(Credit to Renegade Game Studios)
Written by Ed Carter, Staff Writer
Unstoppable
1-2 players
Renegade Game Studios
Deck building, card drafting, solo hero
Becoming Unstoppable: Game overviewÂ
There is a world ending menace threatening all life on the three planets of Ceres, Mithras and Virenos. One hero with growing power inside has the chance to be the savior and defeat the threat. To achieve this. you must gather allies, resources, skills, and gear to become unstoppable.
Unstoppable is a 1-2 player deck builder in the Renegade solo hero series of games that challenges the player to overcome an ever increasing horde of threats in order to defeat the boss and win the game. The danger escalates with each victory and each card you add to your deck not only increases your power, but the threats you face as well. The game uses a unique system of card drafting and upgrading; each card has a core side and a threat side combined to make one card. It is a challenging puzzle trying to defeat the threats as well as building up your deck.
Training for the fight of your life: Game set-upÂ
When you first open the box, you will need to sleeve and set up your cards before you can play. The rule book goes over what cards are paired to create a complete card of threats and your deck. There are three bosses that come in the game and 4 characters to choose from. It is recommended to play against the harbinger as your first boss. Each boss has their own deck and set-up instructions to follow.
Once you have your cards sleeved and organized, take 6 strikes and one spare credits card to form your base deck. Add the three character specific cards and any additional cards from the boss to form your starting deck. Set your health to 10 and your armor to zero, take 3 action tokens and 3 credits adding them to your player mat. Your character board is ready.
Set up your market cards by taking the 6 decks of core cards and line them up in 6 rows. Next, take the upgrade cards and form a face down deck and draw 6 cards from the top also in a row.
Draw three cards from your deck and place the remaining on your player mat threat side up. Take the top three cards to create the threats in the battlefield for your round of play, paying close attention to any keywords. Refer to the threat guide for the rules on each keyword. Place your level disc and core level disc above the level 1 core cards. place the danger tracker on the top zero space of the boss mat and you are ready to go.
Fighting for your survival and victory: A Game turn
The game is played in turns made up of 5 phases; Upkeep. Draft, Main, Threat and Cleanup phases.
- Upkeep – Gain 3 action points, refresh all allies, and resolve any upkeep effects
- Draft – Draw 3 cards from a core deck that is from the deck where your level marker is located. Select 1 to keep and sleeve it with a threat card and place it in your hand, returning the other 2 to the bottom of the core deck.
- Main – Play cards from your hand by paying the indicated action point cost and resolve the effects on the card. If it is an ally, exhaust it to use its abilities. Purchase any upgrades by paying the credits and adding it to one of your cards not in play. Cards can deal damage to threats, the boss, gain credits, action tokens or other various abilities. Threats are defeated when they have sustained enough damage to total their current attack and defense values. These values can increase as the danger level increases.
- Threat – Take damage from any remaining threats; this may include your on deck threat depending on the keywords. Reduce your health and armor by the amount of damage sustained in the phase. If your health goes to zero, you lose the game.
- Cleanup
- Discard all played tactic cards
- Lose all unspent action points
- Reset armor to zero
- Refill the battlefield with up to three active threats
- Advance the danger level by 1
The game continues until either you defeat the boss or you run out of time when the danger marker reaches the end.
Can you actually win? Final thoughtsÂ
Make no mistake, this game is hard, and it will beat you up as you play, This balance of threats and upgrades is a challenge. For each upgrade you add to a card, you can also make the threat of that card even harder the next time you face it.
Game designer John D Clair posted on board game geek that if you play this like your standard deck builder, it will be a really frustrating experience. You don’t get to draw back up to a full hand in Unstoppable; You get your new card you draft and any cards you still have unplayed. Card economy and upgrades are the key to victory in this game.
Add to that as the danger level increases each round, so do the threats strength. This challenge makes a win that much more rewarding. There is no easy level to this game, there is normal. medium and hard. The level is tracked on the boss mat, by skipping certain spaces the harder you make it. Normal level is quite the challenge already. Its a brain burning puzzle to get the right balance of threat and power needed to defeat it. The game is full of great card combinations that can level the playing field when dealing with the battlefield.
Each boss and character play uniquely so there is a lot of replay ability. The game comes with all of the sleeves you need to play and set up your decks, plus a good insert and card dividers to keep things organized in the box between plays. Its a game that I keep going back to as I continue to look for those game changing card combos in my attempt to win.
I can see gamers who want a real challenge with some unique mechanics enjoying this one a lot. While the game can be played cooperatively as well, it is designed to be a solo gamer experience as it is part of the solo hero series of games from Renegade Games. There is a Dungeon Crawler Carl version of Unstoppable that is currently on Kickstarter for fans of that book series. You can find the current version available online, from Renegade games direct, or at your local game store.
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