When Tales Attack

A villain and their minions are threatening the town! You heroes will need to work together to defeat them through skilled maneuvers, schemes, and attacks. You’re our only hope!

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What Is It?

🎯The Goal is to defeat the villain
⚙️Cooperative – Players work together
⚙️Action Points – Players do 2 actions per turn. They can maneuver (draw a card and move), play a scheme card, and/or attack an opponent
⚙️Hand Management – There aren’t a ton of opportunities to draw cards, some minions make you discard cards, and you never shuffle your deck, so you really need to manage your cards wisely
⚙️Variable Player Powers – 4 unique character decks
⚙️Variable Set-up – There are 2 villains and 6 minions, and you choose 1 and 3 per game, respectively

Who Is It For?

👥1 to 4 Players – The villain’s health scales based on player count. You can cover more ground with more players
👥Ages 12 & Up – The rules are pretty approachable, especially if you’ve played Unmatched, but strategizing can be tricky as you adapt to the fluctuating turn order
👥Fans of Unmatched system looking for a cooperative variation
👥Fans of hand management

PROS

🟢Aesthetics – Great look/art
🟢Components – The minis are excellent, and the overall component quality is very nice
🟢Rules are well-written
🟢Good variety in minion combos
🟢Smooth gameplay
🟢Small learning curve if you’ve played Unmatched
🟢Fun theme

CONS

🔴If it’s your first play of Unmatched, it can be overwhelming since there’s 2 rulebooks, plus a small set of rules for the characters
🔴Luck of the draw – turn order fluctuates which means players can’t always plan ahead; Characters with sidekicks can get unlucky if their cards aren’t for the character they want to use
🔴I wish there were more options for drawing cards

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Final Thoughts

I thought this was an interesting twist on the original Unmatched system, while still holding a lot of the original game, making it an easy transition if you’ve already played that. It has a fun theme, and good variety in both player characters and opponents. I thought strategizing in this was interesting, and held the most contrast to the original, because the villains/minions will always defend and get to reshuffle their decks at times, so you have to be ready for that. But overall, if you like this style of game, and cooperative play, then it’s definitely worth checking out!

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Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 6/10

Designers – Jason Hager, Darren Reckner
Artists – JJ Ariosa, Anne Benjamin, Marie Bergeron, Ashley Floréal, Satoshi Kamanaka, Nastya Lehn, Kwanchai Moriya, Ian Reed (I), Jason Taylor
Publisher – Restoration Games
MSRP – $60.00
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