Unmatched: The Witcher Realms Fall and Steel and Silver Review

The first Unmatched set was released in early 2019 and allowed players to battle with heroes from history and legend. It's expanded since its first release, looping in other IPs and more fighters from legend. The latest release for the system draws from The Witcher IP, which originally was a series of books before the video game and TV show, and has seen a few tabletop incarnations. Unmatched: The Witcher enters with 2 new sets, which introduce heroes and villains from The Witcher series. In this article, we'll have a look at how you play Unmatched, which heroes the new sets add, and how they play.

We covered the Robin Hood vs Bigfoot Unmatched set on the site back in 2019, and recently, I've covered the board game, The Witcher: Old World, and its expansions. Or if you want to know about the video game, you can check out our The Witcher 3 review.

Find Your Match

The core rules for Unmatched are the same across all the sets (except the Unmatched: Tales to Amaze set, which tweaks the rules to add in solo/co-op play). Players pick their fighter, and can play 1v1, a free-for-all, or a 2v2. Then, each turn, players take 2 actions (and can pick the same action twice) from moving, attacking, or scheming.

Attacking and scheming require players to play an attack or scheme card from their hand, and moving lets you draw a card, and then move the amount on your character's stat card. You can also play cards to boost your move, and some abilities, attacks, and schemes also let you boost them. Play continues back and forth until only one fighter remains.

Although the core rules are simple and straightforward (the rulebook is 20 digest-sized pages with large text and lots of examples), the depth and strategy come from the individual characters themselves. Each character has a unique stat card and deck to give them a thematic style of play. Some characters also come with 1 or more sidekicks to add another dimension to their style of play.

Steel and Silver

Unmatched: Silver and Steel includes 3 characters from The Witcher franchise. The main protagonist of the first 3 video games, Geralt of Rivia, the protagonist of the upcoming The Witcher 4 game, Ciri, and one of the monsters from the franchise, the forest monster, the Ancient Leshen.

The White Wolf, Geralt of Rivia himself, as you would expect, has an aggressive deck. Most of his cards are combat-focused, and most have additional flexibility of adding additional mobility to Gerlat, drawing cards, or discarding your opponent's cards. At the start of the game, you get to build Geralt's deck, choosing between 2 sets of Potions, Armors, and Swords depending on what you're going up against. Geralt also brings along Dandelion as his sidekick, a ranged fighter with attack cards that can move your opponent's fighters and discard cards from their hand.

Ciri is another aggressive fighter, but her cards aren't initially as powerful as Geralt's. Instead, most of the cards in her deck have a Source icon, and other cards gain power, depending on how many Source cards are in your discard pile. The Lion Cub of Sintra attack card, for example, has a printed value of 2, but 4 with 1 Source card in the discard pile, and 7 with 5 Source cards in the discard pile. Ciri deploys with Ihuarraquax, who has cards that let them move and damage foes after combat, and search for Source cards from the deck.

The Ancient Leshen has extremely powerful attacks, and also adds +3 to attack card values if it has already attacked that turn. It has 13 cards in its deck with a printed value of 4 or more. Powerful as it is, the Leshen is slow, with a move of 1, so it can be easily kept at range by your opponents. The Leshen does have cards that let it move to any space after combat, and has 2 fast wolves as sidekicks, but getting that super-powerful second attack can be a challenge.

Realms Fall

Unmatched: Realms Fall includes 3 (technically 4) characters from The Witcher franchise. The powerful sorceresses and Geralt's love interests across the franchise, Yennefer and Triss, another powerful Sorceress, Philippa Eilhart, and the big bad from The Witcher 3, Eredin Bréacc Glas.

If you choose Yennefer and Triss, you then have to pick between them for your hero and sidekick. Both come with miniatures and sidekick tokens that represent them, and 2 stat cards depending on who you choose as the hero. Their deck remains the same, regardless of whom you choose, as most of their cards can be used by either, with 3 Yennefer and 2 Triss only cards.

They have a good mix of offense and defense, with Yennefer's Incinerate card having a printed attack value of 7, but can be ignored by your opponent discarding 2 cards. Triss's Merigold's Hailstorm card only has a printed attack value of 4, but your opponent must also either discard 2 cards, deal 3 damage to their hero, or discard the top 4 cards from their deck. The main difference between the pair is that if you choose Triss as the hero, her ability lets you deal 2 damage to a fighter adjacent to her after playing a scheme, and if you choose Yennefer, her ability means that attacks can be boosted.

Philippa and her sidekick, the powerful spymaster Dijkstra, have a defensive deck that likes to force your opponent to discard cards and cycle through their deck. Their offensive and defensive cards can block the value of your opponent's cards and also allow you to choose which card they play. Philippa's ability means that you're never short of cards yourself, and can always draw up to 4 cards at the end of your turn.

All of the fighters in both Unmatched: The Witcher boxes have ongoing scheme cards, which persist after playing as long as you meet the criteria. Philipa's Polymorph card, using her ability to turn into an Owl, means she can be placed in any space, and then her movement value is raised to 5, as long as at the end of your turn, you're not in a zone with an opposing fighter.

Eredin, as King of the Wild Hunt, brings along 4 Red Riders as sidekicks. You'll want to throw the Red Riders at your opponent, because once they're all off the battlefield, Eredin becomes enraged, adding 1 to all of his combat cards and boosting his move to 3.

Almost all of his cards gain extra abilities, usually extra damage once he's enraged, so throw your Red Riders at your opponent, and then bear down on them with Eredin for the kill. Eredin's cards aren't super powerful, but they deal consistent damage, and he can be pretty unrelenting. The Wild Hunt attack/defence card deals 1 damage to every fighter that's adjacent to one of your fighters, allowing you to remove a lot of weak sidekicks quickly with some clever positioning.

Unmatched: The Witcher Realms Fall and Steel and Silver Final Thoughts?

In a vacuum, the Unmatched: The Witcher boxes give a great thematic The Witcher experience. Each character feels thematically unique with Geralts' changing deck options, Eredin's relentlessness, Ciri's growing power, the almost stationary but powerful Leshen, the controlling and wily Philipa, and the powerful ranged sorceress combination of Triss and Yennefer.

The Unmatched system is straightforward and extremely easy to learn, letting you focus on the strategy of the fighter you've chosen. The variation and replayability come from that variety, so the more fighters you have, the longer it lasts.

Both Steel and Silver and Realms Fall both have 3 fighters, so a single box definitely feels like it has a finite amount of games before things start to feel samey. Having both boxes improves that, and long-time fans of Unmatched will find 6 unique and fun fighters to add to their games. Fans of The Witcher coming into Unmatched with these sets will find an accessible system, a great mix of characters that feel like the characters they know and love.

The copy of Unmatched: The Witcher Realms Fall and Steel and Silver used to produce this review was provided by Asmodee UK.