Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Today's review is of the 2025 release, Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For 1-4 players, it takes 20-40 minutes.

Overview

In this cooperative game, you and your friends are each a TMNT character with respective sidekicks, battling against the evil Shredder or Krang. Do you collectively have what it takes to prevail?

To setup the game, choose your hero. Choose a bad guy. Choose bad guy sidekicks equal to the number of players. Take all corresponding tokens, life counters, and decks (shuffling appropriately). Place all on the map of your choosing. Draw five cards and play begins.

This game is in the Unmatched line, and follows much of the same rules; I covered those in the previous post. Simplistically, on your turn, you will perform two actions as discussed last time: maneuver (draw a card and move), scheme, or attack. Turns continue until the good guys win . . . or bad guys prevail.

What is unique about this version:

1) Turn order. This is randomly chosen each round by shuffling the initiative cards (two for the main bad guy, one for each bad guy sidekick, and one for each player hero). Each player is given a marker denoting "player 1" or "player 2," etc. So a round could look something like this (in a three-player game against Shredder and three sidekicks: Bebop/Rocksteady, Leatherhead, and Rat King): Leatherhead, Shredder ability, player 2, Bebop/Rocksteady, player 1, player 3, Shredder, Rat King.

2) The enemies. Since this is cooperative, the game has a system to simulate the enemies. Each has a custom deck; each card in that has both an attack and defense value (and may have special abilities). The value you use depends on whether the character is attacking or defending. After use, each card is placed in its respective discard pile and (eventually) shuffled back into the main enemy deck (once the card stating that is played).

my two-player game in progress

Review
As with the competitive Unmatched line, this game is easy to learn and hard to master. You must manage your turn actions, character placement/movement, and hand of cards, with meaningful decisions in each sphere. The decks of cards are asymmetric, leading to a new experience with each hero you try (and each unique matchup). The turn order system is well done (if occasionally maddening when it doesn't go your way). The challenge level is high; we have yet to win. But the game moves swiftly either way.

Being fully compatible with other Unmatched releases, you could use other characters to play in this adventure. (I'm tempted to see how Dracula fares against Shredder). 

Overall, I enjoyed the game, think it is well done, and recommend it.

Rating: A