Unmatched: Little Red Riding Hood vs. Beowulf

To set up Unmatched: Little Red Riding Hood vs. Beowulf, place the double-sided two-player board on the table, choosing either the traditional side with filled-in zone circles or the side with zones indicated by borders. Place the three door tokens to the side, as they begin open. Each player chooses a character (Little Red Riding Hood or Beowulf) and takes their corresponding character token, sidekick token (Huntsman for Little Red, Wiglaf for Beowulf), health dial, and deck of cards. Set the health dials to their starting values (14 for Little Red, 17 for Beowulf, 9 for Huntsman, 9 for Wiglaf). Little Red Riding Hood starts with her 'Little Red's Basket' card in her discard pile, and Beowulf starts with one Rage token face-up, with the other two face-down.

The primary objective in Unmatched: Little Red Riding Hood vs. Beowulf is to eliminate your opponent's main fighter. This is achieved by strategically playing cards and maneuvering your fighters on the board to deal damage. The game is a direct combat scenario, and the player whose main fighter is the last one remaining on the board is declared the winner.

On your turn, you perform two actions, which can be any combination of Maneuver, Scheme, or Attack. Maneuvering allows you to move your fighters; during a maneuver action, you can freely close an adjacent door by placing a token on it, or spend one movement space to open a closed door, removing its token. Scheme actions involve playing a scheme card from your hand to resolve its effects. Attack actions involve playing an attack card to initiate combat with an opposing fighter. Each character and sidekick has unique abilities and a deck of cards tailored to their fighting style, which will influence your tactical decisions during your turn.

Unmatched: Little Red Riding Hood vs. Beowulf is a skirmish game with no traditional scoring system. The game is a direct head-to-head combat where the sole aim is to defeat your opponent's hero. The game does not track points or victory conditions beyond the elimination of the opposing main fighter.

The game concludes immediately when one player's main fighter (either Little Red Riding Hood or Beowulf) has their health reduced to zero. The player whose main fighter is still on the board at that moment is the winner. If both main fighters are defeated simultaneously due to a card effect, the player who initiated the combat is typically the loser, but specific card texts may override this rule.