Good news, folks, Geralt is bound for your coffee table. So says Restoration Games, publishers of card and miniatures game Unmatched, who announced today that it’s partnering with CD Projekt Red to bring a bunch of Witcher-themed stuff into the game over the course of two new sets.
⚔️ The Witcher is coming to Unmatched in 2024! We’re thrilled to share the news that we’ve partnered with @CDPROJEKTRED to bring the epic world and characters of The Witcher to Unmatched next year.https://t.co/GCaQhSTwdb#TheWitcher #Unmatched #BoardGames #TableTop pic.twitter.com/zouUsBurnONovember 29, 2023
Unmatched works by pitting two, ah, unmatched opponents—say Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a T-Rex, or Dr Jekyll and Robin Hood—against one another. At the beginning of a game, players choose their heroes and corresponding decks as well as a battlefield to wage war on. The new Witcher expansion adds new decks and battlefields to the game.
Called “Steel and Silver,” and “Realms Fall,” each Witcher-themed set adds “three playable hero decks and two unique battlefields,” to Unmatched’s lineup. You’ll be able to play Geralt, naturally, but Restoration also teases that you’ll be able to “lead Ciri to her destiny as the Lady of Space and Time, quaff a Tawny Owl potion, and race across the battlements of Kaer Morhen to stalk your foe.”
By my reckoning, that leaves four heroes still unknown. Yennefer, Triss, and Dandelion seem likely (though the latter maybe as one of the game’s many sidekicks), and perhaps a villain like Eredin or Radovid. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Eskel, Lambert, and/or Vesemir. Still, I’d rather bet everything on Roach being in there.
Anyway, Unmatched has earned some high praise around these parts. When I asked our resident board game czar Robin Valentine what he thought about the Witcher collab, he told me “The idea of all these different characters fighting might make Unmatched sound a bit… Fortnite-y, but on the board it really works. With top notch art and production design, accessible rules, and decks that really capture the spirit and personality of each character, it’s become my favourite board game over the last few years—and The Witcher characters are a great fit for it.”
Sounds good to me, but Restoration is keeping schtum for now, so it’s up to us to speculate just what form the rest of these Witcher-y sets will take when they break cover in 2024. For now, we just know that CD Projekt Red franchise and lore designer Cian Mather says that Restoration “put great care and attention to detail into not only representing the lore of The Witcher,” and that “Players will definitely connect with Restoration’s spin on these beloved Witcher characters when they get their hands on the game.” Well, he would know.