Recently our Chief Restoration Officer Rob Daviau traveled to the Philippines for the All Aboard Expo. We asked him to recap his experience at the event with the amazing Unmatched community over there. Take it away Rob!
It is so rare that a game designer really, really gets to meet the people who like their game. You can track sales or ratings or comments on bgg and get an idea. Conventions often have a handful of people come up to you (if you’re lucky) to say they liked a game of yours. If things are going really well, you get a panel or autograph session to have a few dozen people tell you that they liked what you did. So, it was a complete (and wonderful) surprise to go to the All Aboard Expo ’26 in Metro Manila at the end of May.
First off, the Philippines are very far from Massachusetts. Second off, the people there are wonderful. And, most importantly, they are very, very, very passionate about games, Unmatched in particular. Very passionate.
During the four-day convention, I saw fans of the game playing, talking, coming up to me to discuss the game. I signed (no lie) about 1,000 autographs. Foil cards, box tops, promo cards. Deadpool. I signed a number of Deadpool Call Me cards. You could barely get Deadpool in the United States and here, on the other side of the world, I signed lots of Deadpool. People talked about having a Filipino character (please, pitch us one. Not the deck, just the character), about reprints, licenses, and what’s next for Unmatched.
On Sunday, I was on a panel hosted by iello where I talked a little bit about what’s coming next (without earning the ire of our marketing person by spoiling things). My wife, Lindsay, got up with us. She is on the art team for Unmatched and does the final production to make sure the printed materials are as good as they can be. Oh, she signed a lot of autographs as well. Well deserved but not common. When the graphic designer/production person is signing games, you know you have a passionate fan base.
I heard multiple people tell me they had the best Unmatched podcast in the Philippines (they can’t all be the best but they can certainly all claim they are the best). I had at least 6 people tell me that their town/island isn’t near a game store but they fly/boat to a larger town and bring back Unmatched for their village. For those of you who don’t know the Philippines, it has 7,000 islands, 4,000 of which are inhabited. It’s population is 133 million, just over a third of the US population. So even remote islands have quite a few people. Metro Manila is the 8th largest city in the world in terms of population (NYC is 22nd).
Then, on Saturday and Sunday, I got to see the Unmatched Asian championships. There were people there from Hong Kong, Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan. Over 120 people in the first round (with a robust waiting list). Saturday was a Swiss-system tournament with a cut at the end. Sunday was single elimination until thee were only two, who played in a best of 3 match. I only got to see the first two games as I had a flight to catch but, people, this was intense. Each game came down to the last turn or two. Scores were tight. Cards were tight. It was amazing to watch. Could’ve gone either way.
For you tournament players, the five characters brought to the table by one finalist were: Sun Wukong, Sherlock, Medusa, Yennenga, Golden Bat. The other finalist brought Tesla, Blackbeard, Ciri, Houdini, Sun Wukong. First game was Houdini vs. Yennenga. Second was Medusa vs. Blackbeard. I believe the third and final game was Medusa/Blackbeard again.
Then, it was 28 hours of travel home, please flipping our body clocks (back!) 12 hours. Long trip. Well worth it just to meet the Unmatched community there. Great country. Great people. And I didn’t even mention the food, y’all.