Unstoppable is a 1-2 player cooperative deck-building game where you modify not just your deck but the individual cards themselves.
Cardboard Cut-outs
The cards in Unstoppable are bizarre at first glance and genius in operation. The Threat cards and Core cards have cut-outs along the edge; on the other hand, the Upgrade cards have two different and smaller kinds of cut-outs, which line up perfectly to create visible fillers in those other cards. Cards are sleeved and shaped so that this combination is intuitive and very easy to do/undo.
The artwork is clear but dramatic, maybe a little dark but fitting for the dark sci-fi theme.
The other components are decent but nothing to write home about, with the exception of some really nice wooden Action and Level/Training discs.
The standout feature on Unstoppable is the way cards are physically combined and used. Each of the actively used cards is sleeved with a Core card for you to play on one side and a threat to fight on the other. Enemies you defeat are immediately flipped to become cards you can play. Cards you play eventually become opponents to fight. If you upgrade a card, there are important boosts to the action side, but this also enhances the adversary on the other side. This creates an additional self-building escalation of power on both sides that keeps the challenge well balanced.
Setting the Scene
Setup is very simple and surprisingly quick as long as you’ve stored everything sensibly in the box so you go through each deck of cards in the right order. This is so important I’d suggest going through setup after you’ve sleeved everything and before you arrange how everything is going to be stored.
Every game, you create six stacks of each level of Core cards, and below that place the Upgrade deck and lay out 6 Upgrade cards. You now choose a character to play and build your starting deck. Draw 3 cards to be your starting hand, the rest are flipped over to become your adversaries. Grab the Action tokens and place the Level discs above the level 1 Core cards.
Now choose the Boss. Each has a small amount of additional setup and advises which Threat cards should be combined and placed beside the Core cards. Place the Danger marker on 0, and we’re done.
If you store the decks is a sensible order, you can just drop these on the table with little planning.
Perpetual Motion
Turn structure is easy to remember, so you can concentrate on the strategy.
Upkeep means you grab 3 Action tokens, refresh any Allies you’ve used, and run any effects in play that refer to the Upkeep stage.
Now you Draft cards. Check which level of Core cards your smaller Level disc is above, and grab the top three cards of any deck up to that level. Choose one and place the other two at the bottom of that deck. Some cards work well with other cards of the same faction; others work better in a diverse deck, so this may help you decide.
Now take the top card from the Threat deck and slide your new card in the sleeve. No peeking, just enjoy the temporary ignorance of what’s going to turn up to bite you later later.
Next is the Main Phase of the turn. In any order and as many times as you want, you now play cards (which usually cost Action tokens), buy upgrades (which cost money) or use Allies that you’ve previously played.
When you Upgrade a card, you buy the upgrade and place it inside any Core card that hasn’t been discarded. This gives a permanent boost to that card, and includes a warning of the permanent boost it is also going to give to the adversary on the other side.
There are two types of Core cards, Tactics and Allies. Tactics are one-shot cards that get discarded at the end of the turn. Allies are played in front of you and stay in play. The variety on these cards is amazing and really helps keep each game different. There are several icons and keywords, but there is a reference card for the icons and every keyword includes an explanation.
Lots of cards, lots of variety.
The main thing you’re trying to do is defeat as many adversaries as you can. You do this by dealing damage. Once you’ve dealt enough damage, the adversary is defeated and gets flipped to be added to your hand.
At the start of each turn you have 3 adversaries actively attacking you; if any of them remain after the Main Phase, then they deal damage to you. You can protect against this by using Core cards that give you a temporary shield to soak up damage.
After that, it’s time for Cleanup. Discard any played tactics, remove any remaining shield, and move the Danger marker down another space.
Levelling up
It can be tempting to play it safe, but you need to be aggressive and clever right from the start to stand any chance in the late game. Every turn you are combining a Threat card with a Core card, the vital thing to consider is that the Core cards in each level are exponentially more powerful, but the Threat cards are constant. This means each time you draft a higher Core card, you are adjusting the balance of the deck in your favour. Also, powers on most adversaries escalate as the Danger level increases, which means your starting or level 1 cards quickly don’t do enough damage (Upgrades help). So, in order to build the best deck, you want to draft the best Core cards you can as often as possible.
In case you needed convincing, here’s an example of a good card from each level.
There are two ways to access later decks. Firstly, you can play cards/Allies with the Train action. This moves the smaller Level disc one level higher; at the start of the next turn, you use the small disc to show which decks are available. This is a temporary boost; after this draft the small disc goes back on top of the large disc.
The second way is to level up, which you do by depleting your current deck of adversaries. At that point you move both Level discs up one level, so you always have a better option of cards to draft. As an extra bonus, levelling up also often has an effect on the Boss, and lets you remove one of your cards from the game (Yay for built-in deck thinning!). This is a really strong reason to defeat as many adversaries as you can, even to the point of fighting the adversary on top of the deck to cycle through it faster. You’re adding an extra card every turn, so you need to combine Training, Upgrading and Level Up to create as optimised a deck as possible.
Escalating Threat
There is a nice variety in adversaries in the Threat decks, heavy in theme but light in complexity. All adversaries have a base Attack Value and Defense Value that set the damage they deal and the damage needed to defeat them (their Health is the sum of the Attack and Defense). They may also have an extra keyword (Crazed, Fast, Rage, Taunt, or Terror) that interfere with your tactics or the cards in play. If you’re very lucky, there is also a reward for defeating them.
The adversaries are varied without being complicated.
There are two really elegant ways that the game difficulty escalates as time goes on. At the end of every turn, the Danger Marker moves down one space. Not only does this set the countdown for the game (you lose if it reaches the end), but also the Danger Level in each space builds up from 0 to 5.
The majority of adversaries have a version of the Attack or Defense icons with a skull on them. This lets you know that the value for that icon is the current Danger Level, which means they become tougher as time goes on.
The second method has been mentioned before, which is when you Upgrade cards. Placing the upgrade helps you, but most of these upgrades also strengthen the adversary on the other side. This is still worth doing, as the boost to you beats the boost given to the adversary, but this does still create a dilemma. To help with this, the Upgrade card includes a warning of what it is going to give to the other side.
Using the above example, the card starts doing 2 damage and can be defeated with 2 damage. At Danger Level 4 it requires 6 damage to defeat, with the upgrades it deals 3 damage, requires 9 damage to defeat and has Rage. Not fun.
This escalation does mean that not optimising early can make failure inevitable, but it may still take a while for it to happen. Towards the end of the game you will encounter multiple threats doing 4-5 damage, and you only have a maximum of 10 health. If you don’t have enough high-level cards to reliably defeat or protect against all three active threats in each turn, then you can find an unlucky hand of cards means you lose. Deck thinning and heavy use of the Training ability are necessary right from the start and all through the game to stack the deck as much as you can.
Conserving Momentum
With such a simple turn loop, this could have easily become a repetitive game. The good news is that there are three modifiers with increasing impact.
Firstly, you can set the Difficulty, which decides which Danger Level spaces are used in the game. Some spaces let you remove a card from the game, while others let you refresh the Upgrades market. Adjusting Difficulty may not only affect game length but also which Danger Levels are used and how many of these extra options are available.
Next, you choose one of four Characters to play as. Each has their own unique 3 starting cards to include in the starting set of 10, so there’s a decent amount of difference in play, even if this gradually gets diluted as you draft more cards. It still does a good job of giving your gameplay a slightly different focus, as you tend to draft cards that synergise with your current cards.
Lastly, there are three Bosses you can fight. Each has a different method to add hazards to the game, and set the rules for how to defeat them. They don’t massively complicate the core gameplay loop but will give you something different to deal with.
Even without these three modifiers, the core game has enough to keep you interested for a very long time. The size of the each Threat deck means you will still get a decent variety in adversaries each game. As well as this, the number of Upgrades, the decent number of Core cards in each level, and the variety of how levelling up and training affect the draft mean you will not be playing with the same deck at any point.
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
I definitely recommend this as a clever deck-builder with high levels of tactics but surprisingly low complexity. There are a few plates to spin, but nothing that gets in the way of the game. The built-in escalation of your power and that of the enemies keeps the excitement building through the game.
I do feel that this is a solo game that they wanted to make cooperative, even so the 2-player mode is totally playable and does allow cooperation by allowing you to attack either player's adversaries. Handy for anyone that wants to share the experience rather than wait their turn.
Artwork 4/5
Complexity 3/5
Replayability 3/5
Interaction 2/5
Components 4/5
Final Score: 85/100
