Restoration Games is releasing a new expansion for its hero-battler board game Unmatched, which will feature William Shakespeare and three of his most famous characters duking it out in London’s Globe theatre.
As well as Billy Shakes – as we call ‘im ‘ere in Britain – Unmatched: Slings and Arrows features Hamlet, Titania, and the Wayward Sisters (Macbeth witches). It will be available to preorder from March 4, and receive its full retail release on June 12.
If you’ve never heard of Unmatched, the series bills itself as a battling game for “unlikely fighters”. It features in our best movie board games list for throwing together characters like Marvel superheroes and Jurassic Park dinosaurs, but the series includes characters from myth, history, and literature. An asymmetric game, each Unmatched character gets their own unique deck which determines their abilities.
We’ve actually known that Shakespeare was coming to Unmatched for a while now, as the hero’s designer Jonathan Guberman won a contest, created in 2020, to design a new Unmatched hero.
Guberman had no game design experience before he won this contest. In an interview on Restoration Games’ website, Guberman said he “found many of the possibilities I was most excited about came from two categories: real historical figures and Shakespearean characters. In hindsight, it took me a surprisingly long time to put the two together and realize I could do Shakespeare himself.”
The Wayward Sisters also apparently come from the same competition. They were designed by Jason Hager, a runner-up in the competition, and now one of the designers of the recent cryptid-filled cooperative version, Unmatched Adventures.
In a Restoration Games’ press release, president Justin D. Jacobson says “In the vein of the highly successful Cobble & Fog, these heroes will challenge players’ preconceptions about what an Unmatched deck can do and reward them for mastering their unique playstyles.”
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