Ravensburger Disney Villainous Strategy Board Game for Age 10 and Up - 2019 Toty Game of The Year Award Winner

This is a game with a lot of excellent design elements, but hampered by a few, particularly late-game, play issues. I currently have the core Villainous game and the three expansions available at the point of writing this. I'll elaborate later, but in short, should you buy this? This game works BEST for intermediate to advanced level adult board gamers with an affection for Disney movies: classic to 90s. The age recommendation is 10 and over but unless you have a young player very engaged by problem solving and patient enough to withstand a lot of setbacks in the flow of the game, I would avoid it. What I will say is that it is an amazing implemantation of a Disney Villain theme into the mechanics of a board game, and it's just a beautiful looking game to have out. If you are a fan of these characters and not averse to some challenging gameplay, it's definitely worth a shot.Specifics: you play a villain! Here they are...Core game: Maleficent, Captain Hook, Prince John, Queen Of Hearts, Jafar, UrsulaEvil to the Core: Evil Queen (Snow White), Dr. Facelier (Princess & Frog), HadesEvil Comes Prepared: Scar, Ratigan (Great Mouse Det.), Yzma (Emporer's New Grv.)Perfectly Wretched: Cruella De Vil, Mother Gothel (Tangled), Pete (Steamboat Willie et al)MY favorites: Hades, Scar and Pete. All other villians are still fun, though Ursula and to a lesser extent Jafar I think suffer from comparatively poor play design.Everything is combinable; each expansion can be played without the core or other expansions.Objective: You are a villain and are competing against a number of other villians to realize your evil dreams before they do. Every villain has their own goal, their own allies and resources, and their own set of heroes the other villains will be playing against them.Components: There are a set of black power tokens that act as the game's currency of sorts, and 2-3 other pieces used universally. The core set comes with a plastic cauldron to put the power tokens in, but just a pile will do just fine. These pieces are serviceable but, unlike the villains' components themselves, nothing special. All the villains' components are completely unique and very high-quality. Each has their own fold-out board and two decks. The board and decks feature GREAT art pulled from the source material, given some painterly touches for more vibrant color. Each villain has their own player token, stylized figurines and very nice indeed. In terms of components, this is among the nicest games I've seen, particularly for licensed Disney.Gameplay: You and your opponents take turns. You move to different locations on your board giving you 2-4 different options; these options are sometimes limited by the heroes your opponent can choose to play against you. The turns are normally quite quick, though at the late game you might get some overthinkers. Each villain has a vastly different goal, and the pace of play varies greatly depending on how each one goes about winning.The Good: The implementation of theme into the gameplay is superb. Prince John collecting his taxes, constantly hampered by outlaws, Hades pushing his titans toward Mount Olympus, Scar setting his hyenas and killing lions on his way to the throne, Maleficent cursing the land as the fairies and forces of good try to stop her, the Evil Queen poisoning all those pesky dwarves! If you can get into the spirit of being one of these characters and especially if know your movie well, there is a whole lot of fun to be had here. The amazing art and design specificity make the immersion easy. It cannot be stressed enough how good the cards and the boards look; the art and color pallete really make each villain you play feel special.The Bad: The complaint I hear most often, and it is a valid one, is that your plans are too easily foiled. Opponents, if they sense you are about to win, will play your heroes more actively against you. One opponent hitting you is bad, 2-3 can bury you, and this back and forth can extend the game overlong to the point of frustration. Many times you will be set to win next turn and have victory snatched away. The way to beat this is to get good at the game: understand your specific winning conditions, have a bit of a poker face to avoid gang-ups and set yourself up with contingency plans. You're a villain, remember? Conversely know your opponent's villian and what tools work against them; it's very different for each one. But not every player is going to like to do this, so again, know what you are getting into. If you want to make the jump, Queen of Hearts, Hook, Prince John, Ratigan and all the Perfectly Wretched villains are much easier to play in this regard. Start with them and be aware the others are more challenging.Final thoughtsI really do like this game a lot. It's easy to learn, but surprisingly deep and hard to master. The core game is fun, but the expansion villains are uniformly better in design, which is expected with continued play I suppose. I wish it has some official solo variant, but you can always make one yourself. If you are a very casual gamer, or just looking for something quick to play with the kids, I would think twice (OR start with the Perfectly Wretched expansion and go from there-it's an easier set of villains and less $). If you are a serious fan of the films and the characters it's worth taking a chance on it. If you also happen to like midlevel board games and want a Disney addition to the collection this is a villainously perfect choice.

Super fun game! Came in great condition

I got into villainous over the thanksgiving holiday and I’ve been having a blast. It’s an easy game to understand that does require skill and proper play to win against your opponent. But doesn’t require intense strategy to understand or have fun with.The game itself focuses on completing the plan your Disney villain had in their movie of origin, so the thematic elements are there. At the same time you can also choose to mess with other players by having them get bothered by hero’s, items, and effect from their respective movie. This sets back other players and adds to the fun of the game.I highly recommend trying this game, very very fun. Below I will list the pros and cons with this set.PROS- comes with 6 characters, two of which are only in this set- Comes with all elements needed to play the game unlike the expansionsCONS- an updated version of Captain Hook, Prince John, Ursula, and Maleficent have been made that comes in box with just those four updated versions. These changes make all of the listed characters much better overall and in almost all cases much easier to play. The benefit of this set is that it comes with Jafar and the Queen of Hearts that you can’t get anywhere else.

If you’re a fan of Disney’s animated works, you need this game. Up front, I will say that there IS a learning curve to this, and set-up is definitely more intensive than you’re average round of Monopoly or Uno. There are several components for each player’s area that need to be set up. That being said, the instructions do a good job of explaining the flow of the game, and there is even a link to a helpful YouTube video that does a fantastic visual set-up and demo of the game. The game itself is very fun once you get into the flow of it, and discovering new strategies for your villains depending on what others you’re facing is addictive.Replay value is incredibly high, as each villain in the box has a different objective they must meet to win, and different cards and strategies to help in their quest. The cards and game boards all feature illustrated renditions of actual stills from the animated movies these villains originated in, and are gorgeous to look at. The player pieces are also very cool, colorful and slightly more abstract representations of the villains.The game currently has three expansions, each of which adds three more villains with their own unique cards and strategies, as well as extra power tokens and any unique pieces each villain needs. Having 15 villains to choose from is fantastic and drastically increases replay value even more, so I would heartily recommend investing in the expansions as well as the main game.Here is the one main sticking point I have: storage. The main game and expansions come in very nice boxes, as game boxes go. And even though the expansion boxes are far smaller than the main game, having four boxes for one game is going to take up space wherever you store your games. If that doesn’t bother you, great, but if space is limited, as it is for me, it is worth checking Etsy for storage solutions; neither Ravensberger or Amazon currently provide a single storage solution to hold the main game and all three expansions.As long as you’ve got the space for it, and a little bit of patience to get accustomed to the rules, you’re going to find Villainous to be a rousing good time! It’s good to be bad sometimes.