Be your favorite Disney villain in Villainous!

With the launch of Disney+ this past month, millions of families are watching tons of classic Disney movies lately.

Of course, to families with young children, this comes as no surprise because they’ve probably been watching lots of Disney movies regularly anyway.

In all these movies, we cheer for the hero.

Deep down we know the hero will come out victorious. But to do so, they have to overcome challenges along the way.

Well, what about the Villains?

If we were to view these movies from the perspective of the villains, they’ve got some major challenges to overcome as well.

Now it’s your turn to try in Disney Villainous!

 

How to play Disney Villainous

In Disney Villainous, players take on the roles of famous Disney Villains working to achieve their goals. Every player is a different villain with their own objective and storyline to pursue. The first player to achieve their villainous objective wins.

The villainous characters in the game are Maleficent, Jafar, Ursula, the Queen of Hearts, Captain Hook, and Prince John. Players can choose their character or select them randomly. Once selected, players take the villain board, pawn, villain deck, and fate deck matching their character. They can also each get a reference card which lists possible actions as well as character objectives.

In addition, each player gets their character’s Villain Guide book which explains various aspects of their character objectives and cards.

Players shuffle their Villain deck and place it to the left of their villain board and draw 4 cards to their hand. They also shuffle their Fate deck and place it to the right of their board.

Then they get familiar with their personal villain objective:

• Captain Hook must defeat Peter Pan on the Jolly Roger.
• Jafar must get and move the magic lamp to the Sultan’s palace.
• Malificent must place and maintain curses at each of the 4 locations in her realm.
• Ursula must get the trident and the crown to her lair and defeat King Triton.
• The Queen of Hearts must convert card guards to Wickets at each location and Take a Shot.
• Prince John must collect 20 Power.

On a player’s turn, they move their character pawn to one of the 4 locations on their villain board (their realm) and take actions matching the symbols at that location.

Every villain board is unique as to which action combinations are available at the different locations. For each symbol showing at that location, the player may perform that action once.

These actions include:

• Gain Power – Take power tokens from the supply equal to the number shown in the symbol.
• Play a Card – Play a card from their hand. Some cards have a cost that must be paid with Power tokens. And Item or Ally can be played to any unlocked location. Condition and Effect cards grant special actions.
• Activate – Some Items and Allies have Activate symbols on them. When activating, the player pays the Activate cost and performs the action indicated on the Item or Ally card.
• Fate – Choose an opponent, draw 2 cards from their Fate deck, and choose one to play on them. A Hero card may be played on any unlocked location in the opponent’s realm.
• Move an Item or Ally – Move one Item or Ally to any adjacent location in the realm. Some Items remain attached to an Ally and must move together.
• Move a Hero – Move one Hero to an adjacent location in the realm.
• Vanquish – Use Allies at a location to defeat Heroes at that same location. The Allies must have a Strength (number in bottom left of cards) equal to or greater than the Hero.
• Discard Cards – Discard as many cards as desired.

Some actions at the top of a location in the realm may be covered by a Hero card from the Fate deck. When covered, the actions from those covered symbols can not be performed.

At the end of a player’s turn, they draw from their villain deck until they have 4 cards in hand. Then it’s the next player’s turn.

Players continue taking turns until one player has accomplished their objective. That player wins!

 

Can the whole family enjoy Disney Villainous?

It’s pretty clear that Disney Villainous is targeted at families.

The whole theme is a huge draw for families to play together. The game is a fun mash up of awesome Disney movie plots and characters.

Yet, the stories don’t ever cross over into each other’s territory.

Cards from villain decks and fate decks are only played to that villain’s realm — keeping the storylines very much in tact.

Kids and adults alike enjoy playing heroes, allies, items, conditions, and effects within the realms of these familiar stories.

However, because there’s plenty of reading, strategizing, and making choices on every turn, younger kids may feel left out.

First of all, players choose which location they want to move to each turn — dictating which actions they’ll be able to perform. So players will often need to think a couple turns ahead on what they want to accomplish.

For example, they’ll have cards in their hand that they’ll want to play. But those cards may have a cost. So they’ll need to go to a location that gives them Power tokens. Then they’ll need to go to a location that let’s them play a card from their hand. Depending on the realm, those actions may both be at one location, but not always.

Then when they take a Fate action, they’ll have to choose which opponent to target. They’ll draw 2 cards from that player’s Fate deck and will have to decide which to play and then where to place it. Wanting to disrupt their opponent, they’ll need to consider the location based on both where any villain Allies may be as well as which symbols they’ll cover up — and thus make unavailable for their opponent to use (until they Vanquish that Hero).

Which also means that players need to be aware of their opponent’s main objectives. It’s hard to thwart someone if you don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish.

There’s also a big element of luck in the game.

Many villains require cards from their Fate deck to be in play to accomplish their objective. And sometimes, those cards are going to happen to be deeper in their Fate deck than their opponents’ are for them.

The beauty of the game though is that those villain decks also have abilities on the cards that allow them to manipulate or work through their own Fate deck to get to such cards.

Overall, we’ve found a good balance between the luck and the strategy.

The only downside we’ve encountered is that there can be a larger amount of downtime between turns than we like for a family game. If you’re playing with a full 6-player count, you’ll be waiting a while for your next turn. Yes, once players get familiar with the actions they can take on their turns, there’s still plenty of choices to make.

Players can plan out their turns while waiting, but they’ll also need to be ready to adjust their plans if someone plays a Fate card into their realm.

But overall all, the game is a fun romp in the many Disney realms!

Ravensburger has done an awesome job with tying the characters, their objectives, and the special actions on cards to the theme of each Disney movie they’re tied to.

 

Disney Villainous Expansions

With any successful game (and with any successful Disney movie) you can expect to see sequels.

And Disney Villainous is no exception.

After the wonderful reception of Disney Villainous in 2018, Ravensburger published 2 expansions in 2019 – Wicked to the Core and Evil Comes Prepared.

Both expansions introduce 3 new villains to the game.

Wicked to the Core brings Hades, Evil Queen, and Dr. Facilier to the mix. And Evil Comes Prepared delivers Ratigan, Yzma, and Scar (the most requested villain).

Just like the base game, the characters, objectives, realms, and special actions are perfectly tied to their movie storylines and deliver on the fun!

Now we have 12 villains to choose from when we play the game — making every game completely unique in who’s competing against who.

 

How does Disney Villainous score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Disney Villainous definitely scores high on our “let’s play again” game meter. We enjoy most of the Disney movies these villains come from and we’ve enjoyed playing those storylines out in game form.

And we’ve found that most of us have our favorite villains to play.

But if we only play those characters, it might get a bit stale. So we like to go with a random villain draw each game to keep things interesting.

Because of the downtime issue though, we like to keep the player count around 4 players. While it can be fun to have 5 or 6 players in the mix, when doing so we just know the game will take a bit longer to play. So we only play at that player count with players that have played before and can play quickly on their turns.

If your family loves Disney movies, we’d recommend you give Disney Villainous a go!

We’d like to thank Miniature Market and Ravensburger for review copies of Disney Villainous, Disney Villainous: Wicked to the Core, and Disney Villainous: Evil Comes Prepared.