Villainous is a super cool game featuring villains from movies! If you are a little bit twisted and like the bad guys to win sometimes, this might be just the game for you!

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There are different versions of Villainous; we have Disney villains but there are also Marvel and Star Wars villains. In addition, there are numerous stand-alone expansions, so you can get the villains you want to play.

These expansions are really cool because you don’t need to buy the base game to play them. The base game comes with six villains, the rules, a fun bowl for the tokens, and extra tokens. However, each expansion comes with some tokens, three villains, and a small booklet of the main rules, so you can play it without the base.

Here are the boards and cards for Ursula, Hook, and Mother Gothel. Each character board has four locations on it, and you can do different actions at each board. The cards with the purple section on the bottom have allies, objects, and actions to help the villain. The cards that are white on the bottom are the Fate deck and have heroes, effects, and objects to hinder the villain.

Villainous is really unique in that every player chooses a character to play, and that character comes with their own cards, board, rules, and winning conditions! We have the base game and two expansions; all Disney villains.

This is Mother Gothel’s setup. She’s unique because Rapunzel is always out.

After deciding what villain you want to play as, collect all the parts for your villain. Each villain has two decks of cards (a villain deck and a fate deck), a card with reminders of what the action symbols mean, and a guide to how to play that villain. Some villains have a couple of extra pieces like lock tokens. They each also have a stylized pawn that you’ll be moving about your own board.

Some of Mother Gothel’s cards. These allies and effects will help her achieve her win condition.

Villains do not directly interact with each other. However, some locations on your board allow you to draw a fate card from an opponent’s deck. You play that fate card on that opponent, interfering with their efforts to win the game.

Some of Mother Gothel’s Fate cards. Each of these cards will hinder Mother Gothel’s goal of gaining trust.

Up to six can play the game, but even just playing with all four of us, it can get a bit long. I think it works better as a two- or three-player game. Especially since you need to keep a close eye on your opponents. Not only do you need to know your own winning conditions, but you need to keep an eye on theirs. Each villain is different, and some are harder than others.

Maleficent seems to be the easiest, while Hook seems to be the hardest. They all can have a lot going on, so if executive functioning skills are lacking, this might not be the best game for you. However, if you want to work on executive functioning, Villainous will definitely accomplish that!

While Villainous is not cooperative, it’s different enough that it doesn’t seem to be a problem for my family. Besides, we have enough characters that it’s easy to just choose a different one next time!