Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I’m ending the way I started: with an Unmatched dessert. This time, though, it is the Ninja Turtles in a cooperative adventure against a boss. I have not got around to the first Adventures, because I do not collect the non-thematic Unmatched sets, so I was genuinely curious to see how this version would play. And, let’s be honest: Ninja Turtles for the win.

Here, Unmatched’s familiar foundation has been adapted into a cooperative boss battler, with rule changes that struck me as very clever. Rather than only looking at how to overcome the player opposite me, I have to coordinate with the team against a shared opponent and plan our strategy to withstand the boss’s pressure.

The game does not go easy on you. Against Shredder, at least, winning demands careful play, good decisions, and drawing the right things at the right time. It is not one of those cooperative games where you simply do the obvious and everything falls into place: Shredder has already got us 3–1, and now we are preparing to try Krang, who has a completely different play style.

What I liked most is that the difficulty did not push me away; it nudged me into playing again and doing better. Very good fun, especially if you want your Unmatched to end in a team brawl with a boss rather than the usual settling of scores between yourselves.