Fog 2.0 (unmatched)

I said in my first post that I could “do whatever I want” and I am already taking advantage of this rule by talking about boardgames. And worse; a single niche character in an already niche boardgame. But I suppose mass market appeal is not why people visit blogs nowadays. So off we go. Since November of last year I have been spending a not-insignificant amount of time and money playing a boardgame called “Unmatched”.

The premise of the game is simple, a turn-based card game where you face off against your opponent in duels on a miniature battlefield. The card art is always gorgeous, and the gameplay loop is deep without being overly complex. But the real joy comes when you begin mixing and matching the sets. Unmatched does not just use their own generic original characters, they pull from a vast library of public domain and licensed characters. You can have the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park face off against Sherlock Holmes, or Black Panther showdown with King Arthur.

But enough selling- I don’t work for Restoration games and I don’t want to turn this post into ad copy.

The very first set I bought was “Cobble and Fog”; where Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and the Invisible Man face off on the shadowy streets of London. I immediately gravitated towards the Invisible Man: his playstyle is all hit and run, launching devastating attacks before slipping away through the fog tokens he leaves dotted around the battlefield.

At least in theory. Unfortunately, Invisible Man tends to suck in practice. (His win rate is only around 35%, compared to the roughly 50% of his contemporaries (Unmatched Results Tracking)). He is slippery yes, and his “scheme” cards are remarkably powerful. But his main mechanic, his fog tokens, tend to be more of a nuisance than anything. When he is standing in a space with a fog token, they allow him increased movement, better defense, and improved effects on many cards. Unfortunately, focusing on using them as a mechanic tends to be more of a liability than anything else. The Invisible Man’s most effective playstyle is incredibly boring, forgoing hit and run tactics for slow and arduous passive damage. Damage that is often not enough to bring down especially tanky characters, making him essentially impotent.

As a mechanic his fog tokens completely lack flexibility. They go down at the start of a match and then might only be moved a handful of times from there. Invisible Man lives and dies by his tokens, and this lack of options makes him an incredibly one note character. Many of his card’s effects encourage him to keep his fog tokens close, standing on one for a passive boost to his defense as well as triggering damage buffs or damaging opponents on the same space as fog tokens in cards like “Emerge from Mist” and “Dreaming of Revenge”.

But his playstyle also encourages his fog tokens to be spread across the map so he can teleport through them (when on a fog token other spaces with fog tokens are treated as adjacent). Invisible Man is relatively light on defense cards compared to many other characters, and what cards he does have tend to lack raw numbers. Having fog tokens spread around allows him to escape easily, avoiding the knockdown drag out brawls that strain his limited defensive options.

This dichotomy might suggest a gameplay loop of spreading his tokens out to stall for time, before converging on a target like a bank of looming fog. It’s the kind of delightful marriage of gameplay and concept that the other characters of Cobble and Fog manage to achieve wonderfully (Sherlock in particular is an absolute joy to play for this reason). But enacting that style of gameplay is basically impossible.

The Invisible Man’s only source of consistent token movement is the scheme “Rolling Fog”, of which he only has two of in a deck of thirty. He has many other cards which allow for token movement, but they are generally underpowered: either forcing an escape (ending the engagement early), allowing for only 2 or 3 squares of movement, or worst: giving the enemy the opportunity to move his tokens as well. But the main problem of these effects is not the what but the when.

Each turn in Unmatched requires two actions, usually an attacking action and a movement action, either to approach and then attack or vice versa. Striking the right balance of these actions is key to winning, deciding when to run away and force the opponent to spend a turn moving, and when to stand and fight. Viewed numerically, the Invisible Man has plenty of token movement. But because these effects only trigger after his turn of attacking, of which he will very probably only take one that turn, they will invariably seem to come just a turn too late.

If Invisible Man sets up the effect for “Dreaming of Revenge” (an effect I have never managed to trigger in a match, despite my best intentions) his opponent has ample opportunity to move away and force him to spend even more cards trying to set up even a basic combo. Or if he ends a turn moving his fog tokens closer to prepare for a fight, his opponent will almost always be able to move away, wasting even more token movement. It makes activating his abilities less of a puzzle to be solved and of an annoying obstacle to be avoided. And Invisible Man’s abilities are not nearly powerful enough to justify such hassle. Overcoming that annoyance only provides a few extra points of damage given, and a few points of damage prevented.

But if the situation were completely hopeless, I wouldn’t be making this post. And I think there is a simple solution to almost all his problems.

Enter Fog 2.0

Simply treat his fog tokens as pseudo-minions and allow them to benefit from Invisible Man’s movement actions, while still acting as tokens and not blocking enemy movement or being vulnerable to attack. They are already placed as minions are, and it would give him an interesting quirk to separate him from the rest of the cast. They could not be moved under or through enemies (this might prove too powerful: Invisible Man should be difficult to pin down, but not impossible), but they could still be moved into far more advantageous positions without relying on inconsistent card effects, giving his other card effects more opportunities to be work.

While researching this post I found a comment by the head game designer on the BoardGameGeek forums on saying essentially the exact opposite, that the fog is not meant to be a sidekick.

“While IM can work within and across the fog, he is not a master of the elements. He cannot control it; he just uses it to his advantage” – Chris Leder.

With all respect to Chris Leder, this is kind of a stupid take. No other character in the game has such little control over their own primary gameplay loop. Jekyll and Hyde exist in the very same pack, and although the flavor of their cards allude to uncontrollable transformations and disoriented awakenings, the player always has complete control over whether they are Jekyll or Hyde. Figuring out when to be each becomes a puzzle to be solved, not an obstacle to be avoided.

An additional change might be allowing Invisible Man to place his tokens anywhere on the map at the beginning of the game (this is how me and my friend initially misinterpreted his mechanics), but that would be a larger break with the mechanics of the game while not truly being necessary. A simple change to their movement would grant his main mechanic an infinitely higher amount of flexibility, while not invalidating the rest of his kit.

The beauty of this change is that it could be implemented with a simple announcement from Restoration Games. No reprints or drastic mechanical changes required. Just an extra footnote on future rulebooks. Whether or not this could make Invisible Man “viable” is up for debate, I’ve yet to extensively test the idea out, but it would make him a lot more fun to play. And isn’t that what’s most important?