You are Dracula, stalking the fog-shrouded streets of Victorian Whitby. Around you patrol your dark spawn, three sisters jumping from roof to roof, balcony to balcony. All of you are searching for prey. Suddenly, the mist coalesces before you into a shape, a coat and hat that your vampire senses immediately perceive as wrong. Where there should be a face and hands there is just nothingness, invisibility. Mentally you direct your spawn to stalk and surround the figure, cutting off its escape routes before you pounce, only to find at the moment of impact that it melts away, leaving nothing but fistfulls of smoke between your talons. From somewhere nearby, you hear mocking laughter.
This is Unmatched: Cobble and Fog, an extraordinarily evocative title for what is, essentially a straight up one-on-one skirmish game. There are a lot of games in the Unmatched series, which pits figures from across pop culture and myth in epic fights, all using the same straightforward core rule. In most of them you get the high-octane action and tricky tactics that you might expect. And you get that here, too, it’s just that you get an additional and effective overlay of gothic horror that brings it in line with the best Halloween board games, elevating it among the other franchise entries.
Some of this game's success is down to the production, from the dark, ink-washed figures, to the double-sided board of creepy locales and secret passages, to the striking pen-and-ink art on the cards. But mostly it’s down to the way each character plays, thanks to their unique deck and special powers.
Our opening encounter is a good example. The Dracula player not only has the Count to maneuver but also three "sisters" tokens that are fragile in fights but can block routes and trap enemies on the point-to-point board. His deck has a number of hard-hitting combat moves that reward surrounding enemies with the sisters but also hypnosis powers that can give you some insight into your opponent’s deck. The Invisible Man, meanwhile, controls three fog tokens that not only offer a defensive boost but allow him to teleport between any of them whenever he moves, making him tough to pin down. His deck is less obviously powerful, but relies on using the fog to make surprise moves and misdirections to trick your foes into making mistakes, allowing you to pounce when they’re out of cards.
Hopefully, you can see how these powers and effects embellish the play with trickery and mind-games that make encounters like our opening paragraph not only possible but common. It’s a similar story with the set’s other two characters. Jekyll & Hyde flips between human and monster forms and is, perhaps, the least interesting option here but still fun to play, while Sherlock Holmes "investigates" his opponent’s cards and gets ranged support from Dr Watson and his trusty sidearm.
All this atmosphere comes on top of the tactical core, proven as rock-solid across the other Unmatched titles in a way only the best board games are. On your turn you can move and draw, play a card for an effect, or play a card to attack. It’s an easy-to-learn framework that nevertheless binds players in an immediate conundrum: you can either draw cards or play them, so if you go on the offence you will, eventually, run out of cards. This not only leaves you hugely vulnerable to counter-attack but risks you losing by running your deck down, forcing you to weigh and plan every play carefully.
Between the tactical thrills, cat and mouse maneuver and atmospheric horror overlay, Unmatched: Cobble & Fog isn’t just a fantastic skirmish game: it’s a creepy feast for lovers of the gothic and the macabre, too.
If you want more eerie tabletop gameplay, this modern-day D&D horror adventure feels like Resident Evil mixed with Control.
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