; makes me wonder why there wasn't a "Secret War" or "Contest of Champions" overlay to the line. "Hells Kitchen" did it correctly as far as I'm concerned, with a "Hero", "Antihero" and "Villain" in Daredevil, Elektra and Bullseye. Of course, Marvel is done in Unmatched for now, and The Witcher sets did this better, but the upcoming Hellboy release could easily fall into this trap again.  


Another Cobble & Fog

Cobble & Fog was the first Unmatched I purchased, and I think it is a great little box, even if Sherlock is very strong compared to some other characters. I would think that "Cobble & Fog 2" would be an easy sell, especially as the four-character boxes always feel like better value. This would be a pretty straightforward box to get together as well, using the original as a basis. Throw in Abraham Van Hellsing to deal with Dracula (probably with some kind of open hand mechanic to represent his knowledge of foes) and James Moriarty to menace Holmes. I see Moriarty being a character that plays a lot of schemes and relies on their Sidekick, Colonel Moran, to do the actual damage. Then there's plenty of other ideas that would work, like Spring-Heeled Jack as a hit-and-run type and maybe even Fagin with a horde or urchin Sidekicks that pinch your cards.


Unmatched Adventures

The "Adventures" line offers a lot of opportunity for Unmatched, even without branching out too much further from ideas they have already executed. Obvious ideas include a "Cobble & Fog" version with Captain Nemo as the antagonist, Hellboy featuring the Old Ones and even Battle of Legends with a Hydra or Titan of some kind. I have one idea, however, and it is a very 'me' idea, using Superheroes of the Golden Age; it would fit with the Pulp idea of the first "Adventures" set and require no licensing whatsoever. Taking inspiration from things like "Super Wizard Returns" and "The Next Issue Project", I think the enemy being an all-powerful Stardust and the heroes being pulp standards like The Shadow, Lady in Red and The Spider would be a fun little box that adds some variety without being too far off the mark for the series.


Battle of Legends

If I had a favourite series of Unmatched, it would have to be "Battle of Legends". A crossover fighting game of mytho-historical and literary heroes is right down my alley and I'm a little shocked there aren't more of these than the Marvel versions, as they almost write themselves. There is a line of taste to consider, to be sure, like I'd avoid figures that are still broadly worshiped or are historically rather iffy, so probably no Shiva or Baron Samedi and certainly no Torquemada Corteaz or Davey Crokett (George Washington getting a character still baffles me). Still, that leaves a massive list of possible characters, just off the top of my head; M. Zenith, Herakles, Guan-Yu, Jack the Ripper, Hua Mulan, Quetzalcoatl, Maui, Brunhilde, Raffles, The Phantom of the Opera, Scarlet Pimpernel, John Carter, Raymond Carter, Carmilla, the possibilities are endless. We see this in many of the two-character boxes as well, so there's no limit to this theme except weird rights and good taste.


Fighting Games

So this is where I get a tad wish-list-y, Unmatched is basically a fighting game on a board right? So why not try for a fighting game license? Sure, there's huge problems with this idea and it's pretty unrealistic, but if it could be pulled off, it's tailor-made for Unmatched. Obvious ideas include Street Fighter (for that "Marvel Vs Capcom" vibe) or Mortal Kombat, but they're the big boys and will probably cost a packet to license. So how about some also-rans like Killer Instinct, Primal Rage or Rise of the Robots? Surely they're not asking the same money as Marvel, you know? I feel like I barely need to justify this one, as the ideas would translate almost straight across; big slow brawlers play the same, strike and fade works just fine and most of the moves already have elaborate names for the cards. Add in some retro pixel art for the fans and the whole package would be pretty neat.

Superhero Media: The Spectacular Spider-Man Animated Series

I was a little surprised when this series popped up on Netflix, as opposed to Disney+, but seeing that it was far shorter (at two seasons) than some other things I was watching, I gave it a go one slow weekend. And, it turns out The Spectacular Spider-Man is actually really damn good, probably one of the best animated versions of Spider-Man I've seen. Drawing on both the 616 and Ultimate continuities, The Spectacular Spider-Man hits a really good balance of keeping classic stories and characters whilst bringing them into the modern day. Or, at least, the early 2000s. Kids without smartphones just looks weird to me now. What this programme does which I haven't really seen in a lot of other Spider-Man cartoons is centre the relationships of Peter Parker and his peers, with several episodes that revolve more around teenage romance than fighting animal-themed villains.

Whilst the romantic elements are probably a turn-off for some, I found them really interesting, helping to build the supporting cast to be more than just a bunch of interchangeable kids. And it's written pretty well too, which is quite astounding. An ongoing thread has Peter dating Liz Allen whilst being pursued by Gwen Stacey, and it's handled with shocking maturity and accuracy to teenage development and relationships. Another really cool element of The Spectacular Spider-Man is that Peter's Rogues Gallery is actually factionalised, like in the comics, with Tombstone, Doctor Octopus and Silvermane fighting for control of the New York underworld as Spider-Man tries to stop them and the enigmatic Green Goblin running around in the background as an extra threat. Unlike most animated programmes of this nature, The Spectacular Spider-Man has threads that run through multiple episodes, rather than everything being a one-off with incremental growth; it's a nice change and still something not seen all that often.

My major criticism of The Spectacular Spider-Man is the animation, which is just slightly odd, with visible nostrils and eyes of different shapes on most characters. It's not a deal-breaker, and after one or two episodes, I stopped noticing, but the programme not looking like any Spider-Man comic is an odd choice. For the voice actor fans out there, The Spectacular Spider-Man features the likes of James Arnold Taylor, Clancy Brown, Phil LaMarr, John DiMaggio and more, so the talent is present and lifts up what is already a solid script. If you like your Spider-Man with references to Carl Sagan and James Joyce, which I really do, then the two short seasons of The Spectacular Spider-Man are well worth the watch, even if the broad strokes will be familiar to most fans already. I'm not sure that this is strictly the "best" animated Spider-Man series, but it is really good and mostly a joy to watch, I may even return to it one day, after I get through the dozens of other versions.

The Slizer Project - Part III

When we last left the Slizer saga, a war for control of the technology of Time Travel had ended with the Slizer forces remaining intact and Time Travel being kept in the hands of the powers that be. At this stage of the narrative, you can tell that Anime had started to hit the West and the stories I was making up drifted to more of that style. Certainly the focus of the Slizer stuff moves more towards individual characters rather than epic space wars and the like. Those of a certain vintage will start to recognise more specific Lego sets and brands in the story too, as I had more money of my own and could decide on my purchases.

In the wake of the war, eight pilots chosen from the Slizer team and the aliens and future people with who they work to take on the responsibility of the new Slizer weapons. At this point it's probably worth mentioning that the name "Slizer" is recurrent in the narrative, first appearing as the name of the "Ship" that our heroes traveled through time in and now being revealed to be these weapons. There's a whole thing about a predestination paradox that will come full-circle at the end, but it's probably not as clever as I think it is. To begin with, there are eight Slizer units, Judge, Energy, Jungle, City, Fire, Ice, Sub and Rock, each with a set pilot who must attempt to "bond" with the unit on a mental level. Each unit has its own specialty, though some are more esoteric than others, so the team has to learn a new synergy whilst putting aside their differences to become an effective unit. Of course, all the time, war is brewing again.

One of the big reveals for this arc is that the "big bad" behind the antagonists is actually Daniel, the person who invented time travel and started the group's adventures and betrayed them before Calvin got stranded in the Old West. Daniel is doing a "Kang The Conqueror" bit by working with different versions of himself from across the time stream. As the conflict ramps up again with small incursions and raids, the new technology of the Slizers and the new dynamic of the team keeps putting our heroes on the back-foot. Calvin teams up with his main rival, an alien in the team whose friend he killed way back in the "time traveling adventure" days, to investigate and uncover the enemy base without the Slizer weapons. This doesn't quite go to plan and the Slizers have to come in to save the day, but this is essentially the "team coming together" moment. Some of the inter-member conflict continues, and will play a role later, but the Slizers can work together and the conflict starts to go their way once again. Daniel, however, escapes and rebuilds his group.

Needing something to strike back against the Slizers, Daniel sides with another alien faction that fought in the previous war against the Slizer forces and starts designing a new weapon; The Razors. Much like the Slizers, the Razors are biomechanical weapons, somewhat alive, and requiring a living "pilot" to operate. Whereas the Slizers grow to accommodate their pilots and the synergy provides more power, the Razors feed off theirs and pilots burn out after a while. Due to the limited numbers of both Slizers and Razors, the two sides play around each other and skirmish for a while, with neither coming off the better. Getting impatient, Daniel decides to take a run at the Control Centre of the Slizer organisation, using all the Razors at once and even piloting one himself. All the Slizers launch in response and the largest battle since the war takes place. In the chaos, Calvin and Daniel find themselves squaring off; although Daniel's more powerful machine puts him at the advantage, Calvin and the Jungle Slizer achieve a higher level of synergy than anyone else for a few moments and get the win. Seeing their leader killed, the rest of the enemy forces retreat or surrender, though most of the Razors are destroyed.

Following the battle, the higher ups of the Slizer programme are concerned about the high Synergy achieved by Calvin but that doesn't hold them back from announcing more Slizer units in production... 

Superhero Media: Punisher War Zone (2008)

Before Frank Castle got his own Netflix series, the big argument between fans was which film was better, the '80s version, The Punisher from 2004 and Punisher War Zone. As you probably know by now, the Tom Jane version is my personal pick, but for a while War Zone was the favourite of many. Filled with stars of television, War Zone appears more to be an elaborate pilot for a cable series than it does the start of a new film franchise. In recent years, War Zone has become something of a cult darling, with the director, Lexi Alexander, doing a series of interviews in which she discusses the misogyny and obligations of the Hollywood studio system and how that came to impact the film. It's fascinating, but fails to distract from the fact that the film still didn't turn out all that great. Not that I'm implying that Alexander is a bad filmmaker, just that an interesting story doesn't always make an uninteresting film more engaging. Still, at least Frank shoots a lot of people and wears a skull shirt for most of the run time.

Taking a great deal of "inspiration" from the Garth Ennis The Punisher MAX run I've discussed before, War Zone is full of references to those comics, or at least pretends to be. You know how the 2017 Ghost In The Shell makes a lot of reference to previous iterations of the franchise, but they don't really mean anything? Same here. Sure, it's great to see Christu and Tiberu from "The Slavers", but their inclusion doesn't make any sense and they're just there to be a reference; same with a name-only version of Maginty from "Kitchen Irish", who, in War Zone is a freerunner on a constant meth high. That's not to say that there isn't a lot in War Zone to enjoy, it certainly does play like a Punisher story, with plenty of kills, a variety of guns and a nice bit of gore. The big fight just before the finale is reminiscent of The Raid or Dredd, taking place in an abandoned hotel, with Frank murdering his way through ranks of goons to get to Jigsaw and the plot device hostages in the penthouse. It's really well done and just a good action sequence to check out.

One thing I've noticed about the best Punisher stories is that there tends to be a character other than Frank who is eating up a lot of the plot. This is typically a good thing, as Frank doesn't have a lot of room for growth and tends to not have an arc of any discernible kind, so people have to react around him, rather than him reacting to them. Think Agent Carter in Captain America The First Avenger or anyone in Superman The Movie. War Zone dose have a few characters that exist around Frank, but only really the antagonist, Jigsaw, actually undergoes much change in reaction to Frank's actions; it's just not a brilliantly-written film, sorry. Again, this really feels like the kind of "movie-length" television pilot that was common for genre programming in the 1990s, and the cast being drawn from programmes such as Rome, Dexter and Lost tends to just reinforce that notion. If War Zone is your favourite Punisher film, I really can't fault you, but it just leaves me cold and wanting Tom Jane to return.

From the Archives - 21

In our last adventure, Inquisitor Kang and his retinue failed to penetrate the Lair of the Mutants in a little solo game I ran way back in 2020. Well, not happy being beaten by my own game, I decided to re-equip and go back into the catacombs.

Read about the game here: https://ludusbellorum.blogspot.com/2020/05/in-lair-of-mutants-part-ii.html

Come back soon for the epic finale of this Superheroic 40k trilogy!

Superhero Media: Godzilla - City on the Edge of Battle

Having survived their encounter with the not-really-Godzilla, protagonist man and his team must race to their ship before the mothership leaves orbit or they're eaten by the local fauna. A chance discovery leads the survivors to a massive factory city composed of nanometal, a city grown from the wreckage of Mechagodzilla. You know what? I've figured these damned things out, they're not Godzilla films, they're someone's Science Fiction concept that they couldn't get made into a series or film until they slapped Godzilla branding on it, like a bunch of the crappier Doctor Who novels. Even for one of the cheaper Godzilla efforts, there is precious little Godzilla in City on the Edge of Battle, excepting the planet full of Kaiju spawn; and Mechagodzilla doesn't actually appear at all, unless you count the city, I guess?

Thing is, as a Science Fiction film? City on the Edge of Battle is actually alright. I'm not really a big SF fan when it really comes down to it, but from what I have seen, the concepts here were interesting and all of the tech looked pretty cool. But I did tune in to see giant monsters fighting each other, and I got all of none of that, so I can't really rate the series that high on that aspect. The most interesting part of City on the Edge of Battle is the continuation of the exploration of the two alien belief systems, here revealed to both rotate around Kaiju of some form, which makes a sort of sense, as the creatures are destroying civilisations across the universe, evidently. One species even does the thing where they don't say the name of the monster as a kind of Magical Thinking, with our protagonist ending the film by recalling the name "Gidorah". I hope this means the next one at least involves a monster fight at some point.

I'm personally pretty forgiving when it comes to the huge range of Godzilla fiction, even defending Jet Jaguar and Minilla when I get the chance, but I'm yet to find anything in this series that I feel I'm really going to carry forward. Keep in mind that I even like elements of the 1998 American Godzilla, so this series is really leaving me cold. I'm just not sure what the point of it all was, as it barely even contains Godzilla and even I'm not familiar with the weird philosophy and politics of the narrative, if indeed there is a message trying to be conveyed. Now it's on to the last one of these, which will at least be the end, even if I doubt it will be satisfying.

Ultimate Alliance China: Part VII

Chen Zheng was exhilarated. Despite years of inactivity, his body had responded when he needed it to and his equipment had functioned perfectly. Though now he could feel the beginning of all-too-familiar fatigue setting in, it was if he here in his twenties and just starting out again, rather than a man well into his fifties playing at superhero. Taking the private penthouse elevator at a luxury Hong Kong hotel, he would be off-camera and his equipment would be waiting, including a trusty medical kit. Chen stood under a scalding hot shower and manipulated any small rocks and slivers of metal that had worked into his skin, being rewarded with small flows of fresh blood that he found invigorating. A call down to his private kitchen and shortly Zheng was eating several steaks, quarts of soy milk and half a bottle of expensive scotch; he was sitting on the edge of his bed, considering calling up a masseuse when sleep overcame him. 

Waking more than twelve hours later, Zheng felt as if his body was made of rocks and shattered glass stuffed into a wetsuit. Unclenching his fist, Zheng was rewarded with a series of snaps and pops that indicated he had not moved at all since falling asleep, a sure sign of complete exhaustion. He sent for strong coffee, congee and the massage he'd passed on the previous evening, though opting for the ancient man with his needles and callouses rather than the young lady with oils and soft hands. Later, sore but invigorated, Zheng made a call to the office, blustering all of his appointments off to another day as he dressed in a tracksuit and arranged a car to take him to one of the company's warehouses, deep in the industrial district. The warehouse was something of an open secret among the staff who knew Zheng well, it was a hidden workshop with vintage cars and motorcycles where he went to "tinker" from time to time. Whilst that was true to a degree, the warehouse held a deeper secret as well.

Once assured he was alone, Zheng started up an automatic program that would reliably produce the lights and sounds of work whilst he accessed the true workshop in the hidden sub-basement, The Masked Warrior's Ironworks. Despite being inactive for many years, Zheng still came by this place and tinkered from time to time, mostly on projects he could never get to work properly in his heyday; a powered exoskeleton that once broke his leg, a gas gun and countless other weapons that never did what they were supposed to. Firing up the computer, Zheng cleared space on the main workbench as his proprietary AI searched the dark web for what he needed, a back door into wherever the Science Patrol's files where archived. Zheng had long ago learned that hacking was near useless when just about any information was available somewhere for a price, which he could typically easily afford. 

Soon Zheng was having the computer analyse the schematics, performance records and diagnostics of Super Inframan, comparing them with currently available technology and the materials that were at hand in the workshop. By pulling some supplies from across the company and "losing" the paperwork, Zheng should be able to construct a new armoured suit and suite of weapons within a couple of days, a week at the most. With his new gear, The Masked Warrior would return like righteous lightning from heaven, to destroy Inframan and end the pathetic rebellion in Hong Kong once and for all.