Duels at 14 by 14

Weighed the box before it went up the trail, four decks and four little sculpts, and it still came in lighter than most of what I carry for a weekend. That matters more than it should when everything above camp four goes on your back. The game itself is a duel, two fighters, a handful of maps, cards that double as movement and attack and, if you’re paying attention, bluff. Medusa against King Arthur the first night, wind picking up outside, and I lost quick, then lost again slower.

There’s a real gap between the fighters here, the kind you notice by game three not game one. Arthur and Alice keep coming up short against Medusa and Sinbad, and it’s not really arguable, the numbers on paper support it. Alice especially felt like an odd choice for this set, a character who isn’t quite legend the way the others are, more of a placeholder for someone cooler to show up in a later box. Which, fair, they did. Later Unmatched sets get sharper decks, more going on per card, and next to those this first volume plays like a rough draft that happened to work anyway.

It did take us a session or two to click. First night my hiking partner and I both came away lukewarm, cards felt arbitrary, movement felt fiddly. Second night the flow showed up, positioning stopped feeling random and started feeling like something you could plan for two turns out, and that’s when it got good. Twenty minutes a match once you know it, less breakdown than most card games this size, box closes flat.

Solo it doesn’t really exist, no bot deck in this box, so it’s strictly a two-person thing, which up here is the honest ceiling on most nights anyway. Fine by me. I’ll take a game that only needs one other person and folds into a stuff sack over one that needs four and a folding table I don’t have room for.